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It’s on very low volume but in Canada Condor has just risen 22.89% to CAD 0.510 which converts to 30p.

My apologies for my post below as I had not seen the RNS of 2nd February.

Up 3.3% today getting back to levels last seen in November. Having started February at 58p it has just moved above 62p. We are overdue an update on the first distribution at NAV which was expected in Mid January. I wonder if they are pursuing another option perhaps with another fund making them unable to comment. Interesting

Continued:

The same is true of the company’s $18.3mn (8.1p) investment in Guident, a developer of remote monitoring and control centre (RMCC) software that improves the safety of autonomous vehicles and delivery robots.

Guident has signed software as a service (SaaS) agreements with European partners to provide its RMCC software for fixed-route electric bus services, having delivered its first remote monitoring and control services order to Jacksonville Transportation Authority in Florida. The company has also been awarded funding from Space Florida for a ground breaking project under the Florida-Israel Innovation Partnership programme.

Tekcapital's portfolio fair value estimate at 1 February 2024

Portfolio company Carrying value 30 June 2023 Estimated carrying value 1 February 2024 Value per share

Guident $18.3mn $18.3mn 8.1p

Innovative Eyewear $4.6mn $2.2mn 1.0p

Microsalt $17.1mn $21.8mn 9.6p

Belluscura $6.3mn $2.7mn 1.2p

Smart Food Tek $0.0mn $0.0mn 0.0p

Guident convertible loan notes $1.0mn $1.0mn 0.4p

MicroSalt convertible loan notes $1.5mn $2.6mn 1.2p

Portfolio fair value $48.6mn 21.6p

Net current assets (adjusted for second half operating costs) $1.0mn 0.4p

Intangible assets $0.3mn 0.1p

Total NAV $49.9mn 22.1p

Source: Tekcapital's 2023 interim accounts and London Stock Exchange RNS. The company reports in US dollars. Belluscura current valuation based on latest share price of 20p a share and holding of 10.6mn shares. Innovative Eyewear valuation based on stock price of $0.43 and holding of 5.19mn shares. MicroSalt valuation based on share price of 51.5p and holdings of 33.3mn shares. Guident valuation as reported in Tekcapital's 2023 interim accounts. Exchange rate used £1:$1.268.

Bearing this in mind, Guident has engaged a leading US investment bank to raise capital for expanding its RMCC business. At the bare minimum, it should provide investors with clarity that there is significant value in Tekcapital’s investment in the company. It’s worth noting, too, that Guident is conducting testing and appraisal of its proprietary regenerative shock absorber technology after completing successful paid-for proof-of-concept trials with a major tyre company. This could be a potentially lucrative recurring revenue stream, too.

So, although Tekcapital is the laggard in my 2022 Bargain Shares Portfolio, and the share price is below the 13p level in my last article, the 54 per cent share price discount to my spot NAV estimate of 22.1p is incredibly harsh. Buy.

Article in this week IC just released:

SMALL COMPANIES

MicroSalt IPO highlights the value in Tekcapital

The stake in one of its portfolio companies is now worth more than its own market value

Simon Thompson

MicroSalt has market capitalisation of £18.5mn at listing price

Tekcapital retains 77 per cent stake and convertible loan notes

Tekcapital spot NAV more than double its current share price

MicroSalt (SALT:51.5p), a company that produces low-sodium salt, has raised £3.1mn, at 43p, in an Aim initial public offering (IPO). It’s less than initially planned, but in a moribund market for new listings, it is one of the few IPOs to get off the ground (‘Will MicroSalt whet investors’ appetite?’, 3 October 2023).

MicroSalt’s patented solution dissolves much faster on the tongue, so delivers the same sense of saltiness as traditional salt, but uses half the amount of sodium, a major contributor to hypertension and heart disease. The company has created a consumer brand of potato crisps, Salt Me!, which are now sold across 400 retail stores in the US, and has launched its MicroSalt shakers in 450 stores in the US as well as on Amazon in both the UK and US.

