Without checking the accounts - I am too lazy to, I have a few points that may help you
1. Income tax on profits. My understanding is that they had a tax holiday on their operations - not sure how long for, but possibly it was for a period of 4 years with the ability to seek a 2 year extension (at least that is what RED5 has as an option in its operations in the same country). I believe that tax free holiday is to end soon - you may want to check with the company when that is to happen. There is no Oz tax, other than possibly on any interest earned on their Oz based funds. I think the tax rate they will face overseas is 30%. They may pay some value added taxes on things they buy in that country.
2. Not sure without digging into the accounts - probably just due to different accounting concepts.
3. This is a key issue that people need to get into their heads. ASIC are all the costs that enable a company to go on operating, so it includes all current capital costs on mining as they occur in an accounting period - ie they do not capitalise all or a part of the mine development costs which are very substantial but include them, in particular the mine shaft developments and 1500m of tunnels per month. This is how the World Gold Council (which developed the ASIC concept) thought companies should provide their costs so that investors could more easily compare companies against each other. The profit figure (which is based on Australilan accounting standards) involves capitalising most of those costs and expensing a portion of them during each accounting period as depreciation or amortisation. In the case of an underground operation such as MML there is a huge difference between cash costs and AISC. I would take note of ASIC as this tells you how much of an operating margin they have on each ounce of gold produced. The revenue from operating margins go towards non-sustaining exploration costs and administration etc.
I hope that helps a bit.
loki
MML Price at posting:
76.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
