Jinduicheng Molybdenum

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Jinduicheng Molybdenum ("JDC MOLY", 金钼股份) is Asia's largest and one of the world's largest primary molybdenum producers — a vertically integrated miner that digs molybdenum ore, concentrates it, roasts/smelts it, and deep-processes it into chemicals and metal products, then trades the output globally. Incorporated 2007, HQ Xi'an (Shaanxi), listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

What makes it unusual — and the entire investment case in one sentence: the overwhelming majority of the world's molybdenum is a by-product of copper mining (Freeport, Codelco, Antofagasta, Collahuasi — moly is the second cash-flow line, not the business). JDC is one of the very few large-scale producers where molybdenum is the primary ore, mined for its own sake. That makes it the cleanest listed proxy on the molybdenum price anywhere — far purer than CMOC or Freeport, which are copper companies with a moly kicker.

Product portfolio spans the full value chain:

• Molybdenum furnace charge — molybdenum concentrate, roasted concentrate, ferromolybdenum (the bulk commodity, into steel)
• Molybdenum chemicals — ammonium molybdate, sodium molybdate, molybdenum oxide, molybdenum disulfide (catalysts, lubricants, pigments)
• Molybdenum metal — molybdenum powder, slabs, rods, wires (electronics, high-temp alloys)
• Plus tungsten processing and a sizeable metal-trading book.

Reporting segments (two): (1) Molybdenum Ore Products — the integrated mine-to-product franchise, the profit engine; (2) Metal Trading Products — a high-revenue, thin-margin commodity-trading sleeve that inflates the top line but contributes little to profit. This two-segment structure is why revenue (~RMB 14bn) is large relative to net income (~RMB 3bn) — a chunk of "revenue" is pass-through trading.

Customers & geography: sells to Europe, the Americas, Africa, Australia, Japan, South Korea and SE Asia, holding ~10% of the world molybdenum market; but ~82% of net sales are domestic China. End-demand is steel-dominated: stainless steel, alloy/structural steel, oil-&-gas pipelines and drilling, plus higher-value superalloys, aerospace/defense and nuclear components.

Contract structure: commodity spot/index-linked pricing (MW molybdenum oxide $/lb, domestic ferromolybdenum RMB/t benchmarks), not take-or-pay or recurring — so revenue and margin track the moly price almost mechanically quarter to quarter.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

Mapped upstream → JDC → end customer, with named stakeholders:

Upstream / inputs. JDC is unusually self-sufficient — it owns its ore. The two primary mines:

• Jinduicheng Mine (Shaanxi) — 13 Mt/yr ore-processing capacity; one of the 6 largest primary molybdenum deposits in the world, ~780,000 t contained Mo (metal basis).
• Ruyang Donggou Mine (Henan) — 9 Mt/yr capacity, ~680,000 t contained Mo.
• Roasting/smelting: the Xi'an roaster at ~30,000 t/yr smelting capacity is the key conversion chokepoint.
• FY2024 concentrate capacity reached ~50,000 t/yr of molybdenum concentrate.
• External purchased inputs feed the metal-trading segment (third-party concentrate, ferromolybdenum) — this is where JDC takes price risk without owning the resource.

The company (conversion). Mine → mill/flotation (concentrate) → roaster (roasted concentrate / oxide) → ferromolybdenum furnace or chemical plant (ammonium/sodium molybdate) or metal plant (powder → wire). Sulfur concentrate is a saleable co-product.

Downstream / buyers (named end-markets, not single-named offtakers — JDC discloses end-sectors, not customer names): Chinese steel mills are the dominant buyers; founding shareholders Taiyuan Iron & Steel (TISCO), Baosteel and China Nonferrous (Ningxia) Orient are both owners and natural channel partners. Export buyers across superalloy/aerospace supply chains in Europe, Japan, Korea, US.

Chokepoints & single-source dependencies:

1. The Xi'an roaster — concentrate must be roasted before it becomes saleable oxide/FeMo; smelting capacity (~30 kt/yr) is the throughput governor. The Jan-2026 explosion at the unrelated Langeloth (Pennsylvania) roaster — a major US conversion facility — shows how concentrated and fragile global roasting capacity is, and was a direct 2026 price catalyst. JDC owning its own roaster is a structural advantage.
2. Resource concentration in China — China is ~45% of global mined molybdenum (~282 Mlbs in 2023; ~75 Mlbs in Q3-2025 alone). JDC sits inside the dominant supply geography.
3. Strategic-mineral policy — molybdenum is now on China's export-control list (see Lens 8/10), inserting Beijing's MOFCOM licensing into JDC's export chain.

