Yes there certainly is a divergence of opinion about Hermosa...

Yes there certainly is a divergence of opinion about Hermosa with some good points made by both camps, its been a while since I have looked into Hermosa as have been busy eslewhere and only a small S32 holding so sort of lost track of the project status.

I think the assumption is - if this is another Cannington, then it would make money at any metals price because of the ridiculous head grades at Cannington, even BHP made money from Cannington! But this is no Cannington orebody. And if some of the more skeptical analysts who were questioning the metal price assumptions (particularly Zn prices) are flagging as an issue then their points are worth considering. After all BHP didn't buy Cannington for $2Bn and then spend another $2Bn building it and its a different orebody anyway but S32 seems to have an inordinate amount of faith in their Zn price assumptions that mean that nearly every other Zn market analyst will be proven to be wrong, and only S32 right.

Admittedly predicting metals prices is a bit of a fools errand anyway, and there has been a historical lack of investment in Zinc for decades now but the price never goes up, a little similar to the copper narrative of mines getting lower-grade and being depleted and closed yet the price of copper doesn't seem responsive to supply and demand fundamentals either....

Anyway - they are not going to die wondering about Taylor/Hermosa, the actual project itself is fairly conventional but inflation and some other external factors like something going wrong at the other parts of the S32 business could make this a bit of a stretch to fund and build. Best of luck to them though.