Member Info for prickly

I have recalculated my 9th February attempt to analyse prospects of Hope financials

As before I have taken all the information from official BZT sources and Bloomberg metal prices.

I have adjusted

1. the metal prices to $4560 for gold $72 for silver and $12,000 for copper

2. the opex charge by Unitrans I have increased to $60 to allow for higher fuel costs

3. I have included Ownership 0f 90%

4. I have included an estimate of $8m pa for NZLM rotation plant costs.

I have not deducted any payability or figure for Namibian taxes.

The figure I now have and this is based on 480kpta ROM as before

is $72m for copper $17.5 m for gold and $17.4 m for silver total gross revenue = $106.9m

Deduct Unitrans $29m based on $60 per tonne and $8m for NZLM and you get $69.9m .

I appreciate there are full production assumptions here and this is a best case scenario and no allowances for BZT overheads and unknown financing costs etc . Nonetheless I am very keen to see how things play out this year .

I got the impression at the GM in December that this extra 20% was clearly CB's aim ,economically as it would be very beneficial but politically a bit tricky.

so we should be very pleased he has struck this deal for £1.14m mostly payable in shares and out of future profits.

This has to be worth many times its cost even if you allow a recent ten percent dip in copper and a probable similar rise in Unitrans cost.

Absolutely Pricey. He made a fortune buying up depressed consols (govt gilts) once he heard from his couriers that Waterloo had been won. Critically before the news got out to the rest of the stock market .

Hopefully this is an ideal ISA moment and it will concentrate minds on non oil alternatives.

This fiasco in the middle east may present an opportune time for ISAs in a few days. Assuming that it blows over eventually?

I agree it was not a car crash. Yes we are all still waiting for the news of off take agreement but the car crash is in the Whitehouse, One power crazed imbecile surrounded by a team of gung ho yes men and women. Blowing up the middle east and torpedoing the world economy and with it the copper price.

Yes looks like our new mullti poster is a little thin skinned. May I apologise for omitting a decimal point and I hope nobody invested on the basis that this was going to make them fabulously wealthy

The fact remains that BZT bought the NZLM mining licence for the plant and infrastructure and have no intention of mining the Zinc and lead that it was named after. I hope that at some stage these resources may add value to the Bezant project perhaps when we are taken over by a major.

As to the difference between a podcast discussion and an RNS then of course more weight should be attached to the RNS , But to suggest it is not "true" if it is not in an RNS is daft.

I make no apologies for being in occasional contact with CB . Tedwyn may not be aware that we set up an investors group a few years ago which regularly spoke with the chairman. The conversation was recorded and notes sent out to any interested shareholder. This was eventually disbanded by the chairman as it was very time consuming however we do talk from time to time and I relay anything which I consider interesting on this board . Obviously he does not give any market sensitive information but it does allow him to correct any misleading impressions such as that given earlier this week that we would suffer from a shortage of sulphuric acid due the Middle eastern conflict.

Totally agree Flipper. The company is obliged to release market sensitive information as soon as possible. I would rather hear it today at 3.39pm than tomorrow at 7am.

Plus too much regurgitated AI appearing on the board such as SP would have reached .16 had the RNS been announced earlier. AI can very useful but cannot predict the SP anymore than the winner of the Gold Cup.

I need to correct the RMC suggestion that we may have a problem processing at NZLM. The copper ore (which is mainly Chacocite) from Hope Gorob is mostly copper sulphides . These are going to be processed at NZLM using froth rotation. This does not involve any sulphuric acid.

Yes he is right that copper oxides use a process called acid leaching and do involve large quantities of sulphuric acid but copper sulphides do not.

So we have no issue with any shortage or sulphur caused by middle East war.

Today's RNS is great news. Although the deal was laid out in the plan it is good to have it signed and sealed. Unitrans is a major contractor and I hope we have long successful partnership as we progress into a serious mining business with a serious market cap.

The annual capacity of 180ktpa will all be be needed to process the Hope ore if we are to meet our 7-8k tons of copper annual target. This is why we bought the plant infrastructure. There is little interest in Lead or Zinc which are both in plentiful supply and are in structural decline as lead acid batteries fall out of fashion and demand for galvanised steel in construction is dependent on the troubled Chinese building industry. The coup was spotting the opportunity to secure this plant for a snip and convert it .

I imagine that many posters on this board are small business owners (like myself) and are not accustomed to waiting long periods for loan approvals. Hence the four months since the announcement that we had secured a non binding offtake agreement seems frustratingly long. Apparently and RMC confirms this. it is quite normal in the mining world to have to wait 4-6 months even for "piddling " amounts . This is as it is, as the idiot in the White House says.

Fortunately we know, because CB has confirmed in podcasts, that we are making good progress regardless ,as unlike other Aim miners we have sufficient cash to develop this project in the meantime.

"It is going to plan" and the plan according to the October technical report was to get into production as quickly as possible. This means refurbishing NZLM rotation plant, levelling the ground at Hope setting up and installing the crushing and screeding equipment, the ore sorting machine and conveyor systems. Martin Churchouse laid out this plan and CB has said that if there had been any material delays or issues to the rolling out of this plan he would have to announce these setbacks in an RNS.

We know we have had contractors on site since January 10th. I asked CB if he was OK as I thought he was bunkering down in Dubai. In fact he is currently in Namibia with Martin , which I am delighted to hear.

