Member Info for Happyhaddock

No doubt I'll get shot down by the usual suspects for not supporting the prevailing narrative but, one of the primary reasons for quoting FOB costs is a recognition that shipping costs will vary for different customers in different locations. Until a contract is actually agreed with a particular customer nobody can know what it will cost to ship the last part of the journey to that customer.

Whether we agree an FOB, CFR or IFR contract will impact legally upon exactly how shipping and other costs are covered by different invoicing, but both parties will no doubt factor these costs into negotiations about what we are paid in relation to the going commodity price at the time.... we won't be paid a CFR price if we don't agree a CFR contract.

Regardless, estimated FOB costs below $60/t leave a useful working margin to cover fluctuations and unknowns in future prices and costs and still leave us a profit that should hopefully make a worthwhile difference to a small company like UFO.

@Dip666 - very wise - I remember a quote from Warren Buffet saying that investors would make far smarter decisions if share prices were only published once a year as part of an annual report.... It would change people's horizons and expectations to those driven by company fundamentals., not short term volatility.

BB - you say ""HH returns and the SP dips..."

I've not been away, I was still posting when the SP was going up.

I said only yesterday, that despite some positive action it was too soon to tell if sentiment was actually returning to UFO or not... in that regard nothing has changed today as it is still too soon to tell.

Long term the prospects for UFO are good, short term prices on AIM go up and down. We'll have to wait a good few months to look back and see the extent to which that last few days has just been volatility in an ongoing period of poor sentiment, or a genuine up-tick in sentiment. Something probably far more important to short term traders than long term investors who have waited through a year of falling sentiment and improving fundamentals, so we can wait a bit longer if needed.

"1.5 p will do me HH, i'll finally be in profit after 12 months!"

Myself I've been in decent profit for a good while having initially built the bulk of my position as a very speculative gamble when the entire mkt cap was only around £2m, when we're now getting times when we are moving up by that much in a day. Clearly it is no where near as a risky now and the only unknown is how many more times this can multi-bag for me.

Well being the cautious type that I am I will say it is too soon to be sure that sentiment for UFO is finally turning, but I'm not sure what more I could be asking of it at the moment ... things aren't going crazy which is good, but the price is rising steadily a little each day. Whilst it is to be expected that this is being met by a lot of selling, the buying outweighs this meaning the price keeps nudging up.

Whilst we'll all want to see really high prices, I think I'll be happy if things can form some sort of new stable base around 1.5p and hold this for a while to truly show it is a new base and not a short term spike, then I'll be happier about moving further up again....

So whilst I've always been optimistic about UFO's long term prospects, perhaps now might just be the time to begin feeling a bit more optimistic about the short term prospects.

ECR is one of those strange companies where the actions of the BOD scream confidence and make you believe something great is just around the corner, yet whenever we get drill results the reaction is always a resigned shrug of the shoulders and a feeling they are just about enough to justify more drilling , but never enough to celebrate having found anything significant.

I'm sure at some point the markets will demand our BOD give a lot more detail about where their confidence comes from, until then we just have to recognise exploration is a slow process and trust that CB knows what he is doing; that having done this before there is actually a sound reason behind his confidence and actions.

@smiller - there's a lot of sense to what you say and from a business point of view pursuing the iron at Hanc**k is a safer starting point for a small junior like UFO to begin from , but long term I stand by the view that our silver may turn out to be where our real value lies.

Iron ore is not a commodity to excite the markets (though that doesn't mean it can't make profits), and forecasts about where it's price is heading remain conflicted with no consensus. However silver is a commodity with a fanatical following that has previously driven prices to crazy levels. We don't need to explore here all the reasons why silver bugs feel the price is not just heading a little higher but insanely higher. So whilst many of these predictions are probably over optimistic we should acknowledge even the more pessimistic forecasts from non silver bugs suggest silver prices will rise. The ~3m oz of silver remaining of the JORC at EH is a relatively trivial amount in terms of most silver mines, but the surrounding area has the potential to deliver much more. IF and and at this point it might be viewed as a big "if" it ends up delivering upwards of a hundred millions ounces but at lower grades typical of most commercial silver mines, and goes in to production when the silver price is somewhat higher then it could dwarf Han**** in term of profitability. Plus as others have said, whilst we have another iron prospect, we also have other silver prospects, so this doesn't have to be an either/or situation, more of a win/win.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the estimated economics for Hanc**k recently put out by UFO, and so I see the sense in pursuing it, but long term my eye is fixed on our silver.

well I could do my usual "lets be cautious" thing and "one swallow does not a summer make" etc etc...

but we've felt undervalued and ignored for a good while now, so it's great to finally enjoy a bit of positive action in response to a few weeks of positive news. Here's hoping it continues and attracts enough attention for a few new buyers to look our way ... UFO is a great story for those that can be bothered to read about what we have to offer.

