A lot of good info there Joelstar.Based on the title of the...

A lot of good info there Joelstar.

Based on the title of the table, correct me if I'm wrong, are you suggesting the better value here is those companies trading at discounts to their Total Equity?

The other way of looking at this is: what sort of return have shareholder's received from equity invested? The investment principal is to generate the greatest return from the least invested. That's not to suggest that those who trade at a premium will necessarily continue it but it may point to some quality aspects as you have alluded to (e.g. margin per ounce).

By example, if shareholders has invested $100M into 2 different companies and company A had a market cap of $1B in 5 years time whilst company B had a MC of $50M you'd probably conclude that company A was more investible going forward, irrespective of its premium to shareholder equity. So this would take the emphasis off looking toward companies trading at discounts to their equity and instead looking for companies which are able to generate a premium over the equity invested.

The other thing I think should be taken into account is the cumulative dividends paid. Regis I recall is up around the $600M or so of total dividends paid to shareholders over time. This should be added to Market cap to show the real premium that shareholders have received.

So just using your numbers a slightly different way for Regis:

Market Cap: $1,140M
Shareholders equity: $1,539M
Discount: -$ 399M
Total return on equity: -25.9%

Then add in Dividends:

Market Cap (Incl div's): $1,740M
Shareholders equity: $1,539M
Discount: +$201M
Total return on equity: +13.1%

RMS has paid a cumulative of around $70M in div's as far as I can see, so:

Market Cap (Incl. div's): $1,840M
Shareholders equity: $940M
Premium: +$900M
Total return on equity: +95.7%

So on this metric at least Ramelius has significantly outperformed Regis in that it's market cap is greater for less shareholder funds invested. There are many reasons for this, hedging being one of them, but really it just comes down to decisions made and how convinced the market is that each company will be able to achieve a return on capital for shareholders in the future.

Also, any reason you've left producer Emerald out? It's remarkable their performance over the last year.