Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
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Looking very good for the future here : could be in for an good year or two
Mumbles - thanks for the encouraging update - just need to sit tight now.
Worth a read:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/This-Year-Could-See-a-Significant-Rebound-in-Rare-Earths-Metals-Prices.html
Salients:
Since mid-2023 rare earth companies have been hit hard by plunging prices: MP shares have tanked 50.0% over the past 12 months, Lynas shares have tumbled 42.7% while Arafura Rare Earths Ltd (OTCPK:ARAFF)(ASX: ARU) has crashed 78.5% over the timeframe.
Shanghai Metals Market say rare earth prices have likely bottomed out and could be poised for a rebound in the second half of 2024 on the back of strong demand by the electric vehicle and wind power sectors, claiming further downside for rare earths, particularly for neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, used in permanent magnets, which fell 38% last year, is limited with prices near the production cost level. Guolian Securities has predicted that NdPr oxide is likely to record a 800-metric-ton deficit globally in the current year, flipping from last year's 6,600-ton surplus.
"We expect extra supply to be more or less cleared by end-2024, as demand catches up with supply through continually increasing electric vehicle sales and wind turbine production," said analyst Willis Thomas at CRU Group.
Las Vegas, Nevada-based rare earths miner MP Materials (NYSE:MP) and its Australian peer Lynas Rare Earths (OTCPK:LYSCF) (OTCPK:LYSDY) may be working on a deal that would merge the world's two biggest producers of rare earths materials outside China,
Lynas’ managing director Amanda Lacaze revealed that the company was constantly being pitched M&A opportunities.
The VanEyck index for rare earths is also on an uptick since the start of Feb supporting these trends, see:
https://www.forbes.com/investment-funds/remx/?sh=314bc0132f75
At a risk of severe abuse from the usual suspects.
Based on a very recent discussion, it seems that the heavy lifting for the project has been completed, and the term sheet required for the rest of the financing to proceed has been agreed upon and signed off. However, multiple stakeholders are involved, and each has their lawyers. These stakeholders include Pensana, FSDEA, ABSA, the Pan African Infrastructure Development Bank, and the South African Export Credit Insurance Company. The agreements and contracts are currently in the markup stage and circulating among the stakeholders.
As a result, the project is not being driven solely by Pensana, as the financiers and lawyers are now performing their final functions independently. An exact date when Pensana will complete and announce the financing cannot be accurately forecasted since it depends on all the stakeholders agreeing and signing off on the whole finance structure. It could be a matter of days, but if any lawyer raises a query, it has to go around all the stakeholders for comments and signatures, which can delay the process. This isn’t unusual in a relatively complex structured finance arrangement such as this one. Patience is required, but everything seems to be on track, as previously advised.
Hi Mumbles2021 - Filter , ignore is bliss ,suggest your do the same .
GL, I'm begging you. Please do not take Theo's bait. He's bored!!! As far as Dar is concerned, if the preferred destination is East, or north through Suez (unlikely at the moment). Otherwise 2 and 1/2 weeks to Northern Europe or the states works fine. Trafigura are involved not through any altruistic motive but to get the cost of their logistics from the DR Congo copper projects to export points covered by other parties.
Reptile. Do you honestly think Biden gives a monkey about Lobito. He wouldn’t even know where it is. They’ll probably take the railway down to Dar.
US. President Joe Biden has a full plate when it comes to foreign affairs—many of which are giving him more heartburn than he would ideally prefer heading into a tightly contested bid for re-election. But there is one under-the-radar project that his administration has pushed that could likely end up becoming his signature foreign policy legacy for decades to come—the Lobito Corridor. It's a multibillion dollar railway investment that connects central and southern Africa to a deep-water port in Angola that will become a pivotal piece of the supply chain fueling the expected $10 trillion global clean energy economy.
Yet in one fell swoop, this signature initiative of the Biden administration has the potential to accomplish a triumvirate of major long-term U.S. foreign policy goals: countering China's global dominance in the critical minerals supply chain, kicking off an unprecedented wave of development in key developing African economies, and perhaps most importantly, unlocking access at scale to the key inputs needed to power Earth's migration to so-called clean technology, providing a real path forward to a future less reliant on hydrocarbons
"The Lobito Corridor is, hands down, the most transformational infrastructure project to ever occur in central and southern Africa," Pereira Alfredo, the governor of the Bié Province in central Angola, told Newsweek. "Not only will this initiative unlock access to critical minerals mined in Angola, Zambia and the DRC, but it will also spur a wave of tremendous growth and development along its route."
