Member Info for HarChris

SF, you miss the fact that this is from Dec 31st, further financing has already been agreed (Orion) albeit not signed off until the AGM.

This is looking backwards and has been dealt with since.

June 30th cash - $7m

Dec 31st cash - $10.9m

So BMN actually generated cash through H2 despite V being far lower than we've seen in 2023, a far worse exchange rate and battling Vanchem Kiln 3 issues throughout. The next cash figure in the interims is going to look very, very healthy.

Brilliant news.

Interestingly I got a lot of stick from some of the neg heads on here for continually using my own estimated cash position for the analysis I have done over the past three months. The end of year cash figure I was using was always $8-9m but now it's confirmed that we finished the year on $10.9m so if anything the finances are even better than I thought (V wasn't in profitable territory until very late December).

Certain Q1 was highly cash generative now and Q2 continues to be.

US FeV and European v205 both climbing.

Can you just put in the sin bin in perpetuity? Dump a whole load in there like I have and you won’t even know who is responding and so won’t be particularly bothered as it’ll be one of seven or eight.

I’m sure they’d all get bored pretty quickly if no one’s drawn in by what must be purposeful dimness.

Do you even have any knowledge of how load shedding is specifically affecting Bushveld? I bet you don't. Do you have insider knowledge that I don't? If so fair enough... perhaps you live in South Africa and work at Eskom and therefore you certainly are far more clued up than me.

If you're irked because I posted one of the many recent articles stating that load shedding has been better than expected recently then that says more about you than it does me.

Chips it would take you all of 5 minutes if you have normal comprehension skills to scroll down the page a bit and see that South Africa, its economy, its geopolitics etc are discussed in depth on here. We are all acutely aware of the issues the country faces as it is heavily built into the current depressed share price (see my comparisons with Largo for example which is given a massive premium to BMN).

Oh and it's load shedding not shredding, the latter has more in common with Arnold Schwarzenegger than it does mining.

'I was wondering why they hadn't yet diluted this year,'

_________________

It's not as simple as just raising cash the moment you want to, you need to get a broker to start a bookbuild and get IIs and HNWs to invest and for that you need a compelling investment case and clear strategy behind the cash injection. My guess is that Argo will have been trying to raise cash since day one of 2023 but simply don't have any willing takers at anywhere near market price.

The post period commentary should give us further clues into whether Vanchem has turned the corner once and for all and is on the path to soon be delivering 200mtV of production a month, in a sense it's the heads up for the Q2 update that'll soon follow. Usually I'd have said post period commentary and a cash figure is unlikely to cause much of a share price reaction but when you're in the situation we find ourselves in, one where the share price needs to rise 65% just to get to the 6p price Orion are taking 75 million shares at then it shouldn't take much at all to set the ball rolling on a big move north.

Throw in a positive RNS relating to belco and V prices rising committedly and that certainly would make the next few weeks very interesting indeed.

Https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/496011-why-eskoms-winter-load-shedding-is-better-than-expected.html

Yeah, it's slightly off topic but one I'm well versed on. You can see in the link below what this is going to mean, basically 1.4 million households will have to remortgage in 2023 and of those 57% are coming off sub 2% deals with virtually all the rest on deals between 2 and 2.5%. And fast forward twelve months from now and almost all mortgage holders will have seen their interest at least double but more likely having trebled. Property speculators aren't going to stick it out / enter the market when (i) there's a second home stamp duty surcharge, (ii) mortgage payments don't cover the rent and (iii) possible house price falls leaving them in negative equity.

Huge correction about to take place in real terms (30%-35%?) and a fairly large fall in nominal terms too (15-20%?) from August 2022 peak.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/howincreasesinhousingcostsimpacthouseholds/2023-01-09

Yeah, that sounds a realistic possible path ahead now. Whilst I said i'm not particularly bullish on the S&P500 really I'm talking with a slightly higher time horizon in mind... I do suspect it will continue to rise further in the short term and could certainly see it get close to 6000. And the bigger this rally becomes the higher the chance of that house of cards toppling bust following.

