roy management needs a boot to china, page-11

micky78,

My thoughts are below. Please bear in mind that I have performed a lot of research and followed CAP closely, and to a lesser degree ROY. I have only had a breif look at FMS on your request. I have a significant proportion of my portfolio in CAP and a small percentage in ROY. I do not hold FMS. Some might say my analysis is baised - others would say he is putting his money where his mouth is. Judge my comments as you wish.

Whilst a relative new comer to junior resource stocks, I tend to look at the fundamentals (what could it achieve if it got into production), what are the road blocks to being able to achieve that (approvals, infrastucture etc) and what dilution might occur to get into production. Learning to look for some of these have been costly lessons. The other that I look for, but is harder to judge, is management. With that context, my comments are as follows:

CAP:

Market cap - $28M
Profitability and fundamentals - Fe price plus premium for 69% (premium of $9/t per CAP AGM presentation slide 7) less landed in China costs of mid $60-$70 - Therefore at production of 20Mt and a margin of say $50t, that is $1B profit per annum (rough numbers I know, that's what initially got me excited and I haven't been able to punch holes in that yet, other than drop in iron ore price which will have an impact, but would have remained profitable throughout recent drop). So this ticks the box for me on fundamentals.
Roadblocks -
*Native title - none.
*Water - yes
*Power - accesss to grid
*Transport - common user rail with capacity, potential to upgrade if required or slurry pipe line to port.
*Port - Capacity at common user port - would be a barge to cape size ships. Not ideal as higher freight costs, but way cheaper than needing to build new port.
*Staff - close to broken hill, so not the usual fly in fly out issues.
Dilution and finance - This will happen and current CAP shareholders will not get all of the $1B profit. JV Agreement was to give CAP a 20% free carried interest so I'm working on the assumption current shareholders will get diluted to have a 10% to 20% interest, ie. assuming $1B profit, profit to current shareholders could be $100 to $200M or $1 to $2 per share, per annum. Not bad given current share price.
Management - from my experience, knowledgable and trustworthy.
Current issues - JV partner who holds 40% is in liquidation due to shareholder dispute. The financing shareholder from the JV partner has since bought 20% of CAP (good sign of support) and now wants two board seats. Need liquidator to finalise sale of JV interest (potential for CAP to buy back cheaply) and get board seats resolved. I expect both resolved by Christmas.
Upside - Tungsten project near BHP, Braemar project at other end of Braemar formation.

ROY

Market CAP - also $28M
Profitability and fundamentals - difficult to say without PFS, assuming similar to CAP at this stage.
Roadblocks -
*Native title - yes on part, but preliminary agreement in place I think.
*Water - don't know
*Power - don't know
*Transport - common user rail with capacity, potential to upgrade if required or slurry pipe line to port (assumed similar to CAP).
*Port - Capacity at common user port - would be a barge to cape size ships. Not ideal is higher costs, but way cheaper than needing to build new port (assumed similar to CAP, but I recall something about building another port somewhere).
*Staff - not as remote as Pilbara, but no nearby workforce that I am aware of.
Dilution and finance - This will happen - not enough info on capex to guess, but best guess would be similar to CAP.
Management - Seems good. Recent buy in of some one who I think was early FMG investor is a good tick for management.
Current issues - none. PFS due out shortly.
Upside - they have 100% but have put all their eggs in this basket with no other active projects. On one hand shows confidence and focus. On other hand a risk.

FMS
market cap - $162M
Profitability - Opex per July 2012 is $35/t FOB at 55%, therefore realised price could be about $6 less than quoted 62%. 15Mtpa so volume and margins could produce a nice profit. Have done further analysis, see reason below.
Roadblocks - Based on PFS being completed, I assume there are power, water options etc. However, as you noted, FMS is reliant on rail and port options owned by others. This will make or break this project. It doesn't matter how profitable this is and how good management is, if they can't get up on this issue, it has little value as capex would be too high. This is an issue outside of the company's control. Whilst there are reasonable prospect of getting this, it is currently a deal breaker for me.
There appears to be reasonable upside should FMS get rail and port agreements at reasonable prices. However, if it is assumed that all three (CAP, ROY and FMS) could produce similar profits, then its higher market cap means there is less upside. While it appears more advanced in its DFS, it is still years from production as are the others.

In summary, having done the comparison, I'm still happy holding majority in CAP, some ROY and no FMS. I think Braemar is the new Pilbara and early investors will be rewarded - but DYOR.

To keep somewhat diversified, I currently look to gold for any new investment funds, but if CAP jumped up in price before ROY, I would probably sell some CAP to buy ROY (assuming ROY's PFS comes out as expected).

Sorry if you were hoping for a shorter response - but thought I may as well type my analysis while thinking about it. Hope it helps.