@PhantomGWWAlternatively, we could ‘sell-off’ a project to one of the big boys. In a similar same way that OZ Minerals has bought into Carnaby’s IOCG discovery or acquired the Kalkaroo Project from Havilah Resources – too cheaply I might add!
Let’s be clear, the resource / manufacturing renaissance is in process (4th Industrial revolution) and Junior exploration companies are on the make. At some point, this will be at the expense of the majors unless they buy in. Why? Because they abandoned their high-risk exploration programs and activities about ten to fifteen years ago in an effort to rebalance their spreadsheets leaving the Juniors to purchase the best tenures. Since then, there has been huge advances in geophysics, including the collaborative national surveying of AusLAMP (MT) and geochemical technologies, all this means that targets can be finely tuned. Combine that with worldwide government initiatives (US and Europe) that support the development of critical minerals in sovereign-trust and high Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) countries and you have the ingredients for a new mining landscape to appear.
This is a huge problem for the Multinationals. They are clearly struggling to find enough ‘Tier1’ resource assets to hold
(the surprise forecast behind BHP’s OZ Minerals bid - see AFR story).
Also, they can’t afford for too many Juniors to make raw material discoveries that turns them into company-makers while they spend large upfront capital on projects only to then be potentially outranked by a Junior exploration company. Added to that is the reality of a ‘faster-than-normal’ paradigm shift to an electrify-everything world thanks to Putin’s so-called carbon tax.
Therefore, I’d suggest that takeovers and acquisitions may be inevitable and the norm but let's not sell ourselves short. I’d also suggest that whatever a ‘premium’ sell price is, their must be a portion of the purchase price that is higher than the sum of the net fair value of all of the assets purchased in the acquisition — the track record of being 100% located in a sovereign-trusted country with high ESG credentials. I’d simply call it the Aussie ‘goodwill’ factor.
Interestingly, if you look at IVR's registry, you might find that none of the top holders have been selling. Maybe that tells us where IVR's future really lies.
All IMO, DYOR, GLTA(patient)H
