RE:RE:RE:Portfolio changesThank you No Dice [and a total aside to shout out the late great Charles Bronson, perfectly distilled in a tiny obscure Simpson’s clip: “Hey ma, how bout some cookies?” “No dice.” “This ain’t over.”]
Right up there with Claude Akins. Exhibit A “The Devil’s Brigade” a dear old B movie fave.
If you have been delving into the OT story you have the gist of it no doubt: Wonderful assets, incredible ore bodies. So good the resource and estimates drilling hasn’t been updated for about a decade for ETG. No need with green lights all the way to production and a ravenously piratical sovereign host nation making it lunacy to put any more value gas on the greed fire. So Mongolia absolutely craps all over the risk calculation, Rio Tinto happily joins in that party while they go Three Stooges on each other endlessly negotiating how to do something as simple as cut a pie. I mean, really, you can hire every expert in the world. It isn’t rocket science. Andrew Carnegie sold US Steel to J.P. Morgan after a short conversation and a handshake deal ... the years of negation between IVN, Rio and Mongolia ... in 2009 ends with this genius compromise: 1/3 each. After years or heated wrangling. There are comparables and going rates galore all over the civilized world. Get It Done.
In the meantime, maybe kind fate will have given mankind some thinking time during Covid (Mother Nature yelled “Time Out” and made us play quietly for a year or so ...) and while Mongolia delayed we ended up in a sweet spot of excitement about carbon emission reduction and the realization copper is a key strategic commodity in limited supply.
So given that most dummies go to money like fish to worms, Mongolia will make a reasonable deal with Rio at the end of the day, and no, Rio isn’t going to let Freeport Mac or Chinalco, or ETG Rio TRQ retail share in the ultimate promising revenues to come. They will buy us all out, cutting in Mongolia to a greater or lesser degree . It’s torture waiting years for the obvious to happen.
So sit tight. Take the long view on this one and be prepared for some bumps and delays. Can Mongolia self-immolate by queering everything? Oh I suppose there is some chance of that but my bets are laid against it. Make us a reasonable fair offer at multiples of current SP and we will go away quietly. Leaving more than enough on the table no matter how dramatic the weeping, wailing andvremostrations may be. It’s all a ridiculous opera. Money and greed.
cg