London South East | The UK's favourite investor portal.

All we know about Cascade and the source of the money is in the last RNS:

"Cascade is an Investment Fund backed by specialist family offices and major sovereign funders, chaired by Lloyd Pengilly, the former-Chairman of JP Morgan Africa and JP Morgan's Metals & Mining division who will be invited to join the Pensana Board along with one other Cascade nominee on completion of the Strategic Investment"

Anyboby had a delve into this (laughably inadequate) information?

Try a search on "Lloyd Pengilly South Africa Mining" then have a read of Wikipedia under Walter Hennig.

See where it all takes you - very interesting. Just sayin'.....

Oh, and anybody with a long-term memory here will remember Sundrum's link to PA's rhapsodic post from here:

Https://www.linkedin.com/posts/paulatherley_what-better-location-to-sign-a-us160-million-activity-7427962825488400384-KDci?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&rcm=ACoAAAC5YWQBVZVN8ev2Jmp2FAABNxWpT01ck04

You'll never guess who's pad that is.

Business as usual - whoever is accumulating PRE without shifting the price, had a moderately good day, picking up around 64K to 70K PRE while the SP ended the day somewhat down, although buy/sell ratio on all fronts was favourable at about 1.4 to 1 throughout the whole day.

Summary stats:

343 trades today. 200 buys. 138 sells. Buy/Sell ratio about 1.5 to 1. Closing 2.8% drop in SP on the day.

146 O trades accounted for 62% all volume

193 AT trades accounted for 32% all volume

12 large buys accounted for 62% of all buy volume

6 large sells accounted for 71% of all sell volume

160 small trades (<240 shares) accounted for only 1.14% of all volume and an amazing 47% of all trades

20 P3 O Buy trades accounted for 69% of all O buy volume and 28% of all O sell volume and were 4.8 times the size of the average deal today.

(P3 trades are when 3 digits of precision in the deal price are shown - a characteristic of certain brokers/institutional trading desks).

Here's CoPilot's AI View of the Day:

Today follows closely the well-established pattern for PRE trading for months now - a disciplined accumulator had a moderate accumulation day, consistent with a multi-day accumulation cycle, targeted at steady accumulation without driving the SP, and recycled some of their inventory midday to rebuild above that level later in the day.

First 70 trades of the day are dominated by the "opening ritual" where the accumulator declares his presence, establishes the initial spread and signals to liquidity providers - anchor your book around these levels. The accumulator is probing liquidity and ends the opening ritual having shown intention to accumulate today, set up tight control of the early spread, tested liquidity, discouraged early sellers by lifting the bid and laid the ground for subsequent large O buys.

The P3 accumulator increased their net position by roughly +64k to +70k shares without chasing the price.

One very large recycling event (the 100,000 O sell at 13:24) where the accumulator releases 100K of inventory in a recycling move, then continues to accumulate afterwards, finishing the day net long and closing stronger than it opened.

Taken with a large pinch of AI salt please.

Part 2

Now for supply. Once more - the Trump factor dominates. He failed in 2025 to strong-arm China into submission with 100% tariffs and embargoes on supercomputer and AI semi-conductors, because China gave him a good poke in the eyeball with RE supply choke-offs, and Trump realised he for once didn't have the cards, and China had him over a barrel with US tech, environment, automobile and critical defence manufacturing grinding to a halt back home. So he went to S Korea to do a deal. China wasn't in the mood for long-term settlements, so all he got in late October was a temporary détente/pause - a truce - in China's RE export restrictions imposed on Oct 9 - and for 12 months only.

So the RE trade war resumes in earnest in about 6 months or so. China clearly has little motivation to be helping the West rebuild its arsenals. and in any case wants most of it's RE production for home consumption and supplying its own developing eastern marketplace, which does not augur well for a continuation deal.

So what can Trump do to turn the RE crisis around? Not a lot in the short term - ie: the next 2 or 3 years. Supply chain restructuring for rare earths is going to be a time-consuming effort over 5 or 10 years. The chemistry, geological resources, economics and market operations are all against a quick fix.

