Member Info for pickedpeck

More gold coming out of Ethiopia:

MIDROC Ethiopia was established in 1994. In 2011 it made a profit of 1.3bn birr (US$70m).

MIDROC has major gold mining interests in Ethiopia and it is reported that MIDROC Gold Mine (a subsidiary of MIDROC Ethiopia) has paid the Ethiopian Government 100.1 million birr in royalties, the largest contribution of any mining company. Midroc Gold is Ethiopia’s sole gold exporter. Its Lega Dembi mine has a yearly average production of around 4,500 kg of gold and silver.

Just thought it may be nice to hear about gold in Ethiopia from someone other than Kefi management. How many have actually researched Ethiopia as a gold region? How many know there are mines there and operating already? This is not the first major gold mine in Ethiopia, the King Solomon's mines bit may actually not be a million miles from the truth.

Have a read:
https://qz.com/africa/1189246/ethiopia-gold-mining-asosa-region-has-one-of-worlds-great-untapped-gold-deposits/

Looks like we got out of this just in time pre-covid oil price collapse. Geopark price bombed from around $22 at the transaction for AMER to under $6, and has only recovered to $9s now.

This was my last oil field investment, ended up doing ok and grateful to be out. So long and farewell to all the AMER investors, hopefully money now tucked somewhere good.

There I was wishing HZM was mining in covid free NZ, and this epic paper exploring Nickel and Cobalt geology globally but in particular NZ popped up. Shame we're not looking for new exploration prospects!

https://www.gns.cri.nz/static/download/MINERALS/CR_2018-064.pdf

wasa - maybe we should team up and make a takeover bid. I've got 7.25m in total now. Only another few hundred million and we could get to the 30% mark..

My point is the Bid should be the basis for any trend plot, not the mid price.

If it gets to 15p count me in, that would be £1m on my current holding so pints of bubbly maybe, although do like Sam Smiths... actually thinking about it 13.8p gets me to £1m total holding value.

I am going for 6.9p for September 15th. Near 100% gain from today, and £0.5m for me. There will be spikes higher, but I think a new level post finance would be around 7p. Not as optimistic as most I know, but I think the ramp up in price will take longer as the value realisation gets closer.

Just plotting the bid price? The intraday share price is all over the place, but the real trend line to be interested in here seems to be the much more stable bid price. The MMs are manipulating the apparent price by opening up and closing down the spread using the Ask.
Maybe they are just bored? As a shareholder I am really only interested in the Bid, as that's what my assets could potentially be disposed for.

wasa... August is the middle month of Q3. #justsaying

I think 20p is out of the question, something not on the table at the moment would have to happen to get to that price. However TK in build and approaching production, and Saudi also on the way may see a market cap somewhere nearer £200m. Plenty of comparitors out there for that valuation, so 10p plus is not an impossible dream.

Added another 200k this morning. I listened to the presentation again last night, clear that the debt part is sorted and equity is in negotiation. I suspect the shareholders they are trying to protect from dilution are Teck, Glencore, and Canaccord rather than you or I so they are likely using the last 10p Glencore transaction as a reference rather than the current open market sp. The question is how far from that will a compromise be struck, the clock is obviously ticking and there are likely multiple interested parties.
The comments regarding Vermelho and inbound interest were also very neatly played by JM. I'd be amazed if Teck had not at least discussed taking the lot.

At one point in the presentation video JM said 'that we are starting construction on later this year'. 1:48:35 . Didn't say we'd like to, or pending finance. Pretty confident statement that build appears to be still on track, implying he believes finance will close well in advance.
Just speculating.

Just so we are on the same page about who and what JP Morgan are:

JPMorgan Chase is ranked by S&P Global as the largest bank in the United States and the sixth largest bank in the world by total assets, with total assets of US$2.687 trillion.

The idea that they would sell <$10m of HZM because of a totally unrelated criminal investigation is a little farcical if you don't mind me saying...

