Looks like there is another legitimate horse in this race. I expect GSP’s recently announced “substantial efficiencies in both areas which should result in material capex and opex savings” are intended to directly compete with Evolution, not to mention the rest of the industry. It seems to me GSP originally designed a Cadillac selective solution mine (expandability, carbon footprint, energy conservation, etc) and now they are realizing the key to getting funding is to simplify the process and build a mine that competes well on IRR.
At this point GSP would still seem to have the lead (permitted, environmental assessment, off-take partner, seismic, drilling) along with a queue of interested parties. If they can reduce CapEx to anywhere near Glenbrea’s CDN$143mm, then Tugaske suddenly becomes very, very viable not just from an IRR perspective, but also from a financing perspective.
I suspect there will be room for several 250k ton mining companies as these companies get started on their first projects.
Keep in mind Stockwatcher that share count is meaningless. If a company has a market cap of $50mm, it makes no difference between whether that is 50 shares at $1mm each, a million shares at $50 each or a billion shares at $0.05 each. MARKET CAP IS ALL THAT MATTERS BECAUSE THAT IS IN ESSENCE WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR YOUR TINY SLICE OF THE COMPANY. The dilution process itself can be very painful for shareholders, but if it brings you to a good place where you can stop diluting, market cap matters and not share count.
On this front…..If GSP can truly get capex down and IRR up meaningfully, we may find they can fund at strictly the module level (ie $100mm debt and $50mm equity from HELM - or something along these lines) and not through the GSP parent. That would help limit dilution for shareholders and free up the company to grow without the limitations of debt loads and/or additional share issuance. Cutting CapEx meaningfully can solve a whole lot of problems....