Member Info for esduk

I'm on a jolly down to Bath to watch the rugby on Friday so won't be around for the investor presentation unfortunately. But please do ask it!

I think it's fair to say that we will win either way S&S, so nothing existential to worry about here. Cotec have already started stockpiling feedstock, but if we are looking for 3-7 plants in total then we will need to up our game here substantially (particularly if there is a price floor) e.g. entering into more supply agreements and working with big conglomerates e.g. data centre providers, to provide a circular supply loop where they give us old HDD's, we recycle them, and then supply them with new magnets for new HDD's etc. I have confidence that JT, Will and the team are all over this.

Good points, well made S&S. I would say that the main issue I see with a price floor / competition is that we may get a lot more competition for magnet scrap feedstock, which may increase our input costs. I do think we have a head-start, but if lots of money flows in as a result of the price floor, you could see big operators paying up to corner feedstock supply, potentially years before they are due to be in operation.

As I said, I don't necessarily think a floor is a bad thing for us, just not as necessary for us as it is for others, and therefore may have a mixture of benefits and drawbacks. An announcement would likely still be massive for our SP though, as it makes the Hypromag USA FID easier and will likely be looked at positively by the market, who may not understand the nuance and just be driven by the very bullish headlines.

S&S, you may be right on the White House press release / SP action yesterday afternoon front. However I'm not so sure that Hypromag would be the largest beneficiary of a price floor for magnets in the US.

We don't actually need a price floor to make large profits on our magnets, due to us being the lowest cost producer in the US. A price floor would allow a lot of other capacity to come online that wouldn't otherwise do so, and compete with our magnets. Yes our margins would be higher than theirs, but there would still be more competition for us. So while I'm not necessarily saying that it would be a negative for Hypromag, I disagree that we would be the biggest beneficiary.

Where we would benefit from a price floor is Songwe / Pulawy. A price floor would be massive for us there and would make the financing easy and profitability almost guaranteed.

I think sentiment has changed here and that is the key, particularly US investor sentiment towards Mkango. We've had our period of drift, got rid of a lot of stale bulls, and we have set a new base, from which we will launch as the pipeline of big news is released over the next few months. The geopolitical/macro environment and pricing back-drop is extremely supportive as well. I'm feeling more confident here than I ever have.

For once kat, I completely agree with you. This is about PR, which most on this board have been asking for more of. We now have an officially opened (by the minister) rare earth magnet recycling facility, producing the first RE magnets in the UK for 25 years a couple of days after the G7 Critical Minerals summit which focussed on rare earths and recycling and the tri-partite meeting between UK, South Korea and Japan. What a feather in our cap, what an advert to the US and Japan/South Korea/Canada governments and potential partners.

I also think the official opening may signal that we are able to run 100-300+ tpa now, at least that may be insinuated by the following statement:

"The Facility can recover over 400kg of rare earth alloy per batch utilising the HPMS reactor and can produce new sintered magnets from the recycled rare earth alloy at a capacity of 100 tonnes per annum on a single shift, and over 300 tonnes per annum on multiple shifts."

As others have pointed out, Nick Mann's quote is also very important:

"Expansion of equipment and knowledge keeps pushing the boundaries of what we are achieving and this commercial scale facility at Tyseley is no exception, with results achieved in our commercial runs already exceeding results at the pilot facility."

So 100-300+ tpa capacity, already at higher performance than the pilot plant. This is really encouraging and is a great signal for both the German plant commissioning and the roll out in the US.

Remember the closing mid price yesterday was 49.5p, so the reaction to this "news that we already had" has been good. I am looking forward to seeing what the reaction is in the US. Remember, this is just the start of what promises to be a very news rich period.

If the last few days are anything to go by, perhaps it will be US open at 2.30pm when the real fireworks start…

54 bid / 55 ask now, motoring!

Sorry the 52 bid on L2 was not an MM, so actually opening at 50 bid and 53 ask.

Looks like we open up, at 52/53.

That’s fantastic SG, exactly what we need to get the word out there to the generalist investor about this company. They say they can do 100 tpa in a single shift (over 300 if they do three shifts). I wonder if this signals that they have successfully ramped up to full capacity or if this is just describing what eventually capacity will be. Also loving the daily rises in Neodymium, the Chinese are obviously just letting it run now.

Do you trade full time Bonker, in between the golf?

