Member Info for Hogsnipe

What a feeble effort. Adds nothing new - yesterday's Pensana mailout covered it all.
To claim they are into the ground with a photo of a man in digger and a slice of random trench is deeply unconvincing.
I'd expect to see evidence of site survey, secured boundaries, top soil scrape, vegetation removal, site clearance, setting out pegs/lines, site levels & datums, building structure outline, trench pegs and lines, etc etc.
Shouldn't have bothered if this is the best they have to offer.
Before the accusations fly - I am delighted to see the SP holding up well against some sustained negative trading & I still looking forward to some real news soon from Pensana to pull it back above 100p.

PreNut - here's the link for the official Telegram.Org download of Telegram for Windows:
https://desktop.telegram.org/
I'd be careful where you get your download from as there are a couple of dodgy-looking (one Russian) sources before this in the Google search list I'd steer well clear of.
I installed this version on my Win Pro 64bit PC, but couldn't get into it - demanded I install the mobile app too. I tried the phone-number setup as well, but never received any text message from Telegram on my mobile, so I gave up and uninstalled it.
If you do succeed in getting it running stand-alone on a PC would you kindly post back?

Anyone throw some light on the 1/2 million shares traded in 4 deals in 10 sec today from 09:49:19 all at either 88p or 88.8p?
They were listed as unknown ? because the price was below the current bid/offer range.
However looking back at Friday's after hours trades there were two trades recorded as buys for the same 118k quantity recorded at the same prices (88.8p and 88.0p).
None of these big trades seemed to have any effect on the bid/offer/spread though.
But if they were delayed buys, the Buy to Sell ratio today becomes a stonking 5 to 1.
'Lewis Winthorpe' over on ADVFN chat suggests there are "Multiple sources suggesting news imminent apparently". So let's see if the open tomorrow has any uptick to back this up.

Hope Pensana is keeping a close watch on developments with Mkango's wholly-owned Maginito company. See:
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/08/16/2280812/0/en/Mkango-Provides-Update-on-Placing.html
Extract:
Through its ownership of Maginito (www.maginito.com), Mkango is also developing green technology opportunities in the rare earths supply chain, encompassing neodymium (NdFeB) magnet recycling as well as innovative rare earth alloy, magnet, and separation technologies. Maginito holds a 25% interest in UK rare earth (NdFeB) magnet recycler, HyProMag (www.hypromag.com) with an option to increase its interest to 49%. - end extract.
HyProMag was founded by the owner of Less Common Materials in UK, and has received ATF feasibility grants for RE magnet recycling commercialisation based on hydrogen decrepitation.

We appear be losing out on another non-China RE resource. See:
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/china-eyes-afghanistans-rare-earth-minerals-in-taliban-takeover/news-story/110db4037f33cdb1dafe254067a7daab

Atlantic Council analyst Ariel Cohen states “It should be no surprise when China becomes a primary financial backer to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan via royalties and taxes paid to accelerate mining projects.”

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said, “China is a friendly country, and we welcome it for reconstruction and developing Afghanistan … if (Beijing has) investments, of course we will ensure their safety.”

Makes for uncomfortable reading.

BwanaMakubwa - many thanks for your comments. You're right - I'm not on Telegram - though the Pensana group does look interesting and seems pretty active too. I tried installing Telegram for Windows PC a while ago and I couldn't get into it without having to have the mobile app installed as well. The android app is very aggressive in the level of access it wants to your phone+data and it's not for me. Has anyone succeeded setting up a PC-only installation?
I also notice the down-rampers appear to have been scrubbed from LSE Pensana chat in the last week or two - Dumbpunter is no more, also Charles_H has gone, so the chat is no longer abusive and monotonous.

