Interesting John re cash balance. My first impression of the overall capex costs for the project is they seemed reasonably high for a 2 Mtpa plant, but I guess a lot of that is a function of concurrent underground and open pit pre-production. Drilling from underground was always going to be the plan so I don't think any change in thinking that would indicate they are foreseeing being cash-strapped. It might be that they are just trying to show cost restraint to the market with initiatives such as delisting from the TSX-V.
Lycopodium came in under budget on the Sissingue EPCM for Perseus so I think a reasonable chance of same here. They may have structured the EPCM to have some sort of incentive payments for coming in under budget.
Since the BFS WAF also said that the construction manager had come up with some good cost saving initiatives such as using local contractors for some of the simple earthworks (which had the highest contingency of 20% in the BFS estimate). I think the change in the plant design to a larger mill was also meant to save some costs in capital spares. So even with a slightly expanded plant these cost savings might be able to offset other cost increases.
WAF Price at posting:
28.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