Mine is a family of contrasts, with one quiet, tee total, religious grandfather who was a good man and a TB doctor and the other who was the life and soul, a gambler, mild alcoholic, massive smoker (80 a day style) who gambled all his, his family’s and his company’s money away (he was a financial comptroller for a lemonade company) in the 1950’s.

One a pillar of the community, one a pariah. One lived until 91 and died peacefully surrounded by family, the other died of lung cancer when my Dad was 7 and left them in poverty and ostracised from the very conservative community in Northern Ireland at the time. I can definitely see a fair bit of each man in me and I try to learn from their examples, good and bad. The one thing they shared was that they went bald by their early 20’s and I certainly inherited that from them!

Fantastic post Finton, thanks. Love the humour at the end!

Sounds quite similar to the direction I'm thinking of heading in. I did economics and finance at uni, worked in infra and corporate finance, have a great interest in geopolitics (as scary as it is right now) and history, and got the gambling gene from my grandad which seems to mean that I am open to taking what would be for most people pretty scary risks. I think all of this has led me to Mkango and commodity company investing more generally. I know that I am a gambler, so I need to act accordingly and give myself some pretty strong guard rails. This is one of the reasons I will avoid day trading, leverage or options trading, I wouldn't trust myself with it, even if I did learn how to do it well.

My wife does career and professional development coaching as a side hustle and if I've learned one thing from her it's (if possible) try to follow the things that light you up, that genuinely interest you, and everything else will be easier as a result. My career doesn't really do that for me and never really has done. I've enjoyed parts of it, but that's probably been more related to the team / people / social side of things, which is less of a factor when you have the responsibility of a young family.

I now spend quite a lot of my spare time watching and reading about commodities and anything related, and I'm not just doing it because I want to make money (I obviously do), but also because I am genuinely interested in it. I want to take advantage of what I (like you) think is a once in a generation commodities super cycle, and I guess if it comes to fruition it will both allow me to retire, and also give me something do with the first few years of my retirement. I'm 41, and don't play golf, so I'm under no illusions that I would retire next year (if everything goes very well) and be happy just sitting around the house. I'll need some purpose, outside of parenting. Part of that may come from trying to give something back to the community, but I reckon part time investing would definitely help, particularly if the going is good!

Currently $1.02 or 17% up, on 160k total volume. Don't get me wrong, I'll be very happy if they start us higher than the closing AIM bid/ask spread would suggest. It's just that in the normal course of things we would expect to start at 49.5p, which would be presented as a drop from the 51.6p closing price.

For me positive SP action from around 2.30pm onwards on AIM and TSX open is about American buying, which is happening on both indexes, though obviously in much greater volume on AIM.

Well done Finton, that's quite an achievement. I'm considering continuing on investing as a sort of part time thing once I'm no longer working. I would set aside most of the money and would only invest with a pot that I would be willing to lose / didn't need for living / retirement.

I like the idea of commodities value investing, rather than day trading or options which would be too stressful for me. I like the mix of geopolitics, project risk and macroeconomics that come with commodities and have learned that with a better understanding of commodity cycles than I had when I started, you can make contrarian bets in various undervalued sectors and with a bit of luck and patience (2-5 years) you can make some serious money.

What kind of trading / investing are you doing now, how have you found the transition and have you got any lessons learned that you would share with someone considering following in your footsteps?

I don't think you understand my post strangler. The recorded closing price is 51.6p because of the UT. This doesn't change the bid or the ask at close and usually the bid and ask at open (absent news) matches those at close the previous day. So the mid price / SP starts the day at 49.5p (in between the bid and ask), which is 2.1p / c.4% lower than the closing price of 51.6p. It's all just smoke and mirrors really, and nothing to worry about in actuality, but it will likely appear as if we are down on open.

Sounds like you've got a much bigger portfolio than me velcro, I would have more in copper if I could afford to. I don't own one bond, one fund, one ETF, one index or one non-commodity based stock. It was a moon shot for retirement at the end of this year. At the beginning of last year that looked impossible. Now it's looking possible and perhaps even probable if Mkango delivers on even just some of its plans.

UT at 51.60p... maybe good for the technicals but will open down tomorrow.

Ah, just knew it, they dropped the bid back to 48p in the last minute before close. Usual games... Still a fantastically positive day and closed well above those moving averages. Looks like afternoons are going to be fun again...