And that's why the mining sector in the West is capped.
And that's the underlying problem for Western markets is
the incentivisation is not the same as an emerging market which
has a much more diverse pool of capital.
Fascinating. I mean, we, we, we did a deep
dive in the Fortescue and as well been been reading about
like sort of Sino gold and that sort of at the same sort of time
when that kind of got started. And yeah, it's crazy.
It's crazy to to read about, you know, Jay Klein at the time
speaking about journeys that would take 15 hours.
And by the time he sort of left the country in that venture,
it's taking five hours because there's highways crossing
valleys, there's, you know, plane trips going, there's
airports being built in places where barely a city before.
Well, sometimes there's no cars. So I remember we'd catch a train
out from Beijing West train station, like most Thursdays
nights and we wouldn't even know where we're going.
We'd get into third class. We'd just play poker, eat nuts
and drink beer in, in the train. And like all the, all the
passengers would come and play with us and talk to us.
And, and then you'd get just get off somewhere and, you know, try
and find a restaurant and somewhere to stay.
And, you know, the next day you'd have 500 people outside of
wherever you were staying trying to sell you something.
You might get a couple of horses and away you go into that.
Yeah, it's amazing. Like you'd knock on the door and
say, oh, you know, if you've got dinner and they go, what do you
want? Chicken, cow, pig, you know, OK,
we'll have lamb. They'd build a fire on the road
outside of the house and they'll they'll put the lamb on it, give
you some beer. You just sit.
There's no cars going past. It's it's crazy.
What an experience, all right. JD we're, we're joined by Willow
today and Willow, you're unlike any other guest, I think we've
ever had on our show, not just because you're an investment
banker and we, you know, we usually don't let investment
bankers on the show, but but because, I mean, you're one of
them. You've got one of the most
unusual, I guess, stories or like your, your own journey.
You grew up in SA, you went to high school in Japan, Uni in
China, 27 odd years with JP Morgan, SCB and HSBC doing
enormous kind of, you know, metals and mining M and a
transactions. A lot of our listeners would be
familiar with the likes of, you know, Dundee for Norman star or
red Crest for new Crest or Galaxy aura Cobra, IGO, Tianchi,
Yanko Rio. I mean, these were, these were
big, big deals. You were a part of them.
These days you've, you've kicked off Pacific one, which is, you
know, a, a business you own and, and continuing your career.
I think you've got a pretty unique lens of the world, not
only your, your history, your trajectory, but your insights
into that, the kind of Asian capital world, having lived
there, you know, speaking the, the language as yourself.
We're we're delighted that you're joining us.
And as we're going to kind of reflect on the week that's gone
and and some of the big themes that as we look ahead, I want to
money mine. Great.
Thank you. Thank you, guys.
It's a great service. I'll listen to you every week
and I know a lot of other people do as well.
It's fantastic. As flattering Willow, we're
we're very excited and I think for the the reasons that Trav
just outlined, your background makes you pretty uniquely suited
for the conversation we're going to have.
Although he's going to be cagey when we ask him about companies,
mate, because every investment banker will actually not really
tell you what they really think when you ask him about
companies. It's just it's good business,
good business. Not publicly, yeah.
On the theme of geopolitics and cost of capital, where funding
is coming from in the resources world, where it might come from
in five years and 10 years time though, yeah, you're pretty
primed. So I think we should start the
conversation in that kind of spot because we caught up a
little while ago and we spoke about the big shifts underway as
well as your positioning in in Asia and how you sort of see the
flows as well as your experience in working in junk bond markets
in in debt markets. So I want to, I want to sort of
start this conversation at a kind of broad level and
understand what you think of the big trends in the cost of
capital and how miners are getting financed as we sort of
see it today. Yeah.
So if if you're a Western listed miner, you've you've always kind
of done it one way. You, you get project funding,
you you go to the equity market and you raise equity.
And when emerging markets were pretty small, you know, that
was, that was the only way did it.
Some of the bigger projects the Japanese financed, you know,
along with the majors, iron ore and coal and and copper and
other things. And, and that was very
effective. And, you know, over the last 10
years especially, we've noticed that a lot of the Western
countries have really been hollowed out in terms of their
industrial capacity. And that includes mining and
certainly processing. And one of the surprising things
to me is a lot of the Western politicians don't actually try
and solve the problem. They just Band-Aid over it with,
you know, handouts. I mean, what it, what is the
problem? The problem is that the two
things Western equity capital is, is now a lot more expensive
than emerging market capital. And I don't really like to call
it emerging markets because China, Japan, Korea, they've
emerged, you know, they're, they're the industrial
economies, not, not the West anymore.
So it's an average of 66% more expensive is Western equity
capital. When you look at, you know, very
similar companies and a number of them over the last 10 years.
So that's, that's a huge difference.
And then debt capital, I mean, that's very easy to, to
reference. You've got Japanese and Chinese
five year bond rates, which are below 2%.
You've got US and most Western countries about 4 1/2 percent.
I mean that, that that makes a huge difference to your IRR on
a, on a project. And so if you're just doing it
with Western capital, you're competing against companies,
whether government sponsored or not, that, that are competing
with far lower cost of capital and therefore much higher IRRS.
And so how do you acquire a, a, you know, a cop of mine, for
example, with a much higher cost of capital relative to your
competitors? You can't.
To to tap into that point because I think we start talking
about cost of capital and we're at real risk of losing the
people that are not from a, a finance kind of background.
So. It's everything.
It's everything in a capital intensive industry.
Yeah, exactly. And so if we can really break it
down to, to the nuts and bolts and what the ramifications of a
high cost of capital are or you know, from say an Australian
perspective or from a miner's perspective.
Yeah. So if if you're a Zigen, for
example, and you trade on 12 times EBITDA and you're you're
buying something at four times EBITDA, fantastic, because that
for that EBITDA just goes straight to your 12 times and
there's value created. If you're trading on four times
EBITDA and you're buying something for four times EBITDA,
well, it's pretty hard to create value off the bat from that.
And you certainly can't pay what Zijin can.
So that that, that's just a simple example.
And the same applies to let's say you're investing a billion
dollars of capital in into a project and you need a required
greater return. That's very hard when your cost
of equity is is so low, so, so high.
Sorry. And we've skipped over a little
bit because the key point is why, why is that?
I mean, cost of debt, you can probably understand, you know,
the Western countries are in a higher lever, but why is cost of
equity so high for Western companies given that all we hear
is that I've, you know, the US market has higher multiples and,
and it does, it does for other industries, it does certainly
for tech and it does for infrastructure.
Well, why mining? Well, if the problem with the
Western equity markets is that they're now 85% institutionally
owned, right? And what does that mean?
