Member Info for esduk

I can currently sell 0.5m shares above the advertised bid price. I think that tells you all you need to know here...

I think we've had the same seller(s) for quite a while now and they don't appear to be finished yet. Whether this is just a long term holder like Stewart Newton or Michael Geoghegan offloading, or something more nefarious i.e. an entity trying to keep us range bound, I have no idea. Frustrating, but the re-rate will happen eventually.

Delayed trades from open just in, looks like someone with a fairly weak constitution sold 140k (so far reported) in fives batches. Time to take advantage of others' weakness.

Marex also appear not to have turned up today, so we're currently down to 6 MM's.

standard ****** from mm's, will take any opportunity. wars, as nasty as they are, are likely to be good for rare earth demand and create further bifurcation of supply chains. can you imagine how much replenishment of stockpiles will be needed after this round? ignore the mm engineered noise. lse website playing up this morning too.

Early indications are positive as we’re up 4% in early ASX trading.

Nice discussion over the weekend. Very much agree with your point around China cost escalation, which was actually something I first heard about from Rick Rule about a year ago and one of the many reasons I am so bullish on rare earth pricing. I see Brazil as a major player in the RE mining space going forward and Rick is invested in some of the big Brazilian developers.

Main risks for me currently are two-fold:

Major problems with US markets delaying or reducing the value of the MKAR SPAC. A further delay would put downward pressure on share price, unless the team deliver on other catalysts. With rare earth prices where they are a valuation lower than $400m looks highly unlikely imo, even if we get major market turmoil. There is currently a rotation to hard assets and with war and bifurcated supply chains I think there would still be a strong bid for MKAR shares, regardless of the wider market.

The other is the roll out of HPMS tech at commercial scale and associated offtaker demand. While the noises from management about demand for Tyseley product have been positive we haven’t seen hard evidence yet around 1) levels of production i.e. are we still at 2 tonnes per month or have we ramped up to 100tpa equivalent or are we somewhere in between 2) sales volumes and identity of customers - it may be that the identity of the customers needs to be / will be kept confidential for the time being and we have heard rumours about some big names, but nothing I have seen has confirmed them. The delay to German commissioning, while understandable for a complex plant, is a bit of a concern given that it is modular and we should have learned lessons around Tyseley construction and commissioning, which actually experienced substantial delays.

Every business has risks and it’s why we’re still able to buy these shares so cheap. But I think ours are well understood and well managed and have confidence that we will be trading above £2 by the end of the year once they have been fully addressed.

I think someone said previously that companies often don’t provide additional details on further development of their patented processes because they don’t want to give competitors the blue print to copy them. If we just needed the original patent to stop others from using hydrogen decrepitation as a method, then it wouldn’t necessarily be in our interest to keep updating the patent with more detail on how our design developed over the subsequent years. This isn’t like a drug patent with a particular chemical composition, it’s a highly complex process, which in 2011 was far from being proven at commercial scale.

Remember that it is the University of Birmingham’s patent rather than Hypromag’s, who are the exclusive licensee. The University will no doubt have continued to add to their IP and it may be that Hypromag have also been doing this for separate processes.

The general patent is around separation of magnet scrap using hydrogen decrepitation, so it seems that it would prevent anyone else using this overall method until 2032 at the earliest. But as discussed on here when we first covered this topic, there are many things a company can do to protect their IP post patent expiry, particularly for such a complicated process. Look how long it took us to develop HPMS at commercial scale, how much trial and error there must have been and how many different complex processes needed to be perfected. This is not something that will be easily solved by others, particularly when we have world leading authorities on the subject matter in our team.

Think Jimzi had some good insights when we last discussed this.

Good spot Imbtfol. I found the info around our January 2032 patent expiry on the USPTO website by doing some sleuthing a good while ago (pre AI…) so it’s good to see the company being clearer about it, because it’s an obvious question for any potential investors and not something that was clear in any of the company communications before now.

It is one of the reasons I am so confident here. By time of expiry we will have a minimum of 3 US plants, but likely more than this. We will have locked down feedstock and offtake agreements, and we will have developed a load of other IP around the original patented process that will make it very difficult for anyone to replicate what we do in the years following patent expiry. The original patent was filed in 2011 and the University of Birmingham and Hypromag have been continuing to work on this process and related processes for 15 years since that time, which gives me a lot of confidence that they have a plan to maintain their competitive edge.

