Member Info for Dav3J

@Endion, OK, thanks for clarifying. Personally I would have still put it in an RNS - the US Government showing an interest in working with an AIM-listed company is no small news.

From recollection the previous plan was to have results by November - be interesting to see if some major investment were to follow a successful demonstration of the technology.

@coffeecups I might be being dense here, but I can't ascertain anything from the lack of clarity on the grant. What is this money going towards? Is it just development and improvements to the Eskom demonstrator? Is it to develop another battery to USTDA preferences? Is it to develop US supply chain options for a new or existing battery design? This is presumably known by both the USTDA and BE (I doubt this is a blank cheque), so would it hurt to tell us what the focus is?

Appreciate this is an old thread by now but I've only just had a chance to catch up after a busy couple of days.

Is the tone of this response not a little dismissive, even arrogant? Sure, we're a £250m company, but then again 2 weeks ago we were a £300m+ company. When we are making profit in the tens of millions per year, half a million is still not an insignificant bump up in terms of income. It is also clearly a grant that is tied to something strategic that will define the focus of the business for the immediate future, and is therefore surely of interest and importance to shareholders?

Anyone thinking we may be reaching the bottom limit of a Wave 4?

I am becoming increasingly convinced that something is happening with Bushveld Energy. We've just got a $500k development grant off the yanks, Eskom and the ZA government are making lots of noise with regards to battery storage and moving away from coal and nuclear. Just a bit of this filtering through as released news and progression of BE's business plan would be just the shot in the arm we could do with to tide us over till the H1 results come in, Sojitz, Mokopane and Brits, etc. I have already made it clear that I think our grant was fully deserving of an RNS and we shouldn't just be reading about it on Twitter. But I feel like something big is due, and soon.

Very big spread in visible trades so far - bid and ask have diverged after a big 100k buy. Suggests there is some illiquidity in the market today. Any with Lvl 2 access able to provide some insight?

From Friday only just showing. 150 grands worth!

This should have been released as an RNS by now. A picture of Mikhail signing the document is now in the public domain, so there should be a clear idea of what this is being used towards. A little bit of good news, even if comparatively small in the whole Bushveld portfolio (at present) would be welcome after the blip in the Q2 BV report. It may also hint at a formal business model for BE before this is fully realised and released.

Rumour, speculation and even the odd leak are one thing. Institutional knowledge of regulatory news announcements before they are released is insider knowledge and is completely illegal.

Any reason why we have not had an RNS about this yet? I noticed that the value of the grant was not disclosed in any of the articles I read so this is not fully public knowledge yet.

Wow. Had to google that. This is enormous news, surely?

Agree wholeheartedly with everything you've written Daisan. There are some very obvious mistakes the board have made here with regards to shareholder communication that must be improved upon, despite the positives contained in this RNS. I mentioned this not long ago - if we want to start attracting big institutional investors, we need to be a lot more professional when it comes to updating the market. Slip ups like this do us no favours.

Knuttie - Not sure what you mean by "barking up the wrong tree". Yes, the operational updates are not mandated, yes, they didn't stick a firm schedule on it, however they were also a month later than we all expected (based on previous reporting), and it only made an appearance the day after they responded to shareholders who were asking them when this update was due to arrive. I don't want to attribute their actions to any kind of malice; the alternative then is that it is naivity from the BoD. I would rather they deliver bad news and issues affecting production volumes as soon as they know about it.

While trying to remain optimistic I have concerns over the way this was handled and timed with regards to shareholder communications. I hope the board were not trying to sit on this and hope to ride it out with no one querying the lack of a Q2 report all the way up to the publication of the H1 results. This wasn't being held back in order for a bumper RNS chock-full of good news, in fact rather the opposite, there are a few compounding issues that will reduce the 2018 output. A valuable lesson for FM and the board methinks.

cindercone - I'll take on board and subscribe to your optimism, I have only been on board since May. I fear I may have laboured the point a little too much as we've had a troublemaker crawl out from under a rock almost on cue. This will be my last posting on the subject.

Looking forward to the H1 results - I will be arriving back from my holiday around then so it will be nice to come back to some good news, and of course something to offset my spends on the old Vinho Collapso.

cindercone - It is more the absence of news that will affect my investment. A delayed report (and let us be honest, to the very rough schedule that the BoD have stuck to, this is a little late in arriving) attracts those trying to scaremonger and drive the SP down. I hasten to add I am not one of these, I am confident in this company's future and the real value we should see attached to the SP once H1 results materialise (of course this means that I shouldn't really be concerned with such short term wobbles). However, to make this step up we will need to attract serious institutional investors, who will be far more demanding than us PIs when it comes to timely reporting and updates.

In the Q1 update, scheduling for the expansion phases were briefly detailed. Phase 2 expansion was successfully completed to schedule and reported on in the 28th June RNS. One detail that could be holding up the release of the Q2 update could therefore be confirmation of the Phase 3 plans and scheduling - this was listed as being in the planning stages in the Q1 update. This is justifiably big news that I could understand being bundled in with the Q2 operational update for impact.

cindercone - while you were addressing nvh (and I certainly don't share his crushing pessimism), I don't agree that warrants have any place in being associated with a potential Q2 update, the same as buying out Sojitz shouldn't. The updates are operational, not financial - a simple statement of what is happening at the plant, and what was dug out of the ground and processed is all that is needed. There don't even need to be any financials involved (we can always work out that from our own calculations anyway). Buying out a stakeholder, or warrants being cleared have nothing to do with what happens from an operational perspective at Vametco.

I am not twitchy, worried, pessimistic, or annoyed at the BoD. I just feel that they ought to stick to the approximate timescales for operational reporting they have committed to voluntarily. I am sure that they would expect the same of the Operational Management at Vametco. The result of not doing so is questions being asked by investors as to why this has not happened, which of course are very likely be benign and not anything particularly concerning.

Alfa - Thanks for the response. Would we expect to see a similar overhang and selling down of Sojitz's position after any acquisition, or given the current cash flows do you think we would prefer a cash transaction (if such a deal can even be done)?

And of course congratulations/commiserations on your upcoming nuptials!

Alfa - I appreciate I have not been here long so don't have any knowledge of the impact of historical RNSs. I would say though that with our SP now at 3 times what it was after the acquisition of the majority stake in Vametco, our soon-to-be (I almost said imminent!) move into the AIM100, and our position as one of just three (?) primary Vanadium producers in the world gives us far greater exposure now. Any Vametco news is going to have a huge impact on our SP.

Sanchez - maybe not the right choice of word, but there are plenty of people asking why we haven't seen the update yet, and we have seen the share price drift recently in the absence of news. Investors are a flighty bunch sometimes. I am confident in the future of this company but would still like to see them stick to the rough timings they have committed themselves to.