"It's one thing to have oil reserves, but as the world slowly but surely starts to migrate away from carbon-based power solutions, being a gatekeeper to the biggest channel of goods in and out of the heart of Africa is far more valuable. Not only will the Lobito Corridor catapult Angola's standing onto the international stage, as a major entrepôt in the critical minerals supply chain, Angola will soon realize that it is a significant player in the soon-to-be multi trillion-dollar clean energy economy," she said.
https://www.newsweek.com/africas-angola-holds-keys-ushering-global-green-economy-opinion-1869709?fbclid=IwAR1l6J8vcJ71AirCht1Z3uNj9cmCTHOlg7-aoQsvw-7EJRMj6ljHxotdK0g
Maybe the market makers ate too much pancake today - SP on the up despite some heavy sells.
20 day MA has already up-crossed the 50 day MA and should break the 100 day MA tomorrow, if sustained.
Might even crack the 200 day MA in a few days, so we get back to the average SP levels back in April 2023.
Progress of a sort?
Pancake day?
Mumbles - that is a very fair point! Made me laugh,
Found it - CFTC's EEMAC meeting,
You are meant to be buying a card, and a present, plus making a dinner reservation for your better half tomorrow
I have todays date noted down for something to be happening. Can someone remind me what it is?
The reason is that no trading of shares would be able to occur before trading commences at 0800 on Monday, after the obligatory RNS at 0700 on Monday morning. I have no opinion one way or the other whether an RNS will be out on Monday, as I don't have any for any other day of the week. The guidance says Q1. That's all we have for now.
Your analysis of the trading on Thursday was really interesting.
You say that news of funding would come out over a weekend for obvious reasons- can you explain your reasoning for this view. Surely any announcement would come out within a RNS in the normal way.
China - thanks for a detailed (unlike you, I'll not say verbose) response and analysis.
I don't cross-promote and posting this information elsewhere would deny the silent majority of LSE PRE visitors a first look at a significant "Pensana parallel" development. I'll take your point though and cut the length in future.
Not that I'm cross-promoting, but I see ARR is up 18% today, so there seems to be support coming out of their recent news....
Hogsnipe, A word of warning ~ ARR are either dreamers or pork pie sellers, they pumped hell out of La Paz and it has turned out to be a flop. ! A quick reality check :- According to their latest "News" release they have drilled a total of 9031 metres over both of their Wyoming "Project" areas. If we are very generous and assume an area of influence of 100m x 100m (10,000 BCM) for each metre of depth of drill hole and use an SG of 2.3 you end up with 207 Million tonnes and that's all. SO what are they basing the other 2.1 Billion tonnes of Indicated and Inferred resource on ????
Now any self respecting Geologist or Mining Engineer will tell you that it is stretching the friendship to classify a RE Resource higher than "Indicated" based on a 100m drill spacing and yet ARR are saying that this is Measured @ 200m spacing !!!! And if IT IS all Measured where on earth are they getting the other 2 Billion Tons from !!!!
FYI. The majority of Longonjo was drilled out at around 50m x 100 intervals; and 50 down to 25m with an average depth of 30m in the proposed Pit area. The drilling is still open on at least two sides and at depth, but Management are being honest enough not to speculate any Resource estimates beyond the drilling envelope.
A simple comparison of Longonjo:, and Halleck Creek at a 1,000ppm cutoff ~
LJ has a Total mineral Resource (measured, indicated and inferred) of 313Mt grading 14,300ppm REO. which contains 990,000t of NdPr; They drilled roughly 9,130 m in 300 holes to give an average depth of 30metres. ( Mostly the free dig shallow & weathered material )
Yet for roughly the SAME AMOUNT of drilling at Halleck Creek, ARR claim to have 207Mt grading 3720ppm; which they say contains just 187,000t of Magnetic RE's ! No comparison to LJ's is there really ?
Then , ARR have drilled down to 320metrs (which is probably one factor in calculating the large Inferred resource). Do you know how long it would take to mine down to that depth ? You might as well forget about anything below 120m when calculating a NPV(10) !
