Dinner Sponsor

Welcome Drinks

Conference
Proceedings

Technical Sessions

 

Post-Conference Workshop - Financial Management and Project Investment Analysis

Thursday 23 April - Friday 24 April 2009
Presented by: Dr Bernie Verbaan

Course outline:

This “Financial Management and Project Investment Analysis” seminar has during the last twenty years been attended by many thousands of Australian resource sector personnel. Dr Bernie Verbaan (FAusIMM and FIEAust), a chemical engineer with a business degree, is very well experienced and qualified to pragmatically teach the art and science of using financial decision making theories to evaluate and optimise mining related projects of all kind. The emphasis is heavily focused on understanding the process of calculating real after tax cash flows and constructing spreadsheets to calculate and use ranking criteria such as net present value, internal rate of return, etc. Bernie passionately believes that technical managers need to improve their understanding and ability to use financial decision making theories and communicate more effectively with their commercial and accounting counterparts. Throughout the seminar he demonstrates how corporate wealth creating knowledge and theories can and should be applied to personal wealth creation.

More Detailed Workshop Outline:

The content of the “Financial Management and Project Investment Analysis” seminar is basically as follows:

• Briefly studying the financial statements of a typical Australian mining company to better understand the “bigger picture”. This is a useful teaching tool to aid participants gain a deeper understanding of issues such as: fixed capex, working capex and opex (and their different tax treatments, including depreciation and amortisation); cost of capital and hurdle rates; the relationship between profit and cash flow; strategies to maximise profitability and cash flow; strategies for enhancing ROA (return on assets) and ROE (return on equity), etc.
  
  
• Estimation of real after tax cash flows and setting up of spreadsheets that reflect the costs and benefits of many different types of projects (eg mining ventures, debottlenecking,  equipment rebuilding/replacement,  buy versus lease decisions, comparison of low capex/high opex against higher capex/lower opex project alternatives, etc).
  
  
• Understanding the discounting of cash flows and how to calculate, apply and understand wealth creation ranking criteria such as NPV, IRR, cash flow index, undiscounted and discounted payback periods etc.
  
  
• Performing of sensitivity analyses to establish the relative importance of variables, as well as better understand the risks and robustness associated with a project.
  
  
• Prioritising and ranking of different options for a given project, and prioritising and ranking of different projects. This is done as part of the capital and operating budgeting process to select projects that collectively achieve best value for money, and avoid unnecessary/unjustifiable expenditure of money. This is necessary to help maximise wealth creation for shareholders.
  
  
• During the seminar it is demonstrated how these financial management and investment analysis techniques can be applied to help manage and improve personal financial wealth creation.

 

Host Organisation/Contact:

Dr Bernie Verbaan, Techno Economic Consultants of Australia Pty Ltd. 5 Mossman Crescent, Bull Creek, WA, 6149.
Phone: 08 9310 2348. Fax: 08 9310 1915.
Email: bv@tecoa.iinet.net.au