Kwadoku

I am a LTH who bought in originally at a much higher price than you and lost 95% of my investment. This is not something I am happy about but unlike you I chose to rebuild by buying back at various points as I believed in CB's theory that copper prices would seriously rebound. He was well placed with most of his companies in terms of licenses and grades and although it took 2 or 3 years longer than I hoped the rewards are starting to flow. The opportunity to buy BZT at less than .02 was there until last spring when it seemed fairly obvious to me that this was a massive opportunity. You chose to rant on every board you could find about how unfair life was and how awful and old CB was. You have now modified your tune a little but forgive me if I do not take you or your valuable advice too seriously.

Friedland (King of Copper) says it is very clear that the copper price must double to meet future demand. He is no doubt talking up his own book and and is unpleasantly sycophantic about the Saudi royals, but he may well be right.

If copper price doubles then copper stocks will 10 X.. That would be very nice . Good to see some optimism on this board from ID .

Great post Wheaten. Thanks . This should be on the BZT website.

1. We have technicians on the NZLM site currently refurbishing the plant...repairing/replacing motors and conveyor belts.

2.Steinert pre-sorter ordered. All other necessary equipment ordered and deposits paid

3. Mining contractor appointed.

4.Transport contractor appointed.

5. All internal targets are being met.

We will be in production later this year. I think we should accept things are going well.

The price of neodymium has risen 95% in a year. More than gold 75% and a lot more than copper . This is the main reason I have had a small investment here.

I know we have no Jorc resource so we cannot really begin to estimate what the licenses can deliver but rare earth metals are hot and at $154( and rising) per kg I hope we can find enough to make this a valuable early day project. Yes there will be raises but there will be lot of interest from serious investors like Sovereign wealth funds if CB's calculation is proved correct.

I had a brief conversation with CB on tuesday. He is very confident that this project is running smoothly.

Points

They have more than sufficient funds in hand so any delay in funding announcement is not impeding progress.

The protocols for the funding package require a great deal of detailed compliance such as confirmation of explosive storage licence, water permits, transport permits, local Namibian labour regulations etc etc.

I got the impression that this is all fairly routine but maybe a bit more time consuming than he had expected.

He said the interviews were going well and they had attracted a good pool of local technical people.

When I prompted him to make more progress announcements he said he is not inclined to issue RNS's piecemeal .

I would be grateful if posters would not criticise me for relaying what I have been told. Of course I asked when we would get the RNS and of course he would not give a date and I also said in my opinion he should trumpet the good news. I get the impression he thinks most posters are fretting unduly . He and Martyn Churchouse and the team are getting on with the job

.IMHO this project is taking shape and we have nothing but good news to look forward to. Even Kwads who still thinks I am a race horse might one day change his opinion.

Warrant holders or convertible loan owners are under no obligation to sell their share once exercised or converted. Warrants raise funds for the company remember.

Thanks Silverknight. I get a bit miffed sometimes when I report back what i see and hear at meetings and posters who were not there contradict me. But there are still a lot of investors who have lost serious money backing Colins companies (including me) and they do not all share my enthusiasm for the revival potential.

It takes a certain amount of bottle or maybe foolhardiness to average down when you have lost tens of thousands . A following wind and rising commodity prices have helped Colin recover BZT from rock bottom to our current position. His strategy of seeking out well documented heavily explored mines discarded by the majors when prices were low is bearing fruit. Unfortunately the commodity cycle took longer to turn than he anticipated and we had to fritter away huge tracts of equity to keep the lights on. The warrants are still hanging over us and according to Pricey we still have around 4-billion outstanding mainly due to Sandersons and these will weigh on the SP . Nevertheless the prospects for making large profits , which I attempted to lay out, are tremendous and it should dawn on the investing world some time this year when we start shipping concentrate. Barring a black swan event there is nothing to stop BZT multibagging from here.

The short answer is they have agreed a financier and have been discussing this deal for months. I don’t know why he has not been able to announce it.

I can only relate what happened at the Agm and i would prefer if you didn’t shoot the messenger..

whilst we wait for the funding announcement and now that metal prices have settled down, i have made another attempt to calculate the prospects of the hope open pit economics. it is a bit of a *** packet analysis but once we are up and running and at full production this is my best guess.

all the information comes from official bzt sources.and current spot prices on bloomberg

1. the 480ktpa run of mine ore figure is from 2024 report by sound mining.

2. all the grades are from 12 feb 2025 rns report by steinert 1.36% cu 42g/t gold and 31g/t silver expected in the first three years of mining.

3.recovery grades from table 8 in report . cu 92% gold 60% and silver 50%

4. operating costs given as $55usd per ton rom in october report

so 480tpa @1.36% cu makes 6,528 tonnes.... cu @92% at current spot price of $13,000 = $78m usd

480kpta @ 42g/t gold makes 6,480 ozs.... au @60% at current spot price of $5,000 = $19.5m usd

480kpta @31g/t silver makes 478,000 ozs ag @50% at current spot price of $80 =$19.2m usd

total annual production produces $116.62m revenue . less opex at $55 per ton of ore = $26.4m

so gross revenue $90.22m usd.p.a.

this is before deductions for payability, partnership share and namibian taxes.

this is however a lot more than charles archer projected but reflects the increase in metal prices recently.

nb this is just the hope open pit operation. we also have the hope underground operation the gorob vendome open pits operation and the 1.1m tons of contained lead and zinc at the nzlm licence. pb is $1900 per ton and zinc is now $3254 per ton. so there is much more to come.

i am constantly badgering cb to deliver the next rns as i know we all want to hear from the horses mouth but hopefully this is something to chew on in the meantime