Member Info for rgbuk

One thing I want to point out though is that there seem to be either complaints about speed of progress or profit. For a very junior outfit you can’t expand the operation without borrowing (and unfortunately incurring losses), but on the other hand you don’t want to over extend (just look at Horizonte)!

Personally I’m happy with the progress, let’s not forget as well tin and lithium prices were depressed for much of last year which makes forward planning/deals difficult to say the least.

However, if Orion were happy to buy in at 6.4p and have conversion options over 10p then I know they would have done the in depth analysis that reassures me.

Hopefully we all end up happy when this JV is finally announced.

Yep, forgot the fact that it’s not 100% owned by ATM, thanks for the info bohercon.

So revenue/profits -15%, which makes revenue $81m and profit $35m.

Which was tin at $27k, Petalite at the bottom end of their range at $1600 per ton and no percentage increase for economies of scale. For reference each $1000 change in the tin price equates to a +/- $1.5m change to the profit figure.

Yep, spot on, I knew I’d make at least one slip up, but at least it’s one that makes the figures look even more appealing.

Thanks for the correction Early_Bird!

Just thought it would be interesting exercise to see what the future revenue and profit were looking like. This is obviously just my very rough estimates so feel free to add/subtract as you feel necessary! Please be polite if I’ve missed any glaring errors as it’s just simply meant as a rough view for me to see where the company is going and it might potentially help others too.

These are figures of proposed increases in operations, I’m not going to amend them as AV has been pretty accurate in meeting previous guidance.

So for revenues:

Tin: 2600 tons of tin concentrate which is roughly 60% tin metal, let’s take $27000 as the tin price.

2600*.6* 27000 = $42m

Lithium (Petalite): 30000 tons which they suggest they can sell for between $1600 to $2200 per ton, so let’s take the low end.

30000 * 1600 = $48m

Tantalum: 83 tons but this is a concentrate of about 24% tantalum oxide. Tantalum oxide sell for about £250000 per ton.

83 * 250000 *.24 =5m

So all in all roughly $95m revenue.

Ok, so profit/loss

The ASIC cost in the last set of figures was just over $30,500 per ton of tin concentrate. That included the advanced stripping and the Orion royalty. We can assume that additional stripping will not be required for several years which, let’s be very conservative, brings the ASIC down by $1000 a ton, also the new ore sorting will reduce the ASIC by roughly 10%.

So the ASIC reduces to roughly $26.5k per ton of tin concentrate.

We are all aware that the petalite and tantalum processing costs are low due to the fact they are a ‘by product’ of the tin processing, but let’s say we take off 20% for their processing, shipping, etc.

Tin Revenue $48m + lithium (Petalite) revenue (-20%) $38m + tantalum revenue (-20%) $4m - total ASIC tin concentrate cost $69m

Profit $21m

Obviously this does not include any economies of increased throughput.

We obviously then have the next phase of lithium (spodumene) and potentiality tungsten, copper and more tin.

As a long term holder I’m very happy with the way the company is progressing and look forward to more exciting news to come!

The thing I felt this statement was saying is that for any future expansions they are almost self financing, which means any further raises required will be minimal which is good news in my view not bad, but I accept this wasn’t totally clear.

Plus let’s face it I don’t think anyone can say with any certainty what the tin and lithium price are going to be going forward, so that will obviously have a major impact. Currently both heading in the right direction and let’s hope that trend continues.

Not quite sure I understand your worries over funding but hope the following from the RNS helps:

§ Ore sorting is fully funded by the Orion Resource Partners facility.

§ Ore sorting augments the Continuous Improvement II programme ("CI2") which is fully funded by the Development Bank of Namibia ("DBN").

Plus it’s Petalite they are looking to sell into the ceramics market, not spodumene.

The tantalum 2025 was obviously a typo, should have been March 2024 as some else pointed out it said elsewhere in the doc.

Like most here I’m fairly certain the the lithium partner will be an EU entity especially with the EU will making an investment of over one billion euros and support an upcoming study for the development of the Port of Walvis Bay into an industrial and logistics hub.

However, I just wanted to put out there a possible WHAT IF scenario that’s been nagging at the back of my mind.

What if the throw away comment that AV made about a Chinese company offering eye watering amounts for the mine wasn’t such a throw away comment after all?

TIN: According to the Central Economic Planning Committee of the Wa State in Myanmar, from 1st August 2023, tin mining will stop to preserve the tin field. Prices have risen, but no official information about the closure has yet been received. Myanmar is one of the key tin suppliers to China, the largest tin consumer in the world, accounting for about 77% of tin ore and concentrate imported by China.

Wouldn’t China be keen to find an alternative supply?

LITHIUM: The latest buzz in the lithium market revolves around the Jianxiawo mine owned by CATL, one of China’s largest battery manufacturers and downstream lithium suppliers. Rumors suggest that the mine might face a potential shutdown. If true, this could significantly disrupt the global lithium supply chain. Historically, Jianxiawo has been a major producer of lepidolite, a lower-quality lithium source compared to spodumene and brine.

Yes they can always buy from Australia but the relationship between the two hasn’t always been harmonious?

Plus China already has a presence in the UIS area: Long Fire is the controversial Chinese miner Xinfeng Investments' partner in a lithium mine outside Uis. According to Bryan Eiseb, acting executive director of the ministry, Long Fire has a valid permit to export 30 000 tonnes of lithium ore.

