Member Info for gsdsitgs

I noticed you mentioning it earlier Greenmachine67, you deserve the credit for that. Sounds like "ResourceEU" it was originally supposed to be a fund but now it could also include grants.

I get the feeling that big part of the "25 critical projects" should probably include lithium. Maybe graphite and manganese. There aren't really any exciting rare earth resources in the EU so I have no idea what exactly they are planning except maybe a partnership with Australia or Ukraine...

If you look at the recent price action of US-listed stocks like CRML or LAC or UAMY, I can imagine something similar happening in long neglected EU junior miners.

One thing Skelly is right about is that the grant money is not something sent to EMH right now (well, it's not even sent to EMH but to Geomet) and everything reimbursed through it will have to be tendered and well documented.

Good thing is that this is exactly the type of process that CEZ has lots of experience with. They have an entire department dealing with this s***

The current government approved the grant and the new government (2025-2029 iirc) also supports it. Babis (the future PM) hated the project and hated any involvement with any foreign company years ago. Now he hasn't even mentioned lithium once and it seems like he delegated both the political and practical aspect of it to his industry minister Havlicek. This guy is very active on social media, even streams weekly Q&A in Czech for everyone on Youtube.

I transcribed one of Havlicek's videos and he considers it a sure thing that the mining will start and he likes the project. If anyone would cancel it, it could only be CEZ. 360M EUR is a lot of money but afaik absolutely no one opposed this grant, it's just government throwing money at stuff. At the same time some sort of bizarre project of sending a Czech astronaut to the ISS for 100M EUR was approved, that raised more eyebrows. And the biggest related project is CEZ's plan of a new nuclear power plant which is supposed to cost 17B+ EUR and some people say it may cost 40B+ EUR, more than even CEZ entire marketcap.

tl;dr: if Geomet manages to submit the EIA on time, there is no one and nothing actively blocking the project. CEZ will be happy to pivot some employees from coal to lithium. The government's involvement with CEZ will mostly deal with the new nuclear power plant. And local NIMBY opposition cannot do anything at this stage.

It's impossible to define a "fair" price right now because no one knows the exact financing situation (equity raised via secondary offering, debt, grants). Market still doesn't believe EMH after years of promises and bad communication.

It makes no sense to compare EMH with KOD. KOD has a non-integraded project in Mali where just last month it looked like the capital city will be controlled (or at least blockaded) by Al Qaeda terrorists. Instead of grants KOD has a government looking for bribes and random tax changes.

EMH is more similar to LAC (Thacker Pass), one big difference is that Trump is way better stock pumper than KC.

Almost 9 billion CZK, there was a mistake in the article originally which has been corrected since according to the comments section

Https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/ekonomika-stat-da-az-88-miliardy-na-novy-zavod-zpracovani-lithia-v-prunerove-292668

The state will provide up to CZK 8.8 billion for the construction of a new lithium processing plant in Prunéřov in the Chomutov region. The subsidy for Geomet, which is part of the CEZ Group, was approved on Thursday by the government of Petr Fiala (ODS). The support will be intended exclusively for investment in the factory, especially the acquisition of technology. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MPO) told CTK. The total cost of building the plant should be over CZK 25 billion. According to the company, the entire lithium mining and processing project will directly create 2,000 jobs and another 2,000 jobs in the supply chain.

I was searching for some EU funds info and found this one approved just today: https://seekingalpha.com/news/4524849-onsemi-wins-eu-approval-for-518m-grant-to-build-sic-chip-plant-in-czech

Unrelated but the largest Czech grant ever, so it's not like EMH has to face adversities from the EU or Czechia (like Rio had to in Serbia). The ball has always been in EMH's court.

It's nice to see all these details in a government tenders database. Makes me wonder why EMH never communicated any of this and never bothered to make a single PR about the current progress. The only thing I've ever heard from EMH were delays. We're left with local newspapers, government database, CEZ spokesperson and the politicians in the new government.

Finally some positivity and if the financing is done in a reasonable way (debt, EU grants, equity raise that is timed well and after the DFS), it may not be a total disaster for the EMH shareholders. Even hydroxide prices reaching almost $13k today.

Pavel Kymla is a different person, Geomet has Pavel Cmelik afaik

Geomet submitted the tender at the end of October but it seems to be managed by CEZ, the contact person is someone from CEZ responsible for "public procurement".

At least something actually happened in October. The tender probably wouldn't have been submitted if the technical part of the DFS wasn't ready and wasn't informally acknowledged by CEZ.

In terms of the funding, I understand that up to 1.6B CZK (77M USD) could be covered by the EU JTF grants to Geomet in multiple batches and could cover all phases of the project (theoretically of course).

The decision was mostly made based on huge local opposition, Serbian people protesting against it (and the government) in the streets of the local town and in the capital. Noone really ever protested against EMH in Czechia. Also Rio recently bought Arcadium Lithium so they may think it's enough.

