Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
AIG: So basically Bitcoin is going to drop big time, Argo has zero prospects and only problems. And we should trust a complete stranger on a bb and sell out here? Hilarious. No thanks, I ll do my own reading and trust/blame my own judgement. I have diversified into 3 miners, all with something beyond just bitcoin mining. Argo fits that profile. Have a good look at the pedigree of the ePIC team. They CHOSE Argo as partners. Intel CHOSE Argo. And the code named miner “Amnesia” must be something special. I ve been wondering if ePIC and Intel will collaborate (Raja Koduri the Intel guy leading the ASIC dev is an ex Radeon ATI AMD guy just like the ePIC team). I have no hesitation in pointing out issues with PW and how news has been handled as far as PIs are concerned, but to trash all its prospects as a business is FUD. To speak with so much confidence about bitcoins trajectory is FUD. People with more experience in the market are humble enough to say they cannot predict what bitcoin does week to week or month to month. As Hex says all credibility is lost by the lack of balance and fairness in any argument. One aspect that PW excels in is building relationships in the sector. I think something big is coming in collaboration. And just because Pluto and NFT are silent doesn’t mean it’s all bad news. They are in a deal making phase and there may be sensitive negotiations ongoing. Even if there’s a raise at 50/60p it’s going to be value accretive imho. Of course it’s painful to see sp here and hindsight is always 20/20. But I wouldn’t write this off. One bit of news and the switch of sentiment can flick.
Hex: will have a read around this. Stnz: I haven’t got discord, so never been in any groups there. I heard anecdotally about folks getting censured so it didn’t appeal
Hex: I remember looking into takeovers wrt another company. I found this which may or may not be relevant. Not sure how to interpret it.
https://www.burges-salmon.com/news-and-insight/publications/guide-to-public-takeovers-in-the-uk
“Requirement for particular forms of consideration: If any shares are acquired during the offer period for cash, or 10% or more were acquired for cash during the preceding 12 months, the offer must be in cash (or include a cash alternative) at not less than the highest price paid during the offer period and the preceding 12 months.”
Fair enough Hex. I do hope it comes good for all us patient holders. FWIW I did communicate with Argo IR the concerns I had, throughout last year.
Roger65: my guess would be a company like Core could easily acquire us. No idea on price but my limited understanding is it cannot be lower than highest price in last 12 months? Again my conjecture that the long side ways action has now made us look incredibly cheap. Lots of synergies, CORE are headquartered at Texas. Adding a 800MW capacity to their existing arrangements, could look attractive. Regardless whether it’s CORE or not, we are looking vulnerable. That’s just my humble opinion. Like I said earlier, they might issue that Carlsberg RNS tomorrow.
Krautyankee: agreed, they are in quiet period; and agree 100% on the lightning fast raises to capitalise on rapid share price increase. Great move. But we dropped the ball subsequently or Atleast that’s my view. We rose on the back of promised hashrate increases (58% was the planned increase). It didn’t materialise for months. We got given last minute delay news. Meanwhile we lost the opportunity to mine extra coins whilst the network hashrate fell through the roof (China ban etc). Why did we not buy second hand machines? Why did the additional growth (from 1EH—> 1.6) take NINE months? Who paid the price? We did. The board changes were quite sudden and imo indicated a switch in strategy. Was it moving away from the hosting model to self mining? Was it investing in Argo labs? What’s annoying is the lack of clarity from a team that claims transparency is important. Whether that switch was good or bad, we will find out eventually. I still hold over £50k here, so I speak as someone doing constant diligence to protect my investment, not to gain a cheaper entry or short it. I think Argo will come good eventually but there are a few concerns that need address. Just my two pence and I don’t mind getting flak for the post. Good luck all
Bluebay: I do think a low ball takeover or merger is one realistic outcome here. The way news flow has been managed concerns me. We raised over £128m in 2021, but had zero growth in hashrate and delay after delay, between Feb and Oct. The rampy phase corresponded with sellers. We still haven’t confirmed our live hashrate. I think it’s on account of significant machine failure rates. We have had no updates on Pluto for 12 months. Despite hearing that NFT is considering a merger, Argo has stayed silent on it. The ex Argo team is in numerous companies Inc Dispersion holdings, NFT investments etc. No updates on our relationship with ePIC. We are on the verge of opening our latest facility, with question marks hanging over funding. Any news that could bolster our share price has been avoided. For ex the news of Intel choosing us could have been RNSed imho. This feels orchestrated. May be I m being paranoid and a carlsberg RNS will drop tomorrow morning. Time will tell. Good luck all
Wolf/Hex: Imho those HODLing are possibly betting on further upside in this cycle. There’s a whole spectrum of miners anyways and investors can choose, some are trying to HODL every coin they mine; others are selling everything. IREN and SLNH are two examples from what I remember who sell it as it’s mined. As far as I know only 3 miners are looking to expand into wider blockchain/data computing in a meaningful way. ARB, SLNH and CORZ. Another differentiator is self mining vs being hosted, and I think this aspect will come into painful focus if/when we have a crypto winter. Again those who are trying to vertically integrate like ARB will win out.
