Agree with you Nordesmic - reserves are one of the key factors...

 Agree with you Nordesmic - reserves are one of the key factors for rating NCM as a quality long-term investment, as I also do - and up until Barrick's recent acquisition/merger I believe Newcrest had the largest gold reserves of any gold mining company in the world - hence why they are such a good long-term buy and why I continue to accumulate them.

Yes the smaller narrower vein operations have significantly lower 'defined' reserve and resource bases than the block caving operations but as we know it's too expensive to define them because of the longer exploration holes required and exploration development etc - hence why they try to maintain the reserves or expand them as they mine deeper and deplete them.  Also of course the high capital and development time required to start a block caving operation are prohibitive to most entities - whereas that's not the case for narrow-vein gold - and where NST has greater flexibility over NCM although the scales are not really comparable.

Short-term, NST look like a sell considering the last quarterly report.  Medium to long-term however I see them as one to accumulate - especially in this weakness and expected further short-term weakness - because their average pre-pogo FCF is ~$150m for the last 3 years, which by simplistic forecasting shows they are likely to have at least $300m in cash in 2 years - and hence why another acquisition may be on the cards within the next 2 years.  Pogo is still FCF positive - and I'm confident the team will continue to work on improving the FCF of the operation.

So yes for the speculators NST is probably one to get out of in the short-term and maybe return after the next report if performance is improved and for the investors I'd say to hold and accumulate them in any further weakness.

Nordesmic, do you have any thoughts on MLD, FLT, MND and FNP please?

Thanks,

GFO