Member Info for Happyhaddock

Well as I said last time what will be really telling is the questions that are actually put to Alien.

If they are genuinely interested in addressing investor concerns they'll answer the difficult questions, if they see it merely as more marketing fluff, they will see to it that they are sheltered from the difficult questions and ensure that they are essentially spoon fed prompts to deliver more promotional spin.

If the hosts are really clever and worth what Alien are paying them they will make the latter seem like the former, but that will be a hard task if most are now going in with the cynical expectation of being duped or at least fobbed off.

Well a while ago I said I wonder if we'll see somebody new introduced to give the webinar, leading at the time to jokes about Maxine the tea lady being more likely than a new CEO.

The webinar then got postponed due to unforeseen circumstances with the optimists here suggesting that they were holding out until they had some good news to announce, so as to distract from currently poor investor sentiment and hostility.

Are any here bold enough to suggest we'll see somebody new delivering good news, or just the existing BOD in tin hats ducking awkward questions?

The problem with the RNSs was the ambiguity about exactly what circumstances the performance uplift payment does or does not become due.

There was definitely mention of a five year expiry period which would take us to late 2027, the ambiguity was over whether that only applied to reselling/disposing of the assets, or if it also applied to making the decision to mine; and if so was the decision to mine totally exempt from the performance uplift payment, or totally exempt from the expiry period and hence the payment would be due at whatever point the decision is made?

If I recall this bulletin board has gone over this before with differing interpretations and somewhat ironic arguments about whether the RNS was or was not ambiguous... where the very failure to agree on whether something was ambiguous seemed to be an answer its own right.

Ever since we've bene pushing for clarity from the BOD.

In legal terms ambiguity in a contract usually rules against the party drawing up the contract but we don't even know if the contract was ambiguous or simply the RNS summarising its terms. All we've been told by our BOD about this matter is that they have very good lawyers, implying that there is some sort of problem they are seeking to address.

The more time that goes by and the more the PR seems to talk of the future rather than the present, the more I'm inclined to think the suspicions I've occasionally voiced over the years my be true; that Hanc*ck has been hamstrung by the "performance uplift payment" to Windfield and that we are waiting out the 5year period.

I still hope I'm wrong on this, although the lack of progress may just be down to iron ore prices going the way they are.

Well, the more we come to expect exceptional results the more we set ourselves up for disappointment, but this does seem to be the gift that keeps on giving and long may it continue.

@normbeef - just a point of pedantry but you say "they are not professionals"

The definition of being a professional is "to engage in a specified activity as one's paid occupation rather than as a recreational pastime". Whilst I understand the point you are making about their efficiency and effectiveness , the problem is that WE ARE PAYING THESE PEOPLE to act on our behalf. If they wanted to do what they do in their own time for their own recreational interests away from this company then it would be of no concern to us shareholders.

The issue is not a case of not being professionals, but of so far showing no evidence of executing the professional duties we are paying them to fulfill and of being unable to hold them to account to show us what they have been doing to justify their salaries... However these are common criticisms of the BOD of almost all junior explorers right up until the day they either go bust or surprise with amazing news.

I'm not saying it will be the case here but just look back at OMI, people on it's bulletin board spent two years moaning about the CEO achieving nothing, how their amazing projects had stagnated and how he had failed to stick to any of the schedules he himself announced. However, just recently he pulled a blinder of a deal out of the hat, immediately followed by some stellar drill results and the share price went up almost four fold in a matter of weeks.

The point is we don't know what is going on behind the scenes at UFO and through frustration and/or impatience are assuming the worst. However assuming the worst is prudent with junior explorers for that is what stops you committing more than you can afford to lose in a sector that has far more losers than winners.

@yayay "in another life" as they say I've previously done work for the national railway museum and have also done illustration work for an author writing about Victorian brick making and industrial architecture.

Having spent much of my childhood in and out of old goods sheds and loco sheds, you'll not find a bigger fan of old railway buildings (never got in to train spotting but the architecture is glorious) ... aged just 16 I carried out a full survey and drew up comprehensive plans of a mid 19th century private railway station (local aristocracy) that was in danger of falling in to total dereliction. When working for English Heritage In London I also got the rare treat to go all around the Midland Hotel at St. Pancras with the conservation team when they were planning how best to renovate it.

Anyway much as nothing is happening right now with UFO I'm sure this bulletin board doesn't want to have to put up with two old f*rts reminiscing, so I'll say no more!

@yayay - I couldn't help but respond to your last post by saying maybe it says something about my attitude to timescales but the latest work commission I'm supposed to be starting as soon as the client gets the raw materials sent to me is carving some preserved mammoth ivory in to copies of some of man-kinds earliest sculpture from c. 40,000 years ago....