That means you just crowd capital into where the LP's or
the, you know, the ultimate asset allocators want.
And what do they want? Well, they want, they're happy
to have volatility in operational cash flows like
tech, but it has to be capital light.
So I have to be able to invest in like 10 of them to, to have
two or three of them come off fantastic.
And if it's capital heavy, well, it better not be volatile.
So infrastructure love that. In fact, I don't really care
what I pay for infrastructure is because I know the return that
I'm getting. But mining's in between, isn't
it? It's, it's high capital
intensity and it's very high volatility.
And as a generalist, which I used to be, you know that that's
the worst of both worlds. Why, why am I going to bid more
than four times EBITDA for a company like that?
And that's why the mining sector in the West is capped.
And that's the underlying problem for Western markets is
the incentivization is not the same as an emerging market,
which has a much more diverse pool of capital.
So retail in China, for example, is 80% of the stock market
completely different. I mean, that's, that's how
Western markets were 50 years ago.
And that therein lies the difference in capital formation
and the difference in capital cost.
And then that gives an advantage to those, those companies.
And it's, it's not just China. It's it's, it's Korea,
Indonesia, India, Saudi, Yeah. So when you think about the, the
equity markets though the, you know quite famously the the
Chinese broader indices, they haven't performed phenomenally
well in in recent decades say that the last 15 years since
the, the, the GFC Despite that they have gotten bigger, there
is more and more companies being being listed there.
So the the kind of gross market cap is growing of the
performance kind of hasn't. Is that something you think is
part of the the natural evolution and in time we'll do
well or because of the system there that that's not going to
perform in time well? When it's a retail centric
market, you know, sometimes you don't get the valuations that
you would in the US. So, you know, if you go back
seven or eight years, a lot of the Chinese tech companies
listed in the US for the higher valuations that that makes
sense. But most of the manufacturing,
either directly or indirectly and heavy industrials have all
gravitated towards those markets.
And, and either it's in a chemicals, I think China is
twice the size of the US and EU combined in chemicals output.
So you look at a hydroxide plant, you go, well, why can't
it work in the West? We you don't have the supply
chain backing it up. You don't have the cost of the
inputs that can compete. And and if we think about these,
these sort of holes of money at kind of traversing those 2 E
East and West with a specific example in mind, FMGA little
while ago announced this, remember the US $2 billion bond
bond deal. How do you think about those
bits of financing because they're, they're a relatively,
you know, unique piece or maybe the first of that kind of type
of financing? Do you think that's something we
continue to see more of? So you should be able to get a,
a lower interest rate because the underlying government bond
is a lower interest rate in China.
So that's great. But then because you're
reporting in Australian dollars or U.S. dollars and that's your
functional currency, you you're going to have to swap it back
into that Western currency. And that's expensive.
And that's the reason why a lot of people don't do it.
But in the case of Fortescue, they sell to China and they can
sell an RnB and that would naturally hedge their R&B
exposure and thereby reduce their net cost of interest.
So it can work. It's not for everyone, but in
five years time it'll be a lot more popular to do that.
Isn't that interesting, right? So they get, they get a, a 2%.
I mean, it's like, you know, you look at it and you're like, this
is the lowest cost of capital you can have as a western minor
to well, lowest cost of debt oriented a 2% coupon on a, on a
$2 billion loan. But you know, are they, are
they, are they able to do that? And because because like China
has a political or will to, you know, want to, to de de
dollarize as well. Like if they're selling in R&B,
is that is that is there some advantage and incentive for for
that? I think we all overestimate the
government's hand in a lot of this.
I mean, that is the Chinese banks wanting to expand outside
of China. I mean, look at what they've
done in Indonesia. The Chinese government, the
Indonesian government didn't have much to do with that
really. It was zinc Shan and a whole
bunch of very private, very proud Chinese companies that put
maybe 50 billion in capital now in Indonesia and nickel to build
up all of that industrial size. And, and it's only now that the
governments are kind of getting involved.
The capital came in because of the the.
Government goal setting. Yeah, the, I mean the, the
industrial park like tax in tax breaks for, you know, big, big
windows of time and everything that was the, the landscape that
allowed capital to to accumulate though, was it not?
That was that was part of it. Yeah, part of it.
But you know, the the capital from Tinxion wasn't government
capital. Sure.
Like every government, you have an industrial policy that
encourages lending to certain sectors, but it doesn't dictate,
oh, we're going to go and spend forty, $50 billion in Indonesia
and and ruin the nickel market. Mate, we've just got to jump in
with a quick public service announcement.
We are one short week away from Africa Down Under Adu.
Less than less than a week mate. The conference starts on
Wednesday next week. Only a few sleeps to go. 3rd to
the 5th so it's a Wednesday to the Friday we're gonna we're
gonna be there come come come check like we'll be there
Wednesday morning. So if you're gonna buy your
tickets to come to Africa Down Under, now is the time to pull
the trigger. If you're gonna go, I don't.
I don't even think there's many tickets left, mate.
The selling like hot cakes. So you bought?
Cakes. There's a number of reasons why
you want to get yourself down there.
You've got the biggest African miners, you've got the up and
coming ones, you've got the the juniors that are doing big
things. We've seen deals.
Don't forget the delegates of from all of different countries.
Delegates, a lot going on that front.
When you invest in Africa, you need to understand the playing
field. You want to get in front of the
face of these delegates. You want to speak with them.
The biggest and the biggest African mining convention
outside of Indaba? Phenomenal.
That's crazy right here in Perth.
Get your tickets in the show notes.
Africa down under September 3rd to 5th.
Yeah, it, it is a, a fascinating example in, in terms of more
money that's coming into the metals and market space traders
and the the commodity traders with a lot of these guys being,
you know, energy first traders, they've entered the the space.
We saw another example just recently with Capuchi, the
Ivanhoe mine and a deal with Mercuria, who have always been
an energy trader. Is that another sort of source
of capital? I mean, they're really muscling
in on one another now. Do you do you see that trend
continuing? That's fantastic, isn't it,
Because they go back maybe 7 or 8 years.
There's a few big bankruptcies in, in trading companies,
particularly in Asia, only on I think was one of them and there
was a few more. And so a lot of the banks pulled
back from financing the traders into particularly metals deals.
And you know, you remember maybe 15 years ago, there was all of
that LME, all of those LME problems with security over and
then a lot of the banks got out of it.
So it was very hard for the traders to get any size and the
metals market is what, 8 to 10 times smaller than oil.
