Desperately Seeking #Copper

We've known #Copper Production from existing mines has been set to fall sharply in the coming years, but it's just now we're realizing that, the "coming years" of the past, is today's present and immediate future… 😳

Miners need to spend more than

#BHP’s Bid for #AngloAmerican is Laden with Potential Pitfalls & Challenges…

Buying $AAL.L means $BHP would gain access to 3 of world’s largest #Copper mines.

Merger would improve BHP’s exposure to copper by ~40%—and more significantly—give it 10% of global copper production.

This, however, is likely to lead to significant anti-trust/competition scrutiny in Peru and Chile—not to mention South Africa. 

Top 20 #Copper Mines

To make the list, the cut-off for 2022 was 245kt, versus 232kt in 2021 and 221kt in 2020. The order of the mines also changed, with mention going to Codelco’s Chuquicamata which saw production fall from 319kt in 2021 to 268kt in 2022, but it was not the only one with declining output.

How Awesome was Anil #Agarwal’s @AngloAmerican Adventure

The FT's DD breaks down the trade:

In our article, we explain that Agarwal has made about $500m in gross profits on the trade. BUT, that is before the substantial costs required to service the instruments involved in making the stake happen. Coupon costs alone will have totalled about $300m since he first put on the two legs of the trade.

And we've learned that Agarwal is likely to reveal that he is up about $100m from the overall project. We assume that means a hefty chunk of the remaining $100m will be headed to the folks at JPMorgan.

Agarwal's trade strongly resembles an equity collar, which DD's Rob Smith and Arash Massoudi explained last year has become a hot money spinner for Wall Street banks looking to make money from deep pocketed clients. In short: collars do not come cheap.

In short:

• Agarwal just spent an insane amount of time and energy to correctly pick a stock that soared 80 per cent in two years, but due to the use of an exotic structure may have only made profits equal to his bank fees . . . yikes!

Read the whole story here: https://www.ft.com/content/53b77de8-af35-11e9-8030-530adfa879c2

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