@Luckier Phil The reasons for Bayan's exit are obvious and have been discussed at length here a year ago. In a nutshell: According to the JV agreement Bayan would have needed to supply the BCB plant with coal at $8.50/t while they would have earned less than $30/t from the sale of briquettes, which by the time the JV agreement was signed meant a significant increase of profits. However meanwhile the market price for their low rank coal had hiked to some $50-60/t so getting out of the JV and selling that coal unprocessed into the export market simply meant more profit for Bayan. On top of that as you can read from Bayan's quarterly reports their Tabang mine hasn't been producing enough coal to supply the existing BCB plant, so it would have required some investment to ramp up production while production costs exploded due to a worse than expected strip ratio. Lastly once the BCB plant would have reached nameplate capacity Bayan would have been obliged to contribute funds to build a further BCB plant in Tabang and - in order to supply the same - to increase production of the underperforming adjacent mine even more, but Bayan lacked the cash for that and even after their $950 debt-raising in April 2012 it's more profitable for them to ramp up production in some of their other (higher quality coal) mines than investing in the JV with WEC which simply means spending significant capex for less profit while adding some technical risks. Bayan simply backed the wrong horse when entering the JV agreement but "pacta sunt servanda" and so they will pay for this mess one day. Obviously they didn't consider their KRL shares may be frozen when they breached the JV agreement. The reason why there has not been any other JV so far was that everybody had been waiting for Tabang to prove its productive capacity. Despite the motives for Bayan's behaviour are obvious their move accompanied by their comments on alleged technical issues potential has successfully caused doubts in the industry which WEC has been trying to clear up by countless trial runs at their Cessnock demonstraiton plant.
WEC Price at posting:
24.5¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Not Held