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ASI: good stuff. Happy to resume later.
ASI: be that as it may, I was just trying to follow your point. It ended in a "lol" but I wasn't sure what the actual point was.
ASI: oh, just backtracked and saw. You said DON'T forget. So I'm not sure I follow you.
No worries, ASI 😉 Who on earth can keep up with everything here?
Buda_: yes, the problem with Occam's razor is that it has a wonderful tendency to go where its wielder already wants it to. No great surprise that, handy as it can still be in the right hands, logic has moved on as a discipline in the last 700 years.
ASI: you forget that they also hold directly at the same time.
ASI: regulations that are also at times flouted and hard to enforce in New York by a UK entity. But sooner or later, the company website will fill in the reporting gap.
Buda_: there's already evidence to suggest that that might be so. Glad you added "discuss" because of course it might not be. But you will upset the ramping brigade and one or two bystanders, for some of whom "discuss" means douse in petrol and throw on a match.
Nevergonnaretire: thanks for your kind remark back on Sunday 8th. Yes, I agree that we want to be able to have a cash value understanding of what we and the creditors are looking at. Some work to be done.
ASI: fortunately, context supplied the necessary letters. But yes, automated censoring can produce absurd results. Especially given what else gets posted 🤯
I briefly mentioned in a post on 20 April (09:57) that "Plan B might well - perhaps by force - be to funnel the Tajikistan 'participation' into a staged settlement with creditors."
Thinking about this from the point of view of the creditors, I believe they might well now turn their attention to the 12.25% 'participation' that Vast has in the Takob project, now that the first commercial shipment is upon this month, having been delayed from May. Obviously, if ZimGov delivers the 'historic parcel', that's well and good. But in the meantime, achievement of breakeven at BPPM in June plus the latest raise *ought* (in theory) to mean that the Tajikistan revenue, when it lands, is available. While the company would no doubt dearly love the freedom to recycle that money into the budget, the creditors might take a different view.
We know from experience that a mid-October shipment would probably be cash settled in early November, and the current debt extension runs to 30 November. Coincidence? I'm not so sure.
We know very little indeed about the Tajikistan financials, including very little indeed about the royalty terms (gross? net? threshold-based? Trafigura terms? payment timelines?). But *if* each commercial shipment translates to a timely payout of a shipment-by-shipment royalty, then the company *ought* to be in a position to navigate a payment plan with creditors. Even if the royalty payments are differently structured, e.g. aggregated quarterly and starting, say, in January, the very fact that commercial shipping from the Takob project is at last beginning allows Vast to table an alternative solution for the creditors. And in fact, although the windfall of the 'historic parcel' would be nice, a solution based on revenue from a known and quantifiable ongoing project is generally a good option for a creditor if the numbers are meaningful enough.
IMO.
Fantasy: "Sandy - as always good post... hope you are well.. are you stilling holding vast? :) GL"
Thank you. Hope you're well too. As always, I'm realistic about Vast and keep myself well insulated :-)
ASI: 'The only thing that bags me about this company is the distinct lack of financials in the reports to quantify the production figures.'
I'm glad you said that. I first met AP in 2016 when he was head of the Romanian subsidiary, not CEO and Board Member of the Plc. In those days, Roy Pitchford was the CEO. I seem to remember AP - who was, I recall, freer to talk in those days - slating Pitchford for producing quarterly production reports at other mines without financials. (I'd have to check, but they had Pickstone Peerless Gold Mine going in Zimbabwe then, and Manaila in Romania.) I seem to recall AP saying production figures without financials were really just a ruse to hide the fact that the company was f*ed financially.
Fast forward. AP now produces quarterly production reports without financial figures. Hey ho. What goes around comes around. AP learned the same trick that he used to denigrate. He just didn't expect people like me to stick around long enough to call him out.
ASI: "This could of course fall flat on its face but the likelihood of that occurring is reducing as each day passes."
Q3 Report will illuminate whether that's a correct observation or not, IMO. I think there's a fair chance the figures at BPPM will be up, otherwise I doubt the creditors would keep being so indulgent. But as yet, not a single poster on this trivial BB has engaged with my (pretty elementary) point that break-even might be a moving frontier, not a fixed point. So even if Q3 numbers are up, that might still leave the Vast Group, and even the Romanian subsidiary, well away from having a profit centre (let alone a Plc profit!).
Implementing a lead/zinc concentrate (not molybdenum yet...) brings its own costs and IMO a copper surplus at the mine will be deployed, in the first instance, to cover that. Copper took 3 years to break even. How long lead/zinc?
But it's nice that they raised meanwhile to cover the Board salaries (and other bits). I'm sure that will cheer them up and keep the home fires burning. Remind me: is there a shareholder representative? Is his name Ben Dover? Or did he die, un-replaced. I forget.
ASI: yes. I don't think they've been in any position to get going with molybdenum while copper was operating at a loss. They might decide to cross-finance so that an internal surplus on copper is used to bring on the start up of molybdenum production. This is the type of scenario I have in mind where the breakeven figure rises because the budget goes up, and they cover it as the copper output scales up.
ASI: "It does beg the question though that if June broke even that puts the monthly break even at around $330,000 whereas previously it was suggested to be closer to $800,000".
Yes, indeed. Actually you can see I raised this issue in that thread from 5 August I linked back to. Around 3.5 years ago, the company was talking to shareholders about breaking even, as you say, at well towards 2.5 to three times the recent sales and budget.
So what the June figures told me is that, while breakeven at BPPM is good, it is nevertheless still operating at the level of a minnow. It is highly likely that the running costs will rise substantially as the volume of output and range of different concentrates increase (e.g. adding molybdenum). I inferred at that time that breakeven is therefore not a fixed point but a moving frontier.
Aha! Horult was right, it seems. No greater or lesser signs.
Thanks Horult. I hadn't thought of that.
So to try again,
Under $2,000 is self-evidently consistent with purities in the 20-25% range, which is right. If the price of over $8,000 were based on 36%, then under $2,000 would mean average purities of under 9%, which makes no sense.
You can find my thread on the June breakeven financials here:
https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChat.html?ShareTicker=VAST&share=Vast-Res&thread=9736E5B9-DCB3-468E-B5AD-379F1DAD0D46
Scroll to the bottom I think to find my opening calculation.
Your main point, ASI, that some posters exaggerate the financials by not taking account of purity, is of course true. It's a very important detail.
One last try.
Under $8,000 were based on 36%, then
Urgh cut off again. Bad signal.