ubhopeful,Glad to see that someone's up for a debate (and not...

ubhopeful,

Glad to see that someone's up for a debate (and not just a whining/slanging match!).

The liabilities I've taken from the annual report are;
Trade Payables: $32M
Provisions: $9.5M
Derivatives:$54M
Debt: $90M (50/50 short term/long term)
Total Liabilities: $184M

Assets include;
Trade receivables: $10M (assume this liquidates $10M of liabilities)
Inventories: $21M (mostly copper in circuit, hence either produced and sold by administrators, or now sitting idle; I've nixed this off without taking it off liabilities)
Cash: $15.5M ((assume this liquidates $15M of liabilities)
Plant and Equipment: $114M. (I'm going to drop this to $35M because its mostly idle mine equipment which is unlikely to be sold for 30c in the dollar.)
Development expenses of $37M (drop to $12M, as above)
Trade and other receivables: $750K (assume this liquidates $0.75M of liabilities)
Deferred tax assets: $23M (ie; accrued losses vs taxable profit. Arguably, you don't pay cash for a tax loss. CFE may want these to offset their CGT on the MCC deal; I've ignored this, ie; reducing assets by $23M)
Other assets: $7M. I've increased this to $28M to account for the remaining hedges, which are now worth less because Cu has gone up again.

So, if you reduce your liabilities by (15.5 cash + 10M receivables + $43M after hedges closed out = ) $68.5M you are left with $111M or thereabouts. This is rough, because the mine was run for a couple of months, and ideally ought to have made some money.

However, you have to also reduce your assets, partly by paying off liabilities during the administration, and partly because you impair the asset valuations. I come to $73M. Your nett equity is -$37M.

You pay liabilities + market cap + assets to buy it out and make it liability free, so you pay $111 + $73 + $25M (at 5c) = $225M. This gives CUO on Lady Annie alone about $63M in Enterprise Value. But if you have to pay up another $109M (on my estimation) for the "investments" at market price, you are now paying $334M, and you get 5 years of reserves which (again, on my figures) nett you $57M per annum in NPAT.

Scenarios depend very much upon CFE and what Tony Sage wants out of the deal. Theoretically the Administrators could give CFE the 17% holding in Platmin to ay off the debt, allowing Sage to on-sell it to his other vehicle IGC in some form (which makes sense in a way).

Alternately, a purchaser could give an offer to the Administrators and Board to pay the EV of Lady Annie ($225M), which scuttles the debt and gives the buyer a reasonable rate of return (NPV neutral; with upside) and clears CUO as a vehicle to keep playing. This would essentially reverse the Minsec merger in effect; CUO holders would be out a copper mine, but would have a company with $109M in book value of listed assets. hardly a win, but far from a loss.

Thirdly, the company, if it wasn't run by surrender monkeys, could sell a 4:1 stake (ie; dilute itself out to 20%) to a third party, and use that cash to wipe the debts. It could then ressurrect the mine and keep trading. A buyer would then own 80% of everything, and would basically get control. Current holders would be reduced drastically (given the company would have 2.5b shares) but hey, thems the brakes.

So, thats my maths, in detail. I think that CUO's management really just caved in and didn't even attempt a capital raising. Instead, they just caved in, with plenty of assets on hand (the hedges, cash) and handed us over to the sharks.