Long time reader, first-time poster here with some thoughts and gentle encouragement for the GPX holders.
As a casual observer of the graphite market, I offer the following as an alternative to the status quo here on HotCopper.
Here are some of the things you hear posters from other Companies say about the Chilalo Project:
- Is it fair, appropriate, accurate and honest for GPX to use a discount of 8% in their NPV calculations? Most competitors are using NPV 10% Discount.
- Is it fair, appropriate, accurate and honest for GPX to base its DFS and NPV on more than its mining operation (Downstream expandables & micronised) when other DFS's are base purely on a standalone mining operation.
- Should these have not been split out and each aspect clearly identified on a standalone basis? Most competitors are using standalone mining operation figures. The upside of downstream processing can be recognised in any of these mining operations, but they do not present/include these in the DFS to cook the figures.
- And now we have been vindicated....The project was always in trouble the day the project was scaled up.
- The DFS has proven to indicate that as a stand-alone mining operation i.e without the downstream processing, the project is not economically robust enough to support the debt to equity ratio of 50/50 proposed by Castlelake.
Notice I haven't tagged the posters in this post, they are not important.
The year three spelling and grammar aside, let’s call this what it is – the attempted tearing down of another Company’s Project because these posters believe this will positively benefit their chosen Company.
This “thinking” is flawed at its very core. Take a look at this relatively updated table:
The damage done by Syrah means investment options for coarse flake graphite are limited, the idea that you need to "tear down" another Project to boost your own, is just asinine.
GPX holders should cheer the achievements of other Tanzanian/African Graphite plays.
What these simpletons fail to understand is that it’s not one project versus another, it’s a rising tide lifts all boats. As I said, GPX holders should cheer the achievements of other Tanzanian Graphite plays - because at the end of the day it will help our cause.
As this simple slide from the GPX presentation highlights, there is more than enough demand to be filled from multiple coarse flake projects.
The Irony of these other posters is they obviously have nothing to do with mining. Mining is incredibly collegial, when you go to mining conferences, these companies are often sat in booths right next to each other. You see them laughing, chatting, creaking bread and drinking together. INDABA was a case were I observed much graphite mingling. None of the nastiness you see here on these forums.
In conclusion:
Don't go onto other graphite plays pages and compare projects, just don't engage, leave them be. If they succeed, cheer their success because its progress for all of us. Don't bother getting into arguments about who has a better project, you can tell from their posts that they are not mining people, but individuals who have become tribally aligned to a stock.
Let's be better than that.
My thoughts on the DFS:
GPX was always going to find itself in this position – delivering a DFS to Castlelake for it to review as part of its DD associated with an investment decision. Castlelake has a board member and a member of the Project Steering Committee, so it isn’t like the results of the DFS would have come as a surprise. They could have elected not to proceed with the review of the DFS, but did not. The only conclusion that can be drawn from that is that it is genuinely considering financing GPX’s Chilalo Project – why else would they go through the effort of reviewing a DFS? It is an irrefutable truth that GPX remains closer to achieving funding than any other graphite developer in the world. And that alone says far more than the self-serving ‘expert’ commentary that fills these pages.
