Thursday, October 29, 2026

@StableBread Oct 26 4 clicks

Fajasy on X

At CAD$1.98/share (October 23 close), you’re paying US$214-265M for Levack, the flagship restart project of Magna Mining $MGMNF (TSX: $NICU), or 62-76% of the enterprise value. On the 336.57M diluted count, Magna’s market cap is US$476M, and here’s how it breaks down: → Cash, incl. option proceeds: US$130M (CAD$0.54/share) → McCreedy West, the producing mine: US$28-43M (CAD$0.11-0.18/share) → Crean Hill, the permitted nickel mine: US$54-90M (CAD$0.22-0.37/share) → Levack, R2 (a high-grade zone at Levack), and the rest (implied): US$214-265M (CAD$0.89-1.10/share) For McCreedy West, I valued 3-5 years of margin, discounted at 8%. For Crean Hill, I applied 0.3-0.5x the US$179M after-tax NPV in its October 20 pre-feasibility study. To estimate how much Levack has to produce each year to justify the CAD$1.98 share price, I assumed: → Margin: US$1.85/payable lb before taxes. I started with McCreedy West’s Q2 cash margin of US$1.41/lb, subtracted US$0.42/lb of H1 sustaining capital, and added back the US$0.86/lb the precious metals stream took in Q2. CEO Jason Jessup said most of the tons in Levack’s October 7 preliminary economic assessment (PEA) would come from the contact zones, which I assume sit outside the stream, since the PEA release doesn’t say how much ore the stream covers. → Timing: 7.3 years of output starting in mid-2028, per the PEA. → Taxes: 27% of the value, the share Levack’s PEA loses to taxes. → Discount rate: 8%. On these assumptions, US$214-265M requires 32-40M payable lbs/year from Levack before restart capital (the upfront spending to rebuild and reopen the mine). The PEA’s CAD$70.1M of initial capital adds ~7.5M lbs/year to the requirement, but pre-commercial cash flow and tax credits cut the net funding need to CAD$8.6M, or ~1M lbs/year. Jessup had said Levack could produce 2-3x McCreedy West’s output. The PEA plans 36.8M payable lbs/year from mid-2028 to 2035, ~2.2x McCreedy West’s 17M lbs guidance midpoint. So at Q2 margins, CAD$1.98 assumes close to the PEA’s output, which leaves out R2. But 2.1M of the PEA’s 5.75M short tons are inferred resources (from more widely spaced holes), so over a third of the plan rests on less certain tonnes. However, a 10% higher realized price adds US$0.60/lb to the margin and cuts the requirement to 24-30M lbs/year, well below the PEA’s 36.8M. Since Q2, copper is up 8.3% from Magna’s average ($6.54/lb vs. $6.04), while nickel is down 13.5% ($7.12 vs. $8.23). Nickel is 46.0% of the PEA’s revenue and copper 34.8%, so for Levack, nickel’s drop outweighs copper’s gain. In other words, higher copper prices alone won’t lower what Levack has to deliver. Nickel has to recover too.