Firstly, a frank admission - I swore I would buy this when it was less than £2 but I bottled it. This is a very interesting company. It's a FTSE -100 listed copper producer with absolutely vast reserves of copper ore. The major shareholder is a mysterious Mr Kim, who's Korean by origin. Some say he's a front for Nazarbayev, some say he's Keyser Soze.
The company has a very simple business model. They scoop up the ore, refine it and then stick it on a train to China. It's a very low cost business with little operational risk. They have such vast reserves of copper ore that the standard valuation models the banks use can't cope. Robin Renwick (another fascinating character) is a non-exec director and this means there low probablility of any Sibir-like shenanigans.
Worth bearing in mind it was IPO'ed in Oct 2005 at £6.10, when copper prices were about the same as today and Sterling was much stronger than it is today.
What is less certain is whether they will end up swallowing other Kazak businesses that are starved of capital or move into other areas.