Only tracked this one down via Twitter:
https://www.apcuk.co.uk/news/91-7-million-investment-as-uk-automotive-industry-accelerates-towards-net-zero-emissions/
It's somewhat different to the news in my previous post - APC say that the whole of the £41.2M has been secured for REEcorner, Nuneaton REE Ltd, and names the other three awards as:
BMW-UK-BEV, Oxford £26.2 million of joint industry and government funding has been committed to a project led by BMW Group to develop an electric battery in Oxford that will rival the range of internal combustion engines;
the BRUNEL project £14.6 million of joint industry and government funding will be guided into a project led by Cummins to develop a novel zero carbon, hydrogen-fuelled engine in Darlington, to help decarbonise heavy-duty commercial transport;
Project CELERITAS, Birmingham £9.7 million of joint industry and government funding will be committed into a project led by Sprint Power in Birmingham to create ultra-fast charging batteries for electric and fuel cell hybrid vehicles that can charge in as little as 12 minutes.

Over £91.7 million has been invested in 4 cutting-edge automotive projects, to accelerate the UK transition to net zero the APC annouced as the results of APC18 round.

I can't claim to understand the size discrepancies here (APC18 round was supposed to have a total fund available of £25M??), but since these projects are being jointly funded by industry and government, the investment sources are: companies themselves + other investors + UK Govt grant (ATF??), so the total of £91.7M is UK investment not totals awarded from either/both APC or ATF.

APC19 is the current round (another £25M on offer) and competitors will be notified on 14 Jan 2022 after closing on 6 Oct 21.
All the APC rounds are targeted at late stage R&D projects going into commecrial production.

I have to say that the relationship between the ATF Rounds (sponsored and organised by APC) and their investment grant rounds and these APC rounds confuses me, and obscures how much money is available in what fund, how it is being dispensed and what's left in investment funding for Pensana to compete for?

REE Automotive Ltd (UK,USA & Israel) gets an ATF/APC investment award of £12.5M to start commercialproduction of its modular, scalable,flat bed,"all-in-the-wheel", "universal" EV platform.

Another three awards totalling £28.7M to "other transformational projects" (not yet known who) selected amongst dozens of companies have also been made in related EV technology - total ATF payout £41.2M. Together, the 4 projects could save nearly 32m tons of carbon emissions.
See this link:
https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/ree-automotive-awarded-ps12-5-million-gbp-funding-from-the-uk-government-803946234.html

Apart from the recent Nissan/Envision Sunderland battery gigafactory award, these are the first major investment awards to come out of the ATF/APC.

Interestingly, REE Automotive Ltd (UK incorporation 24 Nov 2020) were successful without going through any of the ATF feasibility rounds, and are a recent startup (the REE Engineering Center in the UK was opened in February this year). Some parallels with Pensana there.

So that means there are three more substantial award announcements in the immediate offing from the ATF/APC - I'd be amazed it at least one of these isn't another EV battery gigafactory award, leaving two. I'd say given the emphasis on carbon emissions reductions of these projects, there's only a slim chance Pensana will cop one However, it's a very encouraging signal for Pensana and LTHs that ATF/APC are at last going into a round of direct investment awards from today.

Over 1/4M bought as the week's trading closed. All we need is some positive news over the weekend and the SP should head off in the correct direction on Monday.

This from Companies House re: Pensana Ltd:
Accounts - Next accounts made up to 30 June 2021 are due by 31 December 2021
Confirmation statement - Next statement date 12 September 2021 due by 26 September 2021
Hopefully we'll see SP responding from 12 Sep?

US congress believes much bigger investment in EV is needed than the UK imagines- see links:

https://www.carscoops.com/2021/08/u-s-senate-passes-1-2-trillion-infrastructure-bill-with-billions-for-ev-infrastructure/
https://www.carscoops.com/2021/08/house-democrats-call-on-congress-to-back-85-billion-in-funding-for-ev-charging-infrastructure/

The USA has now agreed $15bn support for EV infrastructure, and is looking to increase this to $100bn in the short term. Scaling down to UK (1/5th population) this would be $20bn spending. And that's just for charging infrastructure.
The USA also wants to provide $100bn consumer incentives for the EV switch as well.
After passing the recent bill, the Senate voted to begin the debate on an even broader $3.5 trillion budget resolution that includes $198 billion for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, largely related to clean energy development.
Makes the £500m ATF look somewhat piddling.....