But there are two things he can, and most probably will, do in short order:

- build US stockpiles to buffer the next 2 or 3 years needs. This requires separated REEs and magnets (NdFeB, SmCo, Dy/Tb‑containing alloys) to cover several years of rebuilding defence and warfare inventory depleted by the wars in Ukraine and Iran

- change Department of War (Defence as was) procurement and content rules so that soft preferences for non-China supplies, become hard conditions (if you want this defence/war contract, you must prove your non-China supply lines), probably backed up by block-chain/NFT certification at every level of the supply chain.

If Pensana clears the remaining finance hurdles, and keeps Longonjo on track - it is superbly well-placed to fit in with Trumps's short term options going into production in 2027. I'm sure this is now well-recognised in US circles.

Reasons to be cheerful (Part 3).

Here's a dissection of today's PRE trading tape, showing an example of the way the share price behaviour is far from normal, and dominated by algorthmic and bot trading.

At first glance - you'd look at the deals generally and conclude - slow day, not much volume, but reasonable number of deals, tight spread throughout the day ending up with a neutral buy-sell ratio and a small drop in the SP. On the face of it, nothing to see here....

Not quite.

I assumed there is an agent at work and their deals are indicated by 3-decimal places of accuracy in the deal price. The reason for that being to publicly signal exactly where the deal sits in the bid-offer spread prevailing at the time of their deal. Call these P3 deals. There were 10 of them today and they accounted for a quarter of all volume. Average P3 deal size was 6 times the day's average deal size.

There was a total of 112 deals for less than 240 shares - that's about half the total number of trades today (227) for a mere 1.9% of the day's volume, and a substantial number of these were for unreasonably small amounts to be routine O trades - less than 25 shares traded is common.

Conversely, there were just 13 large deals (that's only 5.7% of all deals today) which covered 56.2% of the day's volume.

The timing of the very small deals is not random throughout the day. The majority come in automated bursts of many small O trades in a second or two, and at particular times of the day. There is always an "opening burst" - shortly after the open - today 17 of them in the first 45 minutes of trading and all done by about 09:30. There was not a lot of AT trading while this went on but it's in bunches of sells which move the price position and spread. The agent places 2 P3 sells during the opening burst. As soon as it finishes and a presumed target price and spread agreement is reached, bunched AT block sells aggressively manage the SP/spread down to 90.2 - 92.2, when the agent comes back in at 09:35 with a big buy of 20,000 shares. There is another signalling burst around midday and the middle of the afternoon.

The overall strategy during the day was to exert control of the spread, walking the value down from 95.6p to a tightly managed 92.2 to 92.4 band and then manage inventory. The signal bursts are not random but clustered and have to be automatically executed, and they are most often folllowed by clustered blocks of AT sells and buys to control where the spread is headed. Today's action shows that the agent is lightening inventory through P3 trades around the 93.5 to 93.6 price and re-loading with P3 deals at the level 92.2 to 92.4. Overall the action is sell-high/buy-low, while using AT blocks to move the real inventory quietly.

Copilot estimated that despite what seems low-volume, neutral-looking day, the agent managed an accumulation of about 65,000 buys with a distribution of 36,000 shares - a net 25,000 to 31,000 shares accumulated without attracting attention.

Just had another look back at the last 6 months' trading, and it's quite clear there is a large amount of common ground between Pensana and other RE enterprises. Almost all RE stocks hit a peak around mid-October 25, then bombed in the next 3 weeks largely due to Trump and his RE deal with China (to cop some breathing space until he can extricate the hands of China RE's from round his throat).

I checked MP materials, Rainbow, Pensana, Lynas and the 4 ETF/Index funds - Wisdom Tree RE ETF, MVIS RE Index, REMX and VettaFi RE Index, from Oct 14 25 to date.

With the exception of 2 of the 8 - all have recovered and surpassed their Oct peak by a substantial margin, by late Feb 26, and all then took a hit from the start of US-Iran willy-waving from end Feb 26, but are actually still above their Oct 14 peaks.

