Member Info for Boffin

I certainly like the look of the Hiiroc technology. However the deal agreed with AFC at the beginning of 2020 indicated a prototype linked Hiiroc AFC fuel cell would be prepared for evaluation the same year. Not another word has been heard about it. Also in that announcement was the phrase "Under this agreement, the two companies have agreed to enter into a Commercialisation Agreement" again no indication has been forthcoming that this was ever signed off. Then the fund raise announced by Hiiroc in Nov 2021 mentioned many companies that were supporting or in collaboration with them but there was no mention of AFC. And finally nor was there any mention in the 2001 AFC annual report of any investment made by AFC in Hiiroc nor of any progress of the mooted collaboration.

I hope its still going ahead but in this instance I can't say I find "no news" to be encouraging

"six moths"- Oh dear not trying to imply he's some kind of fly by night!

On further reflection on why no T&C's announced I suddenly feel even more optimistic.

First of all of course is he must have been given some encouraging insights as to the prospects otherwise why would someone with this track record even bother with a £14M cap company?

Slightly more subtle may be the rational for not appointing directly to an executive role with options etc. If he was given options immediately he would basically be benefiting from work that has already been done/ nearly done and due to report in the next few months and thus as it were "not on his watch". He shouldn't benefit from this as its not down to his leadership and he probably now has "insider knowledge" from the appointment process which would again be an inappropriate golden hallo. Give him 6 moths to start having an impact and a decent package with options becomes justifiable.

The reason this encourages me is that it raises the probability of some rather good drilling and assay results in the not too distant future which a newly arrived CEO couldn't justify benefitting from.

Looks OK. No mention of T&C's, salary, share options etc. which are usually disclosed for board positions. Perhaps held back until he is confirmed in an executive capacity in six months time?

As a preliminary survey it was certainly tantalising.

However local politics has already and could still interfere with its development for years. Rather like ECR's earlier ill fated involvement in the Paniai gold project in Indonesia.

Also bear in mind the caveat buried in the middle of this RNS "Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of the Mineral Resource will be converted into a Mineral Reserve."

Of course everything has to start somewhere and the initial findings aren't discouraging but at this stage my suggestion is keep our feet on the ground. Especially as to how long this may take to deliver a decent JORC reserve. The current regime has been working very hard for 5 years in the relatively law abiding, non corrupt and supportive political environment of Australia and we are still way short of having a JORC reserve.

I'm not knocking anyone's efforts but just be realistic as to the time it may take to deliver

Unfortunately I'm a scientist rather than a soothsayer. If it was the other way round I may not have made my last investment two days before the final ECR share issue. I thought, wrongly as it turned out, that having had one recent capital raise there wouldn't be another so soon afterwards. If I had delayed 48 hours I would have received nearly a further 300,000 shares for my money. So like most people I'm good at some things but less so on others.

As for whether I'm excited, well I wouldn't be here if I didn't think the risk/benefit was acceptable to me. And there in lies the rub. It may suit my view of risk, share portfolio balance and personality but could be totally inappropriate for others. That's why I never offer others an opinion on whether to invest in a share or not. That must be an individuals choice suited to their own circumstances and perspective. I try though to make sure that the facts and data are accurate and also the context- even if some don't value the history- re why ECR are where they are now.

The RNS issued on 4 Nov 2016 stated at that time there were nearly 26 Billion shares in issue! I knew it was a lot but I must admit I was shocked when I reread it. Part of the rational for the consolidation was that the market SP of below 0.01p had fallen to nearly the nominal share value and the company would have been suspended if it fell further. Also there is a requirement that the number of shares in issue times the nominal value should have an actual value of at least £50,000. This dictated that the consolidation needed to be 200:1 and that the nominal value could then be retained 0.001p. Ignore the issuance of deferred shares, it was necessary for legal reasons around the existing shares, they are essentially worthless unless the return of capital to ordinary shares reaches £1 M each and then you just may get a share of the leftovers!

The RNS is quite a long and at times technical read but the most significant summary elements are copied below

"The Company currently has 25,845,287,953 Existing Ordinary Shares, 72,674,911 Existing Deferred
Shares and 3,867,029,332 Existing B Deferred Shares in issue. The Directors consider that it is in the
best interests of the Company’s long term development as a public quoted company to have a more
manageable number of issued ordinary shares and to have a higher share price.
The Capital Reorganisation, which comprises a consolidation and sub-division of shares, has been
structured in such a way so that each of the New Ordinary Shares created pursuant to the Capital
Reorganisation shall have a nominal value of 0.001 pence, being the nominal value of the Existing
Ordinary Shares. This is achieved by a consolidation of every 200 Existing Ordinary Shares into one
Consolidated Share followed by an immediate sub-division of each Consolidated Share into one New
Ordinary Share of 0.001 pence and one New Deferred Share of 0.199 pence. "

and a bit later

"In anticipation of the Resolutions being passed by the Shareholders, the Company will, immediately
prior to the General Meeting, issue such number of additional Ordinary Shares as will result in the
total number of Ordinary Shares in issue being exactly divisible by 200. Assuming no other Ordinary
Shares are issued between the date of this Document and immediately before the General Meeting,
this will result in 47 additional Ordinary Shares being issued and will create 129,226,440 Consolidated
Shares

As an example of the share issuance issues look at the following from September 2013 where 25,000,000 shares plus matching warrants were issued at 0.2p. I don't see much prospect of them being priced at 350x that within a couple of months.

https://www.ecrminerals.com/investors-media/news-releases/2013/553-exercise-of-25m-warrants-by-fair-choice

Those on here interested in the convoluted, some may say turbulent and questionable management of the company in the somewhat distant past might take a look at the following link from 2010

https://www.ecrminerals.com/avoca-jorc-report/download-file?path=100928%2BElectrum280910outlook.pdf

It was the collapse of the Meekathara gold project in 2008, discussed in the above that led to the company being restructured and chaired by Michael Silver with Patrick Harford as MD and Stephen Clayson as a very inexperienced finance director. There were , to say the least, a number of highly questionable transactions associated especially with Silver and the Thai assets part owned at that time and Australian shell companies which led to Silver being ousted by a shareholder revolt at the 2012 AGM. I personally thought he should have been at least investigated by the |FCA.

