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Just a thought, won't the impairment and subsequent paper loss be able to be offset against the sale price to minimise tax paid on the gain? Seems a shrewdly timed move if so.
Actually I think we (not the actual we but the collective we of investors and speculators) are a big part of the energy problem in the UK. Energy should be a core government strategy with a designed integrated supply system aimed at collapsing the per unit price to the point of attracting energy intensive industry to the UK.
Right now what is happening is that investors are demanding ever increasing returns and offer very limited capital investment, so programs like SMR are struggling to get going despite obvious demand.
Rather than look at renewables as the cause of this it is much easier to lay the blame at the privatisation purge in the 1980s and 90s where the real damage was done. You can say the same for water too, same parlous state, same root cause.
Renewables are only ever part of a mix, they don't and shouldn't be intended to operate as base load. But there is a lot more to the picture than per unit pricing. We need a coherent joined up energy strategy. I don't see any party at westminster getting close to that at the moment.
For example:
Community heating: There is no need for every house to generate its own heat when it could be done on a community by community basis as is in many other parts of the world. Geothermal, ground source, large scale air source could generate heat and hot water for large numbers of houses, especially as many of ours are sited in close proximity.
Renewables: We have Europe's strongest winds and most tidal resources. Harnessing both with government capital rather than PE could create an oversupply of energy such that we could start exporting it back to the continent rather than buying French nuclear in. Then there is hydropower, solar, and geothermal.
Nuclear : The small modular reactor initiative needs some horsepower behind it, waffling and procrastination has gone on too long. Rolls-Royce have leading tech and we have a bunch of previously closed down sites which could readily be used. Wylfa, Trawsfynydd and more. Small safe reactors are the way to go as baseload.
Democratised Power : Why doesn't every house, office, or factory have solar panels? The return on solar now far outstrips costs, but why are we using greenfield sites rather than coating industrial buildings? No joined up thinking, no co-ordination is why.
EVs : EVs only make sense if electricity costs are far less than petrol or diesel. The only sensible way to drive adoption is to make the KWh charge lower by over producing.
Storage : Energy storage in batteries is not the answer, there are lots of ideas all round the world that can store small to massive energy loads. Batteries can be part of the mix, but things like compressed gas, water elevation, thermal storage and more should all be part of a joined up network.
Natural gas: Using local gas resources as part of a peak lopping strategy is part of the mix, we should never have to import gas with the reserves we have.
Terry, not a lot of facts in that lot. A lot of opinion, not many facts.
Fishing... that's tenuous to say the least. My old Jeep weighs nearly 3 tons, and can legally tow another 3.5 behind it. No one mentioning that being the cause of revised speed limits.
GVW on an MG4 mid range EV is just over 2t, with a kerb weight of 1.6t. A petrol engine Focus is about GVW is 1910kg, about 10% lighter. Hardly enough to make a massive momentum difference in a crash.
Besides, kinetic energy = 1/2 m v^2 , so v has an exponential effect on kinetic energy transferred in a crash whereas mass is linear.
You deserve abuse for a bs post like that.
Debt free, $37.5m receivable from the sale over the next 12 months which is incidentally more than the current mkt cap.
This price values the US business at a negative number.
Operating loss due to an impairment charge rather than operating performance.
Notrex - at no stage did I say you should be forced to do anything. Where force comes into play is at the point of manufacture.
We have banned aerosols with CFCs as propellant because there was good evidence they were doing huge lasting damage to the atmosphere. No one was forced to stop polishing their furniture or using air freshener.
There is a big difference between the company doing OK and the share price doing OK.
Right through an El Nino winter and collapsing gas prices the company has been cash generative. You do understand that is not the only scenario that could have played out? If they had been unhedged in terms of production they could have gone bust.
You do also understand that if they had not established solid ESG credentials then the Democrat committee could have shut them down?
Doing OK in my definition is making money against a harsh market.
Notrex,
Now who is being Western (UK) Centric?
https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/ev-registrations-in-china-nearly-double-from-2023/
EVs will be half the market in China by the end of the year.
