Sandeep Biswas will front the investment community for the first time as CEO of Newcrest Mining on Thursday, and faces a number of burning questions about his plans for Australia's biggest goldminer.
With barely $100 million of free cash flow expected from the 2014 financial year, and a desire to significantly reduce the company's debt ratio, the most obvious issue for Mr Biswas relates to funding.
The spectre of a capital raising has hung over the stock all year, but outgoing chief executive Greg Robinson never pushed the button.
Mr Biswas will be sorely tempted during his tenure, particularly given the temporary nature of the operations at two of Newcrest's major assets: Lihir and Telfer. Mining was scaled back significantly at both over the past 12 months in a bid to lower costs and produce only high-margin ounces of gold.
Most of the ore processed at Lihir was from stockpiles, and while the strategy lowered the cost of production, stockpiles are clearly not a long-term solution for the troublesome asset.
Investors will want to hear Mr Biswas outline a path towards development of Lihir's exciting Kapit deposit, which is inconveniently located beneath those same stockpiles.
Development of an open pit at Kapit can turn Lihir into the significant and lucrative gold producer it has always promised to be, but the project would require an estimated $US1.3 billion of preparatory spending to build a seawall and strip away the overburden, before mining begins. With a gearing ratio close to 30 per cent, and a determination to bring that back towards 15 per cent, Mr Biswas is unlikely to take on more debt to develop the asset.
The future of the Telfer mine also needs clarification, after operations there were significantly rationalised in 2013 to avoid mining the large amount of high-cost ounces that remain in the ground.
Investors will particularly want to know more about the potential for further underground mining at Telfer, which has been investigated extensively over the past 12 months.
Then there is Newcrest's collection of non-core assets, such as Hidden Valley, in Papua New Guinea, and Bonikro, in Ivory Coast.
More than a few analysts have wondered whether Newcrest should join BHP Billiton in mulling some sort of divorce between its best assets and its worst.
