I’ve seen a lot of rubbish on here lately. Clearly SMM’s operatives (we all know who they are !) are having fun with us shareholders heightened anxieties.
Anyone who thinks this is not a good asset has rocks in their head. On this forum I have seen concerns over grade; whether Indonesia will lift their export ban; comparisons to RMI; references to valuation methodologies etc etc.
Firstly, the resource that the company quoted a few years back is MASSIVE. Companies like Sumitomo and the Japanese government do not go pursuing small assets. They especially do not take indigenous landowners and a foreign governments to a High Court (twice!) and for years on end if it is not large.
Think about the only two other parties to have worked and evaluated the project : INCO and Kaiser Engineers. No. 1 and 3 respectively in the world when they were on the land. Why was Clive Palmer pursing it? Isabel is BIG.
I have been to Isabel with our largest shareholder and his analyst – I put the photos of us on the laterite up on this site last year.
When you stand on the laterite you look straight down to a deep water channel/ocean. These two tenements encompass the actual shore line. How then can anyone seriously consider comparing RMI to AVQ? RMI is land locked with 35km’s to shore. This is a bulk tonnage operation; hauling over land is expensive and since when in Melanesia is building a road a “given”? Someone also compared their resource estimate to that of Isabel. I had a quick look at the RMI website and it says the resource was derived from less than 300 holes at 200m spacing – Isabel has over 6,000 drill holes and pits ! clearly the Isabel resource would be “measured” or there is at least significant reserves.
As to valuations, the best comparable I can see is Nickel Asia in the Philippinnes. It has good sized deposits and I suspect that if Axiom gets on the land to drill, that Isabel will be the same size as Nickel Asia’s deposits. Interestingly Nickel Asia does DSO to other countries as well as feeds its ore in to on site processing plants which they hold just minority economic interest in. Those plants are owned and run by Sumitomo. Nickel Asia are valued at $2.5bn.
Just because two cars both have four doors and four tires does not mean they are worth the same – there are Mazda’s and then there are Bentleys……
As to concerns about the 1.1% Ni grade: that is just for the first 5 or six metres. In all tropical laterites saprolite has a higher grade than limonite and Isabel has had the full mineralisation profile tested yet. Besides that, a simple physical screen can easily double the grade. When you have a quality deposit there are a number of ways of extracting value. Anyway China is buying sub 1% Ni anyway and not to mention other processing mechanisms that process sub 1% Ni ore.
As the randon (or semi-regular) press article about a mothers groups wanting to stop mining, or some bloke wants tourism instead of mining, just remember this is a developing nation – if you pay someone enough (and not much in our terms) you can anything written in the paper or get someone else to speak out on an issue. But if there is not substance to it then it doesn’t last long. Think about all these so called landowners who joined Sumitomo to challenge Axiom and the Solomon Islands government and their own traditional tribal leaders in the High Court. Most of them pulled out of the proceedings when it came to fronting up in a witness box in a trial…..
As to all this talk about Sumitomo corruption, I cannot believe this is such a hot topic. Anyone who thought they were not up to it also has rocks in their head. Forget it, Axiom’s prerogative was to secure the asset legally – who cares what Sumtiomo do. As long as we do the right thing by the community and the legal rights nothing else matters.
In that respect Axiom have done a remarkable job to date. Yes, we have all seen a large amount of shares issued but how else are they to fund a major litigation battle against a major. I know that it was tempting to them to partner up when things were tough but management fought to remain independent and that will hopefully pay off ie. if we win the trial Axiom is in a rare situation – it has a world-class asset in a commodity class that is HOT and will therefore dictate price and structure on how to commercialise this asset and in turn deliver value for us.
That said, it is all down to one man – the judge in the High Court. But the way I see it is that all they have to do is win the land part of the case i.e. validate their leasehold and they have effectively won. Land rights are the key to any major development in the Pacific. All else is comes a far off second…
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