Thanks Floyd. So the CrownProptech EGM vote to extend the deadline is scheduled for 9th March. Anything else worth noting from the most recent filings that I’ve missed?

Yes, it would appear to be mad not to at least strongly consider adding a third UK/Europe recycling plant at Pulawy, I’m sure it’s very much a part of management’s thinking.

Velcro, a pity we didn’t talk about it sooner. Could have recommended it in the middle of the ridiculous short attack hit job debacle when it dropped back in the 12’s/13’s in September, during which I doubled down. It’s just had an ATH close today just below 30.

It is still the most shorted silver stock on the planet at over 9% of issued shares short equivalent, down from 18% in September. So there is still a long way to run and Boumadine is a monster, which is not currently valued at all by the market, but which Benoit is bringing forward as it can now be easily funded from Zgounder cashflow alone and doesn’t require the EBRD loan they have already been offered. They are also listing on the Nasdaq in Q2 and had $130m in cash at end September, which is likely to be more like $200m+ at end of December 2025. 2026 operating cashflow at $75 silver is likely to be over $350m, or nearly $0.5bn at current spot silver price.

Finally, Benoit answers my emails personally, which I find astounding for a CEO of a $3bn+ market cap company. Imo it will do five bags by the time Boumadine opens, but quite probably sooner. I recommend watching Benoit’s latest video with Jimmy Connor and considering it if we do get a correction in silver price and you are able to get a good entry.

Haha, you won’t get a sensible sounding answer from me on that front Drantley. I’m over two thirds in Mkango across my SIPP and ISA and I’ve got some in Cotec for good measure. But I’ve been invested here for almost 10 years, with an average in the 6’s, so not necessarily a comparable for others to look at.

As I’ve said previously on here, this is my once in a lifetime company and I’m here to the end game. I have some targets at which I will slice a decent percentage of my current holding but we have a long way to go before reaching the first of these. I have no doubt that as long as Mkango exists as an entity, I will maintain a sizeable shareholding.

Velcro, FYI it’s 18 mins 20 seconds into the latest Rule Classroom plus video that Rick (who knows the management) talks about Vizsla / Mexico.

Fwiw Aya Gold and Silver is my highest conviction silver miner, and it’s in Morocco, which in my view is one of the premier mining jurisdictions in the world, though it is not recognised as such by the market (particularly US investors) so trades at a discount as a result.

Sorry for off topic, please ignore if not interested in silver!

Hey Velcro, good question. I sold immediately on hearing the news (like a few mins after market open) when the stock was down about 8% from ATH, which I think was the morning that preceded the silver crashed of over 30%, so was pretty lucky that I got out before the big drop from the combo of security news and silver crash. I was around 65% up from my average buy in price, so was very lucky.

It wasn’t my biggest or highest conviction silver holding and my thinking was that this situation would take time to be resolved either way and that my capital could be employed in the meantime elsewhere in the precious metals bull market (or on Mkango and copper miners) rather than sitting either treading water (best case) or losing lots of value (higher likelihood case).

I also did some more research on local cartel issues for the rest of my Mexican miners (with the help of AI) and either sold or reduced exposure on each based on the particular outcome. Rick Rule’s latest interview in the Rule Classroom plus on YouTube covers his views. It sounds like Vizsla were paying off the cartel, but that the cartel was split into two factions and the faction they weren’t paying kidnapped and killed 10 Vizsla employees, which is completely tragic.

Panuco is one of the best undeveloped silver projects on the planet, so it will eventually get built by someone, whether or not that is Vizsla I don’t know. If you have the stomach for lots of risk and a long timeframe then it could be a good speculation at this price, but there are so many good opportunities out there that I prefer to deploy my limited non MKA funds elsewhere.

Yes, I am expecting a high of at least $200 before all is said and done before a long term price settling in the triple digits. Most of my silver miners back to or near ATH’s, despite silver bing $30 or 25% off its high. Expecting a fun few months on all fronts! Greedy I know…

UT at 56p. It is all very smoke and mirrors at the moment. Let's see if some delayed reported trades turn up later to justify the price action.

Cheers bonker. 56.8p paid for 13k shares while advertised ask is 56p, what's all that about..?

Another great episode of live from the vault with Andrew Maguire was released today. Looks like silver is breaking above its 50% fib retracement at $92.90 right now and gold is ready to head back and test ATH's in the next week or two.