Member Info for pickedpeck

A way off funding yet. The normal stages of mine development go from discovery to JORC, to PEA (aimed to be published shortly for GROC), to Preliminary Feasibility Study, to Definitive Feasibility Study, to investment / fund raise, to construction, to commissioning, to production, and finally to decommissioning and disposal.

All the stages cost money, only production creates income although each of the development stages potentially adds value to the asset. They have raised funds today to complete the PEA, assuming that all looks ok they will likely plan to raise money for the feasibility studies. Only after the DFS will the full mine economics be clear, and an NPV calculated making the mine investable or not. Obviously the early signs here are good, a great resource is a great start point, but to secure construction investment a lot more work has to be done.

Obviously that all assumes that GROC are going to try and develop the mine themselves. Perhaps a better outcome for current investors would be a bid from a major looking for a graphite development asset. The PEA is the first tangible document that would enable a meaningful bid to be made. The offtaker(s) giving an indication of offtake price and quality would be a key component of a PEa.

In fairness there are three companies on AIM with a lower share price and higher market cap, Reabold, Baron Oil, and UKOG! I was surprised there were any. Some of the others in the same price range are sub £1m mkt cap, probably zombies.

Consolidation should have no effect on dilution, that is a market cap vs assets vs cash required discussion and nothing to do with unit share price. Dilution can counter intuitively raise the share price over time, and whilst it is inevitable for both GROC and ALBA at some point it would probably be less painful at a higher unit price.

Anyway seems like most people are happy to carry on trading 35 shares for 5p, or to buy 1,750 shares in a gold mine for the cost of a pint at wetherspoons.

I wonder whether it is worth calling on the board to consolidate the shares here. £10m mkt cap and 7.7Bn shares is incongruous and undermines the credibility of the company by being not even a penny share.

A 20:1 consolidation would leave 385m shares in issue and shift the unit price to 3p or so, a 50:1 maybe even better with 155m shares and a price of 7p a share. Trading range equivalent for this year would be 5p - 9.25p, 5 year range 5p - 28p ish.

No one is going to be disadvantaged as the number of shares in issue is still plenty to enable liquidity, but it would 'feel' a lot better and be less off putting for new private and institutional investors. The psychology of the price is not insignificant.

£26m seems cheap for the mkt cap of this company and market position. I've bought in on speculative recovery and / or possible bid situations arising.

I've bought a few more. Can only see this going one way for the next year or so as progress is made with both the mine workings and GROC. Horse Hill is a sideshow they are not in control of and i wish they would sell their part of it off frankly.

Wasa - The reason that some have felt able to hold a large part of their portfolio in HZM is the balance of risk factors and key indicators.

- Who else is invested and why

- Who is on the board, and why, and what is theor reputation and track record

- Asset value, although this is arguable given the purchase prices

- Commodity demand and market dynamic

- Who has done diligence

- Stage of development

- NPV vs Mkt Cap reward balance

For me the key moment was when Orion Mine Finance stumped up 25m for essentially a royalty. That implied two things, firstly that competent mining experts had done diligence, and secondly that they were confident enough that HZM would make to production to use a royalty payback model.

I was already bought into Nickel as a key commodity for the electricity transition and could not find a better risk reward opportunity than HZM. At today's price and level of programme progress, combined with sustained Nickel price inflation that still remains true, although as risk has reduced the reward has retreated a little too.

We should always revalidate our investment decisions. I am happy to hold here for at least another year with an expectation of somewhere near 70-100% gain in that period as we enter production.

Nearly there. Every day risk reducea.

Dunno what happened to the second half of that! But...

29kt production x $15k profit/t after sub $10k AISC is $435m EBITDA.

Earliest first div date likely 2026, latest 2028.

All current planned assets in production by 2030 then dividend will likely exceed current mkt cap by some margin.

Finish A1 construction spend in H1 2024, first 18 months of production income will likely be used to fund A2. In 2026 they should have income from A1 and A2, the level depends on the Nickel price then but at $25k a ton then their income will likely be higher than the current market cap.

Dividends just off Araguaia could be as high as 50p or per share.

