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At 7:28 am today someone called "ijamion" added a comment on ADVFN's chatpage for VLX saying that Jeffries have upped estimates following the capital markets event, they have increased their price target on VLX from 540 to 670 and they have mainatained their buy rating.

Today's London & South East daily broker upgrade report published at 9:50 am also says that Jeffries have upped their target from 540 to 670 with a buy rating.

this morning VLS is repeatedly reaching new all time highs. At 10 am the spread was 601 - 603 and a few people have bought at 603. Moments ago the spread was a bit lower at 598 - 600.

Well done if, like me, you hold VLX. I bought back in at just over 574 last Tuesday 21 April, because I expected the share price to rise significantly following last Wednesday's Capital Markets Day, which is now happening.

Don't forget if VLX moves from AIM to the main market, which is almost certain to happen, tracker funds and other big investors will be buying VLX for the first time and this will add upwards momentum to the share price. The buy-back should also have this effect, but as I said in one of my comments below on 21 April, I've not yet seen any evidence the buy-back has begun.

For most of this morning VLX traded at about 578, a couple of pence down on yesterday's close which was 580.

There was a sudden spike at 12 noon. So far today the highest transaction price is 588 which was at 12:30 pm when the spread peaked at 588-589, but if I remember correctly Interactive Investor was showing 587-590 for a few seconds.

Late this morning VLX made the the slides from, and a recording of, the presentation at its first ever Capital Markets Day available on the investor relations page of its website. This is almost certainly the reason for the sudden jump in the share price.

The slides are at:

https://www.volex.com/media/fmihsqo5/volex_cmd_deck_23_02_final_web.pdf

It is necessary to register with your name and email address for the recording which you can access at:

https://www.volex.com/investors/capital-markets-day

Since 12:40 pm the shares have slipped back - moments ago Interactive Investor was showing a spread of 581-583 and the most recent trade was 582 at 1:36 pm, up 2 on yesterday's close.

Furtherto my comment at 16:26 today, I draw attention to this paragraph of the 7th April buy-back announcement which refers to a restriction on the number of shares which Pell Hunt can purchase on any given day:

"Due to limited liquidity in the Ordinary Shares and in order to proceed with the Share Buyback Programme in an effective manner, the Company's purchases of Ordinary Shares on any trading day may exceed 25 per cent., but will remain below 50 per cent., of the average daily trading volume of Ordinary Shares during the 20 trading days preceding the date of purchase. In all other respects purchases of Ordinary Shares pursuant to the Share Buyback Programme shall take place in accordance with Article 5 of UK MAR and the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 2016/1052 with regard to regulatory technical standards for the conditions applicable to buyback programmes and stabilisation measures, as it forms part of UK law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018."

According to the second of annoucements via the RNS at 7 am on 7 April, the buy-back of up £40 million of VLX shares (to reduce VLX's share capital and return surplus capital to its shareholders) was to "commence immediately" and Peel Hunt had been instructed to conduct the buy-backs. The announcement also said:

"The Company will announce all purchases of ... Shares pursuant to the ... Buyback Programme by no later than the seventh daily market session following the calendar day on which such purchases occurred."

The seventh daily market session following Monday 7 April, when the buy-back was supposed to commence, was last Thursday 16 April so I'd expected announcements of Peel Hunt's purchases to via RNS to begin no later than that day and to follow daily except in respect of ays when no purchases are made.

As far as I can see there haven't been any announcements, so am I right in assuming that no shares have been bought back yet despite VLX having said that the buy-back programme would start on 7 April?

If I'm right, does anyone know why the buy-back hasn't started?

If I'm wrong and the buy-back has indeed started, does anyone know why no purchases have been announced?

I'm thinking of trying to contact VLX's company secretary or Peel Hunt to find out what's going on.

Most of this morning SNR had been down but never by more than 4p (i.e. 285.5p per share). Moments before the offer was announced at 12:56 pm today, people were buying at 286.5. After the announcement the price spiked up a bit - at 12:57 pm there were small buys at 296 and 300 which is the highest price so far today. Since then the price has slipped back - moments ago the spread was 291 / 292.

