Member Info for Jonfon

Compo, I hope you are right. The problem is the share price fell about 25% when this was announced. The market Cap lost more than if the decision goes entirely their way. Surely that means there is more to lose than the litigation amount.

£5million a shipment means £5million for each of the stakeholders. That's £30 million a year, a fortune for the Mali government. I think that affords our mine a lot more protection than the towns that have been overrun in the North.

£30 million more for a Chinese company. China has done well to stay out of Africa's war, but it is the worlds' worst kept secret that they use Russia for muscle. So I think we can rely on the Russian mercenaries, who still have a strong foothold in the South, for protection.

Only problem dangling over our heads is the upcoming litigation. We don't hold many cards in this situation. If it sours the relationship, I hope the powers that be on the Chinese side realise don't do anything to push us out.

Gold is easily transported and laundered. I doubt the JNIM has the capacity to sell spodumene and chanbel the proceeds to weapons

I am just as frustrated by the share price as everyone else, but I think there are too many red herrings out there. The fact is Kodal is in Mail, an active war zone, and has a large, unresolved dispute with Hainan. Being on the wrong side of a big Chinese company when everything we ship is to China, could add to the risk, in that Hainan might be able to pull strings to Kodals detriment.

At the end of the day, this is a high risk asset, trading at a time where markets are making record returns in other industries. People would rather put their money into safer US stocks with more than decent returns. (DJIA is up 20%, SnP 500 28%) . I have a lot of faith in Kodal and if things carry on as they are, we should make almost the entire market Cap in a single year. However, until there is either peace in Mali (unlikely) or a dividend that that gives a material return to shareholders, this will never be traded at it's full value.

Wrennus, there may be an initial fall, but if there is a long war and fuel prices surge, it may help electric cars. That will help lithium.

Platinum price is roughly where it was a month,ago. Up nearly 70% in 6 months. It spiked briefly in January, then fell to what it was in December, and the jittery among us think the apocalypse had come.

After the raft of good news coming out of Ocado's UK operation, where it's market share grew 15% and they are building a new warehouse in the north, this suddenly and unexpectedly started falling around 16th January. Someone knew something. Maybe not a sinking ship but definitely a leaky one.

Hainan Group owns 51% of the joint venture. I don't think the Mali government would dare confiscate Chinese assets.

Does this affect us?

Does the gold price affect exploration assets? We have a few gold assets that seem to have lost focus with the middle east and Canadian projects. With the buybacks and focus elsewhere I don't think we will be moving on those anytime soon. Maybe time to sell them while the gold price is so high.

More volatile than crypto.

Ocado don't need to pay as many staff. They can build warehouses on cheaper land, rather than shops in prime positions. They not affected by shoplifting, which currently at crisis point in Britain. If they passing these savings on to customers they will become one of the major players in the next few years.

There was a price rise just before news on the Kroger payout came. Maybe a nice RNS coming for this leaky ship.

A big risk here was the debt pile. This won’t solve it completely, but will certainly make a dent. Onwards and upwards!

Retireguy, if you can't join the dots between a company who's whole business model is replacing expensive staff and a climate where staff are increasingly expensive, maybe it is time to retire.

The UK budget is enforcing minimum wage increases and upping the tax paid by employers. In Australia, where things look to be going very well with Coles, minimum wage is $25 an hour, among the highest in the world. The market needs to stop fretting over what could have been with Kroger and see the massive potential in other markets.

Caspinos, you argument makes more sense for US customers to prefer Doordash and uber eats than for Ocado. They have the money to pay extra for someone to manually pick the products off the shelves and a driver to take it to their house in an hour. They can also go to the shops, because the $27 cost of a shop comes off the top end of a high salary.

In other OECD countries, paying an individual to pick and another to deliver might be seen as an unnecessary luxury. Europe, Australia, Japan are all good markets for well priced delivery service.

Last year Ocado technology made around $600m revenue. $50million is less than 10 percent of that. EBITDA was about $110million (figures translated from GBP). There will be some costs subtracted from that $50million. Hard to say how much, but let's assume 30%. So all things being equal, a loss to EBITDA of $35million. That's around 30%. That's bad.

BIG HOWEVER:

If we can get the $250 million payout, that is 7 years profit upfront. Plus Ocado retail is growing fast and there is a push for new customers. Sit tight and wait.

To spell it out Sheltie:

Shorters biased View: Decades of R&D, patent and billions of pounds is now worthless.

delusional holders biased view: This is going to return to it's heyday.

Balanced view: It's neither worthless nor worth what early investors thought it would be worth. It has bled more than it needed to but can be trimmed down and made profitable.

If you take all emotions out of the equation and look at the situation for what it is, you get the following:

The Amazon like take off for grocery, where brick and mortar retailers were sunk by online, never happened. However, there are still significant segments of the population in all OECD countries who find it better to have their weekly shop delivered. I say weekly shop, because smaller orders are more likely to be picked in store by the likes of Uber Eats and doordash. But with the weekly shops, there is still enough demand to keep a company like this going.

The bad news is that, in the opinion of the exec, the Amazon style move to grocery delivery was going to happen, and nearly 6 billion was spent getting this in place. The early investors aren't going to get that back. Once this Kroger mess is sorted out , we will either have the opportunity to pursue other US deals or carry on with Kroger. Either way, Ocado will continue to generate revenue and survive as a company. Or maybe get bought out. I don't think we'll get back to the £20 a share of yesteryear, but £4 or £5 is attainable.