(29kt production x $15k/t profit (

When would ideal timing for the A2 DFS be? I think the company would be better sitting on it until September, time it to come along with (hopefully) the start of cold commissioning / end of construction phase. Some positive words about budgets, contingency, over run etc would go down well then too.

Would be nice psychologically to say we have finished the build phase for part 1, and here is the near identical and investable extension plan for part 2, and maybe reference a future part 3.

Those trades, and their lack of effect on the price, could be related to last year's options. Cant help but think they may have all occurred at the mid price at exactky the same time, pretty much a year to the day since the last options grant.

Lets hope you're right, as to cash in the deal has to be a long way up from 170. However the options dont vest for 6, 12, and 18 months, there is usually no obligation for an acquirer to pay out on unvested options (although they often do).

I suspect it is more likely calendar related, SR and JM got the biggest numbers bit I suspect this is just an annualised options grant to key staff as a bonus incentive. There was a similar RNS 13th July last year.

My last two employers did this too for execs, seems to be pretty common practice now as the preferred retention / incentivisation method.

Fulmar, remember these are options not shares,

Taking Simon Retter's award for example, 330,000 @170p, in order to make any money the share price has to be above 170. Let's say SR decides to vest 1/3 at 6 months (as he can) , with the share price at 200p. He would receive 110,000 x 30p, £33k. Vesting at 6 months it would be fully taxable as income, so SR wpuld receive around £17k into his bank account. Hardly a massive bonus for a C level bod.

It does get nicer should the share price accelerate, but then we all win too.

Options are a great way to keep senior executives at companies. Having vesting dates in the future is almost certainly dependent on continued employment. Wouldn't it be worse to have SR not tied in and head hunted for a bigger job and bonus elsewhere? Imagine that RNS.

I have been missing out on that type of in depth technical analysis, I can see at last where I have been going wrong. If only i had known facts, financials, and research were so useless I could have saved myself loads of time. Not just on the time wasted doing research, but my market exit would have been way quicker, just perhaps not in the ideal way.

Seriously, does anyone believe this nonsense? Even the guy making the video has titled his graph 'bank nifty chart'.

Comedy gold.

UT in at a weird price. Can't see it being fat fingers.

So many different reactions here to the placing, you don't really have to guess pretty much none of them from anyone who has been on the exec of a publicly traded company.

For clarity, the reasons i see the raise as a positive, and I believe so should other shareholders, are:

1. The raise was done quickly. They didnt struggle to find a buyer or buyers, the story was instantky good enough to raise against. That means it has very likely been done in principle a while and was just waiting for the confirmation of the permit to execute.

2. The execution price is good. You can't realistically raise at a spike price, or in fact much above the market average price. If you took the average 20 day price on ALBA before the raise as the baseline then the execution price is above that. Two days earlier it would have been above market price. The spike the day before could never have been the raise price.

3. What it enables. Miners only realise value through spending money, often lots if it. Money makes things happen. Assuming they have spend plans in place, and lord knows they have had enough time to prepare them, then spending money is only good for shareholders. We won't get a mine without spend, simple as that.

The news of this week, the water permit and the raise, both point towards a resource that will be developed rather than sitting on the shelf for years.

Fidelity Management & Research.

Building, equipping, and staffing a mine is not cheap. Gold doesnt process itself. The RNS tells yiubwhat the money will be spent on. No pay, o play.

Oh and btw, as an AIM example, i bought HZM at 1.5p a share, equivalent to 30p post consolidation. Now 150p a share, a 5x gain. Since I bought they have increased the number of shares in circulation by 3x, diluting me loads. On the other hand those extra shares have allowed the company to build and equip a huge mine and gave me the 5x return.

That is a totally naive view.

Of coursr they will raise money, increasing the number of shares in circulation. But by spending that money developing the mine they increase their capital value. Dilution happens when capital value does not increase.

Which is worth more, a field, a field with some gold under it, a field with proven quantity of gold reserves under it, a field with a hole in it to access the gold reserves, or a field with gold reserves, hole, and processing plant? You only start to earn income at the last stage, but have to spend development money to get there. A good investment spends less money devloping an asset than its capital appreciation, a bad one spends more and dilutes shareholders.

This is a known mine, with (some) known gold reserves, with the first permits in place to allow operations. That is worth more than it was last week.