We Answer an Open Q&A

Buddy, mine is the Q&A episode that was asked for a couple of weeks ago. It's here, it's here, and who better to bloody be the partner for it than salt Bush contracting mine? Doesn't that just make sense? The bloody the turnkey bulk college site support. They handle everything once you mind the orgy say. Yeah, once that all all's out, they'll look after everything for you, right? That anything you want they will

Polish the ore for you. And just remember when a job is too hard on your mind site, you get fucking saltbush to do it. That is the saying you should have in your head. Whether it's building a road bloody mind rehab equipment hire. Why buy it when you can get some off saltbush? Go saltbush. Well done salt, and do you remember the questions for this

bloody while ago? Yeah, No, there was a bit, we had a a little bit on. I remember we talked about copper, we talked a little bit about Indonesian mining. I think we we talked about ore body geometry. Oh, that's true. I learned a lot about that. That was cool. Well. The the intricacies of what's a good and bad geometry for for. Underground plunge and all plunge. All these fancy words. There was actually some finance lingo as well for the non non financy people too.

I'm devastated that there was a lot of macro stuff and it's two weeks too early because like I am now a macro guru. After all, the Trump. Stuff and I feel like I'm not going to be reflected accurately in this video to what my prowess is at the moment, but I'll I'm happy to wear that so. I did a good learning curve in the last two weeks, hasn't it?

Right now let's get into the Q&A or we could just talk about K Drill, that's I got you on the chapters there didn't. I not just an. RC and diamond drilling company JC Drilling the holes is the easy part in exploration. It's creating the K drill culture that the bloody drillers want to work for, that the offsiders want to sweat their guts out for. And who else to do it for than Ryan O'Sullivan? He is the man that people want

to work for. And especially in this WA hate we've been experiencing this summer, you know, so far, I mean, that's a lot of sweat. Mate, you wouldn't do it for anyone, but like the only way to possibly become as good of a driller, a manager and a bloke as Ryan O'Sullivan is to work for Ron O'Sullivan. You might get close if you're exposed to him. Just go help Kaydrill keep the mining industry alive faster and diamond experts. Go Kaydrill. And just people, experts,

righto, we'll get into it now. Righto Muddy 1 is. We asked you asked and we're about to answer. That's that was the process. We asked for Q&A. Users have given us Q and AJ CS gonna run AQ and. A Let's. See how good's that? No thanks to all the money miners that submitted a whole bunch of different questions to us during the way.

Thank you for that. We've taken the time, I've taken the time to whittled them down to a few that we're gonna ask the ask the time, all sorts of topics and companies, commodities, the shit that's happening in general. Please tell me there was a question about your stock holdings. You know what? There wasn't, and I'm so glad that gets talked about enough. Ali's got all the power, though. We wouldn't even know. Oh yeah, we've gotta go through, back through and check those.

You've intentionally withheld these questions from us, so we're. Yes and so yeah, you guys haven't seen the questions so it'll be your your first crack at em so. This exposes me, Jason. Now you'll be all right. You'll be all right. I can still edit the video true. Thank fuck for that. So let's let's kick things off. So we had James and Aisha from Twitter who asked about and actually a few others who asked about what you guys think about the outlook for copper in the

sort of near term. And you know, James also asked about, you know, there's, you know, not too many pureplay copper plays left on the on the A6. What were you guys thoughts just on that and then the copper more generally for this year? She's pretty consensus long right like that. That's the, the, the feature of it that kind of scares me in a way that everyone wants it, especially, you know, you have the, the mining sort of fundies and then you have the, the generalist as well.

And when every man and the dog loves something, you're not going to get it cheap. And you see it in all the transactions. There's been some hot M&A deals, big mines, you know, many billions of dollars. And when you have that many people looking at the, that many miners looking at the transactions, because every big miner wants copper, you're not getting them cheap.

So you're really paying for that narrative as opposed to buying something that's deep into the cost curve where you might be getting it on a a discount because everyone hates it and everyone's running away. That's the sort of first thought

that comes to my mind. Well, on the yeah, on the big scale, it's like, you know, big Trump, he's gonna have a massive effect on, you know, China growth of China bloody and 'cause you know, China is the determinant on what copper demands gonna be. And if there's any slowing there, that's obviously you can pick the best stock you want, but if the underlying price doesn't go up, good for bloody bugger all. So but then on the yeah, pure like getting pureplay of scale as well.

Like, you know, AIC for instance, like yeah, it's pureplay copper, but it's not producing shit loads of copper. You know, like to develop with Woodlawn and that lock. It's not they're not going to be like big, like they're not going to be at 50,000 tons of copper. Yeah, whereas what Mac they're. 45,045 get over 50. Yeah. So it's like trying to find something of scale in here without going to like a frigging gown to the vicuna, like to a

porphyry or something. Yeah, that requires bloody shot loads of CapEx. The lack the lack of copper ASX names is reflective of the lack of quality in ASX in Australian copper projects. Yeah, like you think I remember scale at least. Well, de Grocer. Was what were they, 6065 thousand tons of copper? Because it was, you know what, one half million, 1.6 million

tonne at near 5% copper. But to find that now like look at like what half a billion dollar company, Firefly, that's probably going to be 1 1/2% copper. So that'll have to be like to get that to 4050 thousand tonne of copper equivalent likes no, over 3,000,000 tonnes of ore from a kilometer down. So it's to find that whereas you know, Mac, Mac is coming from what, 1.8 kilometers down. But that's got the grade. It's got 5, 5%, yeah. So I was a distressed asset for a reason, yeah.

