Member Info for Jiving

All the hints from the company around New Year were that negotiations were taking place in Saudi Arabia. Remember from ZIOCs perspective we need a strategic investor to commit to provide either side of $800m to kickstart Phase 1. The appointment of the CEO & the power MOU suggest ZIOC is serious about developing the mine itself - so we need a strategic investor whose 'price' is the lowest dilution we can negotiate. We dont actually need multiple strategic investors or a consortium - that would have been the likely structure for a buyout, not a strategic investor buying in. The Chinese EPC proposal was full of China-centric language so a Chinese strategic partner can not be ruled out, but AT's tweet & other communications clearly pointed to the Saudis.

It's worth noting that a number of potentially interested parties are currently financially weak including - the Chinese Govt; Glencore & Vale. There is nothing to stop Glencore selling down their stake (+ matching offtake) to interested parties - but that fortunately will not dilute ZIOC shareholders or indeed raise funds for us. So long 'something' is happening I really dont care what nationality the strategic investor is, and I dont see it particularly impacts ZIOC shareholders as it is likely they will be a minority investor in either the company or the mine.

Interesting short video/transcript. Expiring IP in rest of this decade will drive Biotech M&A:

https://citywire.com/funds-insider/news/ailsa-craig-big-pharma-has-a-problem-and-that-s-driving-biotech-manda/a2438448

The pity is now John Candy & Robbie Coltrane are no longer with us, who plays Arthur?

I get the impression (& this is the optimist in me) that first we will get news of the key strategic investor. Then in conjunction with that, Marty will introduce the new grand plan that will include all the latest updates & input from the Chinese EPC. Including hopefully a new presentation with the full updated FS with new current project valuations & NPV.

Not sure if this has been posted before but the COPL page is now up on their site & includes team details & links to the key documents.

https://www.ksvadvisory.com/experience/case/canadian-overseas-petroleum

You are correct Soup & I should have made my Orphan point in relation to IPF and not 'all' drugs. But I am just trying to get a discussion started on our chances of success, and if you include a whole list of qualifiers it reads like some dull legalistic prospectus or annual report.

Re-Chabs point - yes thats how I see it, first we needed a patent granting and only then can we apply for Orphan status. But also until you start approaching Pharmas to gauge their interest you cant find out what their JV parameters are at this particular point in time.

To be clear who this means: "The SISP will be conducted such that the COPL Entities will..."

Thats Arthur as President of COPLA & his 'team'. They are in charge of producing the materials for third party bids. What a joke - IMO Arthur is setting himself up to be the main/sole bidder for the Wyoming assets (and has been for the last 2 years), and guess what he won't want competing bids.

From Dan's Telegram explanation I see the critical event in the next 12 months to be getting (or not) the grant of Orphan drug designation by the EMA for NXP002. It seems that Pharma's essentially require this as a necessary condition before examining whether to invest in a new drug. It provides them with two benefits - first, an objective third party has examined a new drug & deemed that it has potential - an important independent vindication, essentially 'for free'. Second, it provides real tangible benefits in terms of market exclusivity & access that provide tangible long term financial benefits & therefore directly impact IRR.

I was very impressed by the lengthy Allenby research report on NFX a few years ago, which set out a probabilistic valuation model for small biotech companies like NFX. This struck me as being the crux of the matter - getting a deal or not is entirely up to the whims & decision making processes of third parties. My unscientific probabilistic take of NXP002's likelihood of success over the next 12 months is - without EMA Orphan status less than 10%; with EMA Orphan status, south of 50:50 but north of one third - call it 40%.

DealBreaker, thats how I see the situ as well. If we dont get a Strategic investor announcement by 28 March, we will need an update on when that will arrive & also whether the Glencore loan (which currently expires 31.03.24) is being rolled over.

Stas. It seems to me that in September, Arthur jettisoned the Canadian holding company ie COPL (rather than the other way around!). But crucially retained operational control of the US assets & was responsible for the JV negotiations succeeding or failing. As far as I can see he is still 'responsible' for the US operations and all the bad figures are from his 'efforts'. The results of which certainly seem to put the assets in a bad light & would hardly attract industry bidders. He must therefore be in the prime position to bid for those assets. Particularly as he already has hands on experience of the bankruptcy process during Cuda for the self same assets!

"Why did JVP walk after so long negotiating..."

Perhaps because the person in charge of the negotiating at COPLA wanted that to happen when it did & bring the whole house of cards crashing down - which of course it did.

