I'm not disagreeing with you that the value of Schaft Creek is there today, but in 2016 or whenever they took their decision to advance another project, if they had a choice between:
- Schaft Creek NPV (8%) 513M CAD with 10% IRR or
- QB2 NPV (8%) 2B+ USD with 12%+ IRR
... the choice seems logical when looking back at the whole picture, but if you think otherwise, that's ok. It's really easy to criticize now that you know how things evolved in the last 7 years.
If you know a little about finance, take the 2013 capex, future cashflows per year for Teck's 75% and calculate roughly their portion of the 513M NPV (8%). Let me know the results. My conclusion was that most of the 513M was actually coming from our (25%) and Teck's (75%) was barely break-even. Why? Because they have to fully support 3.2B during the construction and pay-back time. That's around 13 years before making a profit!
Continue to figure me out, one day you might get it right.
MoneyK