Beacon Hill price fails to track successes
Mark Mentiplay, 30th Apr 2012
LONDON, Apr 30 – The first shipment of coking coal from Beacon Hill Resources’ Minas Moatize coal mine in Mozambique is planned for the middle of this year.
Mining from Upper Chipanga pit began recently for the production of a high margin hard coking coal product and a just released definitive feasibility study shows the project has compelling economics for mine expansion for a pre-tax NPV of $US662M.
However, this and other recent advances on Beacon Hill’s horizon have done nothing for the share price, which has taken a tumble in recent weeks.
Chairman Justin Lewis says recent months have seen the company grow into a significant Mozambican coal producer and developer in one of the world’s most exciting developing coking coal regions. Recent developments have seen the group begin coking coal production, execute a valuable coal marketing agreement and $US20M debt facility with the Vitol Group, the world’s largest private energy trading company, and the completion of a DFS, which shows the strong economics of the Minas Moatize project.
“The recent share price performance does not reflect the true value of the group. The board knows of no reason for this decline over recent weeks, as we continue to make strong progress with the expansion and ramp up of production at Minas Moatize. In addition, the group is also poised to begin exploration at the prospective Changara coal project, which at 70 times the size of Minas Moatize provides the potential for significant upside within the Tete Province of Mozambique,” Lewis said.
Minas Moatize has current JORC-compliant mineable reserves of 42.65Mt, including a marketable reserve of 23.45Mt, of which at least 8.72Mt is coking coal.
Its March 2012 quarter was hit by significant rainfall, which saw production fall to 29,235t from the previous month’s 49,288t, but saleable coal was up from 13,741t to 21,952t. Beacon Hill remains on track to produce and export about 100,000t of coking coal in calendar 2012.
The recent DFS for Minas Moatize envisages a 4Mtpa ROM operation producing an average 2.2Mtpa of saleable coking and thermal coal during its mine life using a 13% discount rate, for a pre-tax NPV of $662M and a post-tax NPV of $428M.
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