So. Near term outlook for copper probably about the same as where it is right now. And I think you're better off like like you said, it's the, it's the corporates who are, who are maybe maybe getting a, you know, looking, looking on the outlook and saying there's a shortage. And so they're paying high multiples for the, you know, the acquisition targets to, you know, a bit of a tip to the person who asked the question, those acquisition targets and not on the ASX.

Listen to that episode with Tom Orwreck and he'll he'll talk about yeah, like maybe some of the, some of the other kind of targets that could could get covered up, but they're by far and above, yeah, skewed towards the, the, the North American listings. And a bit of this is another

question, but sort of related topic. This is from Risk It for the Biscuit on Twitter. I'm not sure if it's a he or a she. Oh no Anthony, sorry Anthony. So I've just seen the name there. Will 2025 be the year that the small medium Mount Isa copper projects start to gain mainstream attention and traction? One example is Glencore committing to a long term partnership with Carnaby. Partnership's a funny word,

isn't it? You'll love you'll love to see the juniors use the word partnership with the commodity trading houses. But it's always a bit more devil in the detail there, Al. Bancora rather on the way out than on the way in to Mount Isa, that's how to sort of think about their approach to that area.

So I think you're hoping for a few things to go your way at the end of the day, they're they're higher cost assets and if the copper price goes up, I've got a lot of talk to the price, but they are high cost and you're running the risk when you when you own them. Yeah, what? What would Glencore sell the smelter for and all that there? Mount Ozer exposure? What's? The liability. Don't know it's. I couldn't tell you if the I wouldn't know.

Tough one. So yeah, you pretty much need some big dog to come in and consolidate the whole region because it appears, as you said, Glencore's on the way out, so they don't want to do it. Like who will do it? Yeah, Glencore conscious of their social licence as well. They've still got enormous, you know, economic activity in relation to the coal mining in that state. They don't want to, yeah. They want to preserve their social licence in in Queensland too, So no.

That's a good point. Bit of a change of tech.

So I'll direct this to our finance gurus, Trev and JD. So hankle hankle Gogo up and rising staff and coming here. So Hankle Gogo from from Twitter says, can you guys go over the terminology related to the ways of valuing companies like a back to basics for some of the new money miners now, I mean the segment like this, you know, you could go on for for hours, but why don't we do? Why don't we do a couple like MPV? What what the Hell's MPV for for

a very any intro to our finance? I could zoom out a bit and I, I would like preface it with saying the way you value, you know, mining companies changes over time. You go from this like, you know, in situ resource in the ground and then, well, you know, hopefully blue sky discovery people get ahead of themselves. And then as you get nearer and nearer to cash flow, people use the DCF.

And whenever we're talking about these multiples, we often like say stuff like P NAV, well, we're just sort of shortening things. It's price divided by the NAV per share and that's what we mean by P NAV. And then NPVNPV is a simple one. You're working out what is the, the net present value of the, the future cash flows from this upper from, from this mining project. What, what the NPV is kind of like a, a thing everyone looks at in the, in the feasibility study or the PFS or even the

scoping study or PEA. And what's your CapEx out late at the beginning? And then what are your your kind of free cash flows overtime taking into account the? Time value of money, exactly, Yeah. So that's why we always pick on the discount rate, which is the percentage you use to discount those cash flows.

We talk pretty commonly, some of the miners who you know will reference EV to EBITDA multiple, which is taking into account the the value of the company on the Stock Exchange, incorporating their net debt and then comparing that with their EBITDA, which is a sort of crude cash flow metric. That's, you know, we sometimes use it often more often for copper miners and so on. It's more of an industrialist

kind of metric. I think it's more preferred in the mining space to use net asset value and that's related to these projects having a definitive mine life. Yeah. Plus the the corporate level, there's often these adjustments for for your NAV as well-being the cash and debt cap structure in the money options which are reflected in NAV per share. Yeah, IRI is another one. That's another one bankers will Chuck around.

And that's just similarly when a study is being put forward, trying to just put your returns into a percentage term so you can understand what the returns might be, again taking into account the outflows, the inflows of capital over time. I guess the interesting thing, which I think we touched on in a previous episode is with, with, with mining assets, you know, especially really long life ones, because things like MPV and IRS take into account the time value of money.

You know, you might have a, a copper producer, a gold producer that you know, produces for 50 years or something. But the MPV, because you're taking into account the time value of money, penalises or doesn't penalise, but it makes those cash flows that are 4050 years out so small when actually, jeez, if you can produce for 40-50 years, that's like a, a great thing. But the the the, you know, the Excel spreadsheet sort of doesn't give too much

recognition for that. Big time the thing that Excel spreadsheet doesn't give you credit for is commodity markets are volatile and relatively frequently there are these like short term shortages and price flexes up massively. So, you know, miners might just, you know, wash their face for, for seven years and then have one year where they make 7 years worth of profit because the, the price of their commodity shot up

massively. That's, that's like, you know, you get in the realm of, yeah, where the spreadsheet kind of fails. It's just our, our, our assumptions on pricing and how volatile and, you know, de minimis earnings can be for some periods and then highly lucrative for a very short period of time. But people talk about the NPV not capturing the option value of a mining asset or or or or longevity that comes from

enduring mining cycles. Coal assets over the 2022 period is the most recent example of that way. That's a good example. Prices go through the roof and these companies just buy back their shares, issue dividends and all sorts and it pays for a lot of the bad years.

