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@Magic, thanks. Hopefully you are just being unnecessarily cautious and the copper will blow the AISC into negative territory, LOL.

Hi, Nige. One brief point -- price earnings ratio isn't a very good guide in the current environment. No one really knows what earnings are going to be.

And two questions, since you are comparing PSN to BDEV and BWY.
1. How do the companies compare in cash holdings? If we're going into a downturn as you suspect, cash in hand may be very important.
2. How do the companies compare in land bank? Same thing, if you can draw on your land bank whilst in a downturn, it helps conserve your cash, if you have to keep buying land it burns cash.

"W.A.M., If Willie Walsh asked your advice, what would you say to him?"

Wrong question. The right question is, if W.A.M. asked Willie Walsh's advice, what would Willie say to him?

"Get a life, mate."

@Paddy, is not toll-treating always part of AISC?

@magic, I know the mine is going to be expensive, but using a by-product method of calculating AISC, copper proceeds are deducted from the AISC. My assumption that $1K is probably high is based on the good Cu concentration (and the increasing copper price). Do you think Cu isn't going to be that big of a factor, or just that I'm perhaps over-estimating it?

@Paddy
Perhaps a few things he's overlooked. Big assumptions (with my view):
1. We really do get 500K oz from Hav. (marginally optimistic)
2. AISC is $1000K. (perhaps pessimistic)
3. POG is $1800K. (reasonable, but perhaps pessimistic)
4. Earnings of £100 million. (probably not, we'll be spending money on drilling other places)
5. P/E of 10. (P/E doesn't work for a gold explorer, priced on perceived value of assets, not earnings.)

Re: #5, I recognise that it's all based on the assumption we'd turn into a miner. But we'd still be an explorer, too, with earnings going into looking for more gold. An explorer with earnings but no good prospects probably gets a P/E of 5 or less. One with good prospects might have a P/E of 15 or 50 or 100.

@ttb "Greatland can comfortably fund their total capital cost"

That's the magic part of this farm-in agreement. It ensures low capital cost so GGP can just hold our 25% and mine it. That's so valuable, even if we want to sell it, because it means we can walk away from any offers that are too low. Even if we don't want to mine, we can do it if there aren't any good offers, the CAPEX won't be prohibitive.

2/3 cut is probably mostly priced in, will trigger a small drop in SP, IMO. I think most of the market is expecting the div to be cut by 1/3 to 1/2, not by 2/3, so it would bring some drop. I doubt it would drop as far as 280, but who knows?

Not sure what happens if they maintain the div. Market might not like that, might want them to retain more funds. Counterintuitive, but a bigger div cut might even be positive for the share price, maintaining the dividend negative for it. Partly depends on how the big funds view it.

@WF "Re the buy out, all is possible. My feeling is that NCM don't need to buy out HAV/GGP. "

Very well stated, I agree. They need the ore to run through Telfer but they don't need to own every ounce of it. They might like to, of course, but that would depend on cost.

@WF, forgot to mention, re: "white knight"
The term usually refers to a friendly company who steps in to buy you to fend off a hostile takeover from a raider.

In this case, I'd expect NCM to be the "white knight" if an offer comes in from somewhere else, including Rio. I don't think GGP would be thrilled about a takeover from Rio, the symbiosis with NCM is too substantive. NCM would be even less thrilled.

So even if NCM is happy to just let the JV run, if Rio came in with an offer I think NCM would step up. It's one thing for GGP to own 25% of Hav, quite another for Rio to own it.

@WF "This is all why there will be no buy out of Havieron or GGP from NCM, certainly not now. Maybe, if all works well for NCM, sometime after 5 years.

The capital committed elsewhere to simply maintain their production levels doesn't leave much room for SB to go after more asset."

I agree that the old money problem makes an NCM buyout of GGP less likely. But let's not forget that NCM is approximately 50x the size of GGP, and had no difficulty raising a bunch of cash just to restructure their debt. They would not have any difficulty raising cash to acquire the last 25% of a Tier 1 mine, either.

The fact that they'd have to borrow most or all of it changes the dynamic sufficiently that they are less likely to do it than they might have been, but every option is still well within the realm of possibility here.

@Paddy
"Well the graph shows zero output attributed to Telfer in the first image which is titled "before exploration results" so I'm guessing that is what this Daniel Morgan from UBS is trying to get across."

I wouldn't be too sure. If Hav is mined, the JV will be paying Telfer (the processing plant) for toll processing. That will make Telfer (the mine) more economical because it won't have to fully support the costs of the processing.

I'm guessing that 500,000 oz/year includes Telfer ore, too, and is intended to be conservative.

