Member Info for HarChris

As for Argo, fair play, that’s about the best you could ask for at the moment… problem is they just have nowhere left to turn unless Bitcoin and it’s bull run gets a move on…

I reckon we’re talking a matter of months left of cash runway, up to the halving max, and I don’t see there being any funding options left available to them at this time.

We’re getting very close to bull run or bust.

‘ Then Shishir comes up with a million £s out of the blue 2 days after releasing the finals results.’

What a strange comment. ‘Out of blue’ refers to them selling ~$1.1m of graphite for $1m, offering the discount in order to deal with the working capital bottleneck that otherwise would have required an immediate placing or loan at a far poorer rate.

You’ll notice there’s been no funding rns since whilst the company confirms via Twitter and other mediums that the ramp up is in full swing so there’s every reason to expect the q2 and q3 targets to be achieved without additional funding necessary.

A little more patience for the recovery to start. I’m hoping for the update to land next week with BAT having already sold all their shares.

Exactly. They didn’t raise because they didn’t need to raise, not for this ramp up. And to grow further they need more funding than what a £30m mcap would afford them so it’s a moot point.

What management chose to do after q1 results was quickly address the liquidity issue in order to calm the market and add weight to their assurances that they won’t raise down at these levels. They did that with the $1m prepayment. It just didn’t quell the selling for two main reasons:

(i) the ever increasing risk off nature of the markets

(ii) most importantly BAT’s forced selling.

That’s a sudden change in tone from you…

Shishir made it crystal clear that now that (as in August, at 30p) they’re so close to becoming a cash generative company and reaching a major milestone he wasn’t interesting in diluting far below what he considers fair value

He has told each of us personally that whilst the market has lost faith after q1 that interest will return when they put out the figures proving just how much leaner TGR is than the rest of its graphite peers ex China. Then they will look at debt financing until the share price is at a level he’s comfortable diluting at.

As for it going even lower in the meantime, well, if BAT are still selling that’s just unfortunate.

Can we at least critique after that first set of numbers is released in the coming weeks? For now there’s

This is incomparable to HZM - they delayed their production til late 2024 earliest and announced they need hundreds of millions more funding (at least, no actual exact figure given)

TGR on the other hand simply missed their madly ambitious Q1 target and instead laid out a more gradual path to 2000T a month production which we are told will be reached during Q3 now. TGR aren’t even needing funding, they are ramping up with the modest resources they have.

HZM has plummeted because news is terrible, TGR has plummeted because disappointing news coincided with BAT needing cash immediately and when it becomes public knowledge that a distressed seller is in town buying stops.

They are all but done now and news here is due imminently so the chances of a sharp snap back rise by the day.

This new Mara strategy is strange to say the least. It will pay off enormously though if Bitcoin does fail to move post-halving, just think of the carnage that we’ll see, with miners switching off and going to the ground in their droves and those still operating slowly clawing back their monthly numbers (immediate 50% drop but steadily increasing back up as difficulty plummets). Not to mention how cheap it will be to add hash in that circumstance…

We’re only six months away from that halving, that above scenario is looking more and more likely now.

You had a video call today Gallmat, with Shishir and Puruvi?

Which ‘math’ told you that the share price couldn’t go below 9p? Never heard of such equations…

I do agree with that slightly. If TGR prove they can ramp up production to close to the 30kt capacity without any additional cash resources then this sort of valuation will never be seen again. If they can’t, well, they’ll only need a small amount of cash to tied themselves over but we know what Mr Market is like right now…

As for BAT let’s not forget that TGR got the acquisition away at a far higher share price… those 12 million shares came to just under £6m… TGR acquired assets at an opportune time that they simply would not be able to pull off now, at this time.

At some point in the future when they can fully develop the Mozambique assets it will be baked into the valuation and the share price will be multiples of what it it today.

Well it’s looking more and more likely they’ll sll their entire allocation so that’s 1.51% of shares which comes out as ~1.6m shares. That should give them such cash runway and a fair bit of breathing space.

What are we thinking after today? Now under 1m shares remaining?

There’s a reason we are where we are, because despite all the cash sitting in the coffers there was absolutely no confidence in the management to make something of it with an expectation that it would slowly be frittered away over four or five years.

Now there is, or there at least should be a growing confidence following the Yourgene acquisition but markets are terrible right now, there won’t be much new money entering and any new money will be looking at hundreds of relatively cheap companies in which to choose from.

The share price isn’t going to move prior to performance improving (besides court case in our favour to a big degree) unless the market improves dramatically / i.rates come right down.

So don’t buy because there’s cash, buy because you think there’s a highly profitable debt-free business in the making and if you’re right over the next twelve - eighteen months you’ll be a lot wealthier than you are now.

Haha you’re definitely describing me in that don’t wait for $5 at $7 comment, I do that and tend to allow myself two times to back out before buying on the third drop below my initial planned buy in price - miss out most times but I sleep easier.

Ha yeah, I took a handful at just over $8 with the plan to add a few more in the unlikely event it gets close to $7… not so unlikely now.

What on earth’s going on with Mara?

About a week ago over a couple of posts I shared my thoughts on what we were likely to see from BAT… I argued that they’d absolutely hate to be selling at the current TGR price but with their own valuation having fallen so low I suspect they’ll sell a good portion of the shares they currently have to see them well into Q1 2024 and then sit on the rest in the hope that either fortunes turn for themselves or for Tirupati.

Roughly 3.3m shares sold is more than I expected and should come out at £600k ish which gives them cash runway well into 2024 and likely means we won’t see any further selling til the share price is multiples of its current level.

Now for TGR to release a positive Q2 update over the coming weeks and the breaks are off.

Personally I suspect Argo will still struggle to pull off that much of a raise and will still inevitably struggle given a bitcoin bull run post-halving but to say there isn't a chance that things fall their way with the company's share price and outlook improving dramatically would be wrong of me and misleading.

If you mean cash generated debt reduction for Argo from a jump in bitcoin price then no there's absolutely no scenario in which that is realistic, especially as we are half a year from the next halving.

Is there a scenario where the bitcoin price rises, sentiment returns to the mining space in spades, the argo share price trebles and then £25m is raised through a placing to reduce debt / fund expansion to attempt to offset the loss in revenue from the halving? Yes there is.

No such thing as a floor on AIM.

I'm not overly convinced the comparison is fair... STX traded at/below 8p for most of 2023, only going above that price in late July through to the Q2 update. That recent elevated price was based on shareholders assumption of better finances than what was the reality so it's hardly surprising that to attract the necessary investment a fair bit of a discount was necessary relative to the recently increased share price.

The actual number of shares is minuscule anyway. 62m shares from the equity raise + a small fraction more expected from the placing (which won't be fully subscribed as holders add now instead below 8p) vs 294m at the last raise/open offer.

Funding this time around is majority non dilutive which suggests confidence that they are nearing cash break even and beyond.

In answer to your question CD Argo actually peaked in late February 2021 before the new all time bitcoin high that came a few months later and well before a new high again in November. The market cap in late Feb reached £1B, give or take.