There are pre-conditions to the Blackstone/Tinicum offer - see the announcement. If it were a "done deal" without any such conditions, SNR would probably be trading at a discount of about 5% to the 300p offer price, i.e. at about 285. The current spread of 291 / 292 suggests that the market thinks that Advent might come in with a higher offer. We know that on Thursday 5 March Advent announced that their most recent proposal at that time had been 272p per SNR share (comprising 270p in cash plus the right for shareholders to retain any 2025 final dividend of up to 2p per share).

Do Advent want SNR so much that they'll increase their offer from about 270 to in excess of 300? Since this afternoon's announcement many more shares have been sold than bought so maybe a lot of people think that the chances of an Advent counter-bid are low.

I've never had any SNR shares. Right now I'm not intending to buy any, but I'm watching the situation and might change my mind.

Note that on Friday 27 March Advent's put-up-or-shut-up deadline was extended by 3 weeks to 5 pm on Friday 17 April. Incidentally, on Tuesday 31 March the Blackstone/Tinicum put-up-or-shut-up deadline had been extended by only 9 days to 5 pm on Thursday 9 April.

I remind everyone of my comment here at 09:21 on 17 March when I pointed out that SNR was only 5p above Advent's Indicative 272p offer price. Very well done to anybody who bought about three weeks ago at under 280. Since then there were two good buying opportunities, but one was only very brief:

- If I remember correctly, there was a bad day for the markets generally in the week ending Friday 27 March when it was possible to buy SNR in the low 260's. Congratulations to anyone who did that.

- At 8:55 am on Wednesday 1 April Arcline (the third of the identified potential bidders) announced that they were pulling out. Within a minute of that announcement, SNR's spread fell from 288.5 / 289.5 to 268.0 / 273.5. By 9:01 am it had recovered to 288 / 290. Congratulations to anyone who was able to take advantage of that brief window of opportunity of just a minute or two and managed to buy at under 285.

There's an error in my previous comment at 09:21 today - apologies. This is what the pre-penutlimate paragraph should have said:

- "With three known potential bidders, surely SNR at about 275 is a bargain with potential for a gain of more than 10% in a relatively short time if there's an announcement of an intention to make a formal offer at 303."

Advent International is one of three entities who known to be consoidering making a formal bid for SNR. About half an hour after the market closed on Thursday 5 March they announced that their last proposal was 272p per SNR share, comprising 270p in cash plus the right for shareholders to retain any 2025 final dividend of up to 2p per share. (SNR had already announced a proposed FY25 final dividend of 2.15p per share so Advent said that if a dividend exceeding 2p is paid, their possible offer price would be reduced by by 0.15p per share).

The declared interested parties' put-up-or-shut-up deadlines are Friday 27 March for Advent, Tuesday 31 March for the Tinicum/Blackstone consortium and Wednesday 1 April for Arcline Investment Management. In each case the deadline is 5 pm.

SNR's Friday 27 February announcement of offer approaches and Advent's announcement at 12:51 that day that it's an interested party led to SNR closing up 50.5 at 308. They'd been higher that day, and on 5 March which was the day that Arcline's interest was announced they closed at 311 (and had been even higher) despite most equities having fallen since hostilities in the Middle East began on 28 February.

It's normal for potential bid target companies' share prices to fall in the period after the initial announcement of a potential bid approach until there's news that the bidder and the target have agreed a takeover price in principle or the bidder goes hostile, but SNR has had an exceptionally big fall since 5 March:

- From about 8:15 am today the spread was 275 to 276.

- At 8:18 am it was just 274.5 to 275, only about 3p above Advent's possible offer price.

- Whilst it had recovered to 277 to 278, moments ago it was 274.5 to 275.5.

With three known potential bidders, surely SNR at about 275 is a bargain with potential for a gain of more than 10% in a relatively short if there's an announcement of an intention to make a formal offer at 303.

It is of course possible that all interested parties withdraw. If this happens, SNR is likely to drop to 250 or lower.

Finally, I remind everyone that the four week put-up-or-shut-up deadline can be extended if the consent of the Takeover Panel is obtained and such consent will be given if more time is needed for the target and the predator(s) to negotiate and/or for the predator(s) to do their due diligence.