It's really annoying that LSE website does not format a post as you enter it, in the same layout it will appear in the Share Chat listing. Allowed line length is longer when keying a post, then gets shortened in the Share Chat listing - so you can't refer to line numbers with any guarantee the item you want to reference is shown in the line number you entered it. Like this is line 3 when I entered it, but not when its posted.
Please fix.

This from MiningGMX today, reporting strong support for African mining including Pensana:
https://www.miningmx.com/top-story/47203-southern-africa-is-rising-thanks-to-growing-demand-for-green-metals/
--------------------------------------- extract -------------------------------------
An important participant in the push for global decarbonisation has been the scientific and engineering community. Increasingly, scientists are looking for metals that can replace the metals currently attracting huge premiums. It’s led to a ‘mining of the Periodic Table’, as it’s sometimes referred to, throwing the spotlight on previously ignored minerals such as neodymium and praseodymium – referred to as ‘NdPr’ – minerals used in the manufacture of large stationary batteries used in electric vehicles and wind farms.

“These are minerals that people are becoming familiar with, and can even pronounce,” says Tim George, CEO of Pensana, the first mining company to list in London in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. Pensana is building the Longonjo rare earths mine, about 300km from Lobito, Angola’s recently refurbished port.

“We really got our timing right given the drop off in the oil price and the fact that the Angola government wants to diversify its economy into other mining, agriculture, and tourism,” he says.

Apart from a recently improved regulatory regime, Angola also has extensive hydropower and an improved rail network. It’s perfect for Pensana which is able to supply rare earths to its UK processing facilities and European end-users. The rare earths market is 90% captured by China which mines and produces the so-called magnet metals like NdPr.
“We have a non-Chinese supply chain. This is important because people want provenance,” says George.
------------------------ end extract -------------------------------
... think they meant "magnets" not "batteries" in line 4. Easy mistake to make (not)....

Sorry about the double post (LSE needs to fix that!).
Here's a message I received today from Pensana. CITIC Securities is a leading China investment bank, so isn't exactly an unbiased source:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CITIC Securities: Demand for new energy vehicles has begun to explode. The price of rare earths may open up a long bull run. We raise the price forecast of neodymium and praseodymium oxide to 800,000 yuan (US125,000)/tonne in 2021.

Pensana comment - CITIC has published price forecasts well above those used in the economic studies for Pensana's Freeport located rare earth processing hub at the Saltend Chemicals Park in Humber, UK.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aimofthegame6 - had a quick look at today's trades (17 Aug) and there's an interesting play between O and AT trades:
Today's trading (162 trades today)
50% of all trades were AT - 46 sells (26% of day's vol) 35 buys (19% of day's vol), 81 total, accounting for 45% of day's vol.
50% of all trades were O - 23 sells (36% of day's vol) 56 buys (16% of day's vol), 79 total, accounting for 53% of day's vol.
66% of all sell trades today were AT
62% of all buy trades today were O
End of day Buy/Sell ratio 56%
Looking at the individual trades, O sells outweighed AT sells. Many of the O sells were large rounded numbers - 15K, 25K, 30K. suggesting either a seller with with a lot of stock seeking to drive the SP down for further accumulation, or a large holder getting out slowly...
The substantial number of O buys (62%), and the small vol from these (just 16% of day's vol) suggests PRE is still attracting small investors or top-up buying from existing holders at the current SP.
It's also noticeable that the bid/offer/spread seems to respond very quickly to buying/selling bouts compared to a few weeks ago when PRE was just 'sleepy hollow'.
Suggests the SP has reached or is nearing a level which interests the MMs much more.