Rory: did you read my post? I used the hashrate installed by Oct end. In other words that’s the minimum that we have officially installed. I have looked at other miners and their official installed capacity by Oct end (ie disregarding hashrate added through Nov), vs coins produced in November. I tried to calculate the average monthly network hashrate for November if each of their machines were 100% switched on (I know this is impossible but I wanted a comparison). Network hashrate is the only variable I haven’t got and is widely varied on different websites. (Argobull: correct me if I m wrong: the difficulty adjustment is irrelevant, as it’s got a reciprocal relationship with hashrate, ie more hashrate coming online, difficulty has to adjust upwards; of course price kept at constant). So:
Hive: 2.213EH—> 389 coins (gives total network hashrate of 153EH)
Bitfarms: 1.7EH—> 264 coins (173EH)
HUT8: 1.8EH—> 339 coins (143EH)
Mara: 2.9EH—> 196 coins (399EH!!)
Riot: 2.6EH—> 466 coins (150 EH)
So those using hosting appear to have lower functional capacity, translating into lesser bitcoin mined per month. There is a real case for running our own facility and this might explain the vacuum in expansion in 2021, the change in thinking. These numbers are just simple crunching, so make of it what you will.
Assume the ZCash contributed about 20 bitcoin equivalent. So we mined 165 actual bitcoins. How does that compute with the hashrate even at Oct end, of 1.295EH? At 175EH, that should yield 199 coins. Let’s assume 10% failure, it gives 180 coins. My conclusion is that there are machine failure issues (15-20%) out of our hands really and hosting is not working for us. This would explain the impetus to be “Captains of our own ship”.
Hex: rigs were installed throughout Oct, adding up to 1.295EH by end of that month (from previous capacity of 1EH). Secondly Peter has stated most of the 1.7EH capacity will be installed before Dec end. In other words through out Nov and Dec. Thirdly they had 125 additional bitcoin in the Oct HODL, for which there was no explanation. So I think it’s reasonable to think the numbers will be bigger than 165-170 this month. It’s better to keep expectations conservative anyways :)
Money nvr sleeps: I think the main reason for ARB being where it is, is difficulties in executing its strategy. This is not necessarily reflection on management, but the comms has been poor around the delays imho. The market fully expected mining hashrate to be added through the summer months. Instead we had raised totalling over £45m but no additional rigs to show for it. A ten month hiatus (Feb-Oct) during a bitcoin bull run; including a bonanza period when hashrate fell off the cliff, and where we could have accumulated quite a lot more coin.
Coming to Pluto, given we invested over £8m and hold 24%ish, is it unreasonable for ARB investors to expect an update from our CEO? We have had a ten month news vacuum. The listing of Pluto got delayed; they have steadily invested in NFTs during the bear sentiment, and other projects. Other companies with smaller stakes such as Pires have offered some updates, on Pluto. What stops us from doing so? Why is Pluto not even mentioned on our website? Or ePIC for that matter? This shoddiness doesn’t sit well with the team’s usual competence, attention to detail and perfectionism. Especially given the media/comms background. This leads me to the inevitable conclusion the sentiment being where it is, suits management and allows the share register to gradually institutionalise. I know this will be a deeply unpopular post, but I think the facts are the facts.
Minto had $90m revenue for the 9 month period upto Sept 2021. Once this gears up in production, the cash flow should be nice.
Cash flow back from Minto is the logical way for this debt to be repaid. But until there is some clarity on the road map/timeline for that repayment, this will not rerate properly. Life of mine will get extended. New orebodies will be discovered. Extensions to current zones will be found. Plenty of good developments, but those will all add to the value of Minto BEFORE they add to Pere.
Directors hold 29.8% of shares here, which is more than most companies. Not convinced any more buying will move the needle. I think market needs clarity on Minto’s mining expansion plans for 2022, and how Pembridge’s debt is going to be addressed. So far Minto has been run like a private co (which it was). It’s time for greater transparency, investor engagement and forward projections. One or two broker notes would also help.
Jammy: there are chip shortages worldwide. One must be grateful for what one receives.
Kev: these additional bitcoin eq numbers are intriguing. I went back to earlier monthly reports, tried to collate various numbers to reconcile and see where bitcoin has been added above that amount mined directly. The numbers were: 3 additional coins in July, 18 in August, 12 in September and a whopping 125 in Oct. November figures awaited.
The facts are unchanged, this is cash producing and gradually ramping up to capacity. 727 million pound of copper in resource identified. Only 277MLb delineated for 8 year life of mine. All in costs are $2.65/lb. And all this before they pursue more aggressive expansion with the war chest just raised. Expansion will include mining from 2 areas simultaneously in 2022, 13km drill program to add to life of mine further and more exploration in other land packages adjacent.
https://docsend.com/view/nk6szu7i8e6tv45m
Galaxy providing an open source calculator to get metrics on bitcoin costs.
https://argoblockchain.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Ladenburg-Thalmann-Virtual-Expo-11.18.21.pdf
Apologies if this has been posted before. I found the numbers compelling.