Further to my comment here at 14:36:

- Silver seems to be meeting resistance at $90. Since London opened this morning, it has hit a high of about $89.55 at 1.15 pm.

- For Gold, recent resistance is about $5200 from where it fell a week ago on Tuesday 3 March. At 1:10 pm today it managed to break through $5200 and has been as high as $5220 at 1:25 pm.

Although both silver and gold are now a bit under todays intra-day peaks, moments ago:

- EDV was £48.08, up 3.76% on yesterday's close;

- HOC was 683.5p, up 2.86%; and

- FRES was still beating EDV and HOC, and the precious metals themselves, at £37.92 up 8.1% on yesterday's close.

I remind everyone that HOC announces its results for 2025 tomorrow, Wednesday, presumably at 7 am.

Various people commenting on this chat page in the last four or five weeks (particularly CAPTAINSWAG in his comment at 08:41 today and at other times and DUCATIMAN996R in his comment at 08:12 today and at other times) have observed that:

- when the silver price falls FRES drops by much more in percentage terms;

- when the silver price recovers, FRES rises by a significantly lower amount in percentage terms; and

- when FRES recovers from recent price drops, its recovery lags that of Endeavour [EDV] and Hochschild [HOC].

Today is a big exception. A few minutes ago silver was up about 2.1% at $88.85 and gold was up about 1.38% at $5210 but EDV was up 3.8% from yesterday's close at £48.10, HOC was up 2.78% at 683p whereas FRES was beating both of them at £37.73 which is up 7.57%.

The FRES recovery today makes it the top riser on the FTSE100.

On a more general note, I agree with others who think that the start of hostilities in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East on Saturday 28 Feb'26 overshadowed the excellent FRES results for 2025 which were announced last Tuesday 3 Mar'26, and that these hostilities or the financial fallout from them have led some investors to realise profits in equities (and many will have had huge unrealised paper profits in mining companies) and/or to sell equities generally and to move into cash or other asset classes. If the prices of gold and silver continue to go up nicely but there sentiment has moved against equities generally, the return of EDV, HOC and FRES to the levels of their recent 52-week and/or all time highs will be slower than if sentiment had not turned against equities.

I currently hold FRES which I bought at £41.60 on Friday 23 January. Despite seeing FRES hit an all time high £44.70 on Monday 26 January, I decided to hold until last week's results announcement on 3 March so I got hit when silver (and the mining companies) got smashed down on 29 and 30 January. I even continued to hold when I could have got out at over £43 on Monday 2 March, the first day of trading after things kicked off on the Middle East.

Right now I'm down about 10% inclusive of transaction costs. I should have sold FRES on 2 March at about $43 and traded it after that. Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Advent International, the large private equity firm, issued an announcement via RNS at 12:51 today which caused SNR shares to spike up almost immediately by 8p from 307 to 315 and a flurry of buy transactions. Moments ago the spread was 312 to 313.

I quote they key part of Advent's announcement:

- "Advent International Limited, in its capacity as adviser to Advent International, L.P., the manager of and / or adviser to certain private equity funds ("Advent") notes the recent press speculation and confirms that it is considering a possible offer for Senior.

There can be no certainty that an offer will be made for Senior nor as to the terms on which any offer might be made."

Under the takeover rules, this announcement has triggered a put-up-or-shut-up deadline. It states that Advent must, by not later than 5.00 pm (London time) on 27 March 2026, either announce a firm intention to make an offer for SNR or announce that it does not intend to make an offer.

Right now my resources are fully deployed elsehwere. I hope to be able to exit another situation at a good profit next week. Once I'm out of that, I'll have some liquidity to buy into SNR. Meanwhile, I'll be watching it closely.

Unless another interested party shows its hand, SNR's shares are likely to dribble back a few pence whilst Advent try to negotiate a takeover price with SNR so I expect that for the next couple of weeks I'll still be able to buy in at something like the current price which is probably significantly lower than whatever would be attractive enough to SNR's directors for them to recommend to shareholders.