Yeah. Now, I think there's some good things to sort of grains of salt to take in when you're looking at those sort of multiples and figures and things like that. Moving on. Actually, you sort of touched on it before, Maddie. Lots of lots of questions about Trumpy coming in and what that means for commodities, commodity prices, things like that. I'll flash up a few of the questions that came through. Neil asked the world of commodities in the context of the new Trump presidency.

How does the team see this playing out in 2025? A couple of other ones were predictions for renewable commodities with the cancellation of the EV mandate in the USA. Also, any insights regarding the drill baby, drill rhetoric in other jurisdictions you say like Australia and Canada, how that may affect prices. I don't know if you guys had some high level views on what

that might look like this year. Well, they're definitely, if you're an Aussie, Aussie miner in Aussie dollars, you're definitely getting the good tailwind of an exchange right at the, at the moment, like, you know, going from what, 6 within 1/4? It's going from 69 to 62 cents. So if Trump's good for the US dollar, it's going to keep strengthening that and the our realised price. But then it's, you know, they talk about the if the there's still a lot of gold buying around the world.

The I think the ATF flies have always seemed to from what I've been told of the US dollar, US gold price movement of always outweighed with the realised price that Australian miners get for it just with the the VNX funds and everything. So but they'll, you know, be in the position where they got look at Regis. They got what nearly they're going to rapidly have nearly bloody the 3rd to half of their friggin EV in cash so in a couple of years.

So pretty phenomenal. I'll be just like metals accent. If you look at other sort of policies, ones that we spoke about heaps over the past year and a bit like the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA talk that they might trim that down, can it, who knows. I don't think a lot of that value or the benefits was really actually coming through despite all the talk about it to a lot of the miners. Regardless of that anyway, the US for EVs is like 10 odd

percent of the global market. They're not, you know, more than 50% of global sales are actually done in China for electric vehicles. So they're not a huge player in that market anyway. And who knows if they even, you know, cancel. It remains to be seen. I think there will be shorter term volatile action as as Trump and I guess he's kind of competitors in a way, Xi Jinping and stuff and how they kind of act on other sides. We saw it with aluminium in December.

We saw it with more niche metals as well. As they sort of posture about what's going to happen, they start flexing their muscles on the parts of the supply chains that they do have strength, Aluminium being a stronger point in China, the US being more reliant. So I think you'll see like sort of short term movements like that and then you'll see 50 juniors talk about how they've got this niche metal in their backyard and all these kind of

things. And yeah, well, remains to be kind of seen, but I think there's a lot of a lot of talk and you got to kind of wait to see what actually gets put into legislation. It's the interesting one which has come out then the last week or so. Is this project Stargate that sort of 500 billion worth of investment into AI infrastructure?

I mean, we're sort of you guys have touched on that in interviews with a whole host of guests late last year around that driving, you know, you know, critical, you know, minerals demand as opposed to the, you know, traditional EV theme we've seen for a while. I mean that it's a lot of money. Well, it's a lot of potentially a lot of copper, a lot of.

Uranium. Uranium for this, because you know, the, I was watching, I think it was CNBC the other night and it was just the first question that always comes up about that, about that Stargate was like, right, how are we powering them? So and gas and gas and nuclear are the essentially the only ways for things of that scale. It's a solder, Yeah. Shit loaders market. Shit loads are sold I. Reckon every single miner can wrap that around their narrative and just plug in and play you.

You need every sort of electrification as well as energy type to to get those sorts of things off the ground. And that's a bigger scale than we've ever spoken about. It's a biggest scale than most people have ever spoken about in a quicker time frame, so be suspect of how much of the money's actually going to go into the ground over what sort of period. But regardless, it's a it's a huge kick up. I think the it's a it looks pretty convincing It's going to happen.

Remember the what what, two years ago, the everyone's lot now the metaverse is the next thing that just died in the ass. But I guess this data centre and AI thing looks pretty convincing that it's it's heading down that path and it's pretty good. Like how the variances in the the whole EV not bubble bit of a lot, a bit of a nickel bubble really like the whole nickel thematic that didn't come to fruition. But this looks pretty set for yeah, copper energy, shit load

of solder for the tin. So. So yeah. It's one point on the geopolitics stuff. It's like, it's like, it's so hard to sometimes like, you know, think of all the 2nd order impacts, all that sort of stuff. But the general comment on the markets is like there's a lot of froth in parts of the markets a a a lot, right, like you know. Speaking of froth, actually we did get a question from Nick on Facebook. Can we get a call on fartcoin for 2025?

Also Trump and Melania coins. Oh, that's just America's bizarre. Yeah, but no, yeah, I think you're right, Trev. I mean, if I mean that that that's, you know, even in the main coin space as a, as a bit of a funny example, but yeah, no, just even more broadly as well. It's just crazy, isn't it?

I. Reckon on on that particular call there's probably more chance of fart coin outperforms Trump and Milani just historically celebrity coins have not done very well nothing against Trump or Melania but yeah the long the long yeah but we'll see that the. But I do think there's a reflection to have on just the state of the market because when things are really frothy, that's usually a predictor of, you know, things being pretty like a lot of turmoil. A lot of people are just like

maximally deployed. But the reality is the best opportunities come in moments of like a liquidity panic or crash. Whenever a market crashes and all of a sudden some people have too much margin or like funds blow up or whatever, they've got to sell everything and they're for sellers. And those are wonderful buying opportunities.

