At this point, at least we know that building the main infrastructures with low metals prices would be profitable by itself.
In my opinion, the biggest value from this property will kick in when Teck expands the available reserves and leverages the exist infrastructure from phase 1.
If we look at what they just did with QB2 (and they are already talking about QB3), I would not expect anything different.
1) They will buy us out
2) They will sell a portion of it to a partner, which will include ownership for future phases. When looking at the QB2 transaction, this by itself increased significantly their IRR for QB2.
3) They will drill to confirm the reserves and increase production with minimal cost. This is when the biggest IRR will happen.
I'm sure Teck is looking at the big picture and not only and the numbers from the base case.
MoneyK