So well, let's just stay in oil and make money there, which a
lot of them have made huge amounts of money and now they
need to expand outside of oil. And so metals is obvious, but
Glencor and TRAF have had the lion's share of the the best
markets. So now you've got 8 to 10 others
that are heritage oil, but coming very, very aggressively
into providing fundings either off takes or prepaid or hybrid
type structures. That's different from equity,
can have equity warrants or or debt and it depends how it's
structured. But the banks tend to sit behind
those prepaid facilities and lever it to between 50 and 80%.
So the trading company ends up not having to put so much equity
into those facilities. And, and from another sort of
source of capital, you've got the, the streamers and the
royalty players getting bigger and bigger.
If if we kind of piece it all together, what what do you make
of the, the, the statement that there's a, a shortage of money
for mining companies? There's definitely a shortage of
capital for mining companies at certain stages of their
development. So right now, I mean, and it's
fantastic that the, the Perth retail brokers and brokers are
raising all this money for, for, for mining development companies
because that's really hard capital to, to get.
So the exploration capital is a bit easier now to get.
But the problem is when you come to actually funding the, the,
the construction or, or the bigger capital and you're a $50
million market cap company and you've got 400 million of CapEx
to spend. You know, how do I do that?
And there's not necessarily capital available for that from
traditional sources. And that's why, you know, we sit
there going, you've got to, you've got to look at layering
your capital structure. So how do I get a Japanese
trading house in here? How do I get a royalty structure
in here? How do I do off take, how do I
then bring Japanese or Korean or Exim bank debt in the project
financing level at a lower cost? And how do I layer all of those
capital structures so that the equity market understands what
I'm doing? It's not too complex, which is
very important in an Australian context.
And and so my cost of capital is low enough that it justifies me
doing the project. That HUD Bay example that we
spoke about a couple weeks ago, that feels like a a prime
example to to, to put forward in, in unlocking like the first
kind of steps of that with the Japanese trading houses coming
in. Right, fantastic.
I mean, what? What a great result the HUD Bay,
you know, both of them, but, but HUD Bay into in particular.
So they've basically just taken all of the capital CapEx needs
away from themselves. Mitsubishi comes in and and
funds it all. HUD Bay was trading at, you
know, round numbers, let's say .7 times they've brought in
capital at 1.1 times MPV, great value arbitrage.
I mean everyone that can do that should do that.
Even if you don't even need the capital, you should be buying
back shares to reduce your your equity count because you're
replacing expensive equity with with cheap equity.
The inevitability of of the world need for these metals.
It's just like it's so compelling, it's so obvious.
But where is the capital going to come from to bring, you know,
these new developments online if it, if it is, you know, scarce?
So it's not going to come from Western equity markets.
That's where it's not going to come from.
And where it is coming from is industrial, IE Korea, Japan,
China, Indonesia and emerging markets.
I mean the, the capital coming out of Indonesia now is enormous
and a lot of it we don't see because they might not be public
companies or they're not listed on ASX or NYSE, but but that is
huge capital. Is that because they understand
like the, the need for these materials because they have the,
the industrial downstream component in some respects or
they're tied to it in some respects?
So they're like, they've got the foresight to think, you know,
20-30 years in the future. Well, yes, partly because if
you, you know, live in Jakarta or you live in Shanghai or, or
you live in Riyadh, you see masses of construction every day
and OK, things are growing. Let's let's get on board that
train. But I, I think the, the bigger
issue is, is when you're growing an economy, those materials are
really important and the security of those are really
important. But more than anything, they're
just arbitraging the the. The higher cost of capital in
the West, so they're saying, well, this is a gap in Western
markets where where it's too expensive for them to play with,
you know, and, and maybe the the processing's too environmentally
unfriendly and, and there's a whole lot of other issues, but
that's a gap that our capital can play in that we're not
competing with the West tell. Me, tell me more about like, you
know what the ways in which you're seeing this capital, you
know, find it's way into into Western projects.
Yeah, So it, and this is the thing, it's not, it's, you can't
just go out to auction and say, you know, highest bidder wins to
be my partner. That's not how it works.
I mean, these are big sophisticated companies usually
that, that have their own checks and balances and their own
systems and their, you know, every timetable is different and
they're all looking for a different thing.
So it's a bit of a challenge, particularly to a midcap or a
small cap to yeah, you can, you can go to Japan and have a whole
heap of meetings. But what does that mean?
And then how do I compare that to Korea or Indonesia or China
or Saudi or UAE or India? There's no one you can go to
that's that's going to compare all of those together and say
that that's what makes sense for you because most of the service
providers have they either want you to raise equity or they want
you to do a high yield bond or they're, you know, they've done
a few deals in Japan. So that's great.
We want to go there, but they don't know about the other side
of it. So it's very, you know, they
don't know about off take agreements.
So it's very hard to layer that capital structure efficiently.
That's the opportunity for P1, isn't it?
I was going to say that's where that's where a great advisor
sort of how do you how do you pace in US junk bonds in that in
that kind of market because they've at an interesting
history financing Aussie resource projects.
Yeah. So I, I was at JP Morgan for a
long time and you know, they have a very powerful US centric
higher bond desk, which is. I've heard Chris Allison talk
about it, yeah. Right, So it's a it's a it's a
great market. You know, it's not not something
to be scared of it because before you know, you obviously
had Fortescue, right. And that was that was a
fantastic way of financing what what they achieved and, and.
What no one else kind of would have financed.
Right, because because you can get capital, it's just a it's
just price, right. And I think, I think actually
Minrose said that on, on the call it you know, execution risk
is not big, it's just a question of price and that, and that's
great. It's bullet finance.
So you, you know, for five years plus you can sit there and
you've got the finance and the next five year cycle doesn't
really matter so much. But then you then you just
simply roll it over and whatever price you know it is at the
time, that's how you've got to time it and.
And the, the, you know, with regards to that priciness, you
know, the, the cost of that, how do you paste that in with what
it might cost from these Asian kind of players that you think
about? Yeah.
So I mean that's purely debt and usually it, it's a little bit
more costly than a loan, only a little bit and that changes over
time. So that's debt from Asian
players and, and you know, believing RMB loans and debt
aside, you know, a lot of the capital is equity like.
So you know, I guess the next step down is, is kind of off
taking prepays with, with warrants.
So equity warrants to give a bit more of a return.
And then you go all the way down to a Lisco equity investment
minority or or an asset level investment minority, which the
completely different style of of capital.
Yeah. And the, the, I suppose like the
growth of the Nordic bonds to, to finance more spicy types of
projects is, is a, is another trend that we're kind of pretty
astute to at the moment as well. Well, I think, I think given
private capital is growing so fast that that sort of structure
is, is going to make a lot more sense and open other doors for,
for mining companies. So the Nordic bond is, you know,
yes, I think it originally it, you know, it was for Nordic mums
and dads at home, but it's just a structure that then you can
sell to lots of different credit funds and, and I think we'll see
more structures like that over time.