So I just think it's one of those years where like it's just going to pay dividends to have like some dry powder to deploy if those events or an event like that pops up. That's my that's my fuel. I think I've got to, I want to get my head around these other timeline for these data centres and the projects, how long it's going to take.

Because if if they're so energy dependent, it's not going to be just uranium, it'll be powering them like fucking could be like could be huge for thermal coal, could like, could be lithium for like extra storage, like could be a bit of everything needed to power it. Look how cheap natural gas is in the states. It's insane. It's it's 3 or 4 like $4.00 when I last looked Henry Hub that

that is crazy. Like everyone would be trying to use that first and then complement it with things like nuclear and other sources so they can meet the targets that they've put forward in these things. But they take a lot of time naturally S is much sort of quicker and reliable means of getting your power if you want it soon. So I'm completely with you though, very keen to see the the timeline of these builds.

Yeah. It could be could be diesel Jenny's powering at the start, which is like a fucking shit load oil, which is going to be the whole drill baby drill thing. What is it? Land man says got to be between what is it 73 and 88 bucks a barrel for optimum conditions for the global economy. Yeah, and, and look at Scott Bezant, the incoming peak for Treasury Secretary. Super interesting guys.

Worked with Druckenmill and and Soros in his time in in the hedge fund world, ran his own hedge fund for a long time. And one of the the pillars of his sort of policy he's putting forward is 3,000,000 more barrels of oil coming out per day in the States. And that would be enormous. That would bring down costs. And obviously he's saying that to make industry hum even more in the states, see if they can

sort of get there. But that is one of the three explicit targets he's put forward, as well as a, you know, the other targets on GDP and these sorts of things. This is this Treasury Secretary, by the way. He's a fellow that in the past who stated that he thinks the, you know, the US dollar like US will default in this debt like the reign as the supreme currency will end like. Yeah, Golden bugs. Want to want to get a hard on? Go listen to his. He did an awesome chat on the

Capital Allocators podcast. Yeah, it's called Macromave, and it was fascinating. The guy's got decades and decades of history in the game. And yeah. He's fun. There's plenty of gold in it, Yeah. I think what was Musk? Musk obviously puts it very simple, but what's he saying? Very soon the interest will be the same cost as the whole defense budget or something like that. Just Yeah, I. Think it might have just edged it out last year. Yeah. Yeah. And that is a big military

spend, yeah. Oh, Speaking of Gold Phone, you

guys talking about that? We've got Nathan from Twitter who asked Gold Junior developers which ones can realistically, in your opinions, fund and move into production themselves, Which ones will be taken out and which ones are pretenders? I mean, that's worthy if it's all home, you know, for the

episode. But you know, we could perhaps look at a few company examples, but perhaps maybe the characteristics that you tend to say in the ones that can move into production themselves or you know, you know, attractive for a take out and, and, and things like that. You guys have any thoughts? Ali, this is this is one for you. I reckon this is your bread and butter. Or or I think. I'll have something to say, yeah.

Nice. I reckon the well and look the best performing producer last year I think based on our chart the other week was catalyst into just terms of share price performance and you know they're growing printing cash. I think they'd be looking for a for a deal or would they maybe look at broad stuff for the same Stein because that's going to need a lot of capital to get that because that's potentially not a bad hub coming up for some big pits.

But it's going to need a plant, likely need a plant. Makes sense to put a plant at the sandstone project. So yeah, I think catalysts might be looking around to like, you know, they're makers down the road from them, but just don't know if it's got the long term scale. We touched on in our in our first week back the Bullet bullying deal that will be trading again in April, a few

years away from production. It'd be a developer with an asset just need to go through the the studies and everything. But more generally, those kinds of deals are the assets that to be honest. Are off your radar. Completely off my radar. I had no idea about it happening. They're really interesting ones and I'm sure there's more than a few that people are working on in the background. But yeah, very keen to see how

that that trades. I'm sure it'd be interesting when it when it comes back online I think too. Things I've learnt, particularly in the from last year as well, is as far as the, the speed and the sort of most streamlined path forward you can get from, you know, being a developer to a producer, I think is having optionality and having your

permitting under control. Just those having those two things I think so important, you know, just, you know, it's times to get, you know, MLS and then native title agreements and environmental approval, especially if you have to build a, you know, a processing plant and things like that. They take a lot of time. An optionality. I mean, yeah, I could do it myself. Yeah. I could get taken out by, you know, a big neighbor down the road.

Yeah, I could do this. The more optionality you've got, you've sort of got I think a bit more firmer ground to put your two feet on and go actually no, this is how I'm going to maximize the value out of, you know, this asset, this company sort of thing a bit more. Feel like you're leading into an MMS plug or something? One more.

That kind of comes from, I'm not a classical developer, but Wolf, they've got, they're building Kiaka that's going to be producing in half a year's time and they're no longer trading at the level they were when they just had Zambrado. But I mean in share price, they did a capital raise and everything added sort of 60-70 cents from the level they kind

of were. But there's a step change again as they start producing over 400,000 ounces, probably a year's time once things have ramped up and everything. So that's that's one I'm sort of watching, obviously with a massive caveat of risk in the area that's in some countries heightened in recent times, but that's the opportunity that throws up for other people. You think like this, this scale, the scale premium or like the fact that they've got 2

operations? I mean, even if they're getting marked on the same sort of cash flows or whatever that they were going from one asset to to doubling that way more Oz coming at the ground, the cash flow jumps up substantially. Yeah, we'll kind of see in time. But I think people have definitely been risk off in West Africa over the past year. And I think that's an opportunity for other people that can play with that sort of risk. It's Ding Ding on that one for me.

