quarterly, page-22

aquaregia,

I am well aware of the difference between OPCF & FCF.

I focus on both the P&L and cash flow and thought I had made it plain in my post that c. US$50.7m has been plowed back into their projects over FY11 from c. US$117m of OPCF.

That still leaves c. US$48m of free cash flow over FY11 (and that is after ALL costs including dividends).

Clearly, MML are currently highly profitable but they have plans to scale up to 400koz pa by FY16 and that requires considerable inward investment - but they have made this plain and laid out both the timescales and CAPEX required for this expansion.

As for your use of banks as a comparison: as a general observation I would make the contrast between the relatively clear-cut balance sheet of MML and the almost opaque nature of most major European & US banks where they have been shown to be under-capitalised and over-leveraged in poor investments and loans. There is still little to no clarity regarding their derivative exposures and counter party risk even 3 years after the GFC exposed their gross incompetence and poor business management requiring them to socialise their losses through large-scale bailouts.

If there was one singular lesson that we should all take from the GFC it would surely be AVOID investment in banks!