So it like where does the cap like let's say you know, min
raise raises money in the US junk bond market.
Are they US investors or are they, are they, are they
investors that are actually like Asian centric?
I I didn't set up that question, but that is a good question.
So that used to be principally US investors so that a book
would print usually be like 8090% US, very US heavy.
But over time all of those US funds have established their
offices in Hong Kong and Singapore and other other parts
of the world. And so now the book is at least
5050, you know, US, Asia and sometimes a lot more Asia heavy.
And the reason, the reason for metals and mining in particular
is that Asian issuance is much larger in metals and mining than
it is in the US because there's a lot of companies, there's a
lot of need. A lot of the Chinese companies
raise short term debt and bonds from markets and that's the way
they finance themselves. And so if you're a portfolio
manager sitting in Hong Kong, you're going, yeah, I've, I've
seen this, this sort of gold company, you know, 100 times
before. I've seen this sort of aluminium
company. I know how the supply chain
works because I already have investments in bonds in a, in a
bunch of the, the peers. And that's why for metals and
mining company companies, Asia is a really important part.
So is the US It's, but it's important to understand that
they're two different buckets of capital.
So the way, the way in which the, the, the, I suppose the
government forces in very recent history are trying to level the
playing field from a cost of capital.
It's I, I, I'll get angry kind of talking about it, but but
it's, it's frustrating in a lot of ways.
Do you have the same frustration in, in, in, I suppose the, you
know, the approaches we've seen today of government to lower the
cost of capital of, of, of Western mining, you know,
projects and companies. Yeah.
I mean, look, I mean, and we could talk about geopolitics for
a long time, but clearly, you know, the US is not as strong as
it was 10 years ago and China on every objective measure is a
superpower. Like it or not it it just is.
I'd say the West band aids some of these problems, you know,
they're short term sugar hit get a good headline.
Voters are happy because something's being done, but no
one really understand. You know, it doesn't appear that
the government's really are even bothering to understand what the
underlying problems are, what, what are the causes for a lot of
these things. And then I'm I'm sure some in
the government are, but but if they did, then you would form
policies, underlying policies to address some of those issues,
not not handouts and band aids and sugar hits.
And the problem is the more we sugar hit and the less economic
it becomes. I mean, in Brea, So I get it,
you, you need security of supply and, and it's not that bigger
industry. So it's, you know, it's
relatively easy to solve, but you've, what have you really
done? You've now got a structurally
higher cost supply of of inputs into the industrial complex, you
know, and in the military, I mean, as we've seen in Ukraine,
you need very cheap production to to multiply your, your forces
and having Caicos inputs is not the answer.
You, you said we could kind of speak for hours about this, this
geopolitical theme and I think we easily could.
So let's tap into it for for a bit because it's kind of
implicit in what we were talking about with with the funding
there. You know, it's it's, it's the
kind of read through line. And is it going to be that easy
to have capital flow from from east to West and all these sorts
of things? So do you, do you see there
being difficulty in, you know, countries like Indonesia, for
instance, if we're trying to have that money come in to
Australia, like they're in a a kind of funny middle ground
between Asia, China and Australia and and the US, Do you
see there being blockages on a geopolitical front to that
capital flowing? I hope not because what what is
happening now is becoming a multipolar world and lots of
bilateral negotiations between countries, which are, you know,
is different to what we've seen in the last, you know, since
World War 2. And if you're saying that I
think you've as a company, you need to start to be multipolar
as well. So if I'm thinking about my SO
what's the easiest way to equalize the cost of capital?
Well, it's get a partner in with a lower cost of capital than I
do and supplement my capital with that partner.
Now do I just pick one country and that's the country I want to
go to? I don't think so.
I think from now on you need to be multi polar.
You need to have a Japanese partner, a Korean partner, a
Chinese partner, a Indonesian partner, a Arab partner, an
Indian partner. I mean, that would be fantastic.
And then none of them have power over you, but you have access to
each bucket of capital depending on what you want to build,
expand, buy. Because it's all different.
It's all different costs and it's all different terms and
they're all different cultures. When you think about the the
mining companies that could potentially do something like
this, you'd have to be of some sort of scale.
And at least in the West, there's really not that many
mining companies that are of sufficient scale that could have
the bandwidth to set up relationships in all the
countries you've just mentioned. Do you think I'm right in saying
that? Yeah.
So I think Semitomo Metals just put 5.5 million into Mirador,
for example, in, you know, how, how does that, how does that
form? How, how, how was that
originated? How many counterparties would
have Mirador talked to before they decided on, on that?
I, I think it's really hard to navigate.
And then, you know, you go to the Middle East and you can fly
around for weeks. And I mean, it's a big place.
There's lots of cities and they're all different countries.
You know, it's not A and, and, and you know, Asia's obviously
very different depending on the countries as well.
And, and it's for a lot of the companies, they, they, they,
some, some of them will see a lot of the, the counterparties,
but they'll often be the traders as opposed to the investment
guys. And so do you.
Are you really talking to the people that you need to talk to
to influence an investment decision?
And and do you think one of the other sort of ramifications of
this multi polar world is inflation?
Yeah. And undoubtedly, you know,
because if we're reducing the efficiency of the supply chain,
then you're getting cost imposts at every point.
And the more closed you get, the higher inflation you're going to
get, particularly if you reduce interest rates.
You've got, you've got some, some interesting views to share
with us for me when we got up a couple weeks ago, mate, just in
relation to to how how people might choose to combat inflation
and look for store stores of value.
Do you mind sharing that? Yeah, right.
I, I'm, I mean, this is obviously all very personal
opinions, but you know, if I'm a government anywhere else than
the USII historically have just looked to U.S.
Treasuries as my store of value. That's where most of the world
look to store their value. And, and now that's looking less
certain and, and certainly you don't want to have most of your
wealth parked in that store of value.
And so gold and Bitcoin and maybe silver are the first,
first places to turn to because there's no real alternative.
Like a digital RnB currency is not not ready and, and people
aren't ready to accept that wholesale yet.
So, so where to next? Because gold's only a certain
size and it's already gone up Bitcoin, not sure whether that's
a store of value or of a, or a good way to transfer value.
But if I was a Middle Eastern government, I would start buying
and storing metals with positive contango.
So they're, you know, aluminium, copper, zinc, nickel, and and
that is a store of real wealth. It can't be taken away from me
because the property laws change in a country.
It, it, it can't, it's not going to change because someone
changes interest rates or I can't move my money from here to
there. It is a real store of wealth.