aimofthegame6 - had a quick look at today's trades (17 Aug) and there's an interesting play between O and AT trades:
Today's trading (162 trades today)
50% of all trades were AT - 46 sells (26% of day's vol) 35 buys (19% of day's vol), 81 total, accounting for 45% of day's vol.
50% of all trades were O - 23 sells (36% of day's vol) 56 buys (16% of day's vol), 79 total, accounting for 53% of day's vol.
66% of all sell trades today were AT
62% of all buy trades today were O
End of day Buy/Sell ratio 56%
Looking at the individual trades, O sells outweighed AT sells. Many of the O sells were large rounded numbers - 15K, 25K, 30K. suggesting either a seller with with a lot of stock seeking to drive the SP down for further accumulation, or a large holder getting out slowly...
The substantial number of O buys (62%), and the small vol from these (just 16% of day's vol) suggests PRE is still attracting small investors or top-up buying from existing holders at the current SP.
It's also noticeable that the bid/offer/spread seems to respond very quickly to buying/selling bouts compared to a few weeks ago when PRE was just 'sleepy hollow'.
Suggests the SP has reached or is nearing a level which interests the MMs much more.

What a day. A record 508 trades- second largest since PRE listed - 3.4M shares changed hands in 344 buy trades and 158 sells.
(the only bigger day was 4th Aug 2020 with 6.56M shares changing hands).
Big movers made all the action:
33 large buys made up 2/3rd of total buy volume - 29 O trades, 4 AT's
22 large sells made up 7/10ths of sell volume - 19 O trades, 3 AT's
Over half the trades were AT (278 of the 508 trades) with 3:2 Buy:Sell, but they only accounted for 1/4 or 0.9M vol
O trades totalled 222 by number and accounted for 68.5% of all traded volume at 3:2 Buy:Sell
At end of play buy vol for the day ran at 162% of sell vol, with a whacking 0.55M shares bought in the 45mins after close

Conclusion - agree with you Scoobydoo321 - tree shake with only 55 trades clocking up the bulk day's volume. Had the interesting effect of pulling in 300+ smaller "punter" buys of about 2000 shares average.
Can't see any justification for the SP tumble in the morning, given the thinness of selling and strength of buying which put buys ahead of sells by 10:30 and never looked back after that.
Expecting a bounce if rationality returns on today. If Hammy's a MM or married to one, all bets are off.... Well it is Friday 13th.....

Dumbpunter - re: ATF and magnets - is this good enough for you?:
https://www.apcuk.co.uk/app/uploads/2021/03/Building-a-robust-magnet-supply-chain-for-the-UK.pdf

Theorist - re: "Pensana becoming a magnet producer really is fantasy land" - ChinaSyndrome has already said that Pensana is not in competition with LCM, so there is no bar to a more likely outcome - a future joint venture or partnership when Pensana becomes a supplier to LCM which will handle final fabrication of RE magnets for both EV's and turbines. Also if Pensana implements its hydrogen decrepitation trubine magnet recycling plant at Saltend, the recovered RE mixed metal alloy powder is another input stream of RE magnet materials for LCM. OK - this is all speculation, but it does add value and weight to Pensana's strategy and viability.

I worry if Pensana has missed a trick by bypassing the ATF Feasibility Study funding rounds? Maybe they decided they were already too far down the road on feasibility and opted instead to go straight into the investment funding competition.

My first worry is that the ATF smaller feasibility study round winners have established credibility and cooperation with Innovate (UK), ATF and APC UK, but also built up working partnerships with other EV supply chain companies. Many have gone on to forge alliances with EV manufacturers, local authorities and strategic suppliers and customers, and either applied for, or secured, further Govt investment support based on their initial feasibility studies.
Eg: - LCM Ltd (Less Common Metals) won ATF feasibility study awards in both rounds to look at UK RE metals supply chains, and establishiment of a UK RE Magnet supply and production chain. They are now closely involved with Birmingham University and Hypromag Ltd (also a partner in Innovate UK's funded RaRE Project to develop a UK end-to-end RE Magnet Recycling supply chain), with Bentley Motors, Unipart, U of Birmingham proposing a UK RE Magnet Recycling factory at Ellesmere Port.

