Ben Richardson, CEO at SulNOx, confident they can cost-effectively decarbonise commercial shipping. Watch the video here.
I was pleased to see such a wide-ranging update. Obviously it leaves out a very great deal of detail but the overall sense that the different work streams are still trundling along is clear.
Regarding diamonds, I said at the outset that it could be years, just as it was getting the BPPM licence after a favourable court judgment. Governments can take an eternity. But I am pleased that the company is finally laying to rest the narrative that the 'historic parcel' will solve things and is working more specifically on re-financing.
As to the re-financing itself, this is work in progress. See what happens.
The whole situation is a reminder that Vast could have had top tier re-finance back in 2021 if they had been willing to re-structure in such a way that would have partially kicked the African Adventure.
From the RNS of 7 January 2021, when they had been hoping to finalize top tier re-finance:
"Vast Resources plc, the AIM-listed mining company, announces that, following the announcement made on 16 December 2020 regarding the final credit committee meeting focused on the asset backed debt facility, the Company has been informed by the international banking institution “the Bank” that the credit committee is unable to proceed with the approval of transaction until the completion of certain corporate restructuring at which point the Bank will reassess the transaction. The Company has been given to understand that this decision is unrelated to its current mining activity and is not a negative reflection on the Company’s Baita Plai Polymetallic Mine.
The anticipated development of certain aspects of Vast’s wider portfolio has prompted the evaluation for a restructuring and rationalisation of Vast’s corporate structure that will enable investors to have a variable exposure to different elements of the current business, both commodity and jurisdictional. Details of a potential corporate restructuring will be provided to shareholders in due course."
Those details of a potential corporate restructuring never were circulated. Vast walked away from that high-level credible re-finance to keep its African Adventure in play. They even dreamed up a crazy Botswana scheme. The whole effort came to nothing - and has cost three and a half years of staggering around.
Let's see if AP can finally sort something proper out.
Pecten: thanks for your reply. Hope you're keeping well.
Dilara: "To say that its a discussion board is wrong. People use it for all kind of reasons some far from discussing topics".
No. It is supposed to be a discussion board regardless of the fact that it is regularly abused. So I return to my point that a poster trying to shut down discussion by saying he only wants "I agree" and nothing else is quite wrong.
Legalese: "To demonstrate that the naysayers don’t have an agenda, I invite them not to reply to this. For [those] that are positive I invite them to simply post…. ‘I Agree’".
Think I'll decline both invitations and just remind you that it's a discussion board. Putting out a post and saying you only want answers that say "I agree" and nothing else is the complete opposite of inviting a discussion.
And for the umpteenth time, Stockportedd, it will cost many millions to monetize that prospect. You never acknowledge that point.
A difficult time for the late Andrew Hall's family, one presumes. Hopefully the coming inquest can offer some sort of closure and peace.
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23971962.wallingford-asset-manager-found-dead-gunshot-wound/
Firwood: indeed. Something we can agree on.
There is that occasional sort of poster who repeatedly likes to look clever *just after* the fact.
They tell you *just after* it's risen that they bought back.
They tell you *just after* it's fallen that they sold.
Some do it over and over.
On the other hand, we could discuss the facts of the company's situation - upside/downside as the case might be.
ASI: yes, keeping well, thanks. Hope you are too.
Hopefully T. S. Eliot's line about April being the cruellest month doesn't apply to Vast. Mercifully, Eliot was not talking about investing!
We'll shortly need an update on the debt. And one wonders how Q1 went at BPPM.
Trafigura have been content to work with Vast. Seems to me unlikely they'd bother signing contracts lately if their due diligence suggested that Vast was about to sink beneath the waves. With or without the 'historic parcel', I'm intrigued to see what form the next resurrection takes.
Pecten: re your question to Stockportedd about what he thinks is involved in getting Blueberry open - a question he never answers, I notice - I presume he expects Mary Poppins to blow in on a gust of wind and make it happen by clicking her fingers. As she sang:
'In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and ... snap!
The job's a game.
'And every task you undertake
Becomes a piece of cake
A lark! A spree!
It's very clear to see'.
Mary Poppins for CEO!
AP got the votes out and now continues his seventh year as CEO with two consolidations to his name. Whoop! Whoop!
What's the AIM CEO record for consolidations in a single company? I wonder.
This was on the cards as a downside risk in autumn 2022, before the 'historic parcel' court win, and has been looming again more recently, so this is anything but a surprise - particularly after such a disappointing Q4 BPPM report.
Two questions in my mind: (1) will the company actually secure the votes it needs? And (2) how will things pan out if it does?
My own view is that I hope the company does get the votes because a measure like this is needed - but the last headroom vote barely got past 75%, so I don't think it's a shoo-in, actually.
As to what happens after, a lot will depend from a retail point of view on what terms are struck with the PGM-related party. Pecten rightly notes the possibility of a CLN structure; but (a) that isn't definite here, and (b) not all CLN's are horrible spirals. This party is looking to a potential long-term working relationship with Vast and an equity interest in the company's growth, so it's quite possible that the terms will be tolerable.
