Member Info for HarChris

It’s worth remembering that BMN merely has to sell the inventory and breakeven to MORE than cover the November CLN. Sure it won’t be easy to sell an extra 1000mtV in 2023 but the balance sheet is starting to look very healthy now as V continues to kick on and the dollar strengthens further against the rand. So we have something like:

Cash - $9m
Inventory - $42m
CLN due - $35m (~$4m in remaining interest)

Add in the cash generation that is definitely happening and we’re looking at current assets far outstripping the short term debt now.

'Problem is that shorters will be all over this now hoping he offloads the rest, himself as well probably.'

So what? So we potentially see a bit of a panic in the morning and a 10% drop before a rise back up. It's all temporary and immaterial as long as the company aren't trying to get a placing away and hence need a strong share price (we don't).

We've seen a move from ~8p to 16p, £13.5m added to the market following £800m of new contracted work at healthy margins and £100m invested into the shipyards and technical transfer - obviously that's ludicrous but for now it is what it is, short-termism has captured the market at the moment.

Hopefully some of you have spare funds at least and are able to somewhat benefit from the situation, the rest will have to sit it out patiently.

'Don’t think once he has sold below 3%, notified Harl and them to register the rns all Happened today…'

Well it specifically stated:
Date on which the threshold was crossed - 9th February
Date on which issuer notified - 9th February

But yes the TR1 could well have been compiled earlier and the true holding being well below 2.2% now after the huge afternoon sells.

Are Baillie Gifford doing so badly that they need their £1m left in Harland and Wolff pronto?! Surely it's a drop in the ocean.

But yeah my guess is that for whatever reason he was instructed to close his position and having waited for a big rally decided it wasn't coming and sold with a vengeance.

Share price was looking perkier till he dumped millions today!

Very well thanks. I sold out of all my bitcoin miners a few weeks ago which looks prescient now but in truth I found I was going a bit mad following the daily bitcoin movements too intensely. Got lucky it looks like though and made a healthy profit.

Largely invested elsewhere at the moment but will always keep an eye on what's going here. Was hoping to see you get your 30p but I do think you've made a good move diversifying into others - good luck!

'Remember John Wood paid 23.7, 23.3 and 21.75 in November.'

Don't forget the 24.74 ;)

We can spend all day speculating on the reason but whatever it is there's no doubt about it that today's selling was strange.

On the 19th Jan we were informed that, on the 18th, Kave crossed a threshold AND was down from 6.1% to 4.2% which suggests that the entire dump was probably done in one day, on the 18th. 3.3 million shares (or close to) is reasonable seeing as we got an FSS rns that day and volume was over 36 million - share price rose well above 20p so that al checks out, fine.

But today's rns implies that he crossed a notifiable threshold today which means he either crossed 4% or 3% - even if the latter that means he dumped 1.4 million shares on a day with just 5 million volume.

He's had weeks to close at a much higher price with much higher volume that wouldn't have had much of an effect on the share price yet today he goes hell for leather. Head scratcher.

'I’ve sold loads today, moved them into MARA.'

So should we expect a TR1 tomorrow? ;)

Let's be honest, it's highly, highly unlikely that Kave decided that now, today, was the perfect time to dump tons of Harl shares. It's far, far more likely that the rumours around his forced exit (B Gifford conflict of interest) is the reason.

And hence there's an explanation for the share price and we simply have to suck it up for now.

Jesus I have special powers! (Kave TR1)

All these conspiracy theories are nonsense.

The share price lost momentum due to heavy selling from Killick and (I think Kave) and now it's just settled into a range until the next bit of news (with 16p being the bottom of the range). Those that were looking for an easy 50% from 20p to 30p aren't in luck this time around but the rest of us can wait for this story to play out and trust management to navigate the next year successfully to deliver life changing returns.

'Peter has created a strong foundation for Argo which is a confident organisation full of talented people, aligned behind a clear strategy and focused on delivering profitable growth and market share gains.'

Gave me a morning chuckle.

Thought it was £235k, not 235k shares?

It's funny because generally that big of a trade would come with a hell of a lot of due diligence and I'm sure often times they might have the ear of management or some connections to the company but this is crypto... this is Argo... it's probably some spotty 19 year old kid that made thirty million on Shiba Inu last year and is just trying to time it with bitcoin.

