1. Yep, I see where you're coming from. My list is commodity price, currency exchange rates and metallurgical recovery, followed by capital cost and last, operating cost. Because, from an operator's point of view, opcosts rarely properly account for the fixed component of capital and so the project is in fact highly sensitive to capital - how many financial restructurings do you see amongst mining companies every day? How many capital raisings?
Just to make folks uncomfortable with an overreaching statement - everyone lies about operating costs. Everyone. The whole industry. I cringe every time I see some MD crowing about C1, C2 and C3 operating costs. The pie has become a magic pudding by the time the Financial Controller gets to the spreadsheets. . .Once again, the concept of engineering tolerance.
2. Perhaps. I don't do financial valuations, nor do I do shares, so that aspect is not my thing. I leave that to the soft-palmed, limp-wristed, suit wearing namby-pambys with MBA's. Probably why I'm broke - I plan to develop my own show, one day, if anyone has anything plausible that they can offer me (*hint*).
However, analysts and financiers are constantly asking me for an explanation of cutoff grades. And I mean constantly. Always. All the bloody time. So I infer that they must fit it in to their models somewhere. And in my experience, the technique used for cutoff grade analysis is an excellent means of pulling apart a cash-flow model.
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