I. Reckon now we're gonna yeah enter an era of of cash takeovers in the in the gold space. Cash takeovers, yeah, I mean, if you just like look at the lay of the landscape, the gold miners are increasingly unhedged cash generative and sitting on large cash balances without growth projects, it's going to be competitive to buy stuff and yeah, just we haven't seen cash takeovers in a fair while in the gold space. I expect that to come back this year.

I also think that the the there'll be some really good opportunities for larger gold miners to sell assets in this kind of market too, for them to like rationalize their portfolio, maybe sell some of their higher cost stuff because they'll get really good value for it. And there are now all the mid tiers really cashed up to to pay up for, you know, maybe, you know, the not so best asset in the larger company's portfolio. I. Think Newmont's a good example of that over the past six

months. Just Bang, Bang, bang. I mean, they've been working overtime, but just the speed at which they knocked out all the the non core assets. And I think by and large they'll be getting more money than consensus was begging it for. Yeah. Single asset producers, I think a bit vulnerable to because they're, yeah, somewhat discounted because they're so much more exposed to single asset risk and and maybe they'll, you know, trade skinny enough that people will, yeah, find value there. OK.

It'd be interesting to see if Gold Fields gets active in Australia again, if they sort of just stick to what they've got or they divest or invest because there's definitely a lot of options for them and lockers and Anglo Goldishani with I still think, you know, with the cash that Regis is generating and you look at the deal that Greatland got off Newmont, Regis could pull 100% of trop out of Anglo Goldishani AGI, which they would

have first ride on is that'd be that'd be a big play for them. And because there's a, you know, a lot of future there once that a lot of underground potential there after the sort of pit finishes in a couple of years. So it'd. Be worth a lot of money. Hey that. Should be big, but do you reckon you if you're going to get the best deal possible you'd probably get it out of a big company then a small one? Especially if you've got the pre

emptive, Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, but they're stay paid. They paid 900 million for 30% when gold price was like 3000 an ounce, I think. I want to say yeah. Yeah, I'd be I'd be interested to saying, but that a lot of that was probably paying for like, you know the big pit and and everything. I think if the not as much as proven up underground and it knows that there's going to be a lot more capital to go into it with a downsized and cutting the

mill in half. It's like, well, whether they might be might be able to get it a bit cheaper because you've got to they mightn't want to AGI mightn't want to put the capital in sure what? Do you reckon on goldfields more, less or sort of equally involved in Australia in a year's time? Just so slow moving. Well, it's you don't know it's like like, you know, I think it's a pretty pivotal year for Bellevue if they're going to like because the gold's there like it is a freaking high grade

mine. It just as I said, just needs that reset or Ding Ding Ding as well. But just, yeah, it's just whether someone will look at this pricing environment, think not yet 1 1/2 bills, you know, we'll pay that or we're going to wait for a bit more distress if they can't pull a couple of quarters together and try get them for 1.2. Not sure, but I think I reckon that that company would be amenable to it for a liquidity

event for the major holders. You know, BlackRock a bloody 15% shareholder now in it. So I think, yeah, I think it's going to be, that'll be interesting this year. Yeah, we remember gold fields, they were revealed to have tried their luck at getting hold of Corolla subsequent to West Golds. I think this, the scheme implementation deed was signed, but they tried to, they had bank local bankers and we're trying to get hold of that. They're going for a site inspection.

Yeah, well, that the, the scheme, the scheme, but with the information circular revealed that they, they loved a beard at a better, a better price, but more conditionality. And the, they did have a change of, of, of management a bit before that, I think maybe six or eight months before that. So yeah, my God, is that they're they're much more amenable to doing things in WA. Not that we've seen it yet.

It was interesting in that region I just saw announced today the new non executive director for Pantoro is Stuart Matthews from Goldfields. He was one of the senior Goldfields. OK. So which and then there's, you know, there's been the talk about, you know, wet potentially W Guild Pantoro with that, you know, sort of consolidating that Southern Goldfields region a bit. So oh, nice. Very nice. We're going to change tech of

jurisdiction and commodity now. So we've got palm tree capital and ASICS commodities investor from Twitter asking about Indonesian mining. So Indonesian mining, in particular ASICS listed companies, massive resources of gold, nickel, copper, low cost environment and but you know, still close to Australia, but you know, there's still, you know, risk factors around Indonesians growing rapidly.

And then ASICS commodities investor asked Nickel, what's your outlook by mid year given Indonesia scaling back production in conjunction with the various operations that were mothballed last year? Close to Australia, but a very

different jurisdiction. Yes, it was interesting to see, I think over the past week or so that they were talking about giving out less permits, making a bit less happen in the nickel space so that, you know, they can stop the just huge boost in supply that's come out over the past few years. So they want to find a, a, a price level.

I think they're just playing a balancing act, right, where they can disincentivize anyone from doing any more production around the world, but get the biggest bang for buck that they possibly can. And yeah, I mean, so much money has gone in, it's already sunk there that the nickel is going to be pumped for for years and years and years. As for the the other commodities you mentioned, they're obviously done a heap of work in copper to they've forced Freeport.

Freeport spent 1.2 billion US this quarter in CapEx choices, mainly getting the smelter, the smelter at Grasberg that they're forced to do because they're no longer able to export, just concentrate. So they need to make, they need to go a bit further downstream, very similar to what we saw with nickel. Indonesia wants to get more bang for their buck across the the board there and Freeport weren't going to walk away from Grasberg. So it's a balancing act. Lots of other countries have

tried that unsuccessfully. They've managed to do it OK. When you have enough of the market or whatever, you can kind of do it too, right? Like Guinea's the the other example who are, who are, you know, following a similar path in relation to the bauxite, Add more, more, more refining, smelting in country even, which they're going to be able to do.

And yeah, it's, that's actually a good thing for the for the miners strangely enough to globally because you you have a surplus of refining and smelting capacity, which means like lower TCLCS on you, Yeah, which means you bank a bit more of that margin. Freeport's going to get active. Look, oh, they produced what, 400,000 tonne of copper this quarter and you know, has said tried it, such a bloody good

multiple, good paper. Do you think they're going to they never really get talked about for copper acquisitions. It's always like, you know, BHP, Rio, Glencore and the names that get thrown around like. Yeah, it's Freeport. Yeah, I think it's a worthy conversation. There's Grasberg's unpalatable to Rio and BHP, just the the fact that the the the tailings run off into the ocean down there, down the mountain. BHP got good history with Yeah.

OK, Teddy, Not sure how you say that one, but Teddy. Yeah, Teddy. Yeah. And Rio had the original pseudo royalty on Grasberg itself, which they had to divest tragically because of the pushback from the the tailings of of the operation. Yeah. I mean, remember we spoke about last year nor just wouldn't invest in them because of their interest in in Grasberg. Yeah. Oh yeah. But do you think Freeport will invest in about like a will it will you say done more in South

America and stuff? I'm sure they're looking at it as much as anyone and you know, potentially they've got more richly valued paper to to kind of do a deal with given they get all these kind of general funds and all these sorts of things. But I mean talking way out of what I kind of know.

Didn't they used to own 10K? They they sold it in 2016 because they did all these oil and gas deals at the beginning of the 20 tens almost went tits up in 20/15/16 when every commodity came off and they were fighting for their life and that to sell some some really good assets. We fired it with the Lundin. They both sold out, yeah. But yeah, it's a good one, Maddie.

Very interesting. So we've got Ian from Facebook asked how to spot lifestyle companies. What are some good rules of thumb or sort of screens or red flags that you guys like to use? When you say looking at a company, are you going through a quarterly or something? They go like this is a smells to write. Probably a lifestyle company. Too many, too many corporate videos and podcast interviews. High, high sort of amounts of

related party transactions. They're not all bad, you know, but just look into the, the details on them. If there's, you know, hiring your, your brother's firm to do this, your uncle's firm to do that, those sorts of things. Just look into the the weeds there. Yeah, if you own a, a junior and it's in there the business of, of expiration, you're owning it because you, you expect a catalyst to move its share price from where it is now.

You're fighting gravity because the company has a burn rate and that burn rate is it's overheads to keep the lights on and pay all the bills and all that sort of stuff, which means that, you know, a couple times a year they're going to knock the door for, for new funds from investors. And if they're a very small company, then sometimes the dilution is so extortionate just to keep the lights on rise. If they're 5 million market cap, they got to raise too.

That's a lot. That's a lot of dilution, right? I think I do that twice a year. You know, quickly you're, you're 1% interest in the company becomes like a .1% interest in the company just because they've diluted the, the shares so much. So what you, I think you really should be looking for is like, are they doing anything to get to the catalyst you're expecting them to do? Or are they, are they simply

just dormant? Like are they, there's, there's, there's not much work happening, there's not much news flow. There's, you know, there's pretty substantial overheads which are going to result in the need for new capital to come in. If they can manage the, the capital spend, like if they can manage the overheads, then that's not so bad a thing.

If they got like decent cash and that and they keep they're running things really skinny, then you can you can wait a bit longer if you got to wait for a different kind of price cycle for the catalyst to come. Yeah, and I think I'll caveat that new slow with planning this or thinking about this and and you know people are you see a lot of companies put announcements out like you know about that sort of stuff. It's like OK, but like when have you are you actually drilling on

the ground? Have you completed AGF survey? Have you actually done all of these things? Some companies just ship me when they put, oh, we're thinking about this evaluating this, which look, you have to do. But if like if that's the only news flow and then you've got like you say, Trav, this corporate spend just going on in the background just to keep the the lights on. It's it's frustrating, that's for sure.

But yeah, looking at the in the quarterlies, it, you know, does split it out, you know, corporate admin spend, you know, exploration spend, you know, all all that too. So, you know, he has, you have periods with all ebbs and flows, but if it's, you know, pretty consistently very minimal on the operational activities front, it's probably worth looking to, that's for sure. Yeah. What are you getting for that burn rate? You know, yeah. That's right.

This one's for you. Specifically for you, Matthew. So this is from No Pants Vance from Twitter. It's I will flash up his question on the screen. But I think the the crux of what he's trying to understand is how does all body geometry? So that's, you know, the shape of, you know, the BLOB of metal that's in the ground.

How's that important? When you then go from, say, like a resource definition stage to go, OK, now we've got to RIP this thing out the ground and, you know, build a pit or build a, you know, underground mine that wraps around it. You know, how can the geometry affect the engineering side of things given your, you know, sort of previous life experience

in that world? I'll try not to blab on with too much shit, but well, open, open pit wise, like if you got to start with a pit, you know, the more vertical the ore body, the sort of you can't have a pit for as long because you're the deeper you go, the, you know, the more stripping is required to sort of follow that down. So you look at, you know, the, what are the, some of the great pits?

Look at Capricorn Karla window. Like that's just the, it's just pretty much the pretty flat plunging sort of ore body that the the pitch just follows and, you know, low strip at the start and they just keep following it down. It's obviously very consistent and good continuity and like that's why they've made good money. So you know, mount Gibson will be different. Well, that's, you know, vertical. You see that there's not big massive pits that we go on

underground a lot quicker. Then I guess when you do get underground, it's the the dip of the ore body is the most is the the biggest factor at play. So obviously it's nice having a not a vertical a vertical ore body is just easy because it's just not as soon as as soon as there's a bit of angle on it. You got to you mind the Stokes to to that angle, but that that hanging wall. The more angle, the more chance you've got of that falling in and diluting the grade.

So you know you're simplest minds like you are a bander for diverse or Ding Ding Ding as well. Just vertical like. Daisy Milano that was like thin and vertical, but it was a lot faulty like that was that created a lot of issues trying to stay on the ore body. But just yeah, just you just nice vertical, just follow the vine. Just nice and simple. That's what a lot of a lot of Northern Stars narrow vine mines that they've had over the years were just like that.

So and then like so you look at the mines around like your Leonora where they go down instead of being 90°, they're like, you know, 40° thirty. So Gwalia is like 40°. So it's obviously dilution. Controlling the dilution becomes a problem recovering the ore on the foot wall because it's one thing controlling the dilution there. But when it's laid right over, I think the natural angle of repose for dirt to run down a hill is 55°.

So essentially once it goes past 55° and it's flatter, the ore will sit on the foot wall and you either have to wash it down or you have to take more angle out of the football and take waste to get to that, you know, 5560° to get to get it to real. So you can bog it. And then the more it dips over the, you have to do a lot more sort of you have to do you have to, you have a lot more development per vertical meter

in the OR drives. Because if you had 20m level spacings, but it's dipping at 45°, it's like a 30m drill hole to reach the other level. So you have to condense the levels a lot closer. So, and which could be it's less decline development, but it's a lot more operating development too. But it's and it's just, it's just a bit more difficult and then so that's, that's deep.

But then like, look, while they've been doing it for frigging, you know, 1000 odd meters vertically, I don't under, I don't think it was like that the whole time. But they've, you know, once rinse and repeat, they get it down pat and they've obviously got a way to recover it the best they can, but then proven up the answers. The other one is plunge that we talk about the shape. So Gualia has a big plunge, Paulson's had a big plunge.

And that means there's your dip of your body looking this way. But then if you spin around 90°, it's where where the ore body's going. I'm also like, is it just going like? This or is it turning around going that way? So like Agnew Warunga for Goldfields that was like just dead vertical, like it's just a decline that just spiraled next to it. Paulsen's for instance, had a has a big plunge. I think Fireflies one has a big plunge.

Gualia has a big plunge. So what happens there is to actually infill drill as you go down to get the confidence in the ore body becomes more difficult because if it's got the big plunge to drill 300 meters below, if you were just drilling from next to the ore body to get the angle on it is impossible because it's so far away. So you've got to develop these long exploration drives to get over the top of it to get a better angle.

So that obviously costs more, but then it's trying to get the geological confidence to geological confidence is what drives your guidance for the next year because you got to know pretty bloody close what the grade is. So you tell the market we're getting 200,000 oz. But if you the apple a factor in the grade doesn't come out of that number. So plant plunge is another one. And then for that's why Gualia doesn't have it, doesn't have a shaft in it because they never got to the point.

It just kept it obviously kept going and going, but they never got to the point to say, right, we have enough confidence in the ore body down here and we're going to pick a point to put the shaft in here because because the ore body is plunging, you can't like it's too hard extend the shaft later on because the ore body keeps getting further away from the shaft. So you have to pick a point to put it in. There you go that. Was actually very interesting.

But 10? Percent of bloody everything you'll need to know there, yeah. But the take away basically being that I sort of got from that is basically the the all body geometry depending on what sort of if you're developing as an open pit or an underground can impact basically your material movement. And the more material you're having to move, the more that's going to cost and also the logistics that's involved with, you know, more difficult material movement at angles and things.

Like that well, and geometry is also if you look at where the location as well, because let's look at Spartan Spartan's got never never then you know, Peppers right next to it then is at 4. They got 4 pillars sort of up strike from that. And they're sort of all lined up

next to each other. And they've got the decline coming in from the pit and they'll just go past each ore body and then keep going down and sort of they can piggyback off off the infrastructure, like off the ventilation, the pumping, the power as they sort of go down. And they're accessing multiple ore bodies all from sort of the one entry point, what from the one decline. Whereas Bellevue, for instance, like Bellevue's got, you know, crack and grade crack and ore body.

But there's a bit over here, there's a bit over there, there's a bit bloody behind me. So you've got sort of independent mining areas accessing all these places with which need independent infrastructure like like pumping ventilation power. And you got to sort of spread it out everywhere, which is you would anticipate why they're, you know, struggling to get the answers out of the hole is managing the complexity of the constraints of infrastructure.

So once you once you pile all that together, they all, there's good bits of it and bad bits of each of it, you'll figure out is it good or not? Yeah. Or or or you you have a vote on whether it's good or not. Alright, no, that was a very comprehensive one there like that. Well, I was only there for bloody 14 years and I know about 10% of what I need to know. So it's just that's why when someone's been mining for 30 or 40 years, you're frigging listen to what they have to say.

