PE 10 is double currently established gold mining companies. I...

PE 10 is double currently established gold mining companies. I have my doubts that a specialty commodity miner in an African jurisdiction should be valued pre cashflow at 10x price to earnings. But you do you.

The ability to book tax losses vs profit is besides the point for price to earnings ratio anaysis, as tax comes out of earnings. So if you book capital amortisation, it increases after tax earnings until the amortisation is depleted. But you still need to make those earnings after commissioning, and you need to fund before you commission.

Last time BAT went around trying to sew together a funding package, if i recall, Flanno had to commit to fund 40-50% by equity. They're already 20% through funding the project solely by equity as it stands, so if they get away with 40% of the remaining, it's still going to be 50/50.

Ordinarily, equity makes up 30% of the funding mix because interest is an expense of business, which results in it coming off of your tax bill. So the natural equilibrium point is a 30/70 equity/debt split. Admitting your lenders won't go above 40/60 or 50/50 is really saying lenders are awry of giving you money (country risk being one reason) or you can't source funds at cheap enough interest to justify borrowing more (again, likely country risk).

So, yeah, I still think you need to work on your analysis a bit and consider what Flanno et al. have pegged as their WACC and what their funding model is like. The tax deductibility of interest is mostly irrelevant for PER comparison, but makes a big difference for risk rating (more low-cost debt vs high-cost equity or less high cost debt and more high cost equity).