I only checked out NST in the last half hour, having noticed the...

I only checked out NST in the last half hour, having noticed the drop in the share price.

There is a lot of work ahead for young BB to turn the ship around - the AISC is unacceptably high for for a top mid tier goldie with aspirations to produce around 1m ounces per year. While I get the philosophy espoused by BB that as the gold price goes up they will access higher cost ounces and still maintain margins (which means a longer LOM, higher level of total profits over the LOM) it seems to me that they did not in fact manage to maintain net operating margins in the OZ operations because costs rose even more than the AUD POG over the quarter.

I would give BB a bit of leeway to get Pogo right - that could take 12 months I suppose (not sure if BB has given a timeline for such a turnaround, I have yet to read the full report). However, I note that Pogo is in a difficult operating environment and faces costs in USDs so a successful profitability turnaround could be difficult without a higher USD gold price..

I was expecting to see young Esh here telling us that he was right about NST being a higher cost Oz operator than claimed by many. Perhaps he will be so kind as to explain his views here - he has made various comments about NST being over-priced on other threads - and I have basically agreed with that view.

IMO NST is an avoid at the current share price, except for gamblers. If they can sort out the issues, pl;us given their other projects, the current price could prove to have been a good entry point.

It will be interesting to see how broker analysts respond to this report - could be more pain once the tom toms have pounded out the brokers messages.

GLA. I thought Pogo looked like an inspired acquisition, but this has to be proved.

loki (I dunno - what is too hard for me to understand I often avoid so as to protect my assets.)