The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Not sure why my upper case letters didn't come out as such. Also, "sparest" data for Tajikistan.
august was the best recent month at bppm for which we have data. 230 dry metric tons at about 21% purity would be worth a ballpark of $400k, plus gold/silver credits, minus tolling/refinery fees and shipping. operating costs at the mine (not counting exploratory work-up) seem to have been axed to a ballpark of $300k/$350k per month. they're now working in a payment plan to repay mercuria from the operating surplus margin. q4 figures are needed (january or february) to have a clearer up-to-date view. quantity of copper concentrate ought to rise further + they mentioned start of commercial production of lead/zinc concentrate. to be confirmed...
we've had only the sp****st data for a single tajikistan shipment. i calculated then that the 12.25% participation to vast was probably worth a ballpark of slightly under $20k. a piddly start but will presumably grow.
$1m revenue monthly is probably still very optimistic unless there's a surge happening. (previously not: it's been incremental.) but the issue is not really revenue; it's surplus. they need to generate surplus to gradually become more able to pay for the many other things besides the immediate operating costs at bppm. corporate overhead is pretty hefty and manaila is in care and maintenance, etc.
if they can reach solvency via surplus operating revenue in 2024, then you'll actually have a business and i'm sure the market cap would respond.
Equally, as the Bucharest-based collateral is not even held by Vast but has been proffered under contract, enforcement on that asset would have to proceed through the Romanian courts.
Muck: yes, BPPM is formally held by a Romanian subsidiary, Vast Baita Plai SA, so action to enforce would ultimately be served on that entity in its home jurisdiction. This would be true even if the Plc were litigated against in the first instance. A UK court could order the parent Plc (which is the debtor) to hand over a Romanian asset but that would still need to be translated into a Romanian legal process as the entities are of course formally distinct and the jurisdictions are different. Both processes could be appealed along the way. It would be a pretty long road to reach a final, enforceable judgment.
PS. Mercuria also has an option to buy up to 20% of the Plc. Worth noting for the future.
Muck: yes. $4m Alpha loan at 20% in May 2022, originally due as a $4.8m bullet payment in May 2023, since extended on what has so far proven to be a rolling short-term basis. The $300k payment recently (aggregate to Mercuria and Alpha) was a fee, not a debt reduction. Debt reduction payment plan to Mercuria as ASI sets out. No ongoing payment plan as yet for Alpha. If there's further diamond delay, and if Q4 to H1 BPPM figures permit, I suspect that might change by way of a revised payment plan to address both lenders - but that's a hypothesis only.
Alpha had never lent to a miner before and are real estate specialists. They therefore required real estate collateral as that's their expertise. The shareholder who stumped up the Bucharest real estate (re identity: Firwood's hypothesis is a very good one, though of course we can't be definite) took BPPM itself as collateral, while Mercuria have secondary security over BPPM.
Alpha have no interest in the mine. Romanian courts are very slow and highly permissive of appeals, hence why I've always taken the view that Alpha would lose themselves in the court system for a good two years before ever collecting on their Bucharest collateral. It's probably mainly for that reason that they're open to diamonds as an alternative solution, IMO. But they've clearly kept a tight leash on the extensions in lockstep with the Harare negotiations, so they're not cutting much slack. On the other hand, it's probably a better bet for them to bear with the company (whether via diamonds or a payment plan) than to litigate. Plus they also have warrants.
We were supposed long ago to get an update confirming the completion of a new inter-creditor agreement after Alpha came in. But although we got heads of terms, I don't recall that we ever heard further. So my hunch is that Alpha and Mercuria don't necessarily see entirely eye to eye. Not necessarily a bad thing for Vast. Mercuria obviously does have an interest in the mine and has a history of being fairly tolerant about it. It was offtake finance, so their settlement via a carve-out from shipment revenues is on the lines that were always envisaged.
Oh dear.
ASI: re your 12:44 yesterday, thanks for highlighting that.
Sad news indeed.
ASI: fyi, Hall was commercial director, not financial director. The financial director was and remains Paul Fletcher.
Yeah, BB time/life wasting as so often. Small market price blip triggers a BB surge of hope. Out flow the postings that no serious person would waste time on. Next day: boredom in the market kills the BB.
As I have long said, BB follows the market, not the other way around. Some never get it.
Oofy: replies herewith -
1. "I’m sure all these steps would be necessary once the diamonds were found."
Given that these steps have been indicated as being necessary, your own logic implies that the diamonds are indeed there.
2. "Whether it’s the RBZ’s job to supervise the Company’s compliance with these regulations is another matter."
