Member Info for esduk

Great stuff, seems I was actually pretty close with my estimation of total grant size for us, though I got to it by assuming a larger overall grant and a lower share that would come to Hypromag / Mkango. Good to see both businesses front and centre of this initiative and continuing our already strong relationship with JLR.

JLR are a great partner to team up with again. The giga factory that is also being partly funded by the DRIVE programme will produce batteries domestically so that JLR are still able to export to the US without the additional tariffs. I wonder whether this is also a factor in them being keen on domestic supply chains for other components like motors.

Agree with Claude that the feasibility study is likely to be £250-500k, which is around the level I had expected before this morning's RNS. Interested to know if this feasibility study is going to be standalone (concentrating just on just electric motors) or packaged as part of the wider feasibility study into the expansion to 1ktpa at Tyseley.

Interesting that Claude is picking up the potential for the German matched funding as part of its read of this RNS. It's a good point and an open question in my mind about how far the original German matched (at 1.5x) funding goes. Will have a look into it in more detail when I get a chance later, but it would be great if so.

A total of 9.1m traded today, with more likely to be delayed reported tomorrow, that is outstanding volume on a non RNS day. I see that Will has posted about Hannam's research note on LinkedIn. Come on Will, time to get that grant RNS out.

Yeh that was sad, felt for him. Had expected Young to push on and win ahead of Rory but the pressure in the last round, particularly on the back 9, is immense. Rosey had it in his control for a time there, but but that same pressure told around Amen corner. Just glad Scottie had such a poor second round...

Perhaps even the Masters, which I've just about recovered from watching (a lot of Irish whiskey was drunk last night). Go on Rors!

Magic, I'm not a car guy thankfully (for my bank balance). Over on the Greatland board they like to talk about all the sports cars that they have bought / plan to buy with their profits. Mine will eventually (hopefully) be spent on early retirement and lots of travel and experiences, including big sporting events around the world that I've yet to see.

Yep, 8.8m traded (so fare reported). Crazy volume and they did the dirty by letting in 2 x 100k buys and the 500k buy right before / at the bell without moving the ask up....

I think we are on here.

Maybe it's his trades that were cancelled?? Haha

Sorry, as I don't see the strangled cat's messages, I'm not sure whether you are asking that question to him or me?

I see two of the 250k sells from earlier today have been cancelled. Good clean transparent trading fun...

Indeed Kaeren. I think 33-35p was the best risk / reward buy-in price here for around a year here and so I finally told the friends (who had kept nagging me to tell them the identity of the rare earth share that had made me so much money) about the company and advised a buy in, and several did buy in.

It's normally against my rules to give tips to friends and family for AIM shares, as they don't follow the companies closely, aren't on chat boards like LSE and don't have my risk tolerance, and I have been burned in the past. But I made an exception here as that 33-35p buy-in price was so asymmetric to the upside (even if the placing did really hack me off).

We're on for our highest volume day since 14th October, when we hit 72p intraday (which I consider our proper ATH, as opposed to the fake one at 81p).

Yep, 250k at 41.5p, to go with another one from an hour earlier. SP has held up well considering and there are still loads of big buys too, including of 175k and 125k around the same time.

Bod, to be clear I take it with a pinch of salt. But I have my own calculations / valuations for each constituent part of Mkango and Hannam's aren't too far away from them, despite their assumption errors. I don't think we are expecting a placing anytime soon, so I'm not worried there, and I understand the bias, but it's good to have someone else do a bottom up valuation that can be scrutinised and which I can use as a comparison to my numbers.

Yep, there seems to have been a big dump just after 1pm, when we had 41p on bid and 43p on the ask, I'm sure we'll see it turn up later today / tomorrow. Then MM's all over the place. Currently 5.75m traded (which will be a lot higher once the delayed ones have been reported), and true bid / ask spread is 40.3p / 40.8p.

Have had a detailed read of the valuation section of Hannam's research note. In general I think they have done a good job and reflected fair discounts to arrive at their overall valuation of £1.444bn, or £2.40 a share on a fully diluted basis. A couple of errors or wrong assumptions I would point out though:

They assume that we need to spend an extra $10.9m of capex on Germany to get to 350tpa, and then again another $10.9m to expand to 700tpa. We know that this is incorrect. We have already secured the money to get to the 350tpa as part of the placing, and it wasn't $10.9m that was needed (it was £3.95m, which also covered the feasibility study for the expansion to 750tpa). The plan is also to expand to 750tpa not 700tpa, as that is the maximum we are permitted for.

On Tyseley, they have assumed that it costs us $10.9m to expand to 350tpa and that we later expand by a further 1,000tpa to 1.35tpa, and have used the Hypromag USA capital cost of $134.4m for their cost estimate for the 1ktpa expansion. We know that all we need to do to expand to 350tpa is buy out the Uni of Birmingham, as the equipment to run at 350tpa is already commissioned and operating, so that $10.9m is incorrect, and the buy out is likely to be a lot lower, with us likely having raised the money for it through the placing in any case. We also know that the expansion is to 1ktpa, not adding an extra 1ktpa, so that is incorrect. The capital costs of $134.4m are also vastly overstated imo as we have an existing site and it would be a case of adding equipment to existing operations.

So while the analysis is comprehensive and I largely agree with it, they could have done with fact checking some of their erroneous assumptions, which overstate the capex for UK and German plants and get the total production capacity wrong.

Some very whacky action going on on L2, massive volume above 5m now and the MM's are jumping all over the place.

Looking like 42p ask won't be around for long based on L2 movements. Up 6.5% on a day where the general market is struggling is a great sign. This is definitely starting to remind me of our last post placing run up back in October last year. We've had well over 30m shares traded since the placing news!

I'm sure Bonker will oblige when he's got the time. Looks like 40p provided no real resistance this time around. Next stop needs to get back into the 50-60p trading zone, before pushing through former highs in the low 70's when we get the news we are all waiting for.

4m traded by 12.30, relentless!

Yeh, you just have to pretend that you are a professional investor to be eligible for their research... If people are short on time, I recommend skipping to their valuation section on page 15.

Jimmy, that is certainly a risk, and alongside the placing, is the reason we are not in the 60's right now imo. The biggest direct impact for us would be the timing and / or valuation of MKAR SPAC listing. In a worst case liquidity event scenario we may need to delay the listing, or if the listing were to go ahead we may be looking at a lower valuation upon market listing. But even at a $200m (as opposed to $400m) valuation for our share of MKAR, we are looking at 42p a share for our MKAR stake alone. Given the joint NPV of over $1.1bn for Songwe and Pulawy at conservative pricing assumptions, $200m would be very low. So I really don't see the downside from these prices.