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Yep, someone piled in with £40k this morning. But reported late.
Stake build?
500k trade reported late. It is being held. Load up one last time.
And, on a less facetious sporting note, the Congolese sporting talent is overseas because of things like this - concern over where the national team may have to play its qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup (hint : not at home, as things stand) :
From today's depeches :
.. The Congo has eleven stadiums, but none of them has been approved to international matches.
The Alphonse-Massamba-Débat stadium, which was keeping up appearances after its provisional approval is not currently on the list of grounds selected to host the next World Cup qualifiers.
Updating is possible, subject to the stadium inspection procedure of the Confederation of African in force.
The country could avoid the ordeal of relocation if the authorities start work on the work on the Alphonse-Massamba-Débat stadium. Its artificial turf that no longer meets standards needs to be replaced by a new one. Since the Fifa alert
warning in September 2023 work has not begun.
Playing on a neutral pitch is expensive for the home team, because of the extra costs involved in travelling away. This is a
disadvantage for them as it is difficult to pick up points without the home crowd support that is often called ' a twelfth man...
Speaks to the dire state of the economy....
ATB
And now I'm with Jiving on this!
.." Not only is the FEED suggestion likely a teaser to entice broader bids, quite possibly so also is the whole Marty start-up, buy-in project: designed to squeeze out bids for a full buyout without blatantly stating that goal..."
If you look at his full linked-in experience, Marty looks very much like a 'troubleshooting gun-for-hire'.
His last reported job, before joining ZIOC was
Glencore
1 yr 2 mos
Head of Strategic Projects - Africa
Jan 2022 - Sep 2022 · 9 mos
Establishment of strategic project definitions, estimates, leadership and controls for KCC and Mutanda [in 'problematic' DRC ] to achieve their full potential.
He may well have been 'consulting' for GLEN > ZIOC on the Project since ZIOC's acquisition process in Nov/Dec 2022.
His linked in job at ZIOC started in Nov 2023, his appointment was only RNS'd 5 days before the AGM, on December 14, where Elphick says that .." Marty brings extensive experience in project development, operations and transformational growth phases in the mining industry. These positive attributes are essential to moving the Zanaga Project forward, especially in light of the recently announced strategic objectives of the Company."
He hasn't joined the Board 'yet' - " will not be joining the Board of Directors at this stage, but a potential Board role will be considered in the future..." and his compensation package hasn't AIUI been disclosed - but would have to be in the FYE Dec 2023 results.
And, maybe the clincher for me, suggesting that this isn't a long-term posting for Marty : the Federation Congolaise du Rugby facebook has a massive 1,900 followers...and, as with soccer, most of the Congolese rugby talent plays elsewhere.
Just my take on things
GLA
Everything since the Glencore deal 18 months ago has been choreographed to create a competitive situation & entice bidders to pay the highest price based around the 2024 FS. Elphick is a skilful & artful negotiator, and the details that have come out over the months (AT re Saudis at Xmas for example), are only notionally aimed at us & really aimed at interested parties, in that instance letting the Chinese know there were serious Saudi talks going on.
So I see everything geared towards having at least two serious competing bids - likely a Saudi/Gulf (maybe including Japan & Vale) consortium vs the Chinese. Not only is the FEED suggestion likely a teaser to entice broader bids, quite possibly so also is the whole Marty start-up, buy-in project: designed to squeeze out bids for a full buyout without blatantly stating that goal.
FWLIW, I'm with MM on this.
I see this as 'earnest money' and a gauge of seriousness, expressing politely 'right, gentlemen, time to p*ss or get off the pot'.
ATB
I read, but do not believe. You cannot kickstart a multi billion Pound project with salami slice funding. Not credible, imo.
Incidentally, I obviously hope & indeed expect, a strategic investor or consortium to 'at least' provide the equity finance for Stage 1, particularly if they fear they are in a competitive situation. I am actually really hoping for a full buyout bid, why would China go for 20% of the project & not 100% ? They easily need that or their demand & have two clear strategic aims dictated from Xi & the Politburo increase Chinese ownership of foreign iron ore mines & develop a green steel industry that includes access to quality ore.
But on a worse case basis we may end up initially with just the finance for the FEED - that still saves us a horrific dilution of up to 50% if you build in a discount to market if we tried to finance via equity. Anything is better than nothing, incremental progress is better than no progress.
ATG the RNS of the 30 April specifically highlights strategic investors funding FEED as per "....strategic investors to consider funding of the next logical Project phase, being the front end engineering and design.....". Its actually underthinking not to consider it as a real possibility - given the company highlighted it in an RNS from 3 days ago, clearly they think a strategic investor might take that route rather than finance the equity portion of the first stage - so we investors need to consider it as well.