And I, I think that's probably the next leg in in metals as
everyone searches for somewhere to put to park their reserves.
That that has pretty real borders to it as well because of
the the physical kind of constraints of of a lot of these
things. And you speak about doing it
with gold, but gold being a, a finite kind of market, it's the
same issue with, with a lot of these.
So we're not there yet, but they'll, they'll touch a
boundary. And if you know a a number of
countries of significant wealth tried to do this, you touch that
boundary pretty pretty soon as well, don't you think?
Yeah, I think we're, we're starting to see it.
I mean, the, the, there's a lot of economies that are slowing.
You know, the industrial output of China, for example, has
slowed steels slowing, you know, and that that naturally feeds
into copper and other metals. But but we're not necessarily
seeing those metal prices weak, I think because we are seeing a
bit more storage that's off LME and off, yeah, not public.
When you say like like storing the ones with positive contango,
are you, are you talking about any, any financial trades to, to
go along with just buying the physical and storing it or
you're just you're just saying that the ones with positive
contango would be more attractive in general?
You could do. I don't think you'd make it that
complex necessarily. You you just want to store your
wealth in a diverse set of assets, particularly ones that
can't be taken away or don't inflate away.
That doesn't really matter what inflation is when you've got
metals, because that's going to match or better inflation.
This could have pretty, pretty severe implications on metal
prices in a in a pretty short period of time if if you know,
multiple, yeah, like Arab countries come to a similar
conclusion and a similar point in time and start doing that.
Yeah. Even worse than that, if you
think multi polarity could be bad for inflation, what this
could do to the the price of a a computer, you know anything, a
fan, an air conditioner be pretty pretty huge.
Right. You know, I think we're living
through the start of a of a massive change in geopolitics,
which is is exciting and terrifying at the same time.
And I, I tend to think with these things that people don't
really act until the the problem is really in their face.
So the problem has started to happen.
So the we've got. To lower, we've got to lower
interest rates, right, because people don't think inflation is
going to be an issue like. Well, the the value of
treasuries really has to start deteriorating to a serious
degree before people will act on on these things.
And maybe they diversify their measure to euros, yen, Bitcoin,
gold, and then you start to see the metals kind of move.
Yeah, I, I think it's, I mean, look, there's a natural status
quo bias that you want things to remain the same because that's
the easiest way to think about the future.
But ultimately they, they never do.
And it's usually long cycles, but that means when they they
shift, they shift big. And and for the mining companies
out there, this would in effect pull up the bridge behind them.
The ones that have built the project would kind of get to the
promised landish because they are now receiving higher prices.
But the builds to build a new mine would go up significantly
because or the input costs go up.
So it's it's got a kind of compounding effect.
So how do you think about the the mining companies in this
world? So that's right.
So you'd have inflation of costs, but you'd also have a lot
more M&A where it's not just countries, it's going to be
families and, and, and big companies with big reserves,
they want to store that wealth and the gold in particular, but
also other metals. Buying metal in the ground is
still metal, just not mine yet. So that, that's still a hedge
against inflation and geopolitics.
It's just that you're owning land.
So I, I think it's got big, big positive implications.
So, you know, and bringing this back to maybe a mining company
running a mining company is hard.
You know, it's, it's not just the financials and it's, you
know, it is native title, it is regulatory.
It is, you've got, you've got so many moving pieces and it, you
know, it's very, very difficult to go from a explorer and a
developer to actually constructing a mine.
But but please keep going because, you know, I think the
rewards will come. And I, I feel like with all the
topics we've spoken about, Willow, there's one we need to
piece in here and that's energy. Because energy, when you think
about like the cost of energy in China versus the US and where
that's kind of heading in a, in a world trying to combat
climate. And it, it is a significantly
moving part, especially if we pull in the, the Arab states as
well, which have a, a very cheap cost of, of energy.
So what ramifications do does the price of energy have on all
these things that you've been thinking about?
Well, I think it, it, it's so yes, it's energy, but it's more
using that as a concept. So, So what the US was really
good at in the 40s, fifties and 60s was underlying productive
infrastructure, right? And that includes energy.
And so, you know, let's just take a few of the, the, the
building blocks, so the inputs into some of these processing
units. So, you know, China has twice
the electricity capacity of, of the US that that is amazing.
And building absolutely massive infrastructure to, to underline
that advantage. It produces twice the chemical
content that the US and EU does combined, right?
That that is just such a big advantage in in unit cost in in
rail freight, it's about twice as big as the USI mean in mining
engineers, there's 20,000 mining engineers every year graduating
in China, there's maybe 1000 in in, you know, in Australia way
less. Yeah, exactly right.
The scale is just a completely different size.
And all of that is in productive capacity.
It's not in super yachts and it's not in watches and it's not
in handbags anymore. It is in productive capacity
that is very, very powerful and it and then it multiplies over
the rest of the economy. But China you'd imagine would
want to get to that, that high level where where brand attaches
value and and you can become a a service type economy like this
is what all these other countries did a while ago.
So yes, and I guess we all sit here going, oh, well, labour
cost is cheaper in China. It's not that much cheaper.
In some ways it's it's more expensive, but labour's not a
key input into a lot of this anymore because robotics is kind
of taking out. So where do we do we care
whether robotics are in China or the US or any other country?
We don't. All we really care about is the
input. The other input costs like
electricity, chemicals, copper. You know what?
What makes robotics rarest? Copper.
Aluminium. You know, where does 60% of the
world's copper go to China. 6% goes to the US.
Jeez, has a a lot to think about there.
It man, there's a lot to reflect on in the whole.
Yeah, that entire bit, you know, super fascinating.
I feel like those are the themes that are going to kind of define
the next, next decade in, in our industry geopolitics for sure.
And yeah, I appreciate you sharing them.
We're going to pivot to talk about some some news of the
week. And this this is like a
relatively new, new thing we've been doing, Willow.
But grade control is one of the segments where, you know, give a
letter A to F on a on, on, on a certain kind of corporate action
of the week. Are you up for that?
Are you are you actually going to give grades to companies?
Yeah, because I'll give them all A's because they're other
clients. Prospective clients, first up,
BHB have signalled that Nickel W is up for sale again now to give
you a slight out. You can yeah, you can get
creative on, on the grading. I'll, I'll, I'll say I'll leave
it at that. Well, I think all of the majors
need to simplify like like Rio just announced as well.
And if they're not going to productively develop and harness
these assets, then let's try and maximize value by by working out
who's the best operator and owner of those assets.
So I think it's a great idea that you concentrate on your
most productive assets and give someone else a chance on the
others. Yeah, I, I, I I'll give them,
I'll give them an, an A when they actually like transact you.