Starting to see talk of an even bigger i.rate hike from the BoE on Thursday of 0.5% although we have UK CPI on Wednesday which will be the main tell.

I personally don't see the S&P500 as that appealing with what is likely to still be sticky inflation (around 4-5%) for the next year or so and high interest rates that are hold around 5%. I'm focusing on good small cap companies that have been beaten down but have enough funding in place to ride out any medium term market volatility and besides that am in gold stocks and am looking to position again in some bitcoin miners as I see far better risk/return there than with the main indices, especially after the recent rally.

I've never been much of a speculative trader though so hard to say whether this AI-led tech rally (particularly NVIDIA) is going to continue and kick on or blow up in the coming months.

*As for MSTR I should add that a big chunk of their debt is in the form of convertible notes that will be converted into shares if the share price exceeds $1432 by, I think, late 2026/early 2027. Quite the climb to that from sub $300 but long enough way to be more than possible.

I'm saying the combination of having a large amount of bitcoin AND being in the top 3 miners gives you strength, flexibility and leverage beyond what other miners that only have one or the other don't have.

All MSTR has is its bitcoin and the value of that bitcoin as of today is around the same as its debt. And yet they are valued at nearly $4B? I think they get the same love and some.

Still, at just 120000t a year of global production there is absolutely no pressure on global reserves, however far out we project to. The likes of copper that is so heavily demanded with around 25 million tonnes of it produced each year does potentially face the threat of high quality reserves being depleted in the future (whether that be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years), especially as predictions are for that figure to reach 50 million tonnes by the end of the decade.

I'm certainly no mining expert but I'd assume as far as 'energy transition' metals go vanadium must be one of the commodities under the least existential stress.

I guess the main reason we disagree is because you place far less weight on BTC HODL than I do. In the situation I just described (bitcoin rallying quickly to $100K+) Mara's unrestricted HODL is worth $1.3B and is liquid, Riot's $720m AND they will both be making enormous profit on top. I just can't see how that doesn't put them out in front.

Let's say we use the Michael Saylor thesis of 'owning as much bitcoin as possible is the aim of the game' , well I'm not sure many of the miners (which include the likes of CLSK) will ever own anywhere close to 10K BTC.

The next bull creates two avenues of value appreciation - the likes of Mara, Riot, Hut8 will see their digital asset value balloon (4 times if $100k, 6 times $150k etc) and so will have immediate funding options (leverage BTC holdings or sell into higher prices) and then there's the cash generation angle, with those that have built through the bear immediately generating significant cash flows that will open up further funding options.

I still think those that are set to benefit from both will be the biggest winners (i.e Mara and Riot in particular).

It's worth the hour's watch CLSKB, especially for folk like me who aren't quite as up to date on the landscape as they perhaps should be if they are interested in the space.

Another way I look at it is like this. Miners who haven't moved earlier, got ATM offerings in place and built through the bear market are not realistically going to compete in the bull because even if bitcoin suddenly rises enough for say Argo to start making money, so will rigs and difficulty. What w'ere more likely to see in that scenario is the big names leveraging their supersized profits and market cap to expand even further pushing difficulty even higher and squeezing out those at the bottom.

If bitcoin is 100K in twelves month from today it's highly unlikely Argo would be profitable (50% rewards, difficulty, increased machine prices). I'd go as far as saying that could still potentially apply if bitcoin was 140K in twelve months time...that's how bad the situation is for them right now.

The numbers and potential here are simply impossible for most to get their heads around, they’ll need to see evidence of it becoming reality to believe it.

Let’s see if July is the start of that process.

Https://twitter.com/theminingpod/status/1670069631074091012?s=46&t=L7k3nxfxN_9xwjjIedxUrA

‘2023 is the year of dilution’ … and this is why I say there’s going to be four or five miners that absolutely dominate in a few years time, how can miners that have stayed still hash-wise compete in anyway with the mega miners that are trebling, even quadrupling their hash through this bear market - come out the other end and the bigger beasts will carve up the market with impressively low margins due to that scale and many of the others will be gone after the halving