With the current oil price drop, I figure it's a good idea to maybe talk a little bit about their Fort Hills project and perhaps posters here may have some oil sands background to help us.
http://www.teck.com/res/tc/documents/_ces_portal_meta/downloads/investors/ir%20presentations/2014/20141120_goldman_sachs_conference_final.pdf
This is Teck's most recent presentation.
Their potential economics for oil at $100 is around 15% yield from Teck's $2.9 billion capex investment.
$455 million annual pre tax cash flow.
At $100 oil, they have margins of $35. Or 35% margin.
Currently with oil around $70, they are very very close to breaking even.
If you use SC as an example.
SC provides annual $453 million in pre tax cash flow. Divide by capex of $3.2 billion, that yields roughly 14%.
If you look at copper cost margins after by products, SC is at $1.15, if copper stays at $3.00, we have 62% margin.
***I realize the Fort Hills yield is based on during capital recovery period.
If that's the case for SC, first five years of capital recovery is around $3.5 billion. That's roughly $600-700 million a year. Much higher than the average $453 million per year.
I know I'm comparing apples to oranges, but it shows that SC stands alone a very good project. Now if you imagine reducing the capital cost and the payback period, think about how good the numbers will look then?
*I've not accounted for forex changes and metal price changes.