Member Info for Laverda

George, I asked the question in the last Q&A, it is either question 1 or question 2, I asked both, but can't remember which order he answered them in.

Hainan have 20%, Suay Chin option of 80%, no sweeteners but sold at market prices.

You may pick up other points from his answers now we are at this stage.

A big issue is that they tend to talk about cars with EVs and detail their sales. In Asia it is electric scooters and city suited light commercials on trike frames etc which are selling big time.

Celle, 938 dollars per tonne is good money for us. 258 dollars per tonne above our initial hopes. The old figures are still on the outdated website, without the 40% resource increase obviously. Capital cost is less.

Only people who invested late when it was sky high will be disappointed with the current price.

Leo Lithium getting sorted, the mining office running again and our last bit of admin with the licence transfer are much more important to us at present.

Sadly for others at this lithium price a lot of more expensive per tonne projects are doomed to fail. Which may push the lithium price up further around our production date and dispose of some future competitors.

Even more so, fuel in the poorer countries is very expensive, solar is free energy, small electric tuk tuk size machines are taking over without thinking of climate change.

Once there is a large battery recycling and motor rewinding infrastructure in place it will take off

Instructional? Should be institutional.

Hadrian we are too small at present for major institutions, a small investment for them would be a huge chunk of us and if their investors increased they may not be able to scale up with us.

In and outflows are high in instructional investors in this field.

There are some big private investors on AIM so you never know one of those may turn up, but they rarely hold longer than a year from what I have seen.

Like others have said patience required especially so close to production.

Agree 100notout.

Methodical and respectful not slow.

Leo Lithium are making provision of between 30 and 60 million dollars for trying to be clever and cut corners allegedly.

Hadrian, it doesn't take major Investors just small retail investors taking a grand or two punt.

Not sure about your comment on Bernard's timelines either, you are basing that on the incorrect submission to the mining department, Steve said it was in the mining code and it was a surprise when the mining office asked for a phased development notification.

Had the submission been correct the timelines were accurate.

Hadrian, I am not sure at what point the proximity to production rather than news (unless bad)will drive the share price, we are around 11 months or less now.

Taking it coldly as an investment and potential return, that is a short window, how short can that get without moving the share price? Small punts will be taken if nothing else soon.

I expected a new person in to drive the gold forward or take the pressure off somewhere. Nobody has been announced. Bernard is keeping a tight reign on the cash, I reckon that small team will be rushed off their feet at present, it is a huge project, much larger than a typical UK quarry and look at the resources they have.

That is a wide road, I wonder if it needs to be so wide once the plant has been transported along it. No hills which is a good thing for transporting plant in.

To clarify, all timescales with the change submission RNS sequences and most of the detail can be discounted because we changed to a phased development notification, most of those phased development RNS releases are correct.

Except for when we did the workaround so we could construct the mine and use Hainan's money, the legal part, deemed in trust etc.

Effectively the mine and the current holding company are not under Kodal UK mining, even if they were were previous to the legal workaround at some point.

Once the licence is transferred to the new company it will be under Kodal UK mining and that legal stuff is all obsolete.

Does that explain it?

Hope they can't sell the mine to anyone else under the current legal agreement and Hainan could not purchase Kodals share. It is deemed in trust.

That is another reason the share did not jump, there could be no surprise buyout offer until the licence transfers.

It is weird in another way that this is seen as a negative, the mine will transfer over as it is merely admin, no major change. But if you took a negative view that it may not, in that scenario everything is Kodals, we simply need to repay a loan from the mine proceeds and Hainan want the 20% offtake with an eye I am sure on the rest later on.

However complexity creates hesitation it appears. Plus previous RNS releases, due to the change in submission and the legal workaround so we can proceed with the money, are no longer correct or a reflection of where we are, even though they were accurate at the time.

Bear666, the Mining office in Mali audit and review their mining code on a periodic basis. There has been an audit in 2022 of the effectiveness of the 2019 mining code.

This has mainly been centred around gold. The audit highlighted two issues that the 2019 mining code did not resolve.