This lens passes the "names or it didn't happen" test on the resource side; the genuine limitation is that JDC discloses end-sectors and trading volumes rather than named individual offtake contracts.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

This is a commodity producer, so the moat question is really: low-cost, long-life resource position + scale, not brand or switching costs.

• Resource quality & scale (the real moat). Two of the world's largest primary molybdenum deposits with ~1.46 Mt combined contained Mo and multi-decade mine life. You cannot replicate a 780,000-t primary orebody; new primary moly mines are vanishingly rare because moly is normally a copper by-product. This is a durable, irreplaceable asset moat.
• Vertical integration / cost position. Owning mine + roaster + chemical + metal plants captures the full conversion margin and insulates JDC from the third-party roasting bottleneck that just bit US producers. As a primary producer it is a price-maker influence in China rather than a by-product price-taker.
• Position in the policy stack. Executive-committee member of IMOA, chair unit of the CNIA molybdenum branch — it sits at the center of Chinese moly industry standard-setting. As a state-controlled strategic-mineral champion it is favored in a Beijing-prioritized critical-mineral sector.
• Bargaining power. Over suppliers: high — it owns its ore, so input dependence is limited to the trading sleeve. Over customers: moderate — steel buyers are price-takers to the global MW index, but molybdenum has no economic substitute in its corrosion/high-temperature roles, so demand is inelastic and JDC captures the index.

What is NOT a moat: there is zero product differentiation — ferromolybdenum is ferromolybdenum. JDC has no pricing power independent of the molybdenum price. The moat protects the resource and the cost curve, not the margin in a down-cycle. When moly falls, JDC's economics fall with it (FY2024 proved this — see Lens 4/5).

Lens 4 · Segments

Segment-level RMB splits are not cleanly disclosed in English sources; the directional picture from FY2024/FY2025 results:

Geography: ~82% China / ~18% export (Europe, Americas, Japan, Korea, Africa, Australia).

The segment story that matters — price, not volume, drives this P&L:

• FY2023: revenue +22%, net profit +134% YoY — a moly-price up-cycle.
• FY2024: revenue +17.55% to RMB 13.56bn, but net profit −3.18% to RMB 3.00bn and total profit −5.32% — higher revenue, lower profit, because the average MW molybdenum-oxide price fell −11.76% to $21.3/lb. Volume up, price down → margin compression. This is the single most important fact in the whole dossier: JDC's earnings are a leveraged function of the molybdenum price.
• FY2025: revenue ~RMB 14.06bn (+3.57%), net profit RMB 3.188bn (+6.89%). Source conflict, surfaced: one source reports RMB 13.83bn rev (+1.94%) / RMB 3.15bn NP (+5.77%). Both are within rounding of "~RMB 14bn / ~RMB 3.1–3.2bn"; the difference likely reflects total-revenue vs operating-revenue definitions. Treat FY2025 as rev ≈ RMB 13.8–14.1bn, NP ≈ RMB 3.15–3.19bn.
• FY2025 quarterly net profit (the inflection): Q1 RMB 678m → Q2 704m → Q3 904m → Q4 868m — H2 reacceleration as moly turned up.
• Q1-2026 (the breakout): revenue RMB 4.16bn (+26.67% YoY), net profit RMB 902m (+32.99% YoY) — the moly-price surge (MW oxide +35% YTD to ~$30.7/lb; domestic FeMo RMB 316,500/t, +26% YTD) flowing straight to the bottom line.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result (latest print)

Most recent print: Q1-2026 (reported ~Apr-2026).

• Revenue RMB 4.16bn, +26.67% YoY.
• Net profit RMB 902m, +32.99% YoY — profit growing faster than revenue = operating leverage on a rising commodity price, the opposite of the FY2024 dynamic.
• Driver: molybdenum price. MW molybdenum oxide ~$30.7/lb (+35.24% YTD); domestic ferromolybdenum RMB 316,500/t (+26.09% YTD). With JDC's costs largely fixed against owned ore, the price increment is high-incremental-margin.
• vs. consensus: no clean A-share consensus beat/miss is sourceable in English — n/a.