I think they're going to have to pay someone to take Nicola W off
of them because of the, the pretty inordinate rehab
liability associated with, with what's happened to Cam Ballot
there. But but I mean, this, you know,
the return on capital they were getting at in the nickel
business, even in the years before the nickel market went
to, to ship with, with, with like atrocious compared to the
other parts of their business. This, this wasn't like a a game
changer for, for BHP. It's like a social project to,
to keep big employment in WA And I think they were kind of stuck
with it. You know, they're finally going
to part ways with it. It'll be a a change for West
Australians, but it's kind of inevitable.
So yeah, So what if no one buys it and and then the government's
forced to keep it I because why doesn't BHP just go to the
government, say, well, you gave a handout to all of these guys
did. Yeah, they already did, right.
That was like, you know, they, they put the foot on the on the
government's neck in the lead up to them actually announcing that
this would go into care maintenance.
I mean, I think the cost involved to restart a smelter.
But since, but since then, since then to your point like near
star and all these guys have have got handouts and likely
more handouts to kind of come. So it's a a really sort of
poignant question to to frame and let's hope we don't get to
that. So what if the government comes
back and says sorry, what if there's the only buyer is
Chinese of the smelter, not the mines, and they've got the tech
and the and the capital to fix it and and create jobs.
You know what? You know what very interesting
question is? This the first big test of Ferb.
That would that. That'd be a.
That would be a big test. Yeah, that would be a big test.
What the Chinese did with with us for 30-40, fifty years was
have joint ventures. We would go there, there would
be JVS and we would learn and it's, you know, eating a bit of
your own humble pie. But bring them in and have it as
a joint venture where we actually learn why they can do
stuff so much cheaper. And, you know, maybe some of
those things actually aren't attainable for us, but there
sure as hell will be a few things that we can learn from,
and that could potentially be one way to put forward a
solution. Can you imagine the car industry
in Australia without Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, GM and Ford?
They don't have an industry. Yeah.
So maybe, maybe there's a bit of that.
Yeah, yeah, we might need to get creative on a a solution and I'm
sure BHP is already having to. I'd, I'd actually, I'd actually
prefer, you know, if you ever prove that then and and see some
other form of like government handout or bail out here.
That happens. I'm changing my citizenship,
mate. I'm I'm done.
Welcome to Singapore. Does China need any citizen all?
Right. Next one that I want to talk
about is, Wolf, just very recently come out with the
trading halt that Burkina wants to up their stake in Kiaka
subsidiary. Yeah.
What do you grade this one? So it just underlines, well,
that's greater than a because, you know, they might be a client
like, but it just underlines how dangerous emerging markets are.
I mean, Even so, it's very hard for a junior to have any kind of
political force in a country like that.
But even if you look at EGA and their dispute with Guinea, I
mean, Egas just pulled out and they've had their license taken
away. That's 1.4 billion in capital
that the UAE put into Guinea. But I think someone in the UAE
is going to notice. And why did Guinea do that?
Well, Gee, there's a few other countries that have some
influence over the Guinea government, don't they?
So. Well, as I, as I understand it,
they, they did fail to, to make a few promises.
So it's not completely black and white in, in the Guinea Ghanaian
scenario. Yeah.
I mean, I, I think you're, you're bang on, right with, with
regards to, to Wolf, like the, the AM risk is something we've
all kind of been aware of and that's why they've traded at, at
such a, a low multiple. Like, yeah, they've had a great
run the last sort of three years, but we're they've
executed phenomenally and they are on the cusp of doubling
their kind of production. So very, very curious to see
what the outcome is. You love you love Wolf because
you see the cash flow they make, but you always like the the true
test. You talk about the true test
affair, but the true test for Wolf is like, can they ever get
that money out? They've had five of these types
of things in the last few years, and every time they just bounce
back within a within a couple of days they're.
Like that's the, you know, like there'll be a government coup,
whatever. And they do.
You always buy the dip on the coup coup order.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But whatever.
But there were was a change in mining code, yeah as well.
And this is like an, you know, hey, yeah, you're not being
grandfathered. You're jumping on the new code.
And let's see what sort of valuable consideration turns out
to be. If they can't, if they can't
spend the money like X like that they make it at a kiaka and
samrat. If they can't spend that X
Bikina farso then all they inevitably do all they can
inevitably do is just like reinvest in the country, become
a a larger portion of became a fire associ GDP and become more
beholden to the government in the process.
Like that's what. You're.
Yeah, yeah. Exactly the same, Yeah, until
recently. Next up, what have we got?
Mining services. A bit of a slightly change in
tech here, but the mining services multiples have expanded
dramatically in the last month to to two months.
Curious to to hear how closely you pay attention to these ones,
Willow. Sure.
So I, I think it's a, it's a wide variety of different
companies, right. And if you're just doing dry
hire, you know, big trucks that are capital intensive and you're
a small cap, you're never going to win.
That is never a win because your cost of capital is always going
to be too high to compete with particularly McMahon, which now
get the money from Indonesia, Burma, Indonesia.
How long will TS be around? You know, so that, that big dump
truck open pit stuff is, is difficult and I suspect you'll
see some other capital coming in to support the existing players
or, or, or form new players. The, the, the industry leader
is, is probably FLS myth in which is a Danish company and
that does a lot of the processing equipment and gavares
and a whole bunch of different stuff.
They trade on 9 1/2 times EBITDA and it's 80% services, mining
services mainly, but sorry the the, the the other bit of that
is that underground services are completely different and it's
really difficult to find skilled underground people.
The skill set of being an underground, you know, mining
service provider versus open pit is very different.
It's more specialized, being underground and that
specialization is scarce. But the people who have that
specialization, JD of underground service providing or
underground mining, they always repeat one thing to me whenever
I talk to them. We use Sandvik ground support.
It's the. Mandrick Ground Support, Just
like the best people want to work with the best people, the
best people also want to use the best equipment in the industry
and that is provided by the team with the R&D squad at the
cutting edge of technology Sandwich ground.
Support not just the best, the best ground support mate, but
the safest ground support, the most innovative like you talk
about. And it goes.
They too have the best team. It's true, and it goes one step
further. They've also got manufacturing
and distribution hubs in every corner of the world, so they can
get on the phone with you quickly, or you can just put
your order in through the new app that they've got and they
can get that out to you quick, smart, so that you keep getting
the tons out of the ground and keep producing that metal that
makes the world go round. I don't think there's a ground
that can't be supported by Sandy ground support.
Go Sandy ground support. And and management teams and
when we're talking to non Australian capital providers, we
every conversation is stop looking at just the geology,
start looking at the management team that is going to produce
the value. Because a, a really good
management team can produce huge value out of a average geology.
