RE: seriously - indeed forward PE of ONE!!I come up with $1.50 in earnings as the closing 2009 run rate, like you do...assuming phase 2 is on line at that time, which it should be...The company won't actually earn $1.50 in a single calendar year, assuming the above commodity prices, until 2010 and the numbers won't be completely posted until March of 2011...So we are two years away from ML actually earning that $1.50 and several more months away from its being posted as "annual earnings".
Still for a US investors, thanks to the collapse in the Loonie, the stock is now selling for a ONE PE based on the US close of $1.57. Indeed we're either at the tail end of the hedge fund dumbing or at the beginning of a bad and prolonged world depression. I don't quite believe economies are all going to fall that hard. First, we have China's strength which plays right to our two products, Copper and Moly, and second you can bet the new administration is going to spend like crazy to keep the economy from imploding, likely with an emphasis on infrastructure. Third higher cost mines will be closing which will reduce supply.
However, unitl there is a turn back up in world economies I doubt there will be much of a multiple to earnings paid for base metal companies....Hence, I maintain only a very light position, though here soon around one I'll restock...
Several here always deemed me as too pessimistic, worried too much about the Black Swan Event that would derail this stocks rise into the teens and twenties...The out break of bird flu couldn't have done too much more damage to ML stock price than the deleveraging, forced liquidation, deflationary fear sell off we've been through...
The only way ML gets back to $12 in 18 months is for the deep recessionary fears to become unwarranted due to large capital spending projects and tax breaks kicking in successfully, and for the dollar to go back into a slide that lifts commodity prices and brings back resource investors.. Could happen, maybe in 18 months...that'd be a 35% average return per month....Good long term story still....sorrow for the time being, except for those with much cash, good solid incomes and a longer time horizon.
Ah, cheers....