Bbarns, It will be interesting to check the year-end results for...

Bbarns,

It will be interesting to check the year-end results for OGC, as I admit to being a bit behind with them, having not worked through their half-year figures.

According to my notes and figures from OGC's FY14 results, the Reefton open pit was due to end in 2015. The Macraes underground was due to finish in mid-2015 and the open pit was to end in 2017. So their gold-only facilities were both coming to an end.

Didipio has a long life but was receiving more than half it's revenue from copper. Subsequently, the copper price has swooned and looks unlikely to recover for some years due to the China slowdown. So I have to now question the overall economics of Didipio at these copper prices (and likely to be even lower in 2016!).

Free Cash Flow was good in 2014 - what is the likelihood of that having been maintained over 2015 with:
(1) lower gold production from two of their three operations,
(2) much lower copper prices,
(3) much lower gold prices,
and given the above, have they been able to reduce their US$118m of debt over the last 12 months.

I don't know the answers because I failed to keep up with their story over 2015, but I suggest that they may well need to focus on the economics of there own operations without contemplating M&A activity, whether that might be MML or A.N.Other.
CPDLC