I think something that is being widely missed is that until vrfbs came along, demand and supply of vanadium has been more or less symbiotic because of China. As I was reading yesterday China produces roughly 55% of the total vanadium worldwide as well as consuming 55% of the world’s total vanadium but because Chinese vanadium is derived from steel **** byproduct there is a mechanism that largely balances everything out. Steel demand increases? China ramps up steel production and with it vanadium production (as a by product) which then goes into feeding that increased steel demand. What about a steel crisis? Steel demand falls, vanadium demand therefore declines too but the response is to reduce steel production and hence also reduce vanadium production.

Now however China’s thirst for vanadium redox flow batteries completely upends this system. A new GWh battery is announced and 5500mt vanadium is demanded - there are no primary production plants in China (or anywhere but SA and Brazil) so they have no option but to look overseas… yes Evraz will likely plug a little of the gap but once we start seeing multiple GWh installations…

Anyone surprised by the daily pentoxide price rises now?

What you need to recognise Lamps is that vanadium demand for vrfbs is without doubt increasing, the question marks were over steel demand over the coming years. If in fact, as I expect, vanadium for HSLA and other steel sector products also increases then we are without doubt talking a supply shortfall sooner rather than later - and with it another run on the vanadium price or at least a significantly higher new long term average (think $60/kg)

And yet you'll still get the same people next week asking 'what do they know ;) ' when a big buy goes through.

Nothing, they know nothing.

Put down the phone with the specialist funders, Fortune, these V rises are putting the debt risk to bed.

Needs must? You’re not listening, either intentionally or unintentionally.

They have made it through their difficult period without the need to refinance, they did it whilst producing more than they sold hence an even bigger inventory build up which shows margins were actually very good in the last quarter.

V has now increased considerably so no, no placing needed. As things stand cash will be around $9m and Fortune confident of selling at least 250mtV of the extra inventory which is $11m giving $20m. Cash generation of say $10m so that gets them close to covering Orion in full. The rest will either be covered through a refinancing package with Orion or a new loan from a different creditor (Fortune stated recently that they were talking to Orion AND other parties).

I have an opinion on why the share price is where it is and why it's not risen much yet which might differ from others:

Rewinding back four or five months there were legitimate reasons why the Bushveld share price was where it was. No the company's long term future was never in doubt but there were very real concerns and risks in the short term that had the potential to cause severe long term damage. With the Orion debt looming there was the possibility that BMN would be faced not only with severe load shedding in South Africa but also the threat of the energy crisis around the world (and most notably Europe) sending vanadium prices plummeting. If one were to read the RBC broker note back in September 2022 they would have seen the forecast for vanadium in Europe fall to $31/kg by the end of '22 and stay there for half of 2023 before stabilising a little higher at $36/kg. Within the note it's also assumed that the US prices would come down to join those of Europe... throw in severe LS and you get a situation where Bushveld finds themselves stumbling through 2023 stemming heavy losses and leaving huge uncertainty regarding the sort of funding Fortune would be able to pull off to rescue the situation...

What's actually happened is very different. Yes load shedding has and continues to affect operations at Vanchem but what we learnt from the Q4 update and the subsequent analyst call is that the situation is being managed. An agreement has been made with the municipality that mitigates the future impact of load shedding on operations and the hope is that Vanchem will be operating at full capacity by Q2. But far more importantly the negative outlook for vanadium prices did not materialise. From the point in which V was predicted to start tumbling the opposite happened, first it began to firm up and then it rallied hard, with Europe now at ~$38.5/kg, China $43/kg and the US $43/kg.

So getting back to the start of the post and remembering that Bushveld's long term future was never in doubt, what was causing a concern was the short term and the potential for the situation with Orion to get a bit hairy. If that had occurred not only would there be a major shortfall come November but Bushveld may well have run out of working capital by now. This. hasn't. happened. I repeat... this. hasn't. happened. BMN are firmly in cash generation territory now. BMN made it through that period in one piece without the need to refinance (we know that, there's been no placing and now V has risen considerably so we know the financial position is strengthening day by day).

I therefore conclude that the market simply hasn't woken up yet to the fact that the risks present four or five months ago simply haven't materialised and now the short-medium term outlook is extremely positive.

The worst is behind them now and investors will start to pick up on this soon.