Is this sequence of events all about Arthur positioning himself to make a bid for the assets? If the bondholders & shareholders are dismissed with zero compensation, the assets suddenly become viable again. After the sale of his Hawaii mansion Arthur is flush with cash, Summit don't care who they deal with so long they meet all/some of Summit's outstanding debt. Arthur stayed on in his key role at COPLA to see this through.

Further repercussions of the Aramco transfer to PIF - $20b pa in dividend income:

Saudi Wealth Fund Eyes $20 Billion Windfall from Aramco Dividend

(Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is set to earn about $5 billion in dividend payments every quarter from its stake in Aramco after the government handed it more shares in the state-controlled oil company, which then said it would boost shareholder payouts.

The PIF is committed to spending $40 billion a year domestically to help diversify the country’s oil dependent economy, though its ability to fund such huge projects has increasingly been questioned by analysts at a time when the government is forecasting budget deficits until at least 2026.

Its governor, Yasir Al Rumayyan, has said annual deployment is set to rise to $70 billion from 2025. The fund has already raised $7 billion from two bond sales so far this year.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aramco-dividend-hike-hands-pif-110734581.html

I think PIF being cashed up is actually v pertinent. Before any major transaction is signed off there has to be 'proof of funds', its elementary due diligence - no matter how 'big' the purchaser may be.

Instagram influencer ‘paid more than £2m’ in Saudi Newcastle takeover

Amanda Staveley paid the star despite ‘no substantive role’ in club’s purchase, it is claimed

"Carla DiBello, a former reality television producer with connections among Arab elites, was paid at least £2m by the financier Amanda Staveley to secure the purchase of the club by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), according to High Court documents.

According to the filings, Mr Ashley was told that an “introducer” to PIF would need to be paid months before the deal was completed in October 2021. At a subsequent meeting it was made clear to him that the “introducer” was Ms DiBello, an American who worked on the long-running reality series Keeping Up With the Kardashians and had more recently been named as a close confidante of Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of PIF.

At a meeting at the Marriott Hotel on Park Lane in May 2022, Ms Staveley allegedly told Mr Ashley’s representative that “Ms DiBello did not play any substantive role… but instead received payment due to her relationship with the head of PIF, Yasir Al-Rumayyan”."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/09/newcastle-united-amanda-staveley-paid-influencer-2m/

Agreed, it was under 10%, which by current UK smaller company standards is a small raise. Dan has remained a big shareholder throughout the upheavals & dilution impacts him & Jo more than anyone. He has restored financial discipline & tight budgeting to the company so we have essentially zero waste. Frankly it is also not a good idea for a biotech company to begin negotiations with major pharma's with no gas in the tank.

NFTs is sadly bipolar, he deserves our sympathy & forgiveness - he literally does not know what he is doing or why. Once a delusional, fanatical cheerleader for NFX who brooked no questioning of his repeatedly failed predictions he has now become an unhinged critic - making more postings on the NFX board than the AVCT where he is invested.

Another step forward in completing the patent portfolio. The orphan status is also going to be very useful & presumably was dependent on first securing the European patent, so we had to wait for that before applying.

The big trades (100k, 250k like today) have appeared a couple times a week, seemingly virtually every week this year. Occurs to me these could be the company using the subscription mechanism to fund our weekly/monthly running costs. Which now include our CEO & quite likely the cost of regularly visiting Saudi - which we def want them to be doing of course. Money has to come from somewhere to finance this & also hopefully contract lawyers who also dont come cheap at this level. So the appearance of these - usually delayed - big trades could indicate things are still ticking over towards a March announcement.

The company's predictions vis timetable & anticipated partnerships have proved fairly accurate thus far. The timetable set out on 29 September made it clear that Q1 2024 was the crunch period: namely for the strategic investor, & port partner announcements. The hydro power partner was actually announced slightly ahead of schedule. Many of us (myself included) had hoped we would be signing deals sooner rather than later but frankly that was wishful thinking.

The second part of the Chinese EPC namely the focus on their specialist processing technology may be altering the nature of the project (to integrate the processing into Stage 1). This could affect all project costs & revenues - capex, opex & the increased revenue from a higher margin product - likely with a beneficial impact on the projects value/NPV & impact the FS accordingly. The implications would need to be analysed & any revisions negotiated & agreed between all parties - this necessarily could take time, but it means we have a modernised, potentially higher value project going ahead. I remain optimistic for news in March but if it spills over into Q2, that's life.