Full-year context (FY2025, reported 29-Jan-2026 flash): rev ≈ RMB 13.8–14.1bn, NP RMB 3.15–3.19bn (+5.8–6.9%); EPS RMB 1.05 (+12.3%).

Balance-sheet flags: JDC is conventionally regarded as a cash-rich, low-leverage SOE (it pays a steady dividend and has historically run net cash) but specific FY2025 cash / net-debt / FCF / inventory / receivables figures are not sourceable in English — n/a; flag for primary-filing (Chinese 年报) ingestion. The one structural watch item: in a rising-price tape, receivables and inventory typically outrun revenue for a commodity producer — worth verifying in the Chinese annual report.

Guidance: Chinese A-shares give qualitative outlooks, not US-style numeric guidance. Management framed 2026 as a "second entrepreneurship and layout-construction year," signaling a capex/growth posture. actual guidance band: n/a — not the disclosure regime.

Market reaction: the stock is up ~3x over 12 months (52-wk range CN¥10.86–31.61), trading CN¥28.11 on 2026-06-30 (−4.87% on the day). The tape has already priced a strong moly cycle.

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

A-share companies in this segment do not hold English earnings calls; no transcripts/ exist and none are sourceable. Substituting the disclosure-tone trend from results announcements:

• FY2024 tone: defensive — explaining a profit decline on lower moly prices despite volume growth. The message was "we executed operationally; the price hurt us."
• FY2025 → Q1-2026 tone: markedly more confident and expansionary. Volume metrics "beat plan," profit reaccelerated through H2-2025, and management explicitly reframed 2026 as a "second entrepreneurship and layout-construction year" with named growth projects — Shapinggou mine production targeted for 2029 and molybdenum-based new-material deep-processing bases with partners.
• Recurring theme they kept saying: operational over-delivery vs. plan (ore processed, concentrate standard volume, sulfur shipments).
• What shifted: from price-apology (2024) to growth-and-downstream-value-add (2026) — a tone change that tracks the moly price, and is itself a mild contrarian flag (confidence peaks near price peaks).

n/a — no verbatim transcript; tone inferred from results commentary, labeled ``.

Lens 7 · Comps

Peer table — primary/integrated molybdenum exposure.

Read: JDC trades at a ~27x P/E premium to CMOC's ~19x and FCX's ~20x — the market is paying up for JDC's purity of molybdenum exposure at the top of the cycle. That premium is the crux of the bear case: it is exactly the kind of multiple a commodity equity carries near a price peak, when trailing earnings are high and the multiple is high — the double-count that reverses violently on mean-reversion. The honest gaps (EV/Sales, EV/EBIT, ROE) are left n/a rather than fabricated; they require the Chinese annual report.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts (moves >5%, ~5-yr pattern)

The pattern is unambiguous — JDC is a molybdenum-price derivative. Named catalysts:

1. The molybdenum price itself — the dominant driver. Moly +36% YoY into mid-2026 (TradingEconomics ~602.5 CNY/kg; MW oxide ~$30.7–33.7/lb FOB China, US oxide spiked to ~$36/lb) directly drove the ~3x equity move.
2. China critical-minerals export controls (4-Feb-2025) — Beijing added molybdenum + tungsten (with tellurium, bismuth, indium) to the export-control list, requiring MOFCOM licenses. A strategic re-rating event for Chinese domestic moly champions.
3. Supply disruptions — the Langeloth (PA) roaster explosion, 29-Jan-2026 removed Western conversion capacity and stimulated price gains; Peru copper/energy-crisis fears (May-2026) threatened by-product moly supply and drove the fastest price rise in five months.
4. The structural deficit narrative — SMM's "fundamental shift" call: 2025 deficit ~18 kt, 2026 deficit ~10–20 kt, limited new mine capacity. This reframed moly from cyclical to structurally short.
5. Earnings prints — FY2023 (+134% NP) and Q1-2026 (+33% NP) marked up the stock; FY2024 (−3% NP) was the down-leg.
6. Capital-allocation / strategy signals — the Shapinggou/Zijin development and "second entrepreneurship" framing add a growth option on top of the price beta.

