Member Info for Blanka

Agreed buybacks will help, especially at the right price. Continues to be a highly cash generative business so buybacks may well continue after the current announced tranches. Divi yield already pretty good so agree with your funds comment.

HY update from the CEO & CFO on 12th becomes very important in determining where the price goes next (ignoring things like the Iran war).

I feel the drop is somewhat overdone based on the trading statement. Revenue and profit in line with expectations against the current backdrop is pretty good. So see this as a discounted buying opportunity.

Biggest challenge is competing successfully in the crowed Vape/Oral nic markets. But lets be clear the majority of profit for this business comes from traditional tobacco products it is performing well in those.

In the short-med term the impact will be minimal. Most consumers of their tobacco brands are older. Younger consumers tend towards vape and nicotine pouches.

UK makes up around 9% of IMBs operating profit so a small volume decline there should not have a significant effect on the group profits

A thorough analysis ML and I'm aligned with your thinking on development pathway.

Pitfield is huge and projects like this won't happen overnight, investors who put money into mining stocks need to understand that the investment doesn't scale in the same way as say tech stocks do. I try (sometimes unsuccessfully when things drop like a stone) to remind myself of the fundamentals that brought me here in the first place. In this case they are as good as they ever were and I'm prepared to wait.

One thing I have been mulling over is the possibility of bringing extra partners (JVs etc) in. Losing some of the asset to do that is always a concern to me but sometime a necessary evil. It got me thinking - in Pitfield's case wouldn't an obvious option be to push a JV partner into offering on the MI's 30% that we currently don't own? If I recall correctly (and please correct me if wrong) this is owned by a handful of Geo's. Even offering them equivalent to current share price for that would be over £100m, a pretty big pay day for a handful of people. Big mining could then come with financing and lend technical support to scaling the project without impacting the 70% EEE currently controls.

Don't get me wrong I would much rather EEE acquire 100% ownership of the project although that would likely mean dilution in the short term to be able to afford the payment to M.I holders.

P.S. It's nice to see this board returning to what it should be - sensible and reasoned discussion about the investment.

Also, I particularly like this line from within the MRE RNS:

"There has been some limited testwork in the underlying fresh bedrock zone and this will continue in subsequent testwork programmes as the flowsheet details start to be confirmed. It is likely that only small modification to the process flowsheet would be required in order to treat the fresh bedrock ore, this assumption will be tested as the project progresses. "

If this is accurate it has big implications for the value of the resource, after considering the 50m of weathered Cap, because deeper drilling indicates the titanium grades continue and are open at depth in the bedrock, to a minimum of 200m.

So this fact makes the contained and easily extractable ore even more mind blowing in scale.

I agree with your calcs Kongolasse.

at $2,500 value in the ground would be $137B.

Big question is what value should be attached to that resource at this stage?

Inferred/Indicated/Measured resources typically get assigned different percentages based on the risk/uncertainty associated with them.

Gold for example companies resource valuations are often in the 1-2% value in the ground for lower certainty inferred resources (used to also be $100/oz when gold was under $2,000/oz but now probably higher).

Not sure how this maps to Titanium companies but lets take the lowest case of 1% value in ground that should still give us a value of £1.4B, which I am sure we can all agree makes EEE very undervalued currently.

......It's only 2 sleeps until October.

The much anticipated MRE could land anytime from then, my guess is earlier in the month due to it originally being expected in September (several months ago), but ultimately it takes as long as it takes.

Lets not forget that Empire are going for number one, but most of that (certainly the measured part) will be just Thomas prospect.

Equally impressive, from a grades and strike perspective, is Cosgrove (slightly more complex Geology). Not enough drilling has happened there to allow it to fall into the measured resource category. It's a similar story for the ore sitting below 100m at both prospects and across the rest of the licence area. So they will either be included under indicated, inferred or not at all.

My point is, we all expect a huge reserve will be reported but this is just floor level one in terms of the potential size. That is why the long term prospects are so good for investors here and, one assumes, why majors will at some point have to get involved.

What is your point. This is a subsidiary company of EEE with a loan. That's it. Greg is a Director. Not surprising since he is also a director of EEE and to be a sub would need one member of EEE to be a Director. The loan has existed for years (pre 2019), likely relates to previous activity by the Group.

Yep, best of luck here.

True value will out the short term swings.

Smurfff,

2. Yes appreciate sentiment and volume is high now and it would be sensible if you need cash, my point tho was if you are sitting on a globally significant MRE you would wait until that news was out and the SP shoots up to raise.