Harford stayed on for while with Paul Johnson as chair but was soon ousted and Clayson took over as MD. Clayson in my view was an OK accountant but a very poor mining and management strategist. Huge numbers of shares were issued during his reign and the company basically ran out of cash by around 2016/2017 leading to its effective takeover by David Tang and Craig Brown with the ousting of Clayson from any executive role. He did though retain a position because of the complex ownership issues around Danglay. He finally left the company in its current form around 2 years ago when the current management reached an agreement with Codillera, the main shareholder.

You can find a load of old documents online about the company at various times over the past 12 years or so but none of them ever indicate an SP over 5p. As I said before the massive issuance of shares at various times makes back calculations as to historical market cap, shares in issue at the time and thus the SP somewhat treacherous

I don't recall it ever being anywhere near 70p or come to that even 7p. The share chart on LSE has a 10 year history and the highest it reaches is a little over 4p.

However none of that takes into account the massive consolidation that took place in I think 2017 which took the shares in issue from a few billions to tens of millions. Not taking this into account can skew a back calculation as to what a share could appear to have been worth at some point in the past.

I was around at the time that Clayson initiated the Danglay project and questioned him as to why we were going to the Philippines when all the potential tax benefits required ECR doing business in Aus. His answer basically was his wife is a Philippina and there were "reliable" family connections giving us a good deal. I wasn't a fan at the time and at the moment I think its still very uncertain just what our share of it is really worth. Anyway the rest as they say is history !

By the way the tax benefits haven't been mentioned much on here lately and as far as I am aware they remain on the books. In May 2019 ECR issued a statement on tax as follows " MGA has carried forward corporate income tax losses of A$66,203,862 (approximately £35.5million) in respect of historical losses which are available for carry forward."
At a corporate tax rate of 19% that is worth £7.1M ie over 40% of our current market cap! (at current exchange rates) But of course first we need to make some profit!

Ammonia requires high pressure storage containers, essentially the same as used for LPG. They are heavy and require somewhat more care in changeover from one cylinder to another. A methanol tank is no different to a petrol/diesel tank and can easily be topped up as required making it basically the same to operate as a diesel genset.

Hi Haggis I agree that was what was projected when the S membrane was first announced based on running on Hydrogen. However scale up from bench scale test cells may not necessarily be linear. What they have actually achieved both for Hydrogen or running in "hybrid" mode has yet to be confirmed. Thats why I want to know the broad brush technical specifications of the equipment being provided to Acciona. It really sets a general benchmark of scale, efficiency and operating parameters both for now and future developments

Hi Southerhay. Yes I get the comparison ratios but none of that tells us for example the output of the unit being supplied to Acciona. Is it 10Kw? 50Kw/ 200Kw? What size container is it designed for ? Does that include any necessary cracker or battery buffering? Its the first "hybrid" and its the sort of info thats not just nice for us shareholders to know as an indicator of where we are but of great interest to any potential customers. I really can't see any harm in sharing such broad brush detail.

it would have been nice to get some technical details eg anticipated Power output, physical size of the whole system, fuel/energy conversion efficiency etc.

Boffin being a half glass full type there is another possible reason for delay that is I realise is perhaps down to my optimism.

It could be that they have some very good results but they want to double check to ensure they don't overegg the pudding as it were. We know that the gold seen so far indicates that it is very nuggety in distribution . The effects of this can be extremes of finds ie nothing because the drill missed the nugget or high because we got lucky and hit a decent sized one.
To avoid being accused at a later date of misinforming the market any responsible management would want to make sure that a high result is truly representative of what is in the ground over a larger sample area.

Just an idea though, we just have to be patient to find out. But I do agree a poor result would almost certainly have to be disclosed promptly and you would certainly want decent results before discussing a JV

Probably Ben Brewerton from FTI PR consulting who has been named as a contact on a number of recent RNS's. eg 16/08/2021

There are quite a few methods of synthesising methanol but all of them use hydrogen plus either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. It all boils down to whether the primary source of the energy to drive the synthesis is green or not. If it is then since the carbon component just goes round in a circle of conversion to fuel then turned back to CO2 and then back to fuel again it doesn't add to the global total of CO2. Its a closed loop.
Its also one of the "hidden" issues for ammonia. Whilst ammonia at the point of use obviously doesn't emit carbon in any way as it doesn't contain any. However the vast majority of ammonia is today synthesised using natural gas and those processes currently do emit CO2. OK they can in principle be "greened up" at a price but thats going to take time and a lot of capital.
I raise this not to "knock" ammonia as a potential fuel , in principal I like it. I just want to illustrate the point that its necessary to go back to the fundamental energy and conversion processes which underpin any fuel production and not just look at the point of use if you want to be sure its actually overall clean and green.

Interesting press release I just came across re a venture to develop lightweight ammonia crackers to feed fuel cells primarily for aviation and marine transport.

https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/news/news/press-release-joining-forces-deliver-world-leading-decarbonisation-technology

At last the more influential press is starting to get the message out

https://www.economist.com/business/a-lack-of-chargers-could-stall-the-electric-vehicle-revolution/21806663