Ann: Acquisition of South Kalgoorlie Operations from Westgold, page-18

My problem with this is why would you use shares instead of the cash you've got. The only thing I can conclude is that you perceive your shares to be overvalued relative to the cash you hold. ie there is greater economic benefit for the company in holding the cash. What's more as the share price hasn't fallen post transaction the market capitalisation of the company has increased as the SIO have expanded. This in turn will likely cause index matching ETFs to increase their holding thus driving the share price higher again which means the transactions effect on the market value of the company gets unrealistically multiplied up.

What I see is the share price increasing along with the execution risk as new projects are springing up in all sorts of different directions. I'm finding it hard to see how free cash flow of ~$120 million justifies the value while a number of transformational risks exist inside this company. They have been good at executing in the past so I suppose you can assume they will do it again.

Buying at this level for the medium term IMO would need to come with the assumption that we will also see a real rally in the sector. Esh