I guess even that far back is "current" to folk interested in geology where time really is relative.

As I've said many times before and as we all know, speculating in junior explorers is about uncertainties, probabilities and risks. You have to look beyond promotional aspirations and make judgments about the facts. Sadly, at the moment we aren't being given any new facts to judge and the markets don't like that.

The positive aspect to that is that when sentiment is so low even the most modest of positive facts can make a big difference to sentiment, the negative is that when sentiment is so low markets do tend to assume the worst from ongoing silences, where in a slow moving sector a lack of new news is pretty much the norm.

@smiller "... it's completely irrelevant to UFO at the moment."

I'd suggest you may have got your words in slightly the wrong order there and that may more accurately read as "UFO is completely irrelevant at the moment"

Hanc*ck is looking less and less viable as iron ore prices push below $100/t and futures well below $100/t, whilst Pinderi Hills is looking less and less relevant simply because our management are not focusing on it. However for return on effort I believe our non ferrous metals have always been where our BOD should be focusing attention.

I've just been trawling the website of the Office for National Statistics looking for some financial data for a report I've been writing and by chance stumbled across something unexpected; something which illustrates far better than any other means the bloated and wasteful use of tax payers money by civil servants...

I kid you not there is officially compiled data correlating the sexual orientation of the British public by choice of central heating type!

If ever there was a moment for Victor Meldrew's catch phrase then ... "I don't believe it!"

Well it is that time again when I look back on my prior predictions and offer my half yearly thoughts on the months ahead.

For several years I faced insults for suggesting that in a sector noted for delays, dilution and disappointment Hanc*ck probably wouldn't deliver revenue before 2024. Given the uncertainties I've often said I don't expect my predictions to be better than anyone else's, but because things usually take longer than expected, my first date for appraising our progress would be 2025. Similarly as volatile ore prices can periodically jeopardise junior iron-ore miner's slim profit margins, I have often said that I risk my small speculative position in UFO for the long term potential of our non-ferrous metals.

Over the years our management have kept hinting at finance deals or partners for Hanc*ck, yet the market's trust in such statements is now low. Early in 2023 Alien implied that we would begin preliminary site work at Hanc*ck as soon as native title clearance was approved. Native title cleared in late 2023, with mining permits then granted early in 2024, but having lost three CEOs over about 18months and been without one all through 2024, we are yet to sort funding or start work at Hanc*ck.

Despite this bulletin board's years of claims that Hanc*ck would deliver us an "imminent" re-rate, our share price slowly fell from 3.2p in late 2020 to a little over 0.1p in mid 2024. We now end 2024 around 0.08p which a few suggest offers a buying opportunity. However this will only be the case IF we can promptly deliver some good news, where I personally feel our non ferrous metals offer the better chance of good news.

Either way, I will repeat the same prediction that proved prescient when I offered it both at the end of 2023 and also mid 2024; that is to say that whilst some always anticipate Hanc*ck's imminent success, markets respond to the uncertainty of "no news" much as they do the certainty of "bad news". Consequently, whilst the next six months is unlikely to silence excitable talk of Hanc*ck's, potential, it is probably safer to forecast more anxious waiting for confirmed progress rather than predict trend breaking moves up in our share price.

At a broader level I have always encouraged patiently maintaining a defensive position to hedge against further macro-economic challenges, where it is hard to avoid headlines warning about current problems, future risks and the changing world order. Political leaders try to assure us that all is under control whilst simultaneously trying to kick the can far enough down the road to make it their successor's problem. I don't pretend to know how or when this will all come to an end, but it is difficult to see a positive outcome for any who aren't already prepared to survive increasing instability.

I wish every UFO shareholder as happy a new year as the current circumstances permit!

 

Well the market has spoken; possibly the grades from this latest drill hole are not what it hoped for, or the large institutional investor is not what it wanted... personally both seem like good news to me but it seems others were perhaps hoping for more, or perhaps it is just traders taking easy profits before the markets close for Christmas.

Whatever the situation share prices for small explorers have always been volatile so I'm not reading too much in to it as we are massively up on a few weeks ago, and in a few weeks time folk here will have forgotten about today's price move and be fretting about something else.

Well nobody likes to see dilution, but you always have to balance what is obtained in exchange for all the extra shares.

If I'm reading this correctly it looks as if we will effectively be wiping the slate clean in terms of the large debt and moving forward with a new major share holder, which seems a sound basis for a new start.

Well given the market's flat response it would seem that this RNS is more or less what everyone was expecting, no better , no worse.

