Member Info for Sher-Lock

First look at PGM forecasts during Platinum Week: All five major platinum-group metals

(platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium) are expected to remain in deficit in 2026

according to Metals Focus’ latest report, though the research house acknowledges that “price

outcomes will increasingly be shaped by investor flows, stock movements and policy

intervention rather than supply-demand balances alone”. Platinum is forecast to remain in a

fourth consecutive deficit of 312koz, with prices expected to consolidate at an average of

$2,190/oz in 2026 following strong investor inflows. Meanwhile, palladium is expected to have

its fifth deficit year at 376koz, but limited investor appetite will give it a forecast average price of

$1,570/oz, while rhodium’s deficit is forecast to cause above-ground stocks to fall to less than

three months of demand cover, supporting a price of $10,200/oz. Meanwhile, WPIC also

published their latest platinum quarterly yesterday, forecasting a deficit of 297koz in 2026.

Finally, Johnson Matthey published their annual PGM outlook yesterday, forecasting a 370koz

platinum deficit but offering the differentiated view of a modest surplus for palladium and

rhodium in 2026.

With a market cap of £ 33 million and a 20x debt load, it will not be sufficient to raise £ 100 million in new equity. If the business's economic situation does not improve within six or twelve months, you will be back to where you are today. We have seen it in the past, and sorry to say, management is like Don Quijote - fighting against the windmills. The current management took over a sinking Titanic with the view to turning it around. All efforts were great, but for every £ gained, they lost £ elsewhere. A debt-for-equity exchange will be the only solution to bring the economic base to a stable footing. Current equity will be eliminated, and bondholders will receive new equity. Just imagine the 350 million Euros of bonds are gone, the CFO saves 26 million Euros in finance costs, a lot of money when you are just breaking even with the business.

I have followed the shares and the bonds for many years. I was hit with the last highly dilutive capital raise. Loaded up cheap shares and could exit at the end just at breakeven. The management does a great job, but they face all the headwinds one can imagine. Having a look at the global chemical industry, you have to be in the right spot to be profitable and to survive. Only when more protectionism comes into play, Synthomer will have a chance to turn. But when you see how Europe is selling out its technology to the Gulf region, a massive transfer of know-how takes place. In a few years, of Europe's chemical industry will not much be around. At the same time, EU politics is brownnosing India and other countries in the belief that they can find new export markets. In the end, these countries just want free-market access and to flood our markets with cheap, labour-produced goods - including chemicals! Why food companies like Nestle or Danone are buying the "arachidonic acid - ARA" for baby formula in China. There are manufacturers in Europe, but probably a few cents too expensive!

the misses were all due to one-time issues, and they will be resolved in 2026! therefore, shareholders will be pushed out by 12 months to see the recovery, but that is it. if they report earnings per share of 3 to 4 euros, metlen is a solid company. when they return to normal in 2027 and make 6 euros, today's stock is a steal. time goes by very fast, and most ****ed-off analysts do what they do every time. downgrade and cut price targets at the low point. when the stock is 10 euros or more higher, they turn positive again. the listing in london did not really help, just for tax reasons. i took a small position and will increase it when the shares bottom out over the next few weeks.

Still astonishing to see the willingness to pay a 50% premium to NAV in London, compared to a small discount in Frankfurt (XFRD).

What charts never tell is the outstanding shares - in 2014 13.722.062 with a NAV of 1.38 million £ - in 2025 35.037.895 shares outstanding NAV +

Quite a different approach to invest in Rhodium!

South32 has only a 23% revenue exposure to copper, but is expanding it—an excellent pipeline of new projects. Alumina makes up 51%, a commodity currently in surplus. However, you also need alumina for electrical insulators, and it is used to expand the grid. Aluminium is 9%, Zinc is 13%, and nickel is 4%. They sold the Metcoal & coal business and have this cash on hand. Excellent balance sheet, a completely different company today than in 2015 when it was spun out of BHP. Would BHP do the same today?

A clear question to Deutsche Bank, why not reopen this ETC as the interest would be clearly there from investors to pile into one of the most precious of precious metals

.....and a bid price at 580!

Two weeks ago, investors were paying a 15 per cent premium over NAV, and now the bid is at minus 10 per cent!

The only Rhodium ETF which exists, unfortunately, is closed, and DB is not issuing more shares.

It does not add up to what you post here!

I read your first post from January this year! You expressed quite a bit of interest after mentioning that you had followed the website for several months.

All the accusations and misleading information have nothing to do with MF&I or Jacques.

Jacques started to build a position in late 2013 and was elected to the board in October 2013. This is due to his investments and the cash he put on the table for subscribing to new shares. The company was run by people who collected their annual compensation but did not care about the portfolio holdings. Working up this mess takes time and, in the end, a clear cut and writedowns. You never advised on an inherited portfolio holding how to handle it or to make cash out of it - therefore, stay quiet.

Either you are a frustrated Raven Capital, Upstream Marketing & Communications, Hameldon Resources, Athol Gold, or Athol Gold & Value shareholder, or you have no clue how to handle mining investments.

You forget that all options issued to directors had a higher strike price at the date of issuance than the stock's quote. Most companies issue options or shares to their boards at lower strike prices.

If you follow insider transactions in the mining space, you will see that many directors exercise their options and sell a part to pay for the exercise or the income taxes on the transaction. At MF&I, it is not different and absolutely reliable.

Why is your main point in liquidating M&FI and paying the cash to shareholders? The only cash you would get are those investments in tradable holdings. For the other investments, put option on LS, gold forward purchase on GS, Ideon and others - you would sit and wait and post complaints about the slow liquidation process.

The share is currently trading at a multi-year high, and if you would have been a fool to have bought it in the spikes of 2017 or 2023, you can exit now without a loss.

How investors act on market movements is their own decision, and greed is a piece of bad advice.

Everything is on the right track, and with patience, the harvest can be realized and used for other new investments.

What do you post on LUCA? The investment was initiated in April 2023, and no one here was interested in it. Suddenly, with the stock all over chat rooms and stock pushers, advice on handling this investment comes up. Were you ready in April 2023 to invest at 35 Cents? That was a bold decision of Jacques after he did his work on the company. Selling off LUCA and putting the liquidity into the GS financing was a good decision and will pay off. LUCA mines only 34% gold & 16% silver. All other ore are copper, zinc and tin. At a 340 million c$ market cap and a possible 80K to 100K production in 2025 (on the last presentation, mentioning 65,000 - 80,000 oz Au Eq Payable) with one mining operation - it is not cheap.

There are a lot of moving parts which, in the end, will add up and support the reported NAV. But the impatience of shareholders is incredible. The LUCA investