As a long term holder of IGO I would like to point out the very low costs of Long, often buried in the IGO conglomerate.
Firstly you can look at the QRs which consistently show cash costs around A$4/lb payable over the past decade. They don't capitalise a lot of expenditure so you only need to add a little over $1/lb for sustaining capex.
You can also look in IGO's annual reports, where Long is broken out in a seperate division. IGO has been consistently a very profitable miner but within that entity Long has been a true gem, and it has only gotten better in the past couple of years as they got into Moran. Take a look!
If Nova actually gives a better NPAT/revenue margin after tax I will be impressed, and might even start to consider forgiving IGO management for overpaying for Nova. If they do achieve that AND say double reserves then I will forgive them.
As Gungadin has said there appears to be plenty of life left in Long, and no evidence pointing to substantially higher costs, which have been remarkably stable.
EL
SIR Price at posting:
$3.61 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Not Held