Thanks YM!

Copper at $3.60 US adds around 215M US to the pre-tax NPV (7.5%), therefore a total of roughly 1B US or 1.25B CAD.

Also keep in mind that 30% of capex is contingency.  Everything saved on capex would increase the NPV proportionally.

At this point, drilling further and increasing the mine life to (e.g. 30 years) would increase the NPV (7.5%) by possibly another 300M-400M, but that's not very significant compared to where we are today.  Also, even if they double the mine life at this point, the IRR would barely increase.  On the other hand, it would remove more risk for a buyer and maybe warrants a higher price tag.  Copper Fox now needs to decide if it's worth the effort.

If I'm a potential buyer, I would look at it this way.  I need to buy the project and inject almost 300M to get it started.  Buying the project for 400M US and putting 300M of capex still gives me a pre-tax IRR around 18% with copper at $3.15US.  With 5M-10M-15M, I also have the potential to double the mine life and increase the NPV (7.5%) by around 50%.  There's also a lot of room to improve on capex.

I think 400M-500M US (or 500M-625M CAD) would be fair value for a PEA project, which is around 50% of the current NPV (7.5%).

Schaft Creek would most likely still use (8%), because Teck is the operator and it is what it is.

MoneyK