Absolutely, yeah. But Trev, we've got one from

Nick Huntley, who are Stam. So this is for those who don't know Stam. As Samuel Terry Asset Management in their last quarterly noted, they're now holding a gold producer. Who do you think it is? Well, actually did not know that. I didn't read the last quarterly. I read the one before that. That's a great question. Who would stand by there? They didn't name it.

They didn't name who. Yeah, apparently don't know, according to Nick Nye. Knowing those guys, it'll be something funky where there's a bunch of latent value that the market's not quite seeing. Yeah. Like they're, they've got a good eye, Those those guys. Not entirely they, they hold a bit of gold bullion as well. Jada. Yeah, I could be wrong. They did last time I read one of their reports. Yeah, pretty sure. So I, I don't know Ally, I don't know it'd be. Someone left field wouldn't.

It it would be 100% would be left field. They yeah, just find value where you usually just look past it. Value and sort of catalysts where they can kind of make something happen in a way. Catalyst is a big one. I think they are, yeah, exceptionally good at creating catalysts. Yeah. Like, yeah, if anyone wants to look up a just look up Nam on the ASX, it's Namwa Cotton. Namwa Cotton.

Oh, yeah, check, check. Just just go over the the series of that company's announcements over the last 12 months and I think you'll kind of see the value creation stem are capable of of creating for shareholders. It was an announcement almost every week, so I have a fair bit. Of rating and I'm going to do one last quick round table each.

I've got a question for each of you and after you played a lot of golf over the summer. Break I did. Tito trades from 2:00 to US. What's Maddie's handicap? I was 15. I got 2 I think sort of. Sort of. Yeah, yeah. Now I think I hit 17 the other day playing on 15, about 15. Very good. Bloody volatile. It's like, what stock would I compare my golfing to? Nah, but the shells I ain't get in at the bottom. What I think is the bottom. What would you compare it to?

A. Certain uranium company you hold. Maybe yeah it's on and I'd be one day the drivers gone good and the irons are fucked, then next day the bloody drivers bloody shit itself and I'm smashing the irons and then usually the pot is fucked the whole time. So it's. Like. Good fun. Anyone that wants a game on a Friday from Galford hit me up I. Love it. Actually, I had on a separate thing I had to think about the other day.

We were talking about what's like the, the, the finance or the the West Perth equivalent of of word on the decline. And I think I've thought of it. Oh, what is it? I think it's the WhatsApp on Hay Street. What'sapp on Hay Street? Yeah, that's good. I love it. That can be for finance Goss. We can do WhatsApp on Hay. Street, Yeah, 'cause everyone's like. WhatsApp send anything on WhatsApp, it's safe. This guy, the guy's one of the biggest insider trains. Yeah, it was in Australia.

Like, don't worry, it's all good. We're talking on WhatsApp. But that's what they wrote in WhatsApp. It's fully. Encrypted. And then you got the Australian Federal Police reading it all. Oh, it's golden. Crazy JD, what was your favorite book you read over the summer break? Not sure anyone's going to chase me up on this one, but I read a book called Kaput. I spent a bit of time in Germany, got family and stuff from there, and it's on the the struggles of the German economy

going forward. We've spoken about the energy problems, reliance on Russia and all these sorts of things. So it was seriously interesting talking about a, a lack of investment in appropriate industries, a lack of sort of resilience in critical parts of your economy. Yep. And getting a bit sort of sidetracked by certain ideologies and and those sorts of things. It was. It was really interesting. Awesome. And finally, Trev, what was your favorite dog friendly pub you

visited over the summer? Oh, I didn't go to any dog friendly pubs over there. Oh no, I did. Yeah, it went down to Bridgetownish area. There was a cider cidery in Nanup. There's like a very cool, No, it's Bridgetown. Bridgetown cidery. Yeah, that was. Just on the outskirts of town there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, years ago. It's awesome spot down there. Yeah, Yeah. So that was good. But what took once there? Yeah, it's. Good. Love it.

Very good guys. Thanks for answering all those questions from the the money miners on the fly that. Was you? You hosted so well. JC No. I don't. It's such a good body Q&A. Moderator. They take the. Spot at conferences. Righty there we go, well facilitated as JC. You could just dead set consult yourself around Perth and the Greater Australia being AQ and a facilitator. Oh, that was so well. Done so well done. Learn tapes too, so. What a job we have.

I know if today is anything to go by. We get paid for this. It's amazing. But. Go to the mining industry. Oh mate, pay yourself a favour as well and get a freaking underground operators ticket and you can pay. It's effectively paying yourself 100 bucks because you get $100 off using the code MOM 100. Lincoln is in the show notes the greatest underground conference in the world. April 7th the 9th in April in Adelaide we've.

Got to thank the. Greatest open pit mining contractor ever Mineral mining services. Greatest camp builder ever Grounded. The greatest The greatest source of keeping the rock up underground. Sam. Big ground support. Yep. Definitely the greatest insurance brokers ever. See our insurance K drill. Like you could say the greatest driller ever, but you you would say Ron O'Sullivan is the greatest bloke ever. As well, Yeah.

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Well, Tim Taylor's the greatest bloke ever that has provided independent power solutions and on AGC you're the greatest, just the greatest sidekick on a bloody. Podcast. Outside this week. Good. Work. You've been the greatest partner I've had in the podcast this week. This week, your only partner. Have a good weekend. Money miners tutoring money

miners. Information contained in this episode of Money of Mine is of general nature only and does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of any particular person. Before making any investment decision, you should consult with your financial advisor and consider how appropriate the advice is to your objectives, financial situation and needs.