Serbia has a free trade agreement with the EU so there would be no extra duties for lithium from Serbia exported to a German car maker afaik and Rio Tinto can fund their projects on their own, they issue billions worth of USD bonds at 5% p.a.

Https://balkangreenenergynews.com/rio-tinto-halts-lithium-mining-project-jadar-in-serbia/

Not surprising, just ending the misery in Serbia. Some projects in Spain and Portugal look similarly bad.

If lithium hydroxide prices recover from $10K to at least $15K, EMH will probably have the best European lithium project out of them all (which is not a compliment because they're all tragic). At least energy prices in the EU dropped in the last year and there's the political support.

Even if the DFS is published, it feels like a disappointment after all the years. There's still an equity financing needed and no one knows how big it will be. The CAPEX costs for projects like LAC in the US are crazy so I'd be surprised if the costs for EMH remain the same as in the PFS.

Jimb2 you may be right about 100% of what you wrote about the lithium market but it does not help EMH at all. There will be no trading volume and no buyers as long as the CEO of the company is someone who does not communicate and appears incompetent.

The long term holders have money stuck in it and no one can realistically sell or buy the stock with any size. LAC in Thacker Pass may not be a perfect project but look what the share price can do when someone simply communicates clearly and with intention. That is something we can only dream of with KC and CEZ.

The only good thing about 2025 is that this China-US trade war may force Europe to wake up and actually do something. If there's political support from someone like the Czech minister of industry (who seems to have insider information and supports it) and financial support from CEZ (which may soon 100% owned by the Czech government), this combined support may overshadow even all the delays and the incompetence of KC.

So here we have this Czech dude who runs his company, was a minister in Babis government (actually a double minister at the same time), he can deal with CEZ and the local energy markets and he's able to tell us more about EMH than KC.

What exactly is KC doing? It's depressing that a politician seems more competent than the CEO which the shareholders hoped will deliver a successful project.

Out of all the junior lithium projects in Europe, EMH is the best one and most progress has been made but it's like picking the prettiest turd in the toilet.

It would've been better to just let the Chinese mine lithium, make the batteries and cars and be a holiday destination for them. As apparently, no one in the EU is able to push anything forward. And the EMH management is not helping.

Today's volume is barely $300K which is nothing. A single person can move this 20% up or down with a market order.

If you look at the ASX in Australia, everything is going up, rare earths, silver, gold, lithium, one company even pivoted from making CRM software and now claims they focus on "rare earths".

Today's buyer may not even know DFS should be coming soon, it can be just someone making a market-wide bet into every micro cap in a sexy theme with "Metals" in the name.

ZNWD going up 15% and EMH barely any volume...

If EU makes some sort of Trump-style nationalization, it will be one of the 100+ year old German/French industrials or automotives with strong unions and a lot of employees such as Volkswagen.

Not sure why exactly this way up 10% on LSE but ASX today doesn't seem to care.

This article is not behind a paywall and says pretty much the same thing: https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/domaci-babis-spd-a-stacilo-maji-stejny-plan-zestatnit-cez-stalo-by-to-asi-200-miliard-40519222

Any changes in CEZ (spinoff, nationalization) will definitely delay everything including EMH project. In a few months, I'd expect CEZ will be very scared of what can happen with them and they will just default to waiting mode.

They are a $32B company that signed a $18B new nuclear power plant deal this year. If the EMH DFS is good enough, the easiest way out of this misery is a buyout and CEZ has absolutely zero issues of doing a buyout at a "fair price" if there is political support for it.

What I expect to happen in the first months after the elections is a minority buyout proposal of the CEZ shares. Noone really cares about EMH that much besides EMH shareholders. Babis has probably already forgotten lithium exists, he just used it as a populist campaign against another party several years ago.

@HappyLiUK '£1 upon DFS launch' would mean a 1000 % gap up (or a single day gain). I'm not even sure if this ever happened on LSE.

I'd consider a buyout at 2023 levels a relatively good scenario, anything above it is a bit delusional when I look at KC

I don't think CEZ is intentionally trying to bleed out EMH - at least intentionally. Unintentionally it may be the consequence.

CEZ is 1000 times larger by market cap, has activities in multiple areas and multiple countries, they deal with a lot of stuff every day including political pressure, threat of nationalization and a new nuclear power plant. 49% of a lithium mine would be nice to have, 100% of the mine would be also nice to have, would improve their revenue by a few percentage points. However if they don't have it, nothing really happens. If they push the project too hard, they could be accused of hidden interests or corruptions so the default solution of the CEZ CEO is to not do anything controversial (that's how he stayed the CEO for 14 years).

The person pushing it, communicating and getting stuff done should be KC. Another CEO in his position would relocate to the country and hustle every day, would own more shares and wouldn't do another 8% dilution of shareholders. He doesn't care, in some interviews he was straight up lying.