Member Info for ragnarlothbrok

Well that's a first for me

They are spending around $100m this year, which includes the completion of Vulcan. From next year this reduces to around $55m from memory

Iridium starting to be noticed… It increased by 10% to $3,300/oz on BASF yesterday. And rhodium $19,500/oz on BASF this morning. Ruthenium next? Heraeus with a few comments

"The iridium price has soared by nearly 100% to $3,450/oz over the holiday season, gaining 40% between 11 and 18 December 2020 and again between 18 December 2020 and 7 January 2021. The rally occurred as the smallest of the PGM markets is experiencing record market tightness owing to supply problems in South Africa. The combined effect of the mine closures in March/April 2020 and Anglo American Platinum’s smelter outages throughout the year has placed significant strain on the market. Availability of the metal is likely to remain low in the near-term, which could see the regime of higher prices sustained. Rhodium also climbed to a record high of $18,950/oz, again reflecting South African supply constraints and strong autocatalyst demand. Relative to rhodium and iridium, the ruthenium price is lagging, and higher prices are possible"

https://www.heraeus.com/media/media/hpm/doc_hpm/precious_metal_update/en_6/Appraisal_20210111.pdf

Everything seems to be on track Jammer. And even chrome prices have started ticking up lately. That could be some upside that very few of us seem to have contemplated

He must have run the rule over Tharisa given his admiration for SLP. He loves a low P/E and by my calcs Tharisa's is even lower. And in a year from now I think THS will have more net cash than SLP

Its easy to focus on the churn in the short term and blame the sellers for being down but without the support of Odier and CE Mining, Sandstorm etc Rambler would have gone bust. Ok 0.2p but my current losses pale into insignificance compared to what they are sitting on after all these years of SP decline. I'm glad that they decided to stick it out and I just can't see them flipping for a few million.

I remember a company called Weatherly which has a mine in Namibia that went bust a couple of years ago when the copper price was around $6,000/t. Unfortunately the pit filled with water after heavy rain just as they were planning some fresh finance and Orion decided they weren't going to support them any longer. Major shareholder support is essential!

There is a tremendous amount of activity from inexperienced retail investors in the call option market at the moment which is probably going to be the deleveraging trigger you refer to... at the first sign of trouble there will be a stampede. I don't think it will be this week, but probably within the next 3 months or so

I think if you take out the oil companies that would probably set the S&P back into positives... But the trouble with the FAANG momentum stocks is that everyone is watching them and looking for signs of weakness, so that when they appear it will drag the whole market down with it, not just tech. The UK falls even faster even though it has no tech :-(

I think the biggest risk to the market is the FAANGS falling in a doctom style decline and causing an expansion in the risk premium. This is the reason why I stick to stocks with exceptionally strong cash flow like THS, because in the short term sentiment may dominate, but at the end of the day the market will always slink back for the cash

Funny the way the market works...

Castillo had some good grades today and some observed mineralisation and the market reaction means that its market cap is now £42m. It doesn't have a resource statement and is unlikely to produce any copper until 2024.

Rambler has 400kt of copper confirmed, an ore body still open for extension, a producing mine and a plant and can be acquired for the princely sum of £26m

https://www.investegate.co.uk/castillo-copper-ltd--ccz-/rns/assays-confirm-major-copper-discovery-at-big-one/202101110700071590L/

Samancor don't have a seat on the board so they would be unlikely to have an official channel to financial results or dividend decisions. Also, I don't think the decision around the amount of the special dividend will impact the share price. Maybe in the short term, but its free cash flow, not how its distributed, which ultimately matters.

Like TBTT says, Samancor aren't sitting in a good position right now, at these prices I think they are barely breaking even and they have had to curtail their higher cost production. The issues with electricity availability would be compounding the lack of profitability. The chrome tax proposed by the SA government is designed specifically to support Samancor (and Glencore) which shows the depth of the challenge the ferrochrome industry is facing. If the need the few million they just made from selling a few shares (and the $50m or so from the rest) then things are in really dire shape. But I don't think things are that bad. They are part of a large international group which will have access to relatively cheap funding in this current market

And anyway, SLP owns the rights to the dumps so it doesn't matter what happens to Samancor, they still have many years of production.

Morning TBTT, rhodium looking pretty solid, more so than the THS share price. Looks like some large background sells happening again. Not surprised really given the ride lately (although nothing compared to some other shares which shall go unnameless)

And bitcoin at $40,000? Many elements of the market have ascended into somewhere beyond the traditional real of valuation. I wonder what JM Keynes would make of all this? We can blame him for everything

Hey TBTT, Looking at the last quarter's production of 40koz 6EPGM I'm hoping they are producing in excess of 40koz/qtr to get us to the upper range of guidance of 155-165koz. With the pit design now complete and new improved and optimised fresh material movements I'm hoping to see an improvement in the chrome grade and PGM recovery. I've perhaps optimistically included 175koz in my 2022 forecast so any indication we are moving towards that and beyond would be very pleasing.

Building a nice base in the 120-130p range although volume has dried up after a frantic couple of weeks. I would be very happy to see it fall to 100p and would hoover up as many as I could but I just don't see that happening with such a bargain valuation.

A summary of my valuation metrics (unadjusted for cash) with rhodium at $19,000/oz are

2021 P/E = 2.5x
2021 FCF Yield % = 43%
2021 Return on Equity = 63%

2022 P/E = 2.3x
2022 FCF Yield % = 56%

NPV = 280p/share (18% discount rate)

Hey TBTT, I'm not sure if SLP will be permitted to operate... even though they are above ground they went on care and maintenance in the first lockdown with no production. I never understood why THS continued to operate yet SLP didn't

@bhangal.m et al.... This is the best site for PGM news, mostly from South Africa but also some global stuff as well. Its really the only site you need for PGMs

https://www.metalsdaily.com/news/pgm-news/

Here are some other SA and global mining news sites which I refer to frequently

SA: https://www.miningweekly.com/
Global: https://www.miningmx.com/
Global: https://www.mining.com/

SLP rarely reply to my emails, I've sent them a fe over the years but almost never received any response (although I was generally asking what may be considered market sensitive questions :-P)

Perusing the FT and what do I see, our friend Phoevus quoted in an article about rhodium. A rhodium article in the FT!

Nothing really new that we haven't been banging on about on these boards except I did learn a couple of things

When Anglo's ACP went down they had to lease rhodium
EU NOX emission tests must be done by November 2022

https://www.ft.com/content/42b17e6e-ff96-437b-8f41-dd9900a3f8b3

Looks like a £3m sell certainly knocked THS off course. I wonder who that was and will happen to those shares...

Took a few profits on this and HOC. Looks like the market has a case of animal spirits at the moment and despite all the cases for gold it looks like it will take a bit a rest for a while as everyone chases more racy things like oil and crypto

Hey TBTT, BASF says $19,000! I think mr market is getting very nervous.

One day rhodium may be mentioned in the same breath as tulips, the south seas and bitcoin ;-)

Fair enough cornishknocker. We will need to see some decent feed to see how efficient the mill is, doesn't look like its operated at close to capacity well...ever. Overall they just need to improve volumes of ore, more productive handling, less waste, better quality to leverage the infrastructure (and SGA)