The ownership of mining companies constantly change. Exploration companies exist to find orebodies, prove their worth and get taken out at the highest price they can get. But not only small exploration companies get eaten up. We recently saw the practical extinction of big Canadian mining companies when Vale, Xstrata and Rio Tinto came here and bought up a pile of mines. There seems to be a couple of things happening here on two different scales. First of all, Cliffs appears to be a takeover target. They are a great company that Teck or Rio Tinto would be good fits to buy out Cliffs. In the first half of this year, Rio had sales of $5.8 billion, Teck $4.1 billion. Both are growth oriented and have to eat or be eaten. On a smaller scale, Cliffs is doing the same.
Cliffshas paid $260 million for FWR, will pay about $125 million for SPQ for a toatal investment of $385 million for a chromite resource of world class. Teck bought Fording Coal a couple of years ago for $14 billion. Obviously, money can be raised if worth is established. So when you ask the question "How much will Noront be taken out for?", It depends on what we have defined as resource at the time of the takeout, whether there are more than one suitor, whether the price of the commodity is up or down, how badly the acquiring party needs the resource, what value can be put on blue sky, etc. It is not a fair question to get a reasonable answer to. All we are doing is making wild stabs in the dark. The only information we have is the most recent 43-101 and todays share price which is not helping us. Therefore the BOD better get its arse in gear and get some information out that increases our worth and hence our share price.
It is my opinion that Cliffs needs Noront's nickle, copper and PGE's to combine with the chromite in order to create that critical mass of resource at McFaulds. The small amount of chromite that they will be able to sell will not justify the infrastructire required. My guess is Cliffs will want it all so they can finance the area and not have to rely on partnerships with a small exploration company. If they paid $5.00 per share for Noront, it will cost them $750 million. They will have bought the ROF for around $1.2 billion which is a small fraction of the worth of the ore deposits. In fact, the infrastructure will cost double what they will pay for the resource. That doesn't make sense to me, but right now, without concrete data or an eager suitor, that five dollars seems a ways away.
Mike
