RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Mining Companies Urge Top Congo Lawmakers to Block New LawBloomfield
A new process for lithium-ion battery cathode material containing zero cobalt has demonstrated high density, high power, and good cycle life. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4134853-battery-barrier-busted
bloomfield18 wrote: Ursus,
That's another reason I like IVN. They are not afraid to role up their sleeves and earn their money through hard work. The studies are excellent, running hundreds of pages, providing highly detailed economic analysis, including the degree to which various factors (metals price, exchange rate, operational costs) will affect the bottom line. Contrast this with KAT, admittedly a company with a great story, but no economic analysis at all. The heading "Economic Analysis" is there on page 31, section 1.8 of their most recent March 2017 technical report. It reads " The economic assessment has been excluded as per instruction 1 of item 22." That's a real confidence builder.
The turning point for me was the recent updated PEA for Kamoa-Kakula in November. The 8 Mtpa scenario boosted undiscounted cash flow by 86%. I found that staggering when you consider it doesn't even include the imminent Kakula resource update along 5.5 km of strike. I was expecting NPV to go up simply because throughput had doubled, and of course it did. Yet the increased cash flow tacked another billion dollars. The sell off was totally unjustified.
By the way, I don't buy the World Is Running Out Of Cobalt story. Cobalt is relatively common, but until recently no one had much incentive to try very hard to find it. Right now there are 7.2 M tonnes in reserves and another 25 million resource. That's before real exploration starts to take off, with everyone and their uncle scouring the earth for more cobalt. Electric vehicles can slash cobalt use in half by boosting nickel. There's also piles of cobalt on the ocean floor. As deep sea mining goes into production it will be relatively easy to shift focus from mining copper at hydrothermal vents to cobalt rich polymetallic nodules on the abyssal plains and in ferromanganese crust. We're not there yet, but it's coming soon. It's a classic case of supply needing to catch up with sudden demand after years of market equilibrium. Companies just need to get it onstream, which may take a few years. Unless engineers find a way to construct a new battery that doesn't require cobalt at all. Engineers love solving problems like that. Either way, this is just another story. And KAT is well positioned to leverage it for all it's worth.