It is precisely the point that aspects (at least) are the responsibility of government. This would account for the role of the election in stalling the matter, as reported to market. You persistently decline to take this on board. Why?
3. "It was bureaucratic bs, signifying nothing at all."
No, it wasn't. Again your sneer at proper procedures. Valuation for royalty, export certification and Kimberley Process certification are not "bs". You seem to have a mental blockage on this.
4. "It doesn’t take years to do this."
First, your assumptions on timelines again assume it's an internal RBZ matter, despite the market having been told it isn't. (See above.) Secondly, depending on the issues involved, things *can* take years. As I said many months ago, the BPPM licence took about 5 years from a court judgment precisely because of procedures and politics. Thirdly, it isn't "years" yet in this instance. It might or might not turn out to be.
5. "Most of your question and my replies above are superfluous."
My questions, no. Your replies, yes. My questions were based on scrutiny of what the processes are stated as being and forming a judgment about that. Your replies are based on a cavalier dismissal of reality. Your lack of realism shows through again: you previously tried to say that Alpha would not even need a court order to collect on its collateral and were woefully inaccurate in trying to give UK home repossession as an analogy. It had to be pointed out to you that court orders are indeed required. So you have, characteristically, a worldview that is just naive about due process and how long things can take. It's a common investor failing.
6. "I keep mentioning the diamonds because everyone else who mentions them assumes they’re going to be released imminently."
False. I am not the only poster to be unsurprised by a protracted timeline.
Oofy: one trick pony in the sense that the only line you have to bring is the repeated assertion on loop that the diamonds are gone. You maintain your sneer about "protocol" with no engagement on the substance. Why the interest in Vast at all in that case?
On the points of fact, some questions for you:
Is it your view that royalty (and valuation for the purpose) is a necessary step or not?
Is it your view that export certification is a necessary step or not?
Is it your view that Kimberley Process certification is a necessary step or not?
Oofy: one trick pony. You miss the point that, even if your scenario about what happened is right, there will still be a settlement of 129,400 carats due to Vast. That doesn't change.
ASI: quite.
But bang head here. Oofy will continue to ignore it.
Good grief. Thus same discussion over and over. Oofy will never be satisfied that there are any genuine issues that might need dealing with, despite an RNS specifically referring to procedures for valuation and royalty, for export licensing, and for Kimberley Process certification.
Going to cordially disagree with both Pecten and Firwood on this.
1. I wouldn't really expect the identity of the party that put up the Bucharest property as collateral to be identified to the market.
2. To my knowledge, the only thing the market has been told about that party's identity is that, at the time, the party was a Vast shareholder. Might or might not still be a shareholder.
I would add, however, that the party would not be a director as that would be a disclosable transaction IMO.
I don't think there's anything to see here, frankly. As I've said before often enough, it would take significant time in the Romanian courts IMO ever to get hold of that collateral and, on current trends, the loan might well be settled in that time.
On the point about a payment plan meanwhile, the ongoing plan currently applies only to Mercuria, not Alpha. So I suspect that Alpha will be settled either by diamonds (as hoped) or by an updated payment plan.
Just IMO.
Gizabigrise: yes, I know you're looking for a missing TR-1. It was all gone over in great detail at the time, which I believe was before you showed up. TR-1s are a self-report: the company cannot compel them. The Capstone entity is in New York, so the FCA cannot readily compel them either. What happened, as I recall, is that the company simply went ahead and updated the website because it knows the shareholdings anyway. But careful examination of the percentages at the time made it pretty clear that there was a combination of direct and indirect holding.
If Capstone have also already sold out their direct holding as well as their nominee holding, then the website will in due course reflect that. If they're still holding all or some of their direct holding, then the website will continue to reflect that also. It's largely a pointless discussion in my view.
But as I now can't view this BB without scrolling through a ton of your repetitive messages, and have many other priorities in my life, and certainly this week, I'm going to have to filter you for a little bit.
Gizabigrise: and you spectacularly manage to miss out Capstone Investment Advisors LLC at 5.99% with 260,467,120.
Now it's clear you're playing games. I agreed with you about it being nil on the Barclays nominee holding. But that wasn't enough. You're going to insist all day long that there is no other holding, to the sad extent of deliberately missing out that line in a BB post.
Good grief. And do you think you're fooling the market?
Gizabigrise: good day to you.
Gizabigrise: "Not my conclusion, its what the TR1's say."
No. It isn't.
The TR-1 says: "The Company has received confirmation that the position has been reduced to nil".
Note: "The position". Singular. That's the position that is held by Barclays as nominee, to which the TR-1 relates.