With acknowledgment and thanks to DAVEBOWLER who posted the link to this article on ADVFN's chat page for Hochschild at 8:49 am today, it's essential reading for everyone here BUT I must give this WARNING: the video on which this article is based and for which it provides a link might just be an AI HOAX.

The article is at:

https://thesilverindustry.substack.com/p/the-unwinding-of-jp-morgans-62-billion?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1m6y3j&triedRedirect=true

With acknowledgment and thanks to DAVEBOWLER who posted the link to this article on ADVFN's chat page for Hochschild at 8:49 am today, it's essential reading for everyone here BUT I must give this WARNING: the video on which this article is based and for which it provides a link might just be an AI HOAX.

The article is at:

https://thesilverindustry.substack.com/p/the-unwinding-of-jp-morgans-62-billion?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1m6y3j&triedRedirect=true

WARNING: The article to which I provided the link in my comment at 10:18 today might just be an AI hoax.

With acknowledgment and thanks to DAVEBOWLER who posted the link to this article on ADVFN's chat page for Hochschild at 8:49 am today, it's essential reading for everyone here. The link is:

https://thesilverindustry.substack.com/p/the-unwinding-of-jp-morgans-62-billion?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1m6y3j&triedRedirect=true

NOELSHEMPSKY -

The YouTube video mentioned in your comment here yesterday (18 February 2026) is AI and is ABSOLUTELY 100% FALSE. It's described as a "hypothetical scenario". You'd have seen this had you clicked on "more" in the text box below the "screen". The full text includes a disclaimer which says:

"⚠️ IMPORTANT CONTEXT & DISCLAIMER

This video is a hypothetical scenario / “what‑if” analysis, not a confirmed news event. As of my research, Mexico has not officially nationalized all silver mines or issued a decree exactly matching this scenario."

You and other users of the internet need to be careful not to fall into the trap of blindly accepting ABSOLUTELY FALSE videos like this one os the truth.

As others here have pointed out here, once the US traders start their working day the prices of gold and silver usually get smashed down. This happens most days, sometimes when they get to their desks at about 1 pm our time (or even an hour or so earlier) and on other occasions in mid or late afternoon as was the case yesterday. Often the gold and silver prices "miraculously" recover shortly after our markets close at 4:30 pm but with the London stock market having closed, it's too late for the share prices of the mining companies (FRES, EDV, HOC, etc) to recover. This is what happened yesterday, it's very irritating, and it leads me to believe that there's manipulation of the precious metals prices and the prices of the mining companies' shares.

Today FRES had been as high as £39.54 (up £1.54). This was at 2:20 pm. The smash-down once the US markets got going led to most of that gain being wiped out, and by 3:24 pm FRES was up just 4p (in effect unchanged) at £38.04. EDV and HOC suffered a similar fate to FRES.

The moves in FRES, EDV and HOC share prices have been tracking the precious metals prices more closely than usual this week but, unusually, from late this afternoon all three companies' share prices managed to unshackle themselves from the prices of gold and silver (which have seem to have been more volatile than usual this afternoon), and from about 3:30 pm FRES started to recover rapidly from £38.14. Although gold and silver were oscillating a lot, at the times when they were moving in an upwards direction they didn't advance by anywhere near as much as FRES after 3:30 pm.

It's good to see that FRES closed up 128p at £39.28.

CAPTAINSWAG -

I quote from your comment at 19:38 today: "I believe there will be 2 more possible periods this month to smack silver down again.".

If I remember correctly, you've already said this in at least one one of your other comments here in the last week or so.

Various options on silver expire at the end of each month so will one of the periods when COMEX and/or the London market try to smash the price of silver down be the last few trading days of February (i.e. Wednesday 25 to Friday 27 February)?

Please could you also tell us what is the other period this month when you expect them to try this?

I remind everyone here that the FRES preliminary results announcement for 2025 will be issued at 7 am on Tuesday 3 March 2026. We're all hoping for both the results and the forecast to be better than expected and that consequently there'll be an immediate significant rise in the share price as soon as the market opens at 8 am that day, but to get the full benefit of any such rise you need to be holding FRES when the market closes on Monday 2 March so if anyone chooses to take a profit in the next fortnight due to fear of a dip in the last few days of February you need remember to buy back before 4:30 pm on Monday 2 March.