I admit in the UK a lot of it is about price and EVs being led by higher end brands like Tesla, Audi, Mercedes etc. The China market has a very different dynamic with lots of short journey low cost commuter cars being sold at low prices, now way below what you can buy a petrol engine car for.
People will change only based on economics. Making EVs that are cheaper to buy and run than ICE cars will create pull demand rather than push.
Just for transparency... I would buy an EV when it makes economic sense to me. Right now I have a diesel Jeep, an old Porsche, an Audi diesel and a VW diesel Van, plus 5 litres worth of motorbikes. My dad was a rally driver and mechanic, I am about as genetically petrol head as you could find. I just know that era is ending, and understand the reasons why.
Oh and another thing Jim, actually no, it's not worse than that. The share price has more or less tracked natural gas market prices, do a plot of the DEC price over Henry Hub price and you'll see a pretty good correlation, except DEC didn't fall by quite as big a percentage and missed a few of the short term spikes, up and down.
If you sell one commodity, your business value is going to follow that commodity price regardless of how much work you do to mitigate that.
Gas went cheap, so did DEC, gas is recovering, so is DEC.
Gas price futures for the next three years are all set higher than today. Does that mean you should buy more DEC do you think?
Good for you notrex, the secondhand car market should keep you going for your lifetime I would have thought.
Just don't make bad arguments about the environmental impact or economics of it though. If you can't tell the climate has already changed then you're deliberately not looking.
You may criticise fluffy green western woke dreams, but have you wondered what is making a totalitarian state like China throw the kitchen sink at switching to renewables? I mean they don't have green protestors on the streets, a Chinese Greta would just be thrown in jail, and their markets are not driving it either, everyone looks the other way for their cheap gadget / clothes / whatever regardless of human rights, politics, or territorial claims.
Maybe, just maybe, they have studied the science and had a 'holy f*ck' moment.
Jim, it all depends when you bought, and what you did when the share price went down. I'm in profit now on DEC, I don't shout about it every time when I am buying or selling as its no one's business but mine.
No, it's UK centric because I am in the UK and decisions I take effect things that happen here.
However since you bought up China...
In 2022, China installed roughly as much solar photovoltaic capacity as the rest of the world combined, then went on in 2023 to double new solar installations, increase new wind capacity by 66 percent, and almost quadruple additions of energy storage. China is currently the world leader on renewable energy and accelerating. They have come from a very dirty coal past, but are changing course at a pace that makes the West look like a dribbling shambles.
China is also by far the world's largest market for electric cars, motorbikes, trucks, and trains, not to mention industrial electricity demand.
India is the laggard, still growing coal fired energy capacity.
Waiting for someone to bring up birds killed by wind turbines...
All these stories are just that, stories. It's like the invention of the steam engine where it was put out that people would suffocate above 40mph.
I do worry about the drop off in general ability for critical thinking. Acceptance of counter stories without the ability to critique them has led to the rife propagation of conspiracy theories, whether about how green renewable energy is, the efficacy of vaccines, or how flat earth the earth really is.
Bringing it back to DEC a lot of the chat here has been about cunning plans and crooked leadership, another type of conspiracy theory. The real explanation could be a lot simpler, that the company is actually performing OK against a low natural gas market price backdrop.
Gas generation is for peak lopping.
In the US they are way behind on renewable generation, and still heavily dependent on coal.
In the UK the power mix for generation in 2024 looks a bit different.
As of April 2024, the UK’s energy mix is comprised of 41% renewable energy, with a significant decline in fossil fuels. In the 12 months to April 2024, 31.1% of the UK’s energy mix was from fossil fuels, with gas accounting for 30.1% and coal only 1.0%.
Renewable energy has seen a significant growth over the last decade, increasing from 10.7% in 2014 to 39.5% in 2023. In 2022, renewable sources became the main fuel used for electricity in the UK, with nearly 135 terawatt-hours generated.
So as far as electric cars go, given that charging is generally managed overnight at off peak rates then the vast majority of the energy comes from renewable or nuclear. (Remember gas is primarily for peak lopping).
