I found this note on the AG boardI found this note on the AG board
Mikey, hope this makes cents (get it). The issue as you point out is that the $11 nickel price is always posted in US dollars. So one must convert that into Cdn currency if youre a Cdn company. You pay your bills in Cdn currency. So its important to bring in as much Cdn revenue to met those bills.
With the exchange rate currently almost at par you could almost say the company is earning $11 Cdn for each pure pound of nickel sold.
So if indeed as Gary has said publically that the operating cost is $7 per pound Cdn, you could say there is a $4 profit per pure pound of nickel sold.
However the $7 operating cost is just that. It does not include the extra administrative, amortization and interest expense per pound that also increases your true expense per pound.
Then on the revenue side of things as per the feasibility report, the company does not really receive the posted $11 per pure pound of nickel sold. Theres the question of the 3% nsr's that are paid to third parties who owned the mineral leases before the company. Then there are all the Xstrata processing fees that must be deducted before you get paid the final cheque. Added are the transportation expenses to ship the concentrate to Xstrata. I'm not sure if there are shipping expenses either to get the final product into JnJ's hands. There could be a further deduction from them. Others I'm sure can correct that.
Then one has to ask if there is enough profit (if any) to actually pay down the various obligations of debt and accrued interest, and the preferred shares and their accrued interest. Then you have to hope that there is enough money left over so capital commitments like developing Hart can be met and further drilling, expansions to the mill etc etc. Further debt could probably look after that need but I would assume the current obligations would have to be paid down at least to warrant that.
The recent year end financials give you some idea on how this all adds up if you can keep track of all the pluses and minuses. But then I'm not a CA.