Great job Management, page-91

Hi DaLatta,
I have never posted on TON before as I am a SYR holder so don't want to comment on the other graphite hopefuls. I will declare that I have been in SYR for many years and I knew Brad Boyle for a year or two before he took on the CEO's job at TON. I read HC on and off and have followed the TON story closely. My background includes a decade of financial analysis for banks and investment banks and also 20 years experience with listed entities, mostly as CFO.
I have never seen or heard of anyone review 160 parameters (as Nasabear states he does) in order to compare investment criteria. This sounds like a recipe for paralysis by analysis where there are so many criteria that you get confused and are unable to make a decision. I suspect if Nasabear deleted say 80-85% of his criteria and concentrated on say 20 or 30 (or less) parameters then this could lead to more clarity. He should also weight the criteria to reflect their relative importance (he may do so however I don't think this has been mentioned in his posts) to ensure that the most important criteria have more importance than more minor parameters. The concept of peer group imbalance is absolutely fine in theory however putting this into practice requires a significant understanding of the difference within peer group members and the relative importance of those differences. I think this is where Nasabear has deviated from theory and arrived at conclusions that are incorrect and misleading IMO.
A classic peer group is the big4 banks. According to Nasa's peer group imbalance theory NAB should be equivalent in mkt capitalisation to the CBA (note that you look at market capitalisation NOT share price), however it trades at a 33% discount (or you could say CBA trades at a 50% premium). This 'imbalance' has been in existence for many many years and if you invested in NAB expecting it to return to balance with CBA then you would be sorely disappointed. Equally if you shorted CBA expecting the share price to fall to that of NAB again you would have done your dough. Reading the press about these two companies you will find a lot of commentary about strategy and outlook as some of the differentiating factors. Now how much this impacts the $55billion in difference in mkt cap I could not tell you however these parameters do impact differences in valuation and analysis of balance sheet and profit & loss factors will never be able to assist with this 'imbalance' as all of the banks have similar mature balance sheets.
When you start to analyse smaller companies which are in similar sectors ie. gold, coal or graphite, the differences in market capitalisation between group members (I wouldn't call them peers) are a lot more likely to be related to factors such as management, political risk factors, deposit style, etc etc rather than any sort of balance sheet or P&L parameters (other than the obvious cash on hand and debt). Any one of the factors could lead to vastly significant differences in valuation so the idea that these 'peers' will return to balance is just ridiculous and wrong. To espouse otherwise is misleading and inappropriate. My post here is to try and provide 'balance' from the authoritative postings of Nasabear that could easily confuse and misdirect investors that don't necessarily understand some of the terminology.
I was in two minds about posting this and will now go back in my box for another few years.