No, I'd bore everyone to death if I were a writer. Thanks for posting, especially in your circumstances.
We appear to have seen off MAK. Of course it is sod’s law MAK will probably now outperform UCL.
For your share club, etc. if it is of any help my analysis is (not that I know much about investment – and I’ve certainly lost heaps on many stocks so no monopoly on wisdom there)
1. Although our management appears more honest than MAK’s, honesty maybe doesn’t have much bearing on future share price performance as it ought to. The 3 things that jump out of every investment textbook I’ve seen that affect share price are risk, future dividends and future profitability. In our case, in the short term, only risk applies (the other two are too far off/too uncertain?), but being irrational I will probably dump UCL if our Board ever starts behaving as dishonestly as MAK. :) 2. The biggest risk (unknown?) is the price of the finance we need or how much of our existing assets we have to give up to attract new investors. The price of the finance is probably more than the actual amount that has to be used to purchase plant, land and services to get Sandpiper to production (the interest payments on a typical home mortgage add up to more than the capital sum borrowed?). If a share price is just the present value of a stream of future cash flows and if the finance costs are likely to be a very significant cost, it is rational to focus on those perhaps. The sorts of things that can change our finance costs are probably:
1. An increase in prospective profitability e.g. a powerful price gearing effect as a result of a change in the rock phosphate price. 2. An increase in any volume of product above the 3m tonnes p.a. anticipated (a volume gearing effect if it can come about without increasing the beneficiation plant size) 3. A reduction in the quantity of capital needed (e.g. by moving the plant closer to the dredger discharge point).
I see the costs fall in "multiples" as many different costs would all have to fall together: road construction length and associated land acquisition, pipe length and pump size are all related to distance?
Sorry if all these are obvious points.
Finally, on Iran my understanding is (based on a interview of Karim Sadjadpour on France24 with Annette Young from about the 5 minute mark to the end) Khamenei now, after 23 years in power, for the first time will have to gamble: give in to the demands of the West and operate their civilian nuclear power programme in way that engenders trust (but the very identity of the regime is based on anti – Americanism and a common enemy to bind the Iranian people together so not much hope of a humiliating compromise there perhaps?) b) make a dash to acquire a nuclear weapon. Both paths imperil the future of the regime, and the sanctions make playing for time costly and will only wind up the Iranian people even more if they don’t get a tangible benefit (a nuclear weapon?) or if through compromise they are exposed as a paper tiger. Fighting human nature and technology, running the economy as ineptly as the sanctions are forcing them to and using torture and capital punishment doesn’t strike me as a great way to prolong the life of the regime, and especially when it goes against regional trends for greater accountability. If regime change hasn’t happened by the end of September, I’ll have to admit Seals was right: regimes such as this always manage to last longer than one thinks is possible.
Thanks for the ABC interview. I hope Matthew Trivett is worrying about regime change making a nonsense of his Mehdiabad valuation. Probably not. All the best.
For anyone interested in Iran in great detail (not the biggest value driver for our stock at present) so apologies to those who find Iran boring:
Karim Sadjadpour interview (in English) at the top of the page: http://www.france24.com/en/20120305-2012-03-05-1814-wb-en-interview
Latest news on Parchin (which contradicts some of the information I posted earlier: NCRI is the source, not PMOI, and David Albright thinks the Iranians CAN avoid detection by cleaning up appropriately).