A bad management team can destroy any geology.
Is this, yeah, not, not all mining services companies are
the same. Not all of them are are capital
intensive. A lot of them are.
But like some of them, some of them are capital light.
Osinka, you had Zoomy on the other day.
Yeah, yeah. And like, that's a, that's a,
you know, great example of parallel that is still listed on
the ACX like G&G, like bring up the chart, 4 bucks 40 trading on
like I saw, I saw one broken note trading on 24 times FY20, 6
earnings now like kind of remarkable multiples.
But if you go back in time and you know, back to us, when the
period that Jimmy was talking about with the Senko, the
multiples of that he was talking about with, with the Senko at
one point in time were just astronomical as well.
Like we we have lived through an era where mining services
multiples like where we're crazy.
Where are all the new mine builds?
Yeah. And, and, and now we're now
we're seeing like ASX listed mining services companies, both
Capital Heavy and Capital Light expanding pretty heavily on the
you can see that on the focus charts we'll bring up right now
by market tech. Yeah, I mean, it's great to see
them actually get a bit of love. So I'll give it an A for, for
that because so many of these companies, their share prices in
the in the doldrums for years and years and years.
So you can expand that to McMahon's like you mentioned MIH
Parenti as well. They're well north of 2 bucks
now. So they're all having their kind
of day in the sun and want to see how they how they capitalize
on this opportunity if they if they kind of can.
Last, last one to give a grade to Willow. 2 days ago was the
20th anniversary of a very interesting kind of corporate,
corporate event in Australian mining history.
It was the 26th of August. 20 years ago was the the, the day
in which Rio accidentally let their Shavalana iron ore project
tenements lapse. This Junior Kazaley picked those
up at the time. Now then, then there was this
big court battle that played out.
You know, you were, you're paying attention to Marcus.
I'm sure you remember this. We had to learn about it in
history books, but Rio ended up kind of, you know, arguing about
how this all played out. Apparently something got like
they wanted to, you know, renew the tenements, but something got
caught up at A at a post station in like some remote part of
Australia anyway, but it lapsed. They did, you know, things in
the and and because they only picked them up in in short
order. Now, in the court battle that
kind of played out, what what Rio did is they argued that it
was in the public interest for the tenements to be given back
to them, even though they they lapsed.
And they suggested that they would, they would develop these
tenements, not themselves, but they do an asset swap with BHP
because Shavalana is in BHP territory surrounded by BHP
infrastructure, not Rio's infrastructure, right?
So OK, we're, we're going to develop it.
And amazingly, right, the ministerial decision comes in
the minister, the minister kind of overrides everything and
gives the tenements back to Rio Tinto 20 years later.
Well, by the way, because they only had to pay the Rio, the,
the legal costs for, for Rio. 20 years later, Rio, Rio Tinto's
still not done an asset swap with BHP.
The, the project is undeveloped and it's, and it's worthy of
being developed like the grade this project is, you know, it's,
it's, it's above the average grade that the majors are
producing today by, you know, substantial margin and great
impurities and the likes. So how do you, how do you, how
do you rate Rio Tinto and, and the government on, on this, on
the decision to actually give the tenements back to Rio Tinto
A plus? For Rio, obviously, and special
mention to the lobbyists. They earned their fees there,
yeah. And I and I don't think we need
to mark the government, do we? That's, you know, that's above
all of that. We can mark the government here.
Yeah, that's an F for for the Australian government that was
clearly not in the in the national interest and.
Joint F. Because I like to have to pay
the legal fees for, for just being smart and on the ball.
Yeah. Yeah.
A fascinating 1. All right, let's move into sweet
and sour deal. We've got a few to to run
through here. I want to start with capital
raises because we've had a few juicy ones.
First and foremost, Linus, $750 million.
These guys are kept at nearly $14 billion today.
The share prices run dramatically.
I, I, I'm kind of gobsmacked by this one.
How do you sort of think about this sweet or sour deal and and
what are your thoughts on it, Willow?
Great time to raise capital. So.
So why not? Particularly when there's a
whole bunch of public capital coming in to help a lot of the
other potential competitors. And that's probably not going to
be positive for Linus's profits, are they?
So yeah, let's raise capital. I, I think you're right.
I mean, this is just over 5% dilution that is.
Right, It's a great deal for them raise the money while yeah,
like. Feed the ducks while they quack.
What'd you say they were? They were trading at 24 times
last 12 months for revenue. Like.
Just reported $8 million. Capital intensive business, it's
truly, truly remarkable valuation if you.
They trade on a big premium to the Chinese rare earth
companies, by the way. So that's fantastic.
That's. Yeah, there you go.
Are they worth it? I'm I'm not an equity adder.
Of course, OK, Cyprium, this one more in your in your wheelhouse
in the sense that the Tenito group took a 9.9% shareholding.
They upsized this from a $60 million raise to an $80 million
raise. They were a $60 million market
cap coming into this raise. They.
Did have a fair bit of debt though.
There was a combination of the con notes.
And they'll pay down some of that with this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sweet or sour deal?
Sweet, wait for them, raise the capital, organise the capital
structure so that they can fight another day.
If bringing in a family like that is is a better way to get a
better outcome for the equity raise and lower your cost of
capital, then that's what you got to do.
Do you think, do you think doing the, the, that you know, the
equity raise at the corporate level was you know, and, and the
dilution involved and everything like that, Like could they have
structured something differently at the asset level or do you
think you think it's the structuring is fine as is?
Maybe, but there's a whole lot of issues with the capital
structure already with the offtake and and other parts of
how they acquired that asset. So I, I think they were probably
their hands were tied and and equity was the easiest way to
address it. Gotcha.
Fair enough. I'll give it a yeah, I'll give
it a good deal as well. Yeah.
I mean, it was, it was done at a pretty tight discount and
they've raised an enormous amount of equity relative what
their market cap like was and you don't always get to do that
at a pretty tight discount. Yeah, good deal.
Markets are open and take take the capital and see if the the
asset can move one step closer to production.
I don't even want to mention the other two really, but some more
troubled kind of company supreme historically troubled companies.
Well, don't worry. But like Peninsula raising 70
million bucks, they've just had a whirlwind of issues in
relation to production woes combined with, you know,
contracted revenue and core if you they, they raised 50 million
bucks this week as well. Any thoughts on on either of
those 2 Willow? No, but when the ducks are
quacking you, you, you raise equity.
That's and I, I just question, you know, so for all of these
companies that are raising a bit of equity, but maybe not enough
to get them to the next step. I mean, what's, what's the next
step? You know, you've raised enough
to kind of just keep it going. How do you get to the next step?
