The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Indeed. When these outbreaks happen the number of cases tends to be wildly understated and the death rate wildly overstated simply because the authorities do not have a handle on the situation. It will be some while before the actual figures become apparent. The early evidence is that this latest strain of coronavirus spreads more easily than the other, recent examples but the death rate appears lower. Complacency, however, will be as little use as panic.
Zerohedge. The comments are always good for a laugh. If you ever wondered how anyone like Donald Trump got into power I suggest reading Zerohedge. You will never believe anything again, including Zerohedge of course.
I agree Sanchez599. Continued rises in Vanadium prices combined with strong production will provide upward pressure on the share price with or without news from BE. I don't recall many orders from BE in 2018 and yet the share price did ok on the back of rising Vanadium prices.
I believe that we are looking for more than one step in production here.
The first one is as a result of the equipment purchase made in H1 2019 which resulted in the uotick in July to 28 or 29k tonnes of ore (depending on which of the bits of the RNS you believe. That puts annual production at a rate of 17k oz if maintained.
The second is lifting the rate to 40-60k tonnes per month on the back of the current investment. This should be achieved at the same time as grade improving to over 2g/t.
The next uplift will be on the back of reaching capacity at the plant (800-850k tonnes per year) with grade reaching the average for the declared reserves (>3g/t).
The longer term will see production reaching 100k oz with a slight increase in plant processing capacity and then towards 200k oz if they follow through with their plans to expand capacity significantly on the back of cash flows/further funding.
The assets are large enough to support much greater production if you add in Teren Sai (I would say 300-400k is per annum is possible) but this would take considerably more investment.
Whether PIs get to see the fruits of this is another matter but they could easily have taken the company private very cheaply should they have desired. I think that their end game is somewhat different.
Whilst contributory, I am not sure that substitution by Ferroniobium was the primary cause of the price drop as I believe that demand still increased for Vanadium during 2019. This suggests that the surprise element was actually the ability of the Chinese to respond to demand so swiftly with increased production. Production that, in all likelihood, is either currently being wound down or has already disappeared given the current Vanadium price environment.
It takes time to change sentiment in a share or market. One off figures can stimulate brief interest but for sustained interest the market requires a consistent trend. As such, I wouldn't rule out that production increases won't ultimately lead to higher prices, but I do suspect that this will require time and the support of other factors. These include the Vanadium price and VRFB sales. It actually wouldn't take an enormous amount of the latter to have a material impact on Vanadium consumption as the raw material is a large component of a VRFB.
"All hot air"? Come on! Exceeding production for the year, falling debt (net and gross) and an improving VAT position (finally) are not "hot air" but fact. An estimate that the company will have net cash is hardly a radical extrapolation either, so far from "hot air".
The share price has been improving for some time so it is not a surprise that there is a touch of selling once the news was released. Judging the RNS on one day's trading (where it finished marginally higher despite what is stated on this site) is short sighted.
They have been mining lower grade ore for some time and adding it to the stockpiles. They then draw off the stockpile as and when. This has become a very stable producer and I would not expect much more than the 84k oz stated for next year. They do not need to 'go for ounces' with debt decreasing rapidly and due to be paid off this year so they will focus on predictability and ensuring that the lower grade ore is mined profitably whilst the gold price is high (I think that it is likely to go higher in the next few years).
The hedge is likely to be a bit of a drag now. It was important to hedge some production to ensure that the debt repayments could be made. However, the size of the hedge was increased a fair amount at a time when it seemed unnecessary such that it became a bet that the gold price would fall.
The FAR IPO was appallingly managed with the initial price being way too high. I am not sure why anyone would have bought at that level or even close to it. The price now is more attractive but I suspect that it has further to go given the fact that they are looking for additional funding with some via equity. I actually think that it would be a simple way for BMN to add production with little expenditure but the focus is clearly more on adding VRFB capability.
This is very interesting indeed. It has been said by some of the less positive posters that the energy storage development will not go ahead because no loans would be made to Eskom. This seems to confirm that this is definitely going ahead now.
The next step is for at least some of this to be awarded to BE. The major advantage of the BE story is beneficiation which other battery storage technologies will struggle to match. Despite this I do not expect it to be a 'done deal'. It would not surprise me if the ultimate solution was a combination of technologies.
Normally the kind of odd number sell we saw last night would represent a final climax and we should see more understandable trading today. One caveat to that is that we have had more than one sizable, odd trade lately so someone may be obfuscating!
Whilst I don't rule it out, we have seen sizable trades over the last couple of days and these have not been reflected in a change in the REMX holding. I think it more likely that we are seeing a largish seller. How large we should find out soon.