Yesterday VLX closed at 440. Most of this morning it traded between 444.0 (up 4) and 445.5 (up 4.5).

Just after 12 noon I saw it was up 9.5, at 12:17 pm the spread was 458.0 to 460.5. The highest trade was 458, up 18. Moments ago the spread was 455.0 to 477.5. Volume hasn't been huge, only moderately higher than average for a "no news" day. However, there might have been a few big buys but often they don't show up in the list of trades until several hours after they took place (e.g. after that day's uncrossing trade has appeared) or even as late as the following trading day.

I don't have access to Level 2 so I don't know if there are any large buy orders waiting in the wings. So far today there haven't been any RNS's or other news, nor any "chat" on ADVFN or here on London & South East.

Does anyone know if anything to cause the sudden upwards surge has appeared in the press, on the web, or in any tipsheets today?

STRIKE 123:

Your comment here at 12:42 today said:

- "FRES could have provided some financial figures too other than production numbers in Q4.

- I think EDV provided financial figures and that tremendously helpful."

I thought it was odd that FRES didn't put any figures in their 2025 Q4 report because their 2024 Q4 production report issued on 29 Jan'2025 DID have guidance on the final 2024 figures. Someone called AUTONOMY1 made the same point here at 08:49 on 29 Jan'2026. The 2024 Q4 report had estimates for revenue, production costs, gross profit, profit from continuing operations, free cash flow and expected cash and cash equivalents. I give a bit more detail later in this comment. The 2024 Q4 report is on London & South East's RNS page for FRES at:

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/FRES/fourth-quarter-production-report-f27zqdp9a3v969d.html

The guidance on 2024 figures in the 2024 Q4 report is under the heading "ITEMS IMPACTING THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS" and began with this:

- "Ahead of the release of the Company's Full Year Results, we are providing an update on factors expected to impact several items in the financial statements, subject to the conclusion of the audit over the coming weeks."

There were two sub-headings. The first one was "Income and cash flow statements" which said that for 2024:

- Average realised gold and silver prices rose 25.3% and 21.7% vs 2023 respectively, the average realised zinc price rose 8.7% year-on-year, the average realised lead price fell 2.7% and these changes, combined with the rise in the volumes of all metals sold and lower treatment and refining charges, were expected to result revenue increasing between 25-35% vs 2023.

- Cost reduction initiatives and the positive effect of the devaluation of the Mexican peso against the US $ during the second half of 2024 were expected to have a 2-3% reduction in the consolidated adjusted production costs compared to 2023.

- Gross 2024 profit was anticipated to be US$1.2-1.3 billion, up more than 135%, and profit from continuing operations was also expected to benefit from lower administrative, corporate and exploration expenses, increasing by more than 500% on 2023 to a range of US$930-950 million in 2024.

- Free cash flow was estimated to between US$820-US$850 million, with expected cash and cash equivalents at year end being US$1.2-US$1.3 billion.

Uner a second subheading entitled "Extraordinary non-cash items", the 2024 Q4 production report referred to:

(1) The operational difficulties impacting silver production at the Sabinas mine and the initiation of a joint analysis with Peñoles to assess these difficulties and the financial situation. It said that FRES expected the 2024 book value of the Silverstream contract on its balance sheet to decrease significantly and to affect their income statement.

(2) Factors affecting the company's effective corporate income tax rate which wouldn't affect the actual tax paid.

When I checked the price via Interactive Investor at about half an hour ago FRES was in auction and the spread (which is reversed when shares are in auction) was £42.56 to £35.54.

About 5 or 10 minutes later normal trading had resumed and the spead was £37.00 to £37.06. At about that time I was actually up, but only on an intra-day basis, on my most recent purchase which was at £41.60 on Friday 23 January for the first time since last Wednesday or possibly Thursday.

I could have got out at £44 or more last Monday 26 January for a nice profit but decided to continue to hold. At the moment my plan is to hold until the 2025 full-year results announcement due on or about 2 March 2026. However, plans can change, especially when trying to trade volatile mining company shares whose prices are affected by the volatile prices of the precious metals which they mine.