Moreover, the company has delivered its first commercial-volume order for a Fortune 500 retailer, which will use the solution for its own branded nuts to be sold across an initial 800 stores. Multiple multi-national companies are currently testing the product and are in price negotiations ahead of placing orders.

In the first half of 2023, MicroSalt reported a pre-tax loss of £1.7mn on revenue of £0.3mn, so it’s the potential to scale up sales rapidly that whets the appetite of investors. Given the obvious health benefits of the patented product, it’s not going to take that many deals with large fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) customers to ramp up revenue and turn a business with a relatively fixed cost base profitable. MicroSalt looks to have a winning formula.

The IPO is also positive for Aim investment company Tekcapital (TEK:10.25p), which holds 33.3mn shares (77.3 per cent stake) in MicroSalt worth £17.1mn, and $2.6mn (£2mn) of convertible loan notes repayable in December 2025. Tekcapital’s investment in MicroSalt is worth more than its own market capitalisation of £18.3mn.

Deep share price discount to sum-of-the-parts valuation

In addition, Tekcapital has listed investments in Innovative Eyewear (US:LUCY), the US operating subsidiary of Lucyd, the first company to deliver prescription glasses with Bluetooth technology, and Aim-traded respiratory medical device company Belluscura (BELL). The holdings are worth £1.7mn (1p) and £2.1mn (1.2p), respectively, and are in the price for free.

The same is true of the company’s $18.3mn (8.1p) investment in Guident, a developer of remote monitoring and control centre (RMCC) software that improves the safety of autonomous vehicles and delivery robots.

Guident has signed software as a service (SaaS) agr

After yesterday’s volume of just 3163 and a close at 21p, the first trade today was 25000 at 22.5p which is above full offer 21.5p.

SALT now Up 25.45% at 69p

The value of TEK’s 77.24% share of SALT is now surging higher such that is higher than TEK’s market cap by some margin. The other assets are in for less than nothing!

SALT now Number 10 on the Leaderboard

TEK now Number 20 on the Leaderboard

A very encouraging update confirming good progress across the board. No doubt Adam will be giving a presentation and I look forward to that. The fact that Equinox’s Greenstone project will start to produce in a few months is a highlight as this will be a very large gold mine in Canada

Let’s hope there is some positive news before the presentation. While it has been pleasing to see the 16.5% rise last week, CTL is still down 21.5% in the last month,50.3% down in the last 3 months and 73% down in the last year. Clearly CTL is not alone as all lithium companies have been similarly affected by the dramatic falls in the Lithium price. Investors need to remember that it will be some time before CTL are producing Lithium for sale and it is that future price that is relevant to valuing the company. Also remember CTL’s new greener way of producing lithium which they are just testing which will make their lithium very attractive to EV manufacturers with whom they will soon be looking to make agreements about future supply. Looking forward to CTL rerating in the coming months as it gets its house in order following the poorly handled recent placing which has caused the sp to be way lower than it should be.

Oppression of the Minority25 Jan 2024 00:08

There is a concept in English Law:

“ Minority shareholder oppression is a term used in English law to describe the situation where the

1

majority shareholders of a company vote against the interests of the minority shareholders

. This

can happen when the majority shareholders make decisions that cause economic harm to the

1

minority shareholders, such as diluting their shares or failing to pay dividends

. The minority

shareholders are vulnerable in this situation because they cannot compel the company to act in a certain way, and controlling shareholders can make decisions without the minority's consent

The Corporations Act (Section 232) details conduct that constitutes 'oppressive conduct. In general, minority oppression includes conduct that is: contrary to the interests of the shareholders as a whole; or oppressive to, unfairly prejudicial to, or unfairly discriminatory against a shareholder or shareholders

If you are a minority shareholder and feel that you are being oppressed, you may be able to take legal action against the corporation. The court may order different shareholder oppression remedies against the corporation, such as appointing a receiver or liquidator, or ordering the corporation to purchase the minority's ”

Article from Mining.Com today which is relevant to JLP in Zambia as our Abu Dhabi partners are financing Mopani:

Zambia is seeking to restructure a $1.5 billion debt owed by Mopani Copper Mines to Glencore, which arose from its acquisition of Mopani in 2021, state-owned mining firm ZCCM-Investment Holdings (ZCCM-IH) said on Friday.

