Orest Wowkodaw - Canaccord Genuity - Analyst

Okay, and just shifting gears to the balance sheet. Your net debt-to-net debt plus equity is extremely low at 15%. I'm just curious strategically where management is thinking right now in terms of acquisitions given that we've seen a lot of depressed equity prices out there. And sort of what if you could remind me again what you're target net debt-to-net debt plus equity ratio would be in the event that there was something attractive out there.

Bob Bell - Teck Cominco Limited - Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of Coal

Our target really is the debt-to-debt plus equity ratio, which we like to keep at about the 30% level. And the amount of cash that we like to keep on hand, a minimum would be sort of the $500 million at the low end of the range. As we are building up the cash balance, we're looking to pre-fund some of the development projects that Don mentioned in his comments on the slides earlier in the day. Strategically, from an M&A perspective, we are always looking at various items. We will compare them to what we have on the docket, and if anything looks better than what we have in the development pipeline we would certainly consider potential activities in that area.

Meredith Bandy - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst

So, Don, this is a very interesting presentation on QB2. And, I'm looking at Slide 20, we have QB2 number four on the undeveloped projects. I think there is talk that you, Don, had been talking about CAD2.75 copper, you have an 8 percent IRR on QB2.What do you think is the long-term copper price we need for some of these large projects that are obviously getting more and more costly?

Donald Lindsay - Teck Cominco Limited - President, CEO

It is an interesting question. I guess I'm conscious that the market has quite a wide range of copper prices that people would use. We haven't disclosed any one particular case. We usually start at a case of CAD2.50. I think the one you are referring to rather than the CAD2.75, but then we do sensitivity analysis as you might imagine. But we've also done a lot of analysis of what copper prices are implied by the prices paid on other acquisitions of development properties, and most of those have been over CAD3.00 by other parties in the last year or so.

But what we've done is we've left it for you, the analysts and large institutional shareholders to choose your own price, and analyze the project with your own set of parameters. So you have the key capital and key operating costs and mine life and so on. And I guess you can come to your own conclusions. From our point of view, one of the most important things about QB is its doability, if you like. But this is a project that we have a lot of confidence in the resource, the technology, it is a straightforward copper concentrator. There's a mine already there so it is likely we can get permitted within a reasonable schedule. And it's in a very good mining country, Chile, where a country that's very used to our industry and understands it and supports it.

So compared to a lot of other projects around the world where there's some question as to the doability of the projects, related to any one of a number of issues, this one looks pretty clean and that's why we like it so much. If it were up to us, and I don't want to prejudge the board because we haven't put the question to our board to make the development decision yet, but I think Norm and I, if we owned 100% of it we would just go ahead and build it because that's how you build a great company, great mining companies when you get long life resources like this. But there are three owners and we have to finish those discussions before we can make a final decision.

Greg Barnes - TD Newcrest/Waterhouse Securities - Analyst

Okay. Don, I guess Meredith's question was what would make you move ahead on this project, and you kind of implied you already would. But what target IRR do you need to justify the project either leave it or un-leave it?

Donald Lindsay - Teck Cominco Limited - President, CEO

Thanks for the question. As you know, we don't usually disclose that but I will put it this way, that we looked at -- you know we did a number of scenarios, different financial runs at different commodity prices, and generally using a threshold discount rate of 8% real, just to see with the resulting NPV was. And as I said before, if you're used CAD2.50 copper you know it's positive, but it wasn't that exciting, but if used CAD3.00 copper it is fantastic. That kind of tells us that it wouldn't take much, many years at a reasonable price to earn quite a good IRR on it. One of the things I've noticed in this recent period of weakness, the lowest copper got was CAD3.06. It is currently still over CAD3.70 and geologically it seems fairly challenged around the world.

The top five publicly listed copper companies all had reductions in production last year, despite the fact that copper was over CAD4.00 a tonne for nine months of last year. The country of Chile, the largest copper producing country in the world that's production was down last year by 4%. Meanwhile, demand worldwide continues to increase. Sometimes at large rates, sometimes at small rates but continues to increase.We think the outlook for copper is pretty good. We know this that in the quantity business that it never actually runs as a flat line, straight IRR calculation. It is a very cyclical business.

You tend to get all your money back in two or three good years, and never know when those two or three good years are going to be. Is it when the mine opens up? Or is it five or seven years later? But you do know that if you have a 39 year mine life, and I suspect much longer given that we've got more resources, that you're going to have several cycles when you get those two or three good years. And when you do and IRR calculation using that, this looks very strong.

John Hughes - Desjardins Securities - Analyst

Okay. That's great. Then in terms of a summary of the feasibility study for QB2, is there a more -- is there anything else available outside of what's in the quarterly release?

Peter Rozee - Teck Cominco Limited - Senior Vice President, Commercial and Legal Affairs

There will be a 43-101 report filed sometime in the next six weeks. Probably at least a month from now.

John Hughes - Desjardins Securities - Analyst

Okay. So what about any economic reviews, or is that pending following board decision type of thing?

Donald Lindsay - Teck Cominco Limited - President, CEO

Well, we have all sorts of scenarios that we run, and I guess we finally come to conclusion that you are going to come up with your own copper prices and models, and so we've left it to you. We won't be disclosing our actual runs. We've disclosed the key inputs and then let you do you're own numbers.