In one sense, such expectations are testament to the quality of drill results we've been getting, looked at another way, if this is what the market now expects, it is going to be tough to impress the markets in the future.

It is true that there are always forecasts predicting lower ore prices, just as there are always forecasts predicting higher prices, but as one amusing quote put it "economic forecasts only exist to make astrology look respectable".

We can't know what the future holds, all we can do is look back at statistics for past data and wonder if old trends or averages will in any way be representative of future trends or averages. Looking back over the last 20+ years the average iron ore price has been below $90/t. The spike of the pandemic to above $230/t has somewhat skewed shorter term statistics such that the average over just the last ten years has been above $110/t, where as I've mentioned before, for four of the last ten years the average annual iron ore price has been below the $85/t op-ex costs predicted by our development study.

Make of those numbers what you will, for in a world where the purchasing power of fiat currencies is collapsing and where the "global south" is moving away from use of the dollar, nominal prices in dollar terms may not be a particularly useful measure of anything much anymore anyway.

@chilser - whilst I appreciate the vote of support you appear to have missed my point in that you are still promoting your own opinions as facts to the extent of goading and belittling others with different opinions.

Anybody that knows anything about the junior exploration sector knows that it is defined by uncertainty and delay and that management's job is to always promote the more optimistic expectations. I have no idea which targets will or won't be met, I only know that there is more sense in focusing upon RNS describing completed achievements rather than promotional aspirations and future targets.

It is factual to state that an RNS has announced a date for a visit from the state inspector and the intention is to begin trials after this visit. Beyond that folk are merely making assumptions that this visit will be a formal inspection, will be carried out on time, that the result of the visit will be positive, that a positive result will allow trials to begin immediately and that the trials will be positive and quickly lead to commercial production.

All these assumptions may turn out to be true, they may not, the mistake is to assume we have enough facts to know.

I've previously posted this across various junior explorers where even if appearing pessimistic or condescending, the warning to ignore the noise and do your own research warrants periodic repetition.

I'm always amazed at the importance folk on LSE place upon their own opinions, valuations and time frames. It is as if they don't realise that markets are moved by what the silent majority feel probable, not what a few vocal strangers on the inter-net want you to believe is possible.

Junior exploration companies can't announce new deals or great drill results every day simply because nervous folk worried about the share price want reassurance that they've backed one of the rare exceptions that will go on to make a loss making sector seem appealing. Physical exploration and administrative paper-work both progress more slowly than most can tolerate. So, unless companies are generating revenue, their periodic need to raise more funds should lead everyone to expect delays, dilution and short term price volatility from even the best projects.

In the insular world of LSE bulletin boards some dedicate much of every day to cheering on speculative equity purchases like punters at the horse racing, or to jeering at those with contrasting opinions as if they were pantomime villains. This questionable use of time, along with the impatient hype of LSE contributors who champion extreme predictions, either to the up or downside, has no influence over, and tells us little about how, the wider markets that move share prices behave

Insults and paranoid bickering about motive, honesty and understanding won't alter a lack of facts about which, if any, theory on future unknowns will eventually prevail. Nor does it move things along more quickly or increase the odds of a particular hope or fear being realised. Nevertheless, there are always some who think that others should share their conviction in extreme opinions that cannot be objectively confirmed or denied, but where hindsight usually goes on to show unrealistic expectation to have been the most common reason companies do not live up to the predictions of those frequenting bulletin boards.

The success and valuations of junior explorers often depends upon future unknowns which are largely out of their own control. If folk here associate uncertainty and doubt with fear, then they should question if their temperament is suited to such a risky sector of the market or if they have speculated with more money than they can afford to lose? Much of what impatient folk here focus their emotional energy on arguing about each day is, at best, peripheral short term noise of greater relevance to people's confirmation bias, egos and self-esteem than the company's long term prospects or progress. Only the passage of time will show who accurately forecast the timescales, risks and potential rewards of a particular project, or whose assumptions were wildly irrational.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!

@Rob - I've a relative who used to manage the finance for FTSE100 company who had to sort fundraising all the time and I've spoken to them in the past about how quickly a small junior explorer could sort an "opportunistic" fund raise.... Their opinion was that if they need to raise a lot and had to sort a marketing campaign to attract new investors it can take weeks, conversely to raise a more modest amount of money when the company is already in the news and their brokers are probably already being offered cash by investors that a dedicated team of lawyers could push the paper work through in little more than 24hrs.

I can't know, but I suspect this has come about more opportunistically based on and unexpectedly large raise in share price.

@moon "... I can’t wait"

That's unfortunate given that patience is a primary requirement of making money out of junior explorers, and that UFO has tested people's patience more than most.

Myself I can wait having been doing so for several years now.