My second worry is that the 50+ awarded ATF feasibility studies are heavily weighted to EV Battery technology and supply chains with the likes of AMTE Power, Envision AESC, Talga Anode Ltd, YASA now pressing for further funding.
The woeful under-resourcing of UK EV battery production is now a huge headache for HM Govt. The Brexit deal reached in 2020 requires 30% of the content of EV battery packs for UK-built cars to be sourced domestically, and even higher by 2024. At least 3 new 6Gwh gigafactories are needed yesterday and as many as 8 more by 2040 to meet known demand. Failure could leave 800,000 mainly Red Wall jobs at risk, should the UK lose EV production.
All of which means that the absolute priority for green govt funding for the next couple of years is going to be EV battery supply - not RE resourcing/metals/magnets.
My guess is that the bulk (70%) of the remaining £500M of Govt ATF funding will go to the top-priority EV Battery projects. The remaining £150M will go mainly to the large numbers of Universities/Research Groups/Seed Funding Groups as usual (£100M?). That leaves maybe £50M which - if we are optimistic and it's evenly shared between Pensana, Peak and LCM - gives short term funding of about £16M for Pensana. OK, the Govt may recognise it's underinvesting in the whole EV chain and beef up its future funding levels, but that wont help Pensana financing, which has to be secured in the next few months.

So my question is - how is Pensana going to attract Series B or even Series C financing of at least £50M to £60M to get both Saltend and Longonjo underway in 2021 and line up the rest of the £183M total CAPEX costs to follow-on? Dilution? Merger? Sell-off? Hedge fund? Private Equity? Venture Capital? Investment Banks? The ATF is not going to

When launched in Jul 2020, the ATF had £1bn funding available and by 30th July 2021 it was still £1Bn:
___________________________________________
" Funding competition Automotive Transformation Fund expression of interest: 30 July 2021
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £1 billion for R&D and capital projects that help industrialise the electrified automotive supply chain at scale in the UK....."
___________________________________________
but recently it seems to have shrunk by half to £500M, see 2-days ago announcement re: Nissan's new battery factory in Sunderland:
___________________________________________
https://www.cotswoldnews.com/news/nissan-announces-400-new-jobs-in-sunderland/
Nissan announces 400 new jobs in Sunderland - 2 August 2021
The transformational project has been launched with an initial £1billion investment by Nissan and its partners Envision AESC, a global player in world-leading battery technology, and Sunderland City Council.

Nissan will also receive funding from the UK Government’s £500million Automotive Transformation Fund. The battery-making site is projected to offer more than 1,600 new jobs in Sunderland and 4,500 in the wider supply chain.
__________________________________________

The question now is, where has that £500M gone? I can't imagine that Nissan were cheap to persuade them to invest in Sunderland, so it's a fair bet Nissan pocketed at least a 9 figure chunk of it. The 2 ATF Feasibility Rounds have also laid out under £20M on small-beer projects.

Confirming the shrinking ATF, on 19 Jul 2021 the Environmental Audit Committee reported: "We doubt the £500 million government funding left in reserve for automotive transformation will be sufficient to secure the additional 100GWh of gigafactory output needed for the UK EV sector to reach its full potential".

My conclusions (DYOR, this is not investment advice) are that:
a) The ATF CAN dispense investment grants without going through "the Final Stage Full Strand Competition" it has always claimed will be needed some time in the future;
b) Nissan is proof that the ATF has already committed investment cash to private companies almost certainly in significant chunks;
c) The confirmed 50% drop in available funds in the ATF can only be due to its other commitments to fund investments by other companies which are now mutually agreed but not public knowledge.

Is Pensana one of them?