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Just what did he call correctly? He'd been saying since june there was about to be a placing, and seemed to be getting increasingly upset at good news here with progress being made on the farmout and charlie 1 results.
His agenda was quite transparent imo, wanted to buy in at what he thought would be the lowest possible price after a placing and then tell everyone what an expert trader he is for doing so, as per claims he made on other shares. During which time he missed the opportunity to buy here in June and almost double his money at one point. So not quite the expert trader he wants to be.
All seems to be going well. Some progress being made with Icewine and the Charlie 1 results are looking more and more positive.
But the Peregrine Farmout is where we're looking for drilling next year and its still looking very possible it'll happen. Usual caveat applied from DW about the time frames, although receiving several initial offers is certainly good progress.
"The farm-out process at Project Peregrine has progressed through technical due diligence for multiple parties and several initial non-binding offers have been received. Whilst encouraging for the scheduled close of a deal prior to year-end, there can be no guarantee that a deal will be completed within this timeframe.
Permitting, planning and contracting works associated with the drilling of the Merlin and Harrier prospects at Project Peregrine remain on schedule for spud of the first well in 1Q 2021."
Jammer, thanks for the update from the webinar. Didn't get a chance to watch, but hopefully a recording will be posted up on JLPs website.
I get what LC is saying about the valuation of the company. But our P/E is rising, so I'd say the market is already starting to value us on those future earnings and confidence is growing that those earnings will be delivered. To really get to the valuations LC is talking about and stay there, he needs to keep delivering the earnings growth. Looking very achievable though.
Also good to note that copper has been comfortably above our cost price for over 10 years now, and has only once dipped below our cost price during the past 15 years (for a few months in 2008).
Much like our PGM production, its looking like it'll always be profitable even when there's a downturn in commodity prices.
JLP have given the estimated all in procuduction cost per tonne of copper at $4,000, (which includes purchase cost of copper concentrate). Currently copper priced at approx $6,700 per tonne.
So yes, margins look very good. Of course these are only estimated figures for production cost and copper prices will fluctuate, but its easy to see why this is being prioritised over zinc.
Good upbeat interview, and a good explanation of how important the chrome side of the business is. Basically saying the expansion of our chrome processing is giving extra feed to our PGM plants, which all helps with improving our cost per oz of PGMs. And of course means our tailings stockpiles won't be being depleted as fast as origionally expected.
Sounds very much like the chrome and PGM plants are now running at/near full production, and the next 6 months is all about increasing copper production. No mention of zinc/lead though when he was asked about the next 6 months, so it doesn't sound like we can expect much movement there until at least 2nd half next year.
Pretty certain it won't be forggoten about, afterall CB is now in control of two other companies dependant on Kabwe processing zinc tailings and zinc ore. But doesn't sound a priority for LC in the short term.
Pretty good news there, nice to see. Although a bit unexpected as we were supposed to have finished with the quarterly updates and just have 6 month updates now.
It looks to me like we can expect the full year figures to be very good (or perhaps that should be very good in the circumstances with covid, lockdowns etc). Normally these are released mid November, so LC telling us today it'll be by end of October this year suggests he's looking forward to getting the figures out and talking about them in more detail.
A bit of a question mark on the Kabwe tailings though, no mention of the Zinc/lead project. With copper taking over as our driver for future growth its not critical, but would be nice to know whats going on. Hopefully the full year results will address this in more detail.
Jammer, yes I agree that it doesn't come across too well for CB in that it is being made to look like he has got involved in another problematic licence. Although it is good to see CB has responded to it today, and it would appear that the story is not fully accurate, if at all.
But as for impacts on us, we did have the Kabwe licence renewed last month, so doesn't seem to be a problem between us and the authorities.
