I've been following up on some your links analyst99.
You obviously have more knowledge about the coal industry than I do so correct me if I'm wrong but I do note that the $60/t coking coal that you speak of is for semi-soft coking coal - not a whole lot better than thermal coal. In fact, it seems to come out of the same mine at Ovoot Tolgoi - the bit better stuff is sold as semi-soft coking coal and the lesser quality stuff is sold as thermal coal. It is misleading to compare it to high-quality seabourne coking coal at $250-$300/t.
The same graph that you speak of indicates that they get $35/t for their "higher ash/sulphur" coal. This coal (17% ash and 1.7% sulphur) is lower quality than TVN's coal (10% ash and 0.9% sulphur) and still get's $35/t.
Your own link blows your $20/t price out of the water!
I have found a few articles suggesting that around the $45/t mark is about right. For example this article seems to report a price of 285 yuan($45USD) per ton for 4,500 Kcal/kg thermal coal in the Inner Mongolia region.
This Word document here (right-click and save-as) is a broker report I found when Googling and is worth a read.
At the $45/t price they can still be making $10 - $20 per tonne.
What's the resource up to now? 100mt? 200mt?
Anyway, you do the sums - we could still be looking at $billion profits.
It does appear that TVN might be too optimistic with their $60/t price for their coal. I've been looking back through the threads but can't see that anyone has actually asked them to justify this price. I might send them an email.
TVN Price at posting:
5.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