You coming back to the market? Bit of a hope strategy, right?
Like they are taking advantage in the core example that the
lithium price has has kicked up, kicked up, but do you just have
to wait for the next kick up? Well, maybe you wait for the
next kick up to raise the capital.
You really need to to to to achieve all all your your plans.
Yeah, I think on that point you've kind of got to give them
credit for taking the hit and getting the capital on board.
Yeah, but it does leave you in a bit of no man's land there.
In a sense, the Peninsula 1 was like a, you know, a coalescence
of various the buckles all come in head to head.
So I want to see how they they move forward from here.
They've had a few final raises, but they they they have the
strategy of keep coming back, unfortunately.
So yeah, hopefully this one is the last one for them.
I'm going to give, I actually, I'm going to give these ones a a
day just because when the ducks are cracking like you, you raise
equity. I get that.
But I do think when you have the preponderance of equity raises,
it actually, it actually dilutes the total capital.
Like like there's there's so much capital willing to
participate in the space. What can that capital do?
It can participate in, in equity raises of like, I don't know,
mediocre opportunities or it can find a home in companies and
development opportunities that that have legs.
And I don't love seeing huge raises for mediocre projects
because like it, yeah, it just kind of cannibalizes long run
capital availability in my opinion.
So I'll give them, I'll give them AD.
Controversial. Yeah.
All right, projects not yeah. All righty, let's talk about a
couple of hidden gems. I know you've got a few thoughts
on this front. Willow books or podcasts or
places of interest that have sprung up recently that you you
want to share? Perth weather's colder than I
thought. We're coming out the back end of
it, don't worry. I well, not, not really.
I, you know, I'm, I'm a big reader and listen to podcasts a
lot and, you know, a few books came to mind that would might be
helpful that I, I thought were really good.
Goliath. What's that about?
Goliath is about the history of antitrust in the US, which
basically shows the long term cycles from the mid 1800s
through to now and how the governments have kind of
managed, you know, to break up Standard Oil and put it back
together and Busters. So and, and it goes just beyond
blue and red, but but to much longer term cycles.
And we're in one at the moment. It's fascinating to them, you
know, to look at the 30s and look at now and it's very, very
similar. You know, in 1923, Andrew Mellon
had a monopoly of aluminium. Well, what's the first thing
when he became, believe it or not, Finance Secretary?
Well, put up tariffs for aluminium.
That's easy. Yeah.
That is great. That one's going on the list.
Any other? Oh, sorry, history of uranium.
I might just give me one minute on this.
It's fascinating. So World War Two, biggest
producer of uranium in the world is DRC.
Fine. It's owned by Belgium.
Germany invade Belgium, first thing they do is bring down some
ships to DRC and go, where's the uranium?
And they've gone. Oh no, they've taken another
flood on the mines. It's all all gone.
And a couple of weeks later the the Belgian delegation turns up
in in the US and goes, we've, we've got something you might
want. It's a whole bunch of uranium.
They go, no, no, we've got plenty which we don't need any
of that. And they go, that's fine, here's
my card if you need some of it later, you've got my number.
About six months later they go, yeah, OK, we get it.
We'd like that. Please, please come in.
Let's talk about it. And so he, he comes in and they
negotiate price, which I, I figured that maybe it was $20
billion, the biggest ever foreign deal that the US had
done at the time, you know, confirm that the money has
changed hands and, you know, the US has gone right.
Well, where is it? Where is it?
And he's throwing the keys across the table and goes down
in dock 46. That's such a great story.
Yeah, that one's definitely going on the list.
You've you've got a few others there.
We that's to get chip wars. Yeah, well, most people have
read Chip Wars, which kind of talks about the, the, the
semiconductor supply chain, which is fascinating.
It has a lot of similarities or rhymes a lot with a lot of the
metals supply chains. Choke Points, which is written
by the same guy, which talks about the, the financial or
economic war that that countries wage against each other.
And you know, the US, China thing's pretty, pretty
interesting for that at the moment. 2 that are kind of
unrelated to mining, the brilliant abyss, which is all
about under the sea, which when, when we think about seabed
mining, which I'm, I, I think is a good idea in some
circumstances. We've destroyed so much of the
sea thus far. It's just important to kind of
understand what we're destroying before we just blindly go and do
it. I'm not saying seabed mining
definitely does that because it doesn't in most cases.
But the other one is the hidden life of trees.
So I love this stuff. So it's about old growth forests
and how they communicate over, over thousands of years.
You know, they support all just so that each tree has
personalities and they support old stumps that died for, you
know, sometimes 200 and 5300 years and others that they don't
like they'll just let die. It's pretty cool.
That's remarkable. I'll have to.
I'll have to do a bit of reading myself there.
You're student of history. I also love it.
How how is how's the history there going to, you know, inform
any any decisions or oppositions you make right now?
Well, the, sorry, the book I don't have in here is called
Range, which compares, I'll get back to Question, which compares
Federer to Tiger Woods and how they were brought up.
So Federer had played, I don't know, 20 different sports and
then, you know, just decided, Oh well, I might as well play
tennis. And, and that's why he's so
naturally skilled. But Tiger Woods only ever played
golf. But I think just all of these
inputs, so, you know, understanding equity markets,
understanding industrials, not just mining, because a lot of
people in mining have only ever done mining.
They haven't, you know, understand different languages,
different countries, different systems and, and, and read
broadly. That gives you a lot more pieces
of the puzzle that you can put together to form a solution
that. Disciplinary Learning.
Yeah. And a couple podcasts to to wrap
it up. Oh, the rest is history and an
empire with great, great stories.
But they're running out of history now. 600 episodes in.
Yeah, and multipolarity is a pretty, pretty honest take on on
China, US relativity and and EU politics, and that's pretty
cool. All right on on the theme of
podcast, most people have sort of speaking spoken with.
I would have rambled about this one, but founders is a a
fantastic pod and on the book front in it recently read the
big rich on the Texan oil families, the four families that
dominated that over the last hundred 150 years was
fascinating. A lot of parallels with with
resources and with Texas. There's seemingly a lot of
relatability to to WA and our uniqueness, which is was
fascinating and read over the weekend, The rise and fall of
Alan Bond. An interesting kind of take, but
awesome to learn about WA in in the Sixties, 70s and 80s and and
that kind of era. So there's a couple in the mix.
Thank you so much for joining us, Willow.
The the way you think and the experiences you sort of bring to
the table are, are fascinating and make for, for such a rich
conversation. So appreciate you making the
time for us. Yeah, thanks for having me and
congratulations on a great, great show.
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