The Mali government was issuing mining licences and in some cases the site was not mined, large internationals could just sit on them and afford to do so for a long time as usually they are an appreciating asset. Furthermore the feasibility studies finally submitted bore little resemblance in the figures projected to mine to the actual figures mined, apparently for gold in the 2019 code they addressed this, but mines were getting round it by moving ore from one mine to another.

Anyhow the gold audit estimated that the government had lost out by a huge amount of millions by mines getting round these rules.

So one of the rules introduced stopped ore being moved between mines. However some mines share processing facilities. So in practical terms there are a few bits and bobs they are ironing out before the office can open again.

However I am led to believe that a lot of mining companies could be faced with bills in their eagerness to avoid taxes they may have made errors.

Kodal has the mining licence so nothing will prevent us from mining. It just needs transferring to the new company so it falls under Hainan's joint ownership and will be transferred once the mining office sorts out this gold issue and reopens for business.

Meantime we have a legal agreement with Hainan so we don't run off with their 100m dollars.

So nothing stopping us and everything is moving forward.

100notout, it was interesting I was reading Leo Lithium chat board this morning and one of their investors pointed out that prior to Leo Lithium's suspension they were always down between 25% and 55% of the true worth of their share.

Until nearer production, if you step back you can understand it, ours and Leo Lithium will be the first producers of lithium in that country.

It is only our knowledge, I don't think this is even on Kodals website that there is a large cotton road, like a large road in the west, tarmac, smooth with white lines in the middle that goes all the way from our mining area right the way down to the port.

It has been explained to us by Kodal, but also our due diligence, that there is a massive international established mining industry which has never missed a beat apart from in COVID.

So taking a broader view, in one way it is understandable, in another it makes other investors less credible when they remain invested in companies which, if they do produce, cannot do so profitably, but see this mine construction as higher risk. There are a few out there now which are no longer viable. Pilbera just announced that they see a wobbly price for lithium until the market fully establishes itself, you would think investors would only invest in companies which can operate profitably during those 'wobbles'.

BFD, I suppose no longer long term, production in around 11 months time.

Short term now.

For traders two things now can push it up, news as ever, but proximity to production too. Glad I don't trade!

Near the bottom?

We are not producing for another 11 months, however not much of a concern for us, our initial figures were based on:

Year one: 680 dollars per tonne

Year two: 693.60 dollars per tonne

Year three: 707.47 dollars per tonne

At 900 dollars per tonne plus, we are in clover.

Many other mining operations cannot make a profit at those levels as they have fast tracked based on high lithium prices and were willing to chance high extraction costs.

One good thing about not updating the website is the old original operating figures on the lithium overview page.

The old resource tonnage (now up 40%) is in those figures, a plant build of 154m dollars, we are less on our initial plant 100m dollars including a massive drilling program, but the lithium price we hoped to achieve back then was 680 dollars per tonne rising by 2% per year. I think we are around 970 dollars in the market today.

The mining costs are similar to the latest updated figures.

So for once having a website which is historic and not up to date may be useful.

Everything stacks up nicely.

Mijas, that said with AIM always expect the unexpected!

I agree with Elcobble.

Leo Lithium is targeted to be sorted in 60 days according to their investors on a different chat board.

It would have been best for us if Leo Lithium was sorted first, there is an issue when they were ffx surrounding ownership of the Morila goldmine and potential liabilities. In addition starting to ship and sell lithium ore, again according to their investors chat allegedly shipping and selling large amounts of ore as samples rather than changing their mining licence and also, hard to believe but is in the company's own writing, they did not complete the paperwork for the Mali governments royalty share. According to their website they have monies in place ready to pay a fine/settlement or whatever. Not the best of ways to start a new venture in a foreign country for the first time.

It would be great if that could be put to bed before our RNS updates as Leo are hanging round us like a bad smell.

Ironic when next door they now have a resource with an NPV of over 2bn dollars. It should be raising our share price as we have more land.

The lithium price affecting us is annoying as investors do not appear to be looking at the cost of extraction to the sale price, just the sale price.

We are a low cost producer.