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As per Panmure's Feb analysis note, AISC is estimated at $930 in 2017. This means AAU's share of "cashflow" after all costs would actually be only 3.2m. Although with only 9 months of production, it's going to be much less than 10,000 this year

Daisan - completely agree with your very comprehensive overview of the positives earlier and it neatly sums up the reasons why Shanta is also one of my favourites However there are a few negatives I'm nitpicking over in the revised mineplan. It's still not clear to me whether Shanta's "Capex" is included in the AISC. The way it's drafted on pages 6 and 7 with an "Operating costs" table which clearly shows AISC and a separate Capex summary table, one would infer the Capex costs of some 68.2m are not included. This has a huge impact on the true operating margin. Now some of these could be argued as "non-sustaining" and therefore not included in AISC, some are a bit more tenuous and I would argue should be incorporated into AISC to give an accurate reflection (considering production is consistent in mine plan and not increasing, it is therefore sustaining production only). As an example, the 33m in Capex for 2017 is a bit more than I thought it would be and if not included in AISC, effectively wipes out any operating margin for this year

Actually a lot of it could be blamed on weather, but won't know until quarterly report in April. Winter was harsher this year than last, colder, more snow and lasted longer. Weather didn't really start turning for the better until 10th Feb

Gold AISC was only low because of the 1.3m tax credit, otherwise it would have been pretty bad, due to the bad grades. However RNS implies the low grades is a one-off, so will have to see if this is rectified next quarter. ASA of course have 4.5m of tax credits for 2017, however not too sure when they receive it - may have to wait until end of year

Whilst % gold production is a concern, you of course need to take into account the increase copper production, copper price and connection to power grid significantly reducing AISC. Additionally, gold dore figures would not include gold concentrate from flotation (albeit small) and who is to know what the copper and silver production is.

Palladium too, up over 4% today

I tend to think it's more nickel spot price spooking buyers, not the lawsuit

Knocking on door of $1,000, palladium $750 and rhodium $855 If it pushes through $1,000 will everybody get the pullback in SP they think will occur? If perception on tax bill is known, baked in and everybody expecting pullback on Q4 report has already sold, maybe it will be different this time?

Daisan - there are also other positives in copper production increased 100%, Silver 5.8x, lower AISC, which should go lower still with Gedabek now connected to grid

To be honest I think it has less to do with court case and more to do with Nickel Spot - overnight after London close Nickel dropped from 10.5K/tn to psychologically important 10K/tn. It then dropped through 10K today, but has recovered somewhat. Nickel price impacting cashflow with Capex to fund is far more important than this court case, which appears baseless

Thanks for comments, very helpful

Losing - Zim being Zim, the first ASA probably heard of this claim was through the press too. It is understandable for them to take a bit of time, seek legal counsel and respond accordingly. I'm not too concerned whether this is through a dedicated RNS or later this month as part of quarterly report. Maybe I'm being to blasé about it, but I'm not overly concerned. It's the Nickel spot price that concerns me most that could drag on the SP further

Does SLP report an AISC? I see in last quarterly report Group operating cash cost is $431/oz. I have to admit I'm struggling to understand why SLP market cap appears so low on face value, even with PGMs being a relatively unloved place at present. From last updates it has 11.1m in cash, no debt (an untouched overdraft facility it can rely on though) and it's market cap is only ca. £24m. The only downside and struggling to find one based on market cap, is that the PGM production of 55-60K Oz appears pretty flat for the foreseeable future, with no potential to increase it, according to last presentation in Sept. However to me this does not detract from fact SP appears very low based on fundamentals

Whilst a lawsuit, no matter how opportunistic and without merit, will impact sentiment, I tend to agree with Nickel Investor that current SP decline due to commodities prices. For me the impressive increase all the way to 2.6p got a little ahead of itself, so was always due a little breather. But then gold price slump made retrace more pronounced pushing us to low 2p area, but at least Nickel held up and increased to the high 11K/tn. However now Nickel spot has fallen to the low 10K/ tn, a psychologically important threshold, particularly for ASA, there is understandably further weakness pushing us down to where we are now and perhaps lower still if Nickel doesn't rebound. On the lawsuit and with limited info, it appears bizarre an unknown outfit claim they signed an agreement with ASA/ Mwana back in 2013 and are now over 3yrs later coming in with a claim. How was this unknown local outfit going to pay for 26% of Freda?! I could be wrong but it smells of rank opportunism.

I actually thought Shanta's SP decline against the Gold price was overdone, particularly considering the hedges up to end of Feb '17, which is why I bought a load more at 8.75 the other day. With Shanta's reported AISC so low, net debt position improved significantly since 1Q 2016, even under a climate of major Capex, of which a lot of this major Capex coming to an end 1H 2017, at this Gold price I remain very positive on Shanta. With additional drill results throughout 2017, there is plenty of potential upside

Steve - that is not what the RNS states - it actually simply reiterates Trojan's concentrate can only provide sufficient output to meet 50-55% of the smelter's total capacity and, without third party feed, it would not be running at optimum levels on present production. This is already known. However what is new is that we now know remaining est. re-deepening costs, it will extend LoM by 5yrs and provide increase feed - so the 50-55% used capacity could increase considerably

Just had a quick look at 1 Dec presentation on Shanta website - looks like there should be resource update on Singida (Gold Tree 2 & 3) in December. So far focus has been on "Gold Tree 1". Then in Q1 2017 New Luika should have updated mine plan to incorporate indicated resources from Ilunga and Elizabeth Hill. So should be lots of info coming our way in addition to the usual Quarterly Reporting over next month or two. Although for next week think all eyes will most likely be on the Fed, with market view of interest rate hike 100% certain

I personally think we're at bargain territory now, even at this Gold Price. With AISC of 740 and based on 87K Oz, the potential operating margin is USD 37.4m/ yr. Makes the market cap of £55m look ridiculous, particularly as Shanta has almost halved its net debt within the space of a year and with Silver Stream Agreement funds, is most likely now around $33m area. This debt reduction has occurred even at a time of substantial Capex with multiple major projects occurring in parallel On top of this, that does not take into account hedging up to March at 1,250+, reduction in AISC, increase in production, increase to life of mine/ resources and Singida starting up which will initially be small operation of potentially 800 oz/ month (10K/ year) etc etc. If gold maintains this level it will still be a good year for Shanta in 2017 and could see 14-15p area. If gold recovers up to 1,300+, I could see it being a great year and could see 20p+

Yep and this is historic (3Q 16) and before further potential mine closures that may occur as early as this week. It should also be noted such decline was not just due to mine closures, but a reduction in output due to the low prices as well. This implies the supply-side was already correcting before mine closures and leads to a more long-term sustainable picture for Nickel price recovery, depending on the demand side

Have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised by Nickel's resilience and more than makes up or at least mitigates the gold weakness at the moment. VanVan - forgot to thank you earlier in the month for your summary on ASA which nicely sums up the main factors currently at play - I sometimes forget things like the Insurance claim of USD 3.6m which isn't exactly petty cash