Lastly verbose cross promoting is considered bad form, a simple heads up and http reference would do..
News today from the Daily Mail about the USA Wheatland/Wyoming explorations JORC- claiming 2.3 BILLLION tones of RE deposits - Nd Pr easily accessible leach extractable with little radionuclide (U and Th) issues:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13062273/rare-earth-minerals-wyoming-green-energy-material.html
Wildest dreams doesn't quite cover the scale of this - it's 53 timesbigger than the total RE reserves of China (44 million tons).
Here's the JORC pdf if you want details:
https://app.sharelinktechnologies.com/announcement/asx/99e2b33b2d8382c24ed859bbd35d1dbf
• February 2024 JORC Resource is 2.34 billion tonnes
• 1.42 billion tonnes of measured and indicated resources were estimated at a grade of 3,296 ppm TREO using a
1,000ppm TREO cut-off
• Economic and technical evaluation supports cut-off grade at 1,000ppm TREO based on the net-smelter return
• Successfully preconcentrated TREO at a 12:1 upgrade ratio, representing a ~200% increase from existing flowsheet
design using low cost, conventional Dense Medium Separation
• Deposit remains open at depth and along strike
• In-Situ Resources of 419 million tonnes with a TREO grade of 3,349 ppm exists within ARR controlled Wyoming state
mineral leases.
• Close to infrastructure and a highly skilled workforce.
• Potential for remarkable scalability, with 75% of mineralised zones yet to be drilled and deposit remaining open at
depth.
• Deposit is from surface with consistent grades throughout making it ideal for large scale, low-cost open pit mining.
• Breakthrough metallurgy and mineralogy results reduce capital and operating costs opening the path to early
production.
• Environmentally and socially responsible with low penalty elements.
Wow.
It's been a while since PRE market activity was suffciently interesting to merit some EXCEL analysis of trades.
Today's was a corker.
Buy:sell ratio - 5000:1
96% buy volume came after US open - mainly O trades
AT trades very steady - buying all day - not a single AT sell - bye bye day traders, pump & dumpers.....
O trades number roughly same as AT trades, but account for 79% of volume. AT buy volume only a quarter of O buy vol
Only 5 sells the whole day = 0.2% of volume
For an illiquid stock like PRE (by which I mean that most of us LTI's are stubbornly holding out for better days and will not sell before then), when all trades are buys, it suggests increased interest or demand for the stock, leading to a tightening of the spread as more buyers enter the market.
PRE spread fell 50% today.
So why read anything into a low-volume, 30 trades day?
It seems's unlikely that the Pensana's press briefings released over the past week or two have materially altered the situation with PRE, except to somewhat de-risk the Longonjo/mine/products side.
But if PRE were to get Longonjo financing in the bag (as Pensana say is expected in the coming weeks or months):
a) the news will leak - hey it's Africa isn't it?
b) the news would come out over a weekend for obvious reasons
So, it's going to be an interesting day tomorrow, and worth following the deals as they come in.
Just saying - this is opinion, not advice or recommendation, and you should do your own research and arrive at your own conclusions and actions.
What puzzles me is that in yesterdays trading there were more shares bought than sold and yet the SP dropped 11%.
I know sometimes buys are actually sells, but there is no obvious explanation for the drop.
No doubt the Rare Earth prices fixed low by China are to discourage new entrants, but selling at cost is crazy with the upcoming deficit.
Rare earth prices, which experienced a sharp decline in 2023, are expected to make a strong comeback later this year, driven by growing demand from the electric vehicle (EV) and wind power industries, coupled with a potential reduction in production quotas by China, the leading producer of rare earths. Analysts predict a resurgence in rare earth prices after a challenging year in 2023.
Rare earths, a group of 17 elements crucial for a wide range of applications, from military equipment and lasers to magnets used in EVs and consumer electronics, saw their prices reach a decade-high in 2022. However, these prices plummeted throughout 2023 due to increased production in China and sluggish demand growth, impacted by the country's uneven post-pandemic economic recovery.
According to data from Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), the price of praseodymium oxide, one of the most commonly used rare earth elements, fell by 34% in China during 2023. Similarly, terbium oxide and neodymium oxide hit their lowest levels since late 2020 by the end of the year.
