I expect sales revenues to be pretty healthy in the Dec quarter, even though we missed a planned December shipment (now late January).
My best guess using rough calculations (based on company announcements would be): - Sales = $28.04m - Costs = $36.37m - Balance = -$8.33m
What are other people's thoughts?
Lithium sales ($21.00m) Worth noting that US$8.8m prepayment remains or A$12.05m (if calculated using the USD:AUD exchange rate of 0.73:1 from the report footnote in another section).Therefore, the prepayment has reduced A$3.94m in the Dec-qtr (from A$15.99m).The prepayment represents 15% of the value of the Lithium shipments whose value must be A$26.26m. 5% royalty equals $1.313m.
Tantalum sales ($7.04m) We need to dig a bit deeper to attempt this calculation. "13.2wmt (29,040lb) tantalum pentoxide produced in July & August. Site administration, haulage and other cash costs were approximately $1.1m, which equates to the approximate value of the tantalum pentoxide produced during the month of July". Therefore, lets assume $2.2m across both months which equates to $2.2m = 29,040lb = $75/lb (which is conservative compared to the tantalum pricing in the independent reports). We sold 20-30dmt (let's assume 25dmt = 55000lb) in the Dec quarter at "prices well in excess of those previously budgeted" but let's be conservative and assume July pricing which produces revenues of $4.12m. We also sold 400wmt = 880,000lb (3-4% concentrate) so let's assume this is 1/20th the value of 30% concentrate ($3.75/lb) which results in another $3.3m in revenue. So that's $7.42m minus 5% royalties = $7.04m.
Processing costs ($25.57m) In Sep qtr, we had A$900/t processing costs so that's 28,419wmt x $900/t = $25.57m. This is approximately the combined value reported separately by TAW and AMAL in their quarterlies. Even though we produced only 22,570wmt in Dec qtr, let's assume conservatively that the overall operating costs were the same, resulting in a poor $1132/t cost.
Other costs ($10.8m) The Sep qtr for TAW reported $2.8m in development (perhaps tailings dam or water management?), $2m for merger/debt (let's blow this out to $6m due to $40m facility) and about $2m for the rest.
A40 Price at posting:
20.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held