THE BUZZ A StarBiz report today said that Perwaja has finally secured a concession to mine iron ore at a 243 ha mine in Bukit Besi, from the state government of Terengganu. A source close to the group said the mining lease would be subject for renewal every 10 years, and may last up to 42 years.
OUR TAKE
Positive but not new. While we certainly welcome this development though are not entirely surprised, as this is not new news. Our results review note on 30 August 2012 noted the detail after Perwaja's board projected its potential iron ore mining income in the coming quarters. Meanwhile, the mining area of 243ha is similar to the 600-acre mining land allocated to Perwaja in the past records. Currently, we are only assuming a concession period of 20 years, not the 42-year period mentioned in the newspaper.
Profitable, despite the lower iron ore prices. Iron ore spot prices have dropped below USD100 per tonne recently. The last reported price was at USD90.75 per tonne for the Platts 62% Fe IODEX, a small gain of USD0.25 in the week. We expect the ore price will likely rebound as Chinese mills may prefer to import at this price level, as it is cheaper than the production costs of their own mines in Mainland China. We think this concession will remain a lucrative one, as the mining cost for an open pit mine in Malaysia may only be about USD50 per tonne..
Greater assurance for feed supply. Mining operations aside, this development also give improves the assurance of feed supply for the company's ongoing construction of its iron ore concentration and pelletisation plant. Although we are disappointed with the delay of its commissioning, the first shipment of concentration machines have already arrived at its Kemaman plant and the other parcel is en route to Malaysia. We also understand that its financier for the new plant just issued the company a Letter of Credit (LC), which means that construction works can begin immediately after the commissioning, by end-2012. To be prudent, we also project some anticipated technical hiccups during the start-up stages of the new plant.
A reasonable assumption in our earnings model. Meanwhile, the new income stream from mining may take a few months to reach its optimum level; we conservatively expect that only 100k tonnes of iron ore will be sold in FY12, followed by a gradual improvement in volume of up to 1.2m tonnes from 2016 onwards, as seen in Figure 1. With more defined development now, we have incorporated the value enhancement from Perwaja's concentration plant in our projection, as iron ore fine can be sold at
better margins of USD25 per tonne in FY13 compared to FY12. Further margin increases of USD3 per tonne p.a. can be expected, until it hits USD35 per tonne. The margin for pellet processing is also conservative, at USD10 a tonne and may slowly increase to USD25 a tonne in FY16, as shipment cost savings may already be inching to USD20 a tonne. Based on the recently-revised assumption, we arrived at a new DCF for the combined iron ore mine and ore-processing plant of RM1.75 a share based on 10% WACC.
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Reiterate TRADING BUY. This latest development which may bring cheer to investors, after over a year's wait since OSK first mentioned the prospect. This will be a timely boost to Perwaja's earnings, as cheaper in-house iron ore will be further enhanced by its in-house processing. Nonetheless, we are cautious on the steel industry's outlook, as weaker economic conditions may dent the company's existing steelmaking business. As we have incorporated a reasonable assumption for the iron ore mining and new concentration cum pelletisation plant in our earnings model, we make no change to our earnings estimates. We keep our TRADING BUY rating on the stock, with a FV of RM1.12 derived from a 0.5x FY12 BV or -1 standard deviation of its historical trading range, plus adding 30% of the DCF value of its iron ore and new ore processing plant in the light of the company's further developments.