3. £15m was a number bounded around some months ago. Agreed, may be way too low, was just trying to illustrate dilution would be relatively small but we would gain an operating (revenue generating capacity).

4. Was not suggesting debt was a good option, simply showing there are other ways to access cash compared to simply issuing more shares. If MRE is as good as anticipated I expect companies to be falling over themselves to invest or JV.

I think the question people should be asking is why a poster should suddenly turn up here when the share price is around 5 year highs proclaiming to be providing information to save shareholders? Right before the company is about to deliver a hugely important MRE?

All I've seen are some fairly tenuous links to some Companies that one of the Directors was involved in over 20 years ago. And don't even start on where Empire was 10-15 years ago, completely different asset, completely different management - irrelevant.

And for those worried about a fundraise:

1. This is currently a resource exploration company with no revenue, raises is how the sector operates.

2. Why would they do that before MRE?

3. Even if they did, what was the funding requirement for pilot plant? £15m? At £400m market cap that's a drop in the ocean, 3 or 4% dilution to move the project forward.

4. There are plenty of other ways to finance, issue debt, bank loans, Government Grants, JV partners.

Looks more like some orchestrated shorting to me. Hope the MRE lands early on Monday and we can smell the burn.

100% 5x5.

I think if we are going to get drilling results before MRE it will come in the next week or so (what are we 5-6 weeks after drilling completing?).

If not we'll get it all as part of the MRE at some point in September.....

Either way exciting 6 weeks coming. Some might say company making weeks.

Which is exactly what Nick said earlier this week HAMA was looking at targeting.

Ducks lining up nicely

Yep buy when others are selling.

Especially when nothing has really changed since yesterday.

We await board appointments, details of Qatari involvement and strategy update in September.

I'm here because of the individuals involved. There's been lots of reference to SWC and how it went up, which was impressive but that didn't have any of the big hitters this has (and will) have, was listed on AQUIS, and run by a web/media designer.

So imagine what a company with someone at the helm with decades of banking and treasury experience, an advisory board which includes an award winning hugely respected economist, backed by Middle East money and institutions can do.....

Its hilarious, so many bed wetter's. Anyone who regularly invests in AIM shares will be used to this sort of volatility - I know this one is main market.

He's basically said in the interview other coins may be considered in the future, that doesn't mean he's going out and buying a load of Tether tomorrow! Simply that we are looking at an emerging asset class.

Someone posted a great interview the other day (well worth watching) with Dr Laffer and Cathie Wood, from about a year ago. It compares real estate in the 1980's to Bitcoin now as an emerging asset class that really took off when pension funds got involved...... echo's what Nick said in the interview this morning.

Fascinating journey ahead on this one. Look forward to hearing about the future advisory board appointments.

Rick, RNS 3rd July.

100% Dusty.

Just a FUDster.

He's a finance guy why on earth would he be giving interviews of a technical/geology nature when that is the MD's specialism.

Can't think of an AIM explorer/miner I've been involved in where it falls to the FD to give such interviews.

Thanks Ageos. Appreciate your technical insight.

It's going to be an exciting few months at Empire Towers.

Hi Ageos,

Do you think there is anything that can be read into the fact they drilled more AC holes (140 vs 124) than anticipated? Or is it fairly normal that drilling plans adjust in real time so they would just be reacting to the geology? The average depts of the AC holes seem to be less than planned (45m vs 54m).

I note the total area drilled increased from 11sq km to 13.5 sq km. Also from the drill collar location diagram they seem to have stepped out further to the west than in the original plan. May be nothing but it's a 20% increase in area covered.

....And many thanks to Manlord for his continued well thought through and detailed posts.

OD3OD, aside from the fact we are still in the re-rate zone and we are triggering the point that certain small cap focused funds may be buying in I think you've got to look at the news flow that will drive the SP.

MRE is only expected end of Q3. I agree with Manlord this will drive the real re-rate if size of resource confirmed.

What other news in the short term?

- Production of marketing sample products from the bulk sampling. If this is done with the same level of purity on a larger scale basis helps de-risk the final product further.

- Results of 10,700m drilling campaign. Confirmation of continuation of grade and strike de-risks MRE further.

- Details of discussions with off take partners or interest from Majors - speculative at this stage but could come out of the blue.

- Confirmation of government grants and backing for the project (more likely after MRE in my view).

- Something leftfield we are not expecting.....?