Could you check whether there is anything excessive or missing in the structure below for the investment decision case?

Hi there,

A cleaner and more MECE way to structure this investment decision could look like:

• Financial attractiveness
– Incremental impact on cash flows and profitability
– Investment required and payback or returns
– Sensitivity to key assumptions (e.g. gold price, throughput)

• Implementation feasibility
– Technology fit with existing production process
– Capacity and bottlenecks
– Integration complexity and timeline
– Operational reliability and post-integration risks

• Strategic and risk considerations
– Alignment with long term strategy and competitiveness
– Scalability and future optionality
– Regulatory, safety, and environmental risks

This keeps the focus on the decision while avoiding overlap between operational and feasibility topics.

Best,
Evelina

Don't forget that while it is important to have a MECE structure - it's also arguably as important to be able to talk about it with good business judgment. In this case, there needs to be some elaboration around how the technology could actually effect cost and/or revenues and how you would investigate it.

hey there :)

Your structure is already solid and not excessive, I would just make sure financial attractiveness clearly captures incremental profit and payback logic, and that feasibility also briefly covers organizational readiness and regulatory or safety constraints which matter a lot in mining; otherwise this is a clean and interviewer friendly way to approach the case, happy to help refine it further if you want. best, Alessa :)

People impact is missing, even if you thought about them in the profitability question as a number

Hi there,

Overall the key buckets seem to be covered. Small point, but you may want to include opportunity costs if the client has limited resources.

That’s a solid, functional starting point for an investment case, but to lift it into the MBB tier, you need to elevate "Operational Aspects" to include the crucial Strategic context and sharpen the risk section.

The core structure (Value, Fit, Risk) is there, but your current Level 2 points are too descriptive and don't force evaluation. Here’s the reality: When evaluating a $100M+ technology purchase, the Partners need to know more than just the tech's lifespan; they need to know if this purchase locks in a long-term advantage or just delays inevitable decay.

I would pivot your framework to be:

1. Economics & Return: This should be your NPV/IRR analysis, but immediately flag the key sensitivities. In mining, that means stress-testing the ROI based on fluctuating Gold Price stability and the actual achievable Yield increase (which is rarely 100% of the theoretical max).

2. Strategic & Operational Fit: This is where you bring in the competitive view. Is this technology table stakes (i.e., are competitors already using it?), or does it provide a genuine competitive edge in cost per ounce? Crucially, you must confirm the processing plant is the true production bottleneck—you don't want to optimize one part of the value chain just to have the smelter or logistics cap the output instead.

3. Implementation & External Risk: Fold your "Feasibility" section here. Focus on integration complexity as downtime risk (every day the plant is offline is huge cost). For a gold company, always include the regulatory/ESG angle: Does the new tech impact water use, tailings, or energy consumption? This is a growing operational risk that affects long-term license to operate.

Make sure you prioritize the discussion around the few, highly leveraged drivers (gold price, uptime, actual yield increase) rather than spending time on details like the exact dimensions of the equipment.

All the best!