@Nige
I'd be quite happy to see dividends as long as they retain enough to support further exploration. If Hav is big enough, that's possible. GGP could sell our share, retain enough cash to fully explore Scal, and still pay a big dividend. Or, we could keep Hav and mine, and still have enough money to both do further exploration and pay smaller annual dividends.

As Paddy said, in the latter case there would be plenty of iis willing to buy shares of a producing and dividend-paying gold company, so those who wanted to cash out could do so at a really good price.

It's all good. The more gold they find, the better off shareholders will be, whatever the end game, and all end games are good.

"But new mines do not come for free; Morgan warned that construction of those assets (and extensions at Cadia) would cost between $US800 million and $US1 billion a year for the next five years, meaning competition for Newcrest's free cash flow will be hot in the near future."

Anyone catch that last bit? Don't necessarily expect a big buyout of GGP from NCM anytime soon. It could happen -- but NCM just might be content to get another 5% of Hav and start mining it. In which case the GGP might sell our share of Hav to someone else, or just hold it and start paying dividends in a couple years when the gold (and copper) starts flowing.

I guess I'd also add this. In defense of all governments, it is easy to second-guess after the fact, but it's hard to know in the moment. We didn't go into lockdown for swine flu or ebola, and if we had, it would have been a horrible waste and a disaster. There's all the evidence we can see now but it wasn't so obvious back in February and March.

As far as I know, only one health system in Europe / North America has truly been overrun (Italy). The others learned from that and all did enough to prevent that disaster, and should get credit for doing so. And I give Italy's government a pass on that, too, because China wasn't forthcoming enough with data soon enough.

I'm sure everyone would do some things differently if they had it to do over again but life isn't like that.

@trucky
Sounds like you missed my point. My point is that there's sometimes a tension between freedom and safety, and that's the tension that will be used to take away our freedom, because we've gone too far the other way.

I certainly wasn't endorsing the current American handling of the virus. My point is simply that there used to be a very high value placed on liberty and the pendulum has swung very significantly the other way. Safety wins hands down, and that's what a leader with dictatorial leanings will manipulate.

Fact: It really is a "gross invasion of privacy." It really is an "appalling infraction and infringement of our civil liberties."

Justifiable? Each person will have their own view as to whether or not this is a national emergency that justifies these measures. But even if one considers them justified, one should admit that they are extreme and beyond what we would normally accept.

For an event like this, those who find it unjustified don't need to go.

I strongly suspect that many contact details being collected are not accurate. There is no way for pubs to verify. Effectively, it's a voluntary compliance measure.

It has provided a road map for dictators, though. Make enough people afraid and convince them you are protecting them and they'll give up all kinds of liberties. The old American rallying cry of "Give me liberty or give me death" would never fly in modern Britain (or probably modern America, for that matter). When we eventually lose our liberties, it will more likely be through something like this than an invading army.

With all the other people NCM has been hiring for Hav, no one noticed the rain dancers they were adding.

So, Paddy, boiling all that down into a few words (which no one here believes I can do, but just watch me):

It's possible that Scallywag contains a gold deposit at depth very similar to Havieron, but additionally perhaps also a very significant copper deposit much nearer the surface.

Is that a reasonably accurate summary?

@thelearner "I have never looked at what they are charging me - but we (the missus and I) have for us a good bit invested in there now - TMT - where do you think the cross over point is in terms of charges? This is more relevant as I hope GGP is going to make our pots even bigger!"

It partly depends on if you are heavily into funds, into individual shares, and how much you trade. If you have over £100K in funds it's time to start thinking about it. If you are mostly into individual shares, then frequency of trades may matter more than how much you own.

This chart has most of the information you need to compare, I just find it hard to use: https://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/

This table doesn't include HL so is not as easy to compare but gives you a few options in an easily digestible layout. I have not, however, checked to see how current the info is.
https://uk.stockbrokers.com/compare

Cheapest is not necessarily "best". It your life is busy, easiest to use may be more important than cost. And as already discussed, access to different markets may be important to you.

I find myself embarrassed to link anything ever from Motley Fool, but this is pretty good:
https://www.fool.co.uk/mywallethero/share-dealing/investing/?order_by=meta_desc_broker_overall

Read the different reviews. The ones I've read are pretty good.

HL is not necessarily the cheapest, especially as you get more invested, but for someone starting out, their site is quite easy to use, their customer service is good, and you have access to European and American shares as well as UK, and a broad range of funds. I don't think you can buy Aussie shares if you are looking to invest in other explorers down there, however.

But I've recommended HL for starting out to a lot of people, then moving to ii or something else as their investment pot increases in size and the fees disparity begins to matter more.