Member Info for HarChris

It was from Chika via email to a couple of holders, so should be reliable.

Yeah Argo's only chance of a turnaround is a rally in bitcoin that far exceeds difficulty, which is what happens during a bull run. The sorts of moves we are seeing now don't cut it because within a few weeks difficulty has more or less caught up and the margins are once again squeezed.

About ten days since the offer was announced, Yourgene share price failing to quite reach the offer price, novacyt share price firming and starting to rise this morning.

Early signs that the market is confident that is going to get over the line?

Whilst it doesn't really mean all that much by itself the bitcoin figure given each month feels like the slow crawl to insolvency:

February - 101

March - 85

April - 83

May - 50

June - 40

No the value in the fundamentals tab on this site is wrong. From the full year accounts recently posted we have:

Total assets = $267.6m Total liabilities = $162

Net assets = $105.6m

Number of shares outstanding = 1,287,818,281

NAV per share therefore = $105.6m / 1.288b = $0.082 = 6.35p

If anyone wants to inform LSE and c&p the above working I'm sure they'll change it as they have the rest of the info correct.

Besides being a little better to judge when the share price has got away from itself and is well overpriced director dealings don't tell you all that much. I could give you countless examples to prove their uselessness but Audioboom is my favourite for the sheer indefatigable commitment to average down again and again and again from Michael Tobin!

https://www.lse.co.uk/DirectorsDeals.html?shareprice=BOOM&share=Audioboom-Grp

I'm sure the net debt position is the biggest reason for the share price being where it is but the build up of inventory is never factored into that equation. If BMN were to simply increase sales and sell all that inventory and break even otherwise we'd be looking at that net position at least halving and possibly a little more than that which goes to show how misleading that metric can be when you have acquired a stockpile like we have here.

Every reason to believe so… It’s as near to 100% that we’ll see a record quarter but if that 6100t - 6500t guidance is met then we have lift off.

Amazing moves, only hold Mara myself and never did load up heavy but profit is profit!

So much for Argo getting those monthly updates out earlier...

Alastair made it very clear at the AGM that running P1a and P1b concurrently is a very atypical process and one they were not interested in. Perhaps it's because, being in the position he is and all, he knows there will be no issue whatsoever getting the funding they need to progress through P1b over the next twelve months and hence has no reason whatsoever to try and cut corners? Perhaps he knows better than you what route will lead to the best long term outcome rather than worrying about small share price movements driven by traders in the interim?

It's too simple to say everyone will just sell out on a positive DHSC resolution. At what price? What if NCYT are compensated £40m and all costs covered leaving them with £125m (ex Yourgene acquisition) - some will sell on the news but many more will buy, with that uncertainty lifted, all the way up to a market cap at least a little higher than the net cash position (that's £1.80+ given ^^^ scenario).

It also greatly depends on what happens between now and next June... if novacyt have integrated in this proposed acquisition, if revenues from their own portfolio have begun substantially picking up, if there's a constant flow of news and activity then there will be interest in a debt free company with so much cash security that is clearly making progress and growing and has had the major risk hanging over them eliminated.

‘In defence of Chris’

I suspect the attacks on me have increased because they know they are all filtered and so makes it look like I’ve got no comeback.

You weren’t the first.

For the share price to go to zero BMN would have to fail to turn a profit over the next few years which I think is unlikely given the vanadium demand projections and economies of scale we are going to see soon. In that instance BMN would be unable to meet certain Orion obligations and so I’d expect a collateralised debt package at that point against one of the plants which would then buy BMN a good while longer for the vanadium price dynamics / operations to improve to begin repaying the debt. If still the economics were against them they’d relinquish whatever the deal was collaterised against and would have to dilute and streamline the business.

The share price still wouldn’t be zero but continue the cycle and eventually BMN would go bust.

On the other side of the coin a short spike in the vanadium price would see the debt wiped out in a flash.

But aren’t most of those you listed being rewarded for curtailing with cash incentives whilst Argo with its lack of PPA isn’t ?

And either way the likes of Riot and Mara can handle it what with huge cash piles and large Bitcoin holdings - Argo can’t.

Or perhaps they are individuals who keep getting banned and coming back on with a new username, immediately steering the conversation away from company specific discussion towards name calling and targeted aggression only to be fairly swiftly banned with the whole sorry cycle continuing over.

Just one perspective.

We have to bear in mind that with each incremental but modest jump in bitcoin more miners are switched back on whilst Argo's peers continue to ramp up their own operational hash. As Argo hasn't the funding to increase their own computing power then any gains are quickly dissolved in a matter of weeks/months.

A move like we've seen from $26k to $30k will not be enough to change the direction of travel here, Argo needs something for more dramatic than that.

Well it all depends on just how those finances are actually looking. They continually do their best to obscure as much as possible, to delay revealing them as much as possible but the trend is clear - the last time they ran out of cash they had a major asset to flog to keep them in business but this time around they won't so it really is a race against time for bitcoin to pick up.

If it hasn't happened by the time the half year report is out in August/September then those financials are likely to send the share price crashing towards zero.

I'm also rather optimistic when it comes to this year's production and cost guidance. When initially given in the full year results on 31st January load shedding in South Africa was at it's worst and BMN were still having enormous problems at Vanchem (we later found out production was just 121mtV for Jan and Feb COMBINED vs 141mtV in March and already 117mtV by 24th April). Recently we were informed that load shedding was now having no effect on Vanchem's operations whatsoever.

On the cost front from that same update was this text:

'Costs reflect the national 18.65% electricity price increase announced by Eskom, South Africa's national utility, coming into effect from 1 April 2023, as well as the impact of load shedding on production.'

So from this we can be confident that cost inflation has very much been embedded into the cost guidance but not the significant weakening of the Rand, which for guidance purposes was set at 16.6R, a level we haven't seen seen for one single minute in 2023. YTD we're looking at about 10% cost improvements with that increasing by the day as the dollar holds steady above 18.5Zar.

Whilst the debt is high currently once the Orion CLN refinancing goes through the risk will reduce substantially.

Most importantly it shifts almost all of it to the long term, with just 25% of the new $27m loan needing to be repaid over the next 24 months + interest repayments on the loan and new CLN and small continual repayments on the PFA. This gives BMN a clear 24 months to generate cash in what is a low capex period, with any strength in V over that time being immediately crystallised into cash whilst the CLN set at just 8p there's a high chance that $13.5m will be paid off via shares.

Of course if in two years time if V has failed to rise as expected AND/OR operations at Vanchem have failed to improve with cost pressures continuing then that debt will once again come into focus and we won't have seen the return we're all after but anything closer to where BMN expect to be in mid 2025, a profitable 5000mtV+ producer with AISC nearer to $30/kgV, a 200MWh electrolyte producer and a significant partner in Cellcube with VRFB growth two years on, that's sitting on a significant cash pile then the current market cap of just £43m will be a thing of the past.