Separately, AP and the Board are of course woefully culpable for failing to deliver on their projections - but they have behaved this way since forever. The latest letter is a shopping list of the company's fireside yarns. Can it go on like this in perpetuity - always jam tomorrow - or does there come a point where the numbers need to add up? We are into AP's seventh year as CEO, plus longer if one goes back to include his earlier time leading the Romanian operations, and the only claim to 'success' so far is that the lights are still on. It's something but not much.
I see from OofyProsser's 22:33 post yesterday that he was unable to cope with being specifically called out on some of his falsehoods.
He opted to mischaracterize me as rude, abusive, irrational, ignorant and insulting. I think plenty of other posters here know that that does not reflect me.
In reality, and at his own request, I identified three falsehoods in just one very typical post of his - and he simply couldn't bear it.
To troll a BB with falsehoods and then wilt on being challenged for peddling garbage: what a life.
In the meantime, others here with a more genuine interest in the company - and the upside/downside opportunity and risk - can hopefully get on with the discussion without his distraction.
Oofy: "Sandy: where’s the falsehood?"
Let's go back just ONE post of yours, for a start. Your post at 13:05 today was MOSTLY falsehood. I quote you:
Falsehood 1: "Possession of a High Court order doesn’t mean much, does it? There’s no means of enforcing it."
Yes, there is. Vast and the Deputy Sheriff went to RBZ. The fact that RBZ and the Deputy Sheriff agreed a way forward does not mean, and in fact contradicts the idea, that there's "no means of enforcing it".
But you knew that.
Falsehood 2: "the Reserve Bank enjoys sovereign immunity. "
No, it doesn't. This is a line you like to spout but the very fact that a Deputy Sheriff walked into the place with a writ and then got RBZ to agree a way forward shows that, while politics apply, your bogus BS concept of "sovereign immunity" does not.
But you knew that too.
Falsehood 3: "Even if the diamonds haven't accompanied Mrs. Mugabe to her Hong Kong diamond cutting business, and they’re still on the shelf at the Reserve Bank, if the latter doesn’t want to part with them or with their monetary equivalent, there’s nothing any foreign business or individual, or any Zimbabwe lawyer, can do about it. "
Repeat of above but in different words. Zimbabwe law is currently operating at the enforcement stage. The legal system has issued a ruing and ZimGov is required to comply. YOUR inexperience and ignorance about how long it can take governments to do so is only a reflection on YOU. I have said numerous times that it took RomGov about 5 years to follow through on a final court judgment in Vast's favour. But you ignore that. Facts don't fit your BS landscape.
Again though, you knew that.
So, I went ONE message back and found THREE very manifest falsehoods.
I'll pause now. There's a smell of scum on the sole of my shoe, that I'd like to wash away. We can continue another time as needs be.
Firwood: to be absolutely clear, Oofy is a troll whose behaviour is obviously calculated. His behaviour here has been a relentless drip-drip of poison. He speculates almost entirely negatively, typically asserts his speculations as if they're obvious facts, slips in falsehoods along the way, and uses his articulacy in writing to lend his poison a pseudo-authoritative air. It's a bad use of what was probably a good education, and shows a yawning absence of any integrity. There is no balance and a startlingly under-researched failure to know basic facts on occasion. Certainly not deserving of any credit as a poster about Vast.
IMO.
Well that was a pitiful report.
Production basically flat-lined, whereas the best months to date should have pointed to a quarter's production range of 600-700 dry metric tons as an easy outcome.
Grade went significantly backwards.
And the reports have now been gutted of almost all meaningful information, in a giant eff you from the company to the market.
The production level is barely above breakeven for the mine opex alone and the sales data has been excluded. You know that if it was good, they'd have been crowing. They're hiding, so it's bad.
The usual fireside yarns by way of excuse. There's always an excuse.
Shoddy. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy.
IMO.
Onaplate: in or out hasn't mattered to me for a long time. I don't lose here. It's just great fun to watch and/or play. I mean, at this SP, you either think the Vast world is imploding or you think there's a really good punt. I'm not going to sit here and try to call it for people. That would be very wrong IMO. But I find it very interesting. Popcorn?
Straight gamble today between the SP going up vs a consolidation. Either outcome is near term.
Sweet. Vast is one of the only shares that delivers this much fun over and over. Roulette: red or black?
Good luck to those I respect here.
IMO.
ASI: essentially, yes.
I haven't noticed the BB commentary making the faintest difference to the market response. Years ago, if I remember rightly, I talked to AP about this. I believe he said they'd actually studied it. If I recall rightly, the analysis was that the chatter accounts for 10% or less of trading, even at its maximum. I've seen academic research that similarly shows a disconnect. Essentially, a BB is a bubble. It makes negligible difference. So the whole ramp/de-ramp pantomime is a pitiful, navel-gazing waste of life, while the real drivers in the market are happening beyond. You might as well do nothing while relaxing over a pina colada.