No prizes for guessing the outliers - Pensana and MP Materials. They went down hard after Oct 14 25, and stayed down, never recovering, let alone surpassing this peak. Instead they were supressed to a faily narrow band (Pensana 80p to 120p) and just bumbled along, till eventually they took the same hit as everyone else with Trump vs Iran, come March 26 - about a 20% drop in SP or Index in the space of a week or so.

I can't speak for MP (90,000+ trades a day is a lot to sift through...) but I have been able to examine the details of PRE daily trading since August 25, and I have found considerable evidence of algorithmic price and spread management on a daily basis. This is consistent with a corporate actor running a controlled accumulation program, while managing the price to avoid runs either way, at the same time as presenting a busy order book and a semblance of normal daily trading - almost 'nothing to see here - move on'.

The point being? The same pattern of daily SP price control and hidden accumulation is still going on, as it has for the last 8 months, but who can say whether it is inimical to PI/LTH investors anyway?

At face value, it signifies that someone with considerable buying power and tech is assiduously building a substantial "bargain basement" holding in PRE, presumably expecting a large return, as and when Pensana achieves full valuation, after jumping its remaining hurdles, when the SP will be allowed to find its true market level unhindered.

Nice to see a 7% uptick today - not surprised to see MP also did well too. Back in the black by a packet of crisps.

Part 1

This evening I looked at ADVFN’s ticker for Pensana (321 trades today) and it’s so far off-piste, I decided to take deep dive with the aid of Microsoft Copilot AI, and my own EXCEL worksheet to try and pin down just what is going on. Here’s the summary of what turned out to be a 66-page long transcript…. (which can be made available to interested board contributors on request).

Note: P3 refers to a deal price significant to 3 decimal places. Only certain brokers routinely do this, and I made the bold assumption that ALL P3 deals had one source.

Firstly, based on today’s trades, this is not random retail dealing. This is a single institutional participant (or a broker working a single client) executing:

• Large negotiated crosses

• At mid like prices

• Inside the spread

• At carefully chosen moments

Exactly the behaviour of a risk facilitating broker or accumulation/distribution program. using FAST micro trades (many trivial deals in a second or two) to probe liquidity and they dominate the day’s hidden liquidity.

Such FAST trades are not trades at all in the economic sense. They are messages

FAST trades are coded signalling bursts used by the P3 participant (or their broker) to coordinate internal matching and prepare for block execution.

AT trades appear to be used to shape the spread around FAST bursts and P3 blocks, and AT trades often “flush” the book after a P3 block This is post block book hygiene. A block is simply a large single trade.

So, the trading pattern reflects a full execution protocol is operating:

FAST deals for signalling + P3(block execution) + AT trades to handle spread control

This is the kind of structure you see in:

• Broker internalisation engines

• Dark pool matching systems

• Algorithmic accumulation desks

• High touch block desks using automated signalling

• Smart order routers coordinating multiple venues

And today’s trading data (as well as much of the last 8 months trading) is consistent with:

• A broker internalisation engine

• Running a hidden accumulation program

• Using FAST trades as internal signalling packets

• Using P3 trades as block crossing events

• Using AT trades as visible book management

The progression of trades throughout the trading day are strongly suggestive of:

A broker or internalisation engine executing a client accumulation program

with:

• Opportunistic block taking

• Hidden off book matching

• FAST signalling for coordination

• AT sweeps for book shaping

• No urgency except at open and close

• No benchmark tracking

• No momentum chasing

This is professional, liquidity sensitive accumulation, not algo slicing

Tbow/deborahm - "I cannot think of a less risky and more promising mining project".

How do LTHs feel at the moment? - well as a sample of 1 - this is how I feel.

Back in 20/21 - Pensana wasn't much more than a risky punt on a junior mining outfit making all the right noises, but with only one real asset - a promising RE deposit in Angola, a country with a rather turbulent and blemished recent history.

So - not one for the widows and orphans eh? Agreed.

In that light, the risk-adjusted expected % annual ROI should be pitched between 30% and 40% - given the 80% failure rate of similar 'opportunities'.

