I finally had a chance to listen to the quarterly conference call this morning.
The impressive take away from my perspective is the ability of the NST team to outperform operationally.
When they get some unexpected downtime at a mill, instead of getting it back up and running as fast as they can, they use the time to run some trials, optimise the plant, and get it running with 10% better throughput without capital spending. They recognised in the call that they are going to need to spend capital in Kalgoorlie and at Jundee to increase the size of their plants. But before making the step change, they wring every last bit of improvement they can. It's this kind of disciplined capital approach that makes NST outperform its peers.
There was however no hint in the call about how NST intends to utilise its cash pile. There is significant capital expenditure on the horizon at Central Tanami, and there are a couple of new mines, and a couple of upgrades to existing plants. But they are already building the new mines and the cash continues to grow. I wonder if they would make a play for a company like GOR? It certainly is affordable. But is it a good fit considering it's fairly fully valued? BB's preference seems to have been for buying mines with short mine lives and cheap prices and then proving they can find the gold. Just musing ...
CHeers,
Tim.
NST Price at posting:
$4.25 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