Also, something questionable about this whole story, the one from yesterday links back to a 2019 article, which at the end you'll notice (same name as the new article today):
"[Sponsored Article]
By Kevin Coulter,
Coulter was trained as a journalist at E.W. Scripps School of Journalism before working as a PR and content consultant for a range of Fintech start-ups in Ohio and across the US. He now combines content creation for a range of clients with investigative journalism in financial, energy and development related fields."
So here's a question, why would a US journalist who's worked on content creation for Fintech start ups be writting a sponsored article about a little zambian mine and clearly trying to discredit CB? Could it be someone has paid for this 'journalism'?
It does all rather look like the company accussing CB is upset that someone else was granted a licence they wanted. If this other outfit had a licence before (which the story implies), then the obvious question is why did they lose it? As we found out with the BMR problem, licences are conditional and there is a process that is followed for revocation with a right of appeal. If there is a case against anyone, sounds more like a case to be made against the government/mining department rather than CB. He doesn't decide who gets a licence, and in this case he didn't even make the application, it was another company who CB then made a JV deal with.
No doubt there is another side to this story, but on the face of it it doesn't look that good for CB.
But the offical on-line records do name the licence holder as KPZ. And its listed as an exploration licence not a mining licence, so perhaps the article needs to be treated with a bit of caution before jumping to conclusions.
Zambian licences can be checked here, search for 24401-HQ-LEL (according to the BZT RNS back in April):
https://portals.landfolio.com/zambia/
It looks that way, DW is certainly sounding confident that we’ll be drilling the start of next year. Although we have had the line about targeting closing of a deal prior to year end before, so hopefully this one will come off.
Previous management out of BMR must surely be a good thing for all concerned. Will be interesting to know what our ‘support’ includes, lending cash, JV? Could be as simple as our BoD giving their new BoD approval to go ahead with whatever CBs plan is, and in our capacity as the largest share holder.
The reasons for PMO withdrawing were always doubtful imo. They seemed to have made the decision within hours of news there was gas condensate instead of oil at the main target zone. The well had multiple target zones with different prospects, it was always going to take time for the anyalsis to understand what is under the ground. The timing and speed of thier decision looked more like appeasing their investors and creditors given the difficulties they found themselves in at that moment in time, rather than any thorough assessment of results.
He used to post on II as well, don't know if he's there instead? Need to log in now to see the board and I don't have much desire to create an account for that one. Hopfully his absence is only because he had sold up here and was planning to be out of all stocks for a while, and not anything more serious. Takes a stange type to keep posting regularly on boards that you have no investment in or plans to invest.
Yes I'd wait until after they finish their fundraising. They've announced plans to raise $530m through issuing new shares. Their Mcap today is now only £176m. Even if the placings are on a par to the current price, its going to result in a few hundred % extra shares and its uncertain where the SP will be afterwards.
Re the PMO options over other areas - I'd assume it would have been covered in a contract clause that they only have the right to exercise the option over areas B or C if the work on Area A was completed as agreed. This doesn't look like it was completed, they withdrew from the project before completion. It is of course uknown to us exactly what the contract terms were, and whether or not PMO could be said to have fufilled their obligations. But the fact that they are handing back the WI in Area A could indicate that they didn't fufill their obligations.
No doubt DW wouldn't shut the door on them if they came up with the money for the 3D survey across areas B & C, but I don't beleive we wouldn't be contractually obliged to accept it and hand over WI in one of the other areas.
And there is a problem for PMO, they are very stretched financially. I think it doubtful we'll see PMO coming back to Alaska anytime soon, their immidate priority is raising the funds for their Northsea aquisition and paying off debt.
The reason may be nothing more than a change in priorities for our next FO and drill, added to any complications with personnel available to do the lab work during the pandemic.
Previously it was vital to get the full Charlie 1 results quickly. The purpose of which was to get the data to feed in for a new farmout on Icewine, which would have been our best hope for the next drill.
Things have changed with the XCD takeover, we now have new targets in the short term that look more viable if the low cost drilling option is achievable. With limited resources it'd make sense to prioritise any work required in getting the Peregrine FO sorted out.