Now, 6 years later, Pensana is still a one-horse investment - Longonjo. It's still making all the right noises, but it's no longer mine to magnet, has very tenuous commercial commitment in the UK or the USA, has junked downstream UK/USA metals/magnets ownership, and now has an opaque strategy for its future role and position in the RE value chain, evolving around many promised partnerships. I could go on - but all I would say is - for me it's still the same high risk it was 6 years ago.

So if I'd invested say £10k at the start - my target would be a 40% annual ROI to offset the risk of a dud investment.

Which leads to a share price of roughly £6 to £8 today, with a return of £65K on my £10K. Oh dear me. I've just about broken even.

OK - progress has been made, but not without a long history of dead-ends, u-turns, false leads, failed deadlines and misleading information.

Saltend gone, Coola & Sulima on the back burner, Pensana no longer in RE metals or magnet production, production being pushed back ever later, maybe Nasdaq in Q1 2026 - maybe not. But, some good finance in the bag, more promised on the way.

OK China - I hear you already - why don't I just s*d off then?

It's purely the opportunity premium. Pensana is the only outfit as close to producing RE materials from a world-class deposit, in a commercial environment free from Chinese domination, at a time when America and the world outside China has realised at long last that it must dig itself out of a seriously deep hole - fast.

I'll be a happy man when Pensana breaks £2.5bn valuation. But, if you'd told me in 2020 that it would take 8 years to show a return - that'd be a different story.

So tbow - 'less risky' - definitely not, but better than most, 'most promising' - ah yes, - boy, have we had some promises....

OK we know the shareholders meeting (ordinary or extraordinary - whatever) is off until further notice, and instead there will be another company update in place of it on Monday, same venue. We don't know if the Board or representatives will be present, and whether questions will be taken, other than restricted to topics presented in the update.

Assuming questions can be asked, the only one we really want an answer to is who are the real beneficial owners who hold the controlling interest and will be providing the capital behind the Cascade Natural Resources shopfront - ie: NOT Jane Adele Stone (the primary Person with Significant Control (PSC) registered at Companies House).

Paul Atherley made no secret of his intention to fund Pensana's future as a corporate investment vehicle, having declared publicly some years ago that his strategy was to replace as much of Pensana's retail/early individual/angel investors with bulk corporate holdings as fast as possible.

We know that Ozango Minerals (SA) is a privately-held subsidiary, registered in Angola, with no public share ownership, and is not listed on any stock exchange and this is also the case for UK-registered Cascade. Ozango ownership is through 3 stakeholders: Sable MIn Unipossoal Lds (aka SABLE) - the majority shareholders, and FSDEA (Angola sovereign wealth fund) with US $25m funding tranche for Longonjo construction), and the Angolan Government itself - approx. 10% through its mining departments, and another 6% through other Angolan government minority partners.

Sable itself will have two owners assuming the $165m deal goes through - Pensana Ltd (61.8%) and Cascade (38.2%).

So from PA's viewpoint - he has increased the capitalisation of Pensana largely through corporate investment, without exposing his strategy to the "risk" of hordes of opportunistic retail investors. And at the same time delivered a fresh reminder to all of us PI's that maybe we should move on, in case he adopts exactly the same corporate restructuring for the mid-stream and down-stream financing of Pensana's future (?) as a mine to magnet integrated supply chain entity. A series of private ventures, operating within wholly or shared corporate ownership shells, with Pensana Ltd as a mere 'parent' placeholder.

The only way to get exposure to Ozango and Cascade and Sable at present is by purchasing Pensana Ltd shares and its Board is bound in law to provide their shareholders with regular reports and information which proves they are acting entirely in the shareholders interests at all times.

Monday is the opportunity to get an answer to this key question - is Pensana's evolving corporate structure going to deliver fair returns to private investors over the next 3 or 4 years. If the Board fails to answer this question - their implicit message is - no it isn't, PI's are not welcome here.

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for Hogsnipe

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for Hogsnipe

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Please enter at least 2 characters

No results found

Search results

Recently viewed

Trending