Despite this downturn, analysts believe that further decreases in rare earth prices are limited, especially for neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, which is crucial for permanent magnets. SMM analyst Yang Jiawen pointed out that NdPr oxide prices experienced a 38% drop in 2023 and are currently hovering close to the production cost level.
Guolian Securities recently predicted an 800-metric-ton global deficit for NdPr oxide in 2024, a significant shift from the 6,600-ton surplus recorded in the previous year.
China, the dominant player in the rare earth industry, took notable steps in 2023 to control output. The country issued a third batch of rare earth output quotas, marking the first time it had done so within a single year since 2006. The total quota for the year reached a record high of 255,000 tons, reflecting a 21.4% increase compared to the previous year.
China's pivotal role in rare earth production cannot be overstated, as it accounts for 70% of global rare earth mining and a staggering 90% of refined output, according to data from the United States Geological Survey. The country has employed a quota system since 2006 to manage the supply of this strategic resource.
As the world continues its shift towards renewable energy and electric mobility, the demand for rare earth elements, particularly those used in magnets for EVs and wind turbines, is set to increase. With China potentially reducing production quotas, the global rare earth market appears poised for a resurgence in 2024, providing hope for a much-needed recovery after a challenging year.
https://www.finnewsnetwork.com.au/archives/finance_news_network448250.html?fbclid=IwAR1zWA94t6IgSKQSt-bNffd9ouplDD1mv1z0kJkCBak_EhMcReMyU9qrsD8
And your point is?
You sold, made a loss and are now indulging in some self justifying schadenfreud to make yourself feel better?
Amazing positive posts Lizard accompanied by an 11% drop in the share price. Very typical of the PRE MO.
NdPr oxide is likely to see an 800-metric-ton deficit globally in 2024, flipping from last year's 6 600-ton surplus, Guolian Securities wrote last month.
"We expect extra supply to be more or less cleared by end-2024, as demand catches up with supply through continually increasing electric vehicle sales and wind turbine production," said analyst Willis Thomas at CRU Group.
CHINA QUOTA
Last year, China issued a third batch of rare earth output quotas, the first time it issued a third set of quotas in a year since 2006, with the total quota for the year at a record high of 255,000 tons, up 21.4% from a year earlier.
However, China's quotas are expected to increase at a slower rate this year, at between 10% to 15%, analysts at information provider Baiinfo said in a research note.
"We do expect another increase in production quota for both mining and separation ... but not to the extent we have seen last year," said analyst Ross Embleton at Wood Mackenzie.
China, which accounts for 70% of rare earths mining and 90% of refined output, according to the United States Geological Survey, has controlled its supply of the strategic resource through the quota system since 2006
https://www.miningweekly.com/article/rare-earths-prices-seen-rebounding-in-second-half-of-2024---analysts-2024-02-05?fbclid=IwAR2LFvUBNDyvk4fahdobO6jovX3ip1LWGPd8X8SUZqcbxw6HCr96FiV5IpU
Angola's mining sector is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, as global demand for multiple minerals and rare earths is expected to grow in line with the growing demand for battery minerals and other strategic minerals. Currently, the exploration and production of diamonds represents around 90% of total mining revenue in Angola. However, this is expected to change. As the world continues to strive towards energy transition, battery minerals such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, manganese, aluminium, tin and tantalum, among others, are expected to grow exponentially.
Mining company Rio Tinto signed an agreement last month in Luanda with the Angolan Government to acquire a concession to mine basic metals, including copper, cobalt, zinc, titanium and aluminium in the Angolan province of Moxico. This follows a similar agreement signed between the government of Angola and mining major Ivanhoe to prospect and develop copper in the provinces of Moxico and Cuando Cubango. In 2022, South Africa's De Beers Group signed a Mineral Investment Agreement with the government of Angola to re-enter the country and prospect for diamonds.
The aforementioned agreements attest to the significant interest in Angola's mining sector following recent industry reforms introduced by the government, under the leadership of His Excellency João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, President of the Republic of Angola.
https://energycapitalandpower.africa-newsroom.com/press/angolas-ministry-of-mineral-resources-oil-and-gas-mirempet-freiberg-university-of-mines-and-technology-start-scholarship-program?lang=en