..have seemed a little odd to me in the last couple of days, is there a big buy being worked through while holding down the SP? Maybe, just maybe...
are we overthinking this totally? is a strategic investor really going to *****foot around with feed funding only? it is either worth investing in our not. simple, invest 800m to 1bn pounds and it buys you 20% of company and the project goes ahead.
Its an interesting issue Marcus - it surely depends on the extent of the strategic investor commitment? I was anticipating the minimum strategic investor commitment would be the equity portion of Stage 1, the full sum we now know is estimated to be $1.93b. The majority of that will come from project finance & the equity portion should be around 30% ie $579m (Edison btw also worked on the basis of 30% equity:70% project finance in their reports). But if all a strategic investor is initially going to commit to is $22m for FEED, I can see that being positive but not setting the world alight.
With a strategic investor onboard then this should see the IPO value realised at the very minimum.
Strategic investor announcements could happen any day now they have the updated FS figures which have been passed to interested parties.
Pretty stunning market reaction to our near doubling in NPV. The bid side has been continually hit the last 3 days with 100k+ orders. If management have confidence in their 2024 FS they should begin pitching to specialist funds, including those that invested in the original IPO at 156p - if they saw value then surely surely they should see considerably more value now?
Top tip, print out the RNS, highlighter pen the key phrases and hang it on your fridge (or booze cabinet, whichever you visit more often 😉). Have a great day all 🙂
Cheers guys, thanks for clearing that up.
The FS RNS made it clear that the FEED is intended to be funded by strategic investors & not internally. Relevant quote:
"The Company believes these positive results provide much greater confidence in the Project's economic feasibility ....and with this, provides a key catalyst for potential strategic investors to consider funding of the next logical Project phase, being the front end engineering and design (FEED) program ..."
I believe we are getting down into the nitty gritty parts of the project. The ‘Steyn Reddy’ type companies that will be in place to allow this project to start at the drop of a hat.
There’s only a certain level of detail we can get to and give for free, before we say to those strategic investors ‘if you want the next level of detail’ you’re going to need to starting paying.
No squeaky bum time for me. If you’re feeling that way, have a little read of the RNS again and about the FEED stages of projects.
Looking again at costs, the $22m FEED costs are part of the Stage 1 CAPEX.
Little bit of info about the work being done now:
Front-End Engineering (FEE), or Front-End Engineering Design (FEED), is an engineering design approach used to control project expenses and thoroughly plan a project before a fix bid quote is submitted.[1] It may also be referred to as Pre-project planning (PPP), front-end loading (FEL), feasibility analysis, or early project planning.
Overview[edit]
FEED is basic engineering, which comes after the Conceptual design or Feasibility study. FEE design focuses the technical requirements as well as rough investment cost for the project. FEED can be divided into separate packages covering different portions of the project. The FEED package is used as the basis for bidding for Engineering, Procurement and Construction contracts (EPC, EPCI, etc) and is used as the design basis (or Basis of Design).
A good FEED will reflect all of the client's project-specific requirements and avoid significant changes during the execution phase. FEED contracts usually take around 1 year to complete for larger-sized projects. During the FEED phase, there is close communication between Project Owners and Operators and the Engineering Contractor to work up the project-specific requirements.
Thanks for these Vet.
Well it sure seems like “squeaky bum time”
We rather we have a partner willing to fund the £22m for the FEED stage(front end engineering development), or the board will need to blitz the PR, so as to ramp up the share price for a equity raise/rights issue.
Otherwise we will remain stuck on chapter 1, the same chapter that we have been stuck on for the last 13+ years!!.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think the market is hot for this novel, and if we don’t have anybody to “put up”, then I’m all for a raise, if that’s what it takes to “Release shareholder value”.
Bring on chapter two..
Gla.
And Japan/Mitsubishi are involved , here a link to Vale -
https://www.google.com/amp/s/gmk.center/en/news/japanese-bank-to-provide-a-loan-to-vale-to-secure-iron-ore-supplies-to-the-country/amp/
If these 2 parties are to be involved in Zanaga then the attached news is good.
https://vale.com/w/vale-announces-completion-of-strategic-partnership-agreement-with-manara-minerals-1/-/categories/0
After I posted Jiving/Extrader, I came to the same conclusion - that the Corporate Presentation would be aimed at attracting institutional investors rather than strategic partners.
That makes sense as we have/had a severe lack of institutional interest.
All these cancelled trades from yesterday that are showing up today, leaves a bad taste. Not looking at ZIOC here but what is going on, MMs clumsy fingers or what?
Hi Mitch,
I wondered about this as well.
But - with acknowledged confirmation bias - I think there's another way of looking at this : Elphick's public - facing image and a desire to 'do the right thing', maybe even with a hat-tip to possible 'pari passu' considerations :
If there's a public presentation and the 12m SCM shares become available thereafter, no-one can claim (socially or legally), that they weren't given a fair chance..
Just a thought
GLA and ATB