I see you've all kept yourselves busy during the day questioning why a non-holder should post on a stock. I might just change my disclosure to 'held' for the sake of it; that should negate that juvenile issue that you all seem to have with non-holders posting on stocks. I'm one of you now :)
Scanspeak, are you sure that none of my points concern you? None at all? What about the uncertainty that centres around the economic reserve at Rocklands?
They've been drilling there for years, and have not been able to release one. I don't know about you, but I would be keeping my evaluation cards very close to my chest right now if I wasn't accounting for some risk in the reserve figure.
I'm sure it is far too hard for you to accept that I put forward an interesting case, but I on the other hand won't hesitate to acknowledge a good argument when I see one, and you do raise some good points. There is definately some unknowns about the resource tax, and there still is no certainty over its implementation. The thing is, if you are modeling a true risk assessed cash flow evaluation, then you should be accounting for the risk in the resource tax and how that would affect CDU's earnings. Secondly you do mention, quite rightly, that the native copper has some good yields. To this I say that some of the sulphide ore is yielding at less than the suggested 95% recovery, so both balance each other out.
However, you also raise some questionable points. You mentioned that downtime is negligible in a well managed operation. Nonsense. They still need to conduct maintenance and safety checks at times. You can't avoid this, no matter how well managed a mine is. You also ponder on the point that all companies are exposed to risk, and thus you shouldn't account for risk in these evaluations. That's rubbish. If you conduct a NPV on a project, you normally account for 9%-12% time risk. If you are doing a cashflow projection on a project, you must also do the same. If you don't include measures of risk, then your analysis is flawed, simple as that.
Above and beyond all that though, I can't help but return to that key point about the reserve at Rocklands. There isn't one. I really don't care if you don't give a damn what I say, but don't you find it a little odd that after 5 years of drilling, they haven't been able to define a single ounce of ore as economic to mine (i.e. reserve)?
CDU Price at posting:
$3.25 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held