Re: NPV of gold in the ground...
in response to
by
posted on
Jun 04, 2012 01:50AM
San Gold Corporation - one of Canada's most exciting new exploration companies and gold producers.
I think it might help to get a handle on the concepts of what we're talking about here.
NPV = Net Present Value
For a business, be it a machine shop, and automobile builder, an insurance company, or a gold miner, it is simply the sum total of future profits, net of all costs, discounted to the present day. For the discount rate, one chooses an interest rate appropriate to the risk of the investment, compared to some secure standard, such as AAA corporate bonds or US T-bills. I think AAA corporate debt yields are in the 4-6% range these days, so something like a juniour gold miner should be discounted by at least that much plus a reasonable buffer, like 5% or so. Some would argue the buffer should be twice that, and I wouldn't argue with them, when you consider the wild swings of the past few years.
I built a spreadsheet model that uses production tonnages, grades, published production costs and guidances, etc. to estimate this future cash flow, and then discount it to the present. Assumptions are: Mine life = 35 y, POG=$1600, grade=6.2 g/t, milling cost=$125/tonne (with fudge factors for increased costs in the next 5 years), milling rate = 1850 t/d, (giving an annual production of smelter rate = $1.5/t, CAD=USD, 343M shares outstanding.
These are fairly broad assumptions, granted, and if anyone can make a case for better figures, I'm open to hearing it. That said, pumping these figures into my model gives the following NPVs:
NPV/share Discount Rate
$1.94 15% DR
$2.80 10% DR
$3.67 7% DR
Incidentally, 1 year ago, fully diluted shares outstanding were ~257M. That produces these discounted Net Present Values:
NPV/share Discount Rate
$2.59 15% DR
$3.73 10% DR
$4.90 7% DR
I don't want to read another word about how we need the flowthrough $ to prove up the resource.