Silver Mines Ltd Bowden's project was something I mentioned a few months back when talking about relative size/grades of different silver mines ... very much the other extreme to EH (at least as we currently know EH) that is to say EH is currently all about insanely high grades but low overall tonnage resulting in a kind of "keyhole surgery" type of mining to follow rich veins of mineralisation. Hopefully drilling over a wider area at EH will deliver the bulk quantities of lower grade silver that will turn EH into a much larger resource.

gold tends to respond to "real" interest rates, ie. the difference between inflation and nominal interest rates.

whilst inflation is goin up by more than interest rates are going up gold theoretically benefits, however it does have some stiff competition at the moment from artificially inflated main stock markets which deliver insane gains on the back of central bank interventions. As soon as institutional investors lose confidence in central banks abilities to prop up the markets gold should fly.

Well I'd mentioned a while ago that if UFO were to consider "going it alone" with our iron we may need some changes or additions to our board/management such that BBG can focus upon the geological aspects of exploration and get in others with experience of dealing with the financial and logistical aspects of becoming an operational mine.

The last few days seem to be showing that intent to diversify the strength of our management.... more mouths to feed but they should hopefully pay their way.

@PaulQ - I may be mis-remembering this but I believe Fenix sorted some sort of discounted pre-sale of the first of their iron ore to get some money in the kitty from customers so as to bridge the period of needing up front capex and getting to generating profits.

$30m cap-ex is trivial in terms of mining costs, and with expectations of re-paying this quickly may even work as a regular loan. Who knows how UFO will handle it but I wouldn't assume a JV is a must, merely an option.

Nice to see TP have since made the amendment I e-mailed them about where I believed they'd previously misquoted Fenix's operating costs through most likely applying a double currency conversion and converting from AUS$ to US$ twice, thereby arriving at a US$ operating cost much lower than Fenix themselves quoted.

Busy morning elsewhere, so only just had time to check in here.

Whilst I'm the kind of pedant that always likes more info and would have liked to see a little more of a numerical break down as to how they arrived at estimated costs of <$60/t ,such low costs are certainly very encouraging. However what impressed me most were mention of a strip ratio of 1:1 which is superb, something which presumably contributes both to the low costs and to the statement they see it as economically viable to extract all of the resource.

All in all better than this cautious investor was hoping for, where perhaps the only disappointment has been the so far subdued market reaction; where both volume and SP have increased but not so much as to stand out among the volatility of the last six months.

UFO certainly has been suffering a bit of neglect with some of the poorest sentiment and ugliest of boards I've seen in a while
with falling SP regardless of fundamentals. Yayay seem to be losing confidence over there but if SGZ teaches you anything , it is that minerals exploration is a slow game for the patient.

@5x5 - sorry I'm so used to pricing in kg where the rest of the market uses oz... clearly my mistake.

last few words were cut off .. larger than the metals.

I'd just like to repost something I wrote in early in 2021 either on this or another board.

Many silver investors (of which I have been one for over a decade) are noted for being, ermm, how can I put this politely, "passionate about their metal". On a near daily basis so called expert media commentators whip silver bugs in to a frenzy over the smallest price changes in silver, attributable to nothing more than trivial fluctuations in currency values rather than anything fundamental to the wider economy or the metal's supply or demand.

Statistics tell us about the past not the future. However, for those that like to make predictions the following gives us something to think about in terms of how long we may have to wait for a big move up in silver prices. Equally it may enable us to judge any future moves to identify how far they may climb and if they may be deemed to be "extraordinary" in terms of frequency, duration or magnitude.

Precious metals bull markets are rare but long lasting, there only having been two in the last fifty years where both lasted just over a decade. Some consider 2016 as the start of a possible third bull market for precious metals.

Ignoring short term volatility, silver has previously mirrored yet outperformed gold in the later stages of a bull market. This has made silver a good choice for those "late to the gold party". However the more industrial use for silver grows, the more its price may disconnect from gold.

Silver prices are noted for spiking erratically, but what does or doesn't constitute a spike is subjective. Over the last fifty years it is easy to identify at least a dozen events that could be deemed spikes. These have occurred both within bull markets and also within bear markets.

The largest of these spikes moved the price of silver up by over 400% over a 12month period at the end of the 1970's on the back of a period of excessive inflation.

On average (mean) these spikes lifted prices by over 150% though this is skewed by the one extreme spike mentioned above. The median gain on these spikes was about 100%.

The average duration of such a spike is about half a year, occurring on average every four years. Unsurprisingly they tend to be more common in bull markets and less frequent in bear markets, where the average gap between spikes in a bull market is only about two and half years. This suggests a typical bull market may experience at least two or three silver spikes before coming to an end.

Silver spiked notably between mid March 2020 and mid August 2020 where the price of silver jumped from about $330/oz to $670/oz. In other words the price roughly doubled in just under half a year, making this a "statistically ordinary" spike.

Silver miners offer leverage to price moves in the metal, and even silver explores who aren't yet producing can show some correlation. Whilst the extent of this leverage varies, the gains or losses on related equities tend to be far greater than tha

Good to hear the scoping study is due, though exactly what or how much information will be in it is yet to be seen as they can be some of the "earliest stage " broad overviews of economics rather than bankable hard data.

Nevertheless simply knowing what our BOD and their consultants consider to be "reasonable assumptions" about the future will be a big step forward in terms of making estimates about producing iron ore and putting comments about being "very competitive" in to some sort of context. It may also be a good basis on which to secure any extra funds needed to move towards a proper feasibility study and/or a chance for the company to outline what they see as their next step(s) down the road to production.