A Glencore spokesperson said discussions on the debt restructure were ongoing.

“No final agreement has been reached,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Reuters.

The global commodities giant had already written the Mopani debt down to $596 million in 2022, he added, as the copper miner failed to meet production targets, partly due to lack of funding.

Last November, Zambia picked the United Arab Emirates’ International Resources Holdings (IRH) as the new strategic equity investor in Mopani, to take up a 51% stake in return for a $1.1 billion capital injection. IRH’s interest in Mopani will be held through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Delta Mining Ltd.

As part of the deal, IRH, a unit of Abu Dhabi’s most valuable listed company, International Holdings Company (IHC), will provide $400 million as a shareholder loan towards clearing Mopani’s debt. Of that, $300 million is earmarked for the Glencore debt and the remaining $100 million will be used to settle third-party letters of credit secured by Glencore for Mopani.

“The effect of this is that the gross debt owed by Mopani to Glencore … will be replaced by the above shareholder loan owed to Delta of up to $400 million, resulting in an overall net reduction in Mopani debt of over $1.2 billion,” ZCCM-IH said.

The parties had also agreed on a royalty agreement which will see Glencore receiving an unspecified share of Mopani’s profit in the event that the copper price exceeds $12,000 per ton.

ZCCM-IH said “the relationship between Glencore and Mopani will be restructured” following the agreed settlements and “there shall be no indebtedness between Glencore and Mopani”.

IRH’s investment will provide funding to support Mopani’s target to raise its output to 200,000 tons of copper annually in the next three years, ZCCM-IH said.

The miner produced 72,694 metric tons of copper in 2022, down from 87,618 metric tons in 2021.

SALT now UP 8.9% at 55p and Number 14 on the Leaderboard

SALT continues to rise through the day and is now Up 7.8% at 54.50p. It remains crazy that TEK is down on the day.

It is certainly the case that of 3 million volume so far 2.6 million are shown as buys most of which are at full offer 1.10p. Difficult to understand how this is down 4% and hopefully this will change this afternoon.

New Stockbox interview out on iTunes this morning. When asked what would happens if Rio exercised their option to become operator. The answer was Rio are not known for being the operator for small mining companies so I think you should be able to reach you own conclusion.

I think the only unknown here is how many multiples of the current share price will Rio pay for the world class resource that SVML have. Also with this week’s announcement it value increased very substantially because they added a further 8 kilometres to the existing 29 kilometre strike.

Just listened to the interview and he spent some time talking about Saudi Arabia in very similar terms to my post yesterday.

I think Saudi and the Uranium IPO are going to be big drivers in the coming weeks. It continues to look very promising with constant news flow. Well worth listening to the interview.

Absolutely crazy situation. TEK down 7% but SALT is Up 4% following a 17% rise yesterday. Extract from Simon Thompson’s article on Microsalt:

“ The IPO is also positive for Aim investment company Tekcapital (TEK:10.25p), which holds 33.3mn shares (77.3 per cent stake) in MicroSalt worth £17.1mn, and $2.6mn (£2mn) of convertible loan notes repayable in December 2025. Tekcapital’s investment in MicroSalt is worth more than its own market capitalisation of £18.3mn.”

TEK’s Market cap after this mornings fall is £17.3 million!

The concluding comment:

“ So, although Tekcapital is the laggard in my 2022 Bargain Shares Portfolio, and the share price is below the 13p level in my last article, the 54 per cent share price discount to my spot NAV estimate of 22.1p is incredibly harsh. Buy.“

That discount has now increased with today’s fall! This should be above 12p and rising.

MicroSalt made a fast start to life as a listed company as shares in the low-sodium salt manufacturer, which had been priced at 43p ahead of its float on Aim, jumped about 17 per cent to close at 50½p.

Full order book powers Ferrari upwards.