This may lead to a bid. If it is Teck I doubt it could mean much of anything else. The last 3 weeks have seen also stake building buys on the open market for no notable RNS, lots of round number purchases.
If so, what price would you take? Bear in mind these things tend to be a bit of a stitch up for the private investor, and any bid will likely be referenced to an open market price depressed by Covid.
The saving grace is the option prices for JM et al at 4.8p. I can’t see it going for less than that plus a nice margin, but I doubt the initial bid will be much more than 6p. A bit of shenanigans with Glencore might see them paid out off market to secure their position, same with JPM.
I know this is not likely to be a popular view, but I know my company is busy making acquisitions of companies ‘distressed by Covid19’, it’s a blanket excuse to throw some cash around for cheap assets. We may all think 10p would be a bargain given the project(s) npv, but the share price doesn’t reflect it. How much of the company is in a position to defend against a bid in the nuts if Teck have the JPM stake and Glencore are on side?

dsrt - Doing business in most of Africa is just like this. There is either a lack of money, or excess corruption when there is. Any company opening up a brand new industry anywhere in Africa is inherently going to have a risks and issues log as long as your arm, so that high risk has to be offset by high potential reward.
For me that is at least partly offset here by a couple of things:

1. The team has done it before, these are not novices to this despite what many say about Harry he has built a team able to execute this project.
2. The Saudi opportunity - I actually think long term this may be worth more than Ethiopia. Saudi is becoming desperate for non-oil based revenue as it sees the end of the oil funded golden years looming.

If you want a business not subject to the reality of working in Africa go invest in something developing a first world resource.

That narrows it down in reality to Canada, US, Australia / NZ, Japan, and Western Europe. You'll pay a much higher price, and have a much lower return multiple if they succeed. GGP (Audtralia) mkt cap is 25x KEFI, production level is very similar (ie Zero). Another one with the same production is PUR, Canada this time, and 19x KEFI valuation.

If you invest in a company opening up in Africa expect sh*t to happen because it always does. But the potential rewards are enormous IF it works. If you don't like that then take your money and try and make a profit out of GGP or PUR from the current price.

My trades today are showing as sells interestingly. If it falls further I will add more, tempted to go a bit 'kitchen sink' here.

Just added 500,000. I see more room up than down here, £13m mkt cap is less than a third of the value of one of their two projects so I can see decent gains to be made for the patient. Two million in now, and a two year hold plan.

Just added a couple of hundred thousand more. Brazil news has probably induced some sphincter twitch in a few holders, but with finance imminent and the mines located in a remote part of the countryside well away from Sao Paulo I am less concerned with the impact here.
If finance is agreed in the summer, I think mine construction may well start on time in the autumn.

The KEFI message board generates a remarkable amount of heated opinion considering the mkt cap of the company is £13m. Market maker games, opinions on the CEO, conspiracy theories, assertion of corruption, speculation over bank liquidity and so on.

Imagine what this would be like if it was an actual miner producing actual gold, and had a market cap of a few hundred million!

Take Pan African Resources as a contrast for example. A gold producer rather than explorer, it produces in the region of 200k Oz a year, production increasing via mine and processing investments, share price up 75% since March, double digit growth, pays a dividend, and has a mkt cap of £300m , 25x KEFI. It has only 4 message board posts this week!

KEFI hopes to eventually turn into a company half the size of PAF, but if messages on here were proportional to mkt cap then KEFI would be worth billions.

Seriously, considering the limited amount of money in play some of these theories are massively far fetched. Can we not keep a little grounded? Or am I missing the point and all this heat is about generating tradeable share price movements rather than anything to do with the actual company?

28th of May, so on the register on the 29th for payment 9th of July, 1.25p makes the yield 3.33% , not bad for a company with 26% revenue growth, 18% backlog increase, and 17.5% EPS growth with single figure P/E ratio.

Apart from the small free float I really don't understand why this is not more attractive to value investors.