Even GT generation is way more efficient at converting hydrocarbons into energy than an ICE, even allowing for distribution losses.
Just saying. Read stories about how terrible electric cars are with a bit of cynicism about who may be putting those stories out.
Robbie, that's even more worrying. How much capital and expertise do you think it takes to set up a competitive jewellery design, manufacturing, and retail operation, particularly as there is already one called 'Clogau' marketing Welsh gold with only modest success. George wishfully thinking something doesn't make it real.
Ffs they are putting waste tip fines in bulk sacks with a tractor, separating with a shaking table with a capacity of one bulk sack a day.
The cynicism about the RNS releases here is now palpable.
Things I would like to see from the company to persuade me to hold
1. A timeline for mine development, easily possible with conditional milestones.
2. Some sort of basic PEA to estimate what business model is being proposed for main mine and waste tips, and any satellite developments.
3. Any sort of coherent strategic plan for Alba as a whole. WTF is Australia all about, that's my money they are proposing chasing that wild goose with.
4. An estimate of the capital requirements. It's starting to feel like RNS followed by a raise to pay George's wages again is on rinse and repeat mode.
Yes, in the absence of any if the above I am starting to get impatient.
Robbie, there is a massive difference between the retail price of Welsh gold and the price that would be paid ex mine. It's uttey naive to think Clogau mine gold would sell for millions a kilo, it's just never going to happen. I think it may command a premium, but we are talking at the outside 50% on mkt value, more likely less.
Making daft assertions like that can undermine other things you write. Keep it real.
You will notice the prices of these pieces of jewellery which are leveraging the hell out of Welshness are approximately the same price as similar pieces which dont.
https://www.clogau.co.uk/
In fairness they are talking about extracting fines from the waste tip. Fines don't need crushing, they just need gravity separation to concentrate before refining.
Mined rock will need crushing.
Concentrator capacity helps cost analysis. 1.5t per hour, one guy to run the digger/loader, one guy to run the concentrator, one guy to supervise both and stop them bunking off or dodging safety issues. Add in some power and maintenance costs, and then the refining charges. £100 a ton may be a bit low.
Its worth doing, but no one is getting a significant return on investment from the waste tip.
The waste tip RNS from 2022 is worth a read back to back with this morning's typo riddled effort.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/ALBA/clogau-st-david8217s-waste-tip-update-l5bop2np4t5j0wy.html
Very excitable language, I'd say more so in the 2022 version with its 1000g / ton claims.
Let's be generous and say 10g/ton through the whole 4000 tons of waste (which is ridiculously tiny by the way).
4000 x 10g = 40,000g or 40kg of gold.
1kg of gold is £60,000 ish currently, and yes I appreciate there may be a premium for Welsh gold.
40 x £60k is a maximum revenue potential of £2.4m.
Drop the gold content to 5g per ton as in this morning's RNS and you get to £1.2m.
Then there is the cost of mining and processing. We don't know that, but if they took the three men one dog and a tractor approach, plus outsourcing actual refining then it's likely in the range of £100 per ton.
So roughly speaking the waste tip could yield as much as £2m income, or as little as £800k.
Its better than what we have now, but in the scale of things, not very much at all.
That's why my BS detector has gone off this morning. This could all be matter of fact and not use the excitable language in the RNS. It's not a massive exciting development, it's a few quid on the side of the main event at best.
Buying assets at a low EBITDA multiple, and selling them on at a higher multiple is not bad business.
Someone here was complaining about decline 23 to 24 YoY, the acquisitions and disposals (subject to the EGM) boost attributable production whilst reducing overall debt. Again, not bad business.
I do wonder if the problem here is not the strategy, but the speed giving the impression of slight if hand. It looks to me like they are being nimble not duplicitous.
Why is everyone so wound up on here, is it something about DEC that attracts angry people? 90% of the posts are in some way rude or abusive, hardly any discuss the company.
Can we just act civilised. I don't usually use the filter as it's good to hear contrary views, but this has become ridiculous.