quantifying the unquantifiable

In the interest of returning some life to this forum I offer the following:


Clearly Pingoy is pushing the open pit ban into the courts.

Inquirer, Saturday:

“I am determined (in my position) that no open-pit mine will operate in the province unless the pertinent provision of the ordinance will be nullified by the proper court,” Pingoy said.

As I've mentioned numerous times - in the courts it could become a constitutional battle over the authority of Malacanang. I expect Noynoy would be just as happy to have it in the courts so that it looks like he is doing something. In reality Malacanang has little authority in the regions. In fact there are some areas that Tagalog speaking authorities can not even go without risking a shootout.

After many years of debate one outcome of the courts may be that regions do have the right to decide environmental matters for themselves, which is generally the case for democratic societies globally.

So given that the predictable is trending towards the inevitable and the obvious, perhaps it is fair to ask - what is the tangible and intangible value of IRN?

To consider that, amongst the A crowd, unfortunately we have lost Ajax, Arp sold half (presuming he took up the rights in full) and Asf is suggesting that the company diversify elsewhere - which by the way they are, with ongoing but not very successful exploration at Itogon on Luzon. So that leaves one-eyed newsbuff Apples at full emotional and financial commitment with the most on the line to assess the value. So to do the simple maths, there is about $170m in cash plus a corporate value of perhaps $10m (outside of Tampakan). The remainder of market cap is therefore based on Tampakan and consequently the value of HOPE.

It is probably fair to suggest that the value of HOPE is highly variable but in the case of IRN it is worth more than $150m. IMO, that seems a high price in the face of logic and risk assessment that seems to be worth $0. But then what would I know contradicting the genius of instos, despite calling this play correctly lockstep for so long now.

I sense it is getting boring on this forum, so I HOPE (for free) to stir up something with the above. After all, what other mining company in the world that doesn't dig a ton of dirt, doesn't drill a single hole and doesn't have any control, can generate so much interest, news, politics, crime and controversy?