Impairment Charge Queries

Hi All,

I have looked through the last 4 years of annual and half year reports specifically looking at the impairment charges and the calculations involving the impairment charges.

The majority of charges came from Dec 14. See below



A total of $833M was impaired as at Dec 14.

I have recently gone through the Port assets being amortised completely that arguably is the asset MIN sees full value in. This was written down from $68M to zero during FY15.

The 5% increase in operating costs (shown above) impairment of $188M relates to the present value of operating costs as at Dec 14 and extrapolated over the next 5 years.

Operating costs for HY17 were 45% lower than HY14....

I believe $81M should be written back. See calculation below.




Jun 15:

As at Jun15, a further $145M was impaired

Impairment made using forecasted range of USD 51-59 and a reduction of USD 10 in iron ore price from this range,
AUD/USD assumed to be 0.80

Given where the iron ore price lies at present even taking into account the discount and the AUD trading at around 0.75, it is arguable whether this impairment is any longer applicable. The iron ore price has not traded below US 50 for some considerable time and there are no forecasts at present from treasury/analysts etc that show iron ore falling that low.

Dec 15 and Jun 16:

Further $97M in impairment charges made in FY16

The assumptions made in Dec15 and Jun16 respectively was 62% fe price of 39-46 and 48-53 USD price

Impairment charge made mainly focussing on the realisable value of projects assuming a further USD 10 reduction in the iron ore price.

Once again, as per comments in June 15 section, these assumptions are way off the current iron ore price and in actual fact use a lower iron ore price range. The impairment was made against both Horizon 1 and 2 assets.


Overall, there were substantial impairments made during FY15 and 16 but it could be argued that about $400M of these impairments were made using assumptions that are unlikely to now apply and should therefore be written back.

When I calculated the likely equity value MIN would be taking on as part of the acquisition, I did not include any of these writebacks.

I only had included the deferred tax assets. If we were to include the above, we could argue the point that a further $400M on top of the current $300M equity and circa $500M in tax assets....

Yes this is 4 fold more than what MIN is currently offering to take over our company.

Cheers