Good point mumbly, I should have been clearler with the break...

Good point mumbly, I should have been clearler with the break down of costs of the project.
I must admit, the ongong costs are a bit of an unknown, in the sense that are they simply ongoing costs, or required for a further upgrade/expansion in the early years. I need to spend more time reading up on the project.

The article you quote makes a good point, although I find their claim that its project is being valued at zero a bit generous. While I am perhaps being a little pesimistic, we will have to wait 4 years before the company is in a position to provide the market with any sort of dividend. That is not a short wait.. :-(

Of course, that is a short-sighted view, but.... in the current market, I doubt there would be many willing to commit to waiting so long (I for one would not right now, however, it all depends of investors time frames)
I will however say that for bigger players, the asset may be seen in a more positive light, being such a long term asset (perhaps not tier one, but close).

As for debt, at a guess, I have been burnt too many times in being optimistic about capex requirements, so I would guess they will borrow at least $200 million. Obviously a very manageable amount considering the returns, but that will require them a buffer until the new project starts providing actual cashflow.

AQG only recently came onto my radar as I wanted to benchmark OGC. I won't go into that, except to say that their mine locations of Turkey and Philippines (I don't care about NZ) raise some country risk issues. Investing in gold stocks is bloody challenging. ha.