TUNGSTEN, COPPER, TANTALUM: On November 30, 2023, the Ministry of National Security of China  published an article entitled: How to firmly control ‘vitamins’ in strategic industries. The article defines the critical minerals as “those irreplaceable metal elements and mineral deposits used in advanced industries, such as new materials, new energy, next-generation information technology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, edge-cutting equipment manufacturing, national defense, and military sectors.”

There are numerous metals listed but of those Tin, Lithium, Tantalum, Tungsten and Copper are listed. We don’t know the grades yet, but Brandberg West was a producer of tin and tungsten as well as there being copper deposits there. To what degree we don’t know yet, but it was a working mine for many years so that would suggest significant?

Now I know I might well be adding 2 and 2 and getting 5, but could the long RNS blackout be because there’s no need to publish news to prop up the share price when you have an offer? Could the delay be to assess mineral grades at Brandberg West?

It’s now been 10 weeks since the last news update, perhaps we’re going to have to wait for the next quarterly update at this rate? Even if it’s to tell us whether AV has a biscuit or cake with his morning cuppa, it would be something!

It’s great that lithium is again moving in the right direction and the Tin price is holding steady above $26k so that’s all really positive for the company.

Thanks Richy, I really like this company and their future prospects are incredibly exciting, but I’ve found (I’m sure like a lot of LTH’s) the last seven weeks very disappointing with the lack of any news which has allowed the share price to drift down to this crazy level. Let’s hope that AV will get the news flow going again soon back to its previous level, which as a shareholder I really appreciated.

I’m hoping that we will get official figures at some point to tell us how much the ore sorting will increase production and more importantly what this will do to the overall AISC.

Again, hopefully we get guidance soon on the future planned production figures (which must have been presented to Orion for them to hand over $25m) as well as the off-take for Petalite and the all important spodumene/lithium partner talks. Plus lots of drill results.

Also on Brandberg West, it would be good to know what grades of tin, tungsten and copper would need to be found to make it a viable option for mining?

Plenty of news to come, let’s hope it starts flowing soon as a LTH I’m a little disappointed that the share price is back to where I started buying 3 years ago!

I think because AV would have access to price sensitive information (the ongoing JV talks) that aren’t in the public domain, he wouldn’t be allowed to buy any shares currently.

I think there’s a sweet spot around $30k to $35k, enough to give us a good profit but not enough to encourage low grade mines to start processing!

I’ve been invested here and many years and I can’t remember a comms blackout for the length of time this one has been going on. AV seemed to pride himself that ATM were good at communicating and I as an investor greatly appreciated the updates.

Now I really don’t want to go down the line of “this has to be a huge deal in the making to have a blackout for this long” as far too often I’ve seen that written and nothing ever comes of it, but for ATM it is most unusual for certain.

I’d hope to see a separate off-take agreement for the Petalite, if their targets are hit of 250 tons per month just get it sold into the ceramics market at around $2000 a ton. As they’ve said before this is free as part of the tin extraction process.

Later, when details are more clear on the future of lithium ridge/hill and how they propose mining spodumene, with volumes, then I’d expect a separate partner for this.

The tin price is certainly not helping here either, I’m hopeful that this will pick up in the next quarter but I think a lot depends on the China situation.

Unfortunately ATM is very much a news driven share, when the news dries up the interest drops. Let’s hope that the news flow picks up again soon!

The lithium they are producing currently is Petalite for ceramics, not spodumene, it’s pretty much produced for free due to being part of the tin processing circuit, as is the tantalum, they are going to be producing spodumene in future when they start mining spodumene hill/ridge.

If they can get upto volumes of 250t per month and sell it for between $1000-2000, as they have stated, then that makes a big difference to their profitability.

To be honest I was a little disappointed with the update, no new news on how we are going to get to these extra capacity increases, a bit fuzzy on the dates and pushing the lithium partner down the road to an unspecified time. It just felt like a filler RNS than one of substance.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve invested here because I’m impressed with what they have in terms of potential and that hasn’t changed and I do like AV being in charge. Hopefully more detailed plans of how they are going to use the $25m from Orion will be coming soon with production/expansion targets and realistic timeframes.

In the mean time let’s hope the 6 month production update tomorrow is heading in the right direction!

I’ve given up trying to understand AIM share pricing at a certain point! Hibernation time for me.

You’d think now that they've concluded their £25m funding from Orion, including Orion buying £2m of shares at 6.3p, plus having the option of converting their loan at over 10p per share, plus the upcoming JV news, that this might have given a little confidence to shareholders and might have even lead to a rise in the share price?

I’d love to buy more at this price but I reached my allocation limit a while ago, but who’s to say this craziness stops here!?

In the RNS AV states: The agreement secures off-take of our tin production, allowing management to focus on achieving the Orion royalty tonnage.

But still I see no sign off of this agreement which should have happened at the end of September? I’m a little confused as to what’s going on at this point and really hope they clarify things soon!

I don’t know if it’s me adding 2 + 2 and coming up with 5, but I’ve not seen an RNS that states the Orion funding package is in place? Also not seen an RNS with details of the additional shares ($2.5m at 6.39p) that would need to be added to the register that were part of this agreement. It was meant to be concluded around the end of September as per the RNS on the 15th August.

Now the only reason I could see for this not going ahead as planned is that something in the JV/partnership/take over has made this an unattractive option, but how binding was the agreement that was signed on 15th August?

Like most, until we get further details I’m just speculating in the dark! Any thoughts anyone?

With the expansion, money raised, future prospects, partnership, etc I honestly didn’t expect the price to retreat like this.

Ah well, time to dip into the old piggy bank and get a few more as it seems a great risk/reward opportunity at this price to me.