What the market actually reacts to: ~90% the molybdenum price and its supply-side shocks; secondarily, China strategic-mineral policy. It is not an idiosyncratic-execution story — it is a macro/commodity proxy.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• Control & archetype. JDC is a state-owned enterprise, controlled by Jinduicheng Molybdenum Group → Shaanxi Non-ferrous Metals Holding Group (Shaanxi provincial SASAC). This is a professional-manager / SOE archetype, not founder-led. Implication: capital allocation serves provincial-state objectives (employment, strategic-mineral security, dividends to the parent) alongside minority shareholders — alignment with public float is structurally imperfect.
• Founding consortium. Established 2007 by Jinduicheng Molybdenum Group, Taiyuan Iron & Steel (TISCO), China Nonferrous (Ningxia) Orient, and Baosteel — owners who are also downstream steel customers.
• Named executives: Chairman Liu Xiaofeng (柳晓峰) and Board Secretary Li Hui (李辉). Detailed individual track records / tenure are thin in English — n/a.
• Capital-allocation history. Steady dividend (FY2025 proposed RMB 4 per 10 shares, ~RMB 1.29bn total payout, ~1.35% yield). Reinvestment now tilting to growth — Shapinggou development (2029 production target) and downstream new-material deep-processing JVs. ROE/ROIC trend not sourceable in English — n/a.
• Skin in the game. Negligible personal insider ownership (SOE management) — insider-transactions.csv absent; alignment is institutional/state, not personal equity.
• Red flag (material — see Lens 10). A 2023 Shaanxi CSRC warning letter named the company, Chairman Liu and Secretary Li for governance/disclosure failures around the controlling shareholder.

Net: competent operational SOE in a strategically favored sector; the governance ceiling is the state-parent relationship — minority interests rank behind state objectives, and there is a documented governance lapse on file.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Accounting-risk surface (web-only; no filings on disk — flag all as requiring Chinese-annual-report verification):

• Two-segment structure obscures margin quality. The thin-margin Metal Trading sleeve inflates revenue relative to profit. Risk: if trading volumes/prices are reported gross, headline "revenue growth" (e.g. FY2024 +17.55%) can look healthier than the ore-products economics actually are. The FY2024 revenue-up / profit-down divergence is the tell — judge JDC on profit and the moly price, never on revenue.
• Commodity-price sensitivity in inventory/receivables. On a rising tape (Q1-2026), receivables and inventory typically outrun revenue for an integrated producer; specific figures n/a — a priority verification item.
• Cash-flow vs. earnings divergence — n/a; FCF not disclosed in English sources.
• Related-party exposure (elevated). Founder/owner steel mills (TISCO, Baosteel) are also customers; the controlling shareholder is the state parent. Related-party sales and parent-level decision-making are a standing governance risk — and were the subject of the 2023 enforcement action.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section).

• SEC (EDGAR LR + AAER): none possible. JDC has no CIK, is not a US filer; total_sec_findings: 0 confirmed in regulatory/regulatory-findings.md.
• China CSRC — material finding. On ~14-Mar/4-Jan-2023, the Shaanxi Securities Regulatory Bureau issued a warning letter (警示函) to JDC, its controlling shareholder (Jinduicheng Group), Chairman Liu Xiaofeng and Board Secretary Li Hui. Substance: (1) the controlling shareholder pre-disclosed a share-reduction plan via its own WeChat public account ahead of the CSRC-designated media — a selective-disclosure breach of Art. 8 of the Listed-Company Information Disclosure rules (the article was deleted that night but the breach stood); (2) the parent pre-approved asset write-offs/scrapping that should have been the listed company's independent decisions, violating governance-independence rules; (3) the 2022 annual report inaccurately disclosed that the controlling shareholder did not interfere in decisions, failing to disclose the independence shortfall. JDC was ordered to submit a written rectification within 15 working days. Materiality: moderate — disclosure/governance, not fraud or financial misstatement; but it confirms the state-parent overhang is real, not theoretical.
• Non-SEC (FTC/DOJ/FDA/etc.): none found relevant (US agencies have no jurisdiction over a China-domestic SOE) — n/a.

Verdict on the books: no fraud or accounting-fraud findings surfaced, but (a) the trading-segment gross-up obscures true margin quality, and (b) a documented 2023 governance/disclosure enforcement action exists. Both warrant Chinese-annual-report verification before any sizeable position. Not a clean "no material findings" name.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection (FY2026–FY2028 EPS)

Built bottom-up from FY2025 actuals + the Q1-2026 run-rate. All inputs ; FY2025 base . Shares ≈ 3.23bn; FY2025 EPS RMB 1.05.

Anchor: Q1-2026 NP RMB 902m. Annualizing Q1 naïvely → ~RMB 3.6bn, but Q1 captured a sharp price spike and H2 moly is uncertain; I haircut for seasonality and price mean-reversion.

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Valuation cross-check (the heart of it): at CN¥28.11, base EPS ~RMB 1.12 → forward P/E ~25x; bear EPS ~RMB 0.80 → if the multiple also de-rates to a cyclical-trough ~12–15x (where commodity miners sit at peak earnings), fair value is ~CN¥10–12 — i.e. back to the bottom of the 52-week range. The double-whammy (E down + P/E down together) is the asymmetric risk. Bull case (EPS ~RMB 1.30 × a sustained 25–28x re-rate) supports ~CN¥33–36, roughly the recent high — limited further upside unless moly makes a new high.

Brier forecast — NOT logged (per --watchlist rules, skip forecast.ts create; only log on genuine commitment). Candidate for a future pass: "601958.SS FY2026 net profit ≥ RMB 3.6bn, p≈0.45, resolves 2027-03-31" — base case is roughly a coin-flip because it rides the moly price.

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. JDC is the purest large-scale listed bet on molybdenum, a metal with (1) no economic substitute in corrosion-resistant/high-temperature steel and superalloys; (2) a structural supply deficit (2025 ~18 kt, 2026 ~10–20 kt) with almost no new primary mine capacity coming, since most moly is hostage to copper-mine economics; (3) demand tailwinds from nuclear new-build, oil-&-gas pipelines, and the fastest-growing slug, aerospace/defense superalloys (~4.8% CAGR, hypersonics); (4) a China strategic-mineral re-rating — molybdenum is now export-controlled, making a state-controlled domestic champion a policy beneficiary; (5) an owned, irreplaceable, multi-decade orebody plus integrated roasting that sidesteps the conversion bottleneck that just hit Western producers; (6) a growth option in Shapinggou (2029) and downstream new-materials JVs. If moly stays structurally short, earnings compound and the premium multiple holds.

Bear case (2–3 ways it permanently/severely impairs).

1. It is the molybdenum price wearing an equity costume, bought at a cyclical peak. FY2024 is the proof: volumes rose, the price fell 11.76%, and profit fell. At ~27x trailing P/E after a ~3x rally, the market has priced a sustained high-moly world. A reversion to the 2024 ~$21/lb level cuts EPS ~25–30% and would de-rate the multiple — a compounding drawdown back toward CN¥10–12.
2. China steel-demand structural softening. ~82% of sales are domestic; Chinese construction/property steel demand is in secular decline. If the moly bid relies on a Chinese steel cycle that is rolling over, the deficit thesis weakens at the demand end.
3. Governance / state-parent overhang. The 2023 CSRC warning letter is a live demonstration that the controlling shareholder makes decisions over the listed entity's head and discloses selectively. Minority interests rank behind provincial-state objectives.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke). Moly peaked in early-to-mid 2026 on the Langeloth/Peru supply scares; those one-off disruptions normalized, Chinese steel demand disappointed, and the price round-tripped toward $20–22/lb. JDC's H2-2026/2027 prints reverted to FY2024-style "volume up, profit down," the structural-deficit narrative was exposed as a 2025–26 disruption story, the ~27x peak multiple compressed to mid-teens, and the stock gave back most of the 3x — the classic commodity-equity round-trip bought at the top.

Are multiples too high? Yes, on trailing earnings — ~27x for a commodity producer at peak-cycle profitability is rich vs. CMOC (~19x) and FCX (~20x), and dangerous because it stacks a high multiple on high earnings. Justified only if molybdenum has genuinely re-based structurally higher (the bull thesis) rather than spiked on transient disruptions.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see). The market is extrapolating the 2025–26 supply scares (a roaster fire, a Peru energy crisis, export-control optics) into a permanent structural deficit and paying a growth multiple for a cyclical. The contrarian read: a chunk of the "deficit" is transient disruption, not durable shortage, and ~82%-China demand sits on a deteriorating steel base — so the right entry is after a moly-price pullback compresses the multiple, not at a 3x-extended cyclical-peak ~27x.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• What structurally breaks the money-making: a molybdenum-price decline — full stop. There is no margin buffer independent of the price; FY2024 demonstrated profit falls on flat-to-up volume when the price drops. This is a one-variable equity.
• Revenue concentration / what shifts: ~82% China, steel-end-market dominant. A Chinese property/construction-led steel downturn — already underway secularly — hits the demand side of the very deficit bulls are paying for.
• Why the moat is weaker than bulls think: the moat is a resource moat, not a margin moat. Owning the world's best primary orebody doesn't help when the index price you sell into halves. JDC cannot differentiate ferromolybdenum or hold price in a down-cycle.
• Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: not a single rival — it's by-product supply elasticity. If copper prices/volumes rise (Freeport, Codelco, Antofagasta, Collahuasi expanding copper), incremental moly by-product floods the market at ~zero marginal cost to those producers, capping price regardless of JDC's discipline. The deficit can be erased by copper miners who don't even prioritize moly.
• Worst capital-allocation / governance moves: the 2023 CSRC warning letter — selective WeChat disclosure of a parent share-reduction, parent overriding the listed company's independent decisions, inaccurate 2022 annual-report disclosure. A pattern of state-parent primacy over minorities.
• Assumptions that must hold for CN¥28: moly stays well above $26/lb and the market keeps paying ~25x. Both are cyclical-peak assumptions.
• If growth disappoints 20–30%: EPS to ~RMB 0.80 and a multiple de-rate to mid-teens → ~CN¥10–12, a 55–65% drawdown to the 52-week low.
• Single scenario that permanently impairs: a durable copper-supercycle that structurally lifts by-product moly supply while Chinese steel demand structurally declines — a permanent oversupply that re-bases moly lower for years. Plausibility: moderate — copper bulls are loud, and Chinese steel weakness is structural; the combination is a real medium-term risk, not a tail.

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. What molybdenum-price deck underpins your 2026–2029 capex and the Shapinggou decision — and what is your all-in cost per lb Mo at Jinduicheng and Ruyang Donggou? (The single most thesis-determining number: where does JDC stay profitable if moly reverts?)
2. How much of FY2025 revenue and — critically — gross profit came from Metal Trading vs. Molybdenum Ore Products, so we can see true mining margins stripped of pass-through trading?
3. What is your read on the durability of the 2025–26 supply deficit — how much was transient disruption (Langeloth fire, Peru energy crisis) vs. structural, and at what price does new by-product supply from copper miners cap the market?
4. Given ~82% China sales into a declining property/construction steel base, where is your demand growth coming from — what % of volume is now superalloy/aerospace/nuclear vs. commodity steel, and how fast is that mixing up?
5. What is the Shapinggou/Zijin development structure, JDC's equity, contained-Mo reserves, full capex, and the 2029 production ramp — and what moly price makes it NPV-positive?
6. How do China's molybdenum export controls affect your export volumes and realized pricing — net headwind (licensing friction) or tailwind (scarcity premium)?
7. What concrete governance changes followed the 2023 Shaanxi CSRC warning letter to ensure the controlling shareholder no longer pre-empts the listed company's independent decisions?
8. What is your through-cycle capital-return policy — will the ~RMB 4/10-share dividend grow, and how do you weigh dividends vs. Shapinggou/new-material reinvestment?
9. Quantify FY2025 receivables and inventory vs. revenue growth — are working-capital balances outrunning sales as prices rise, and what is the cash-conversion profile?
10. What is your hedging/offtake policy — do you lock any forward moly pricing, or is the P&L fully exposed to spot each quarter?
11. What downstream "molybdenum-based new-material" products are the JVs targeting, what margins do they carry vs. commodity FeMo, and what revenue contribution by 2029?
12. What are reserve lives and grades at both mines at current cut-off, and how does grade evolve over the next decade (a key forward unit-cost driver)?
13. How exposed are you to related-party sales to founder steel mills (TISCO, Baosteel), and at what pricing basis?
14. What is your tungsten-processing strategy given tungsten is also export-controlled and structurally short — a second growth leg or a sideline?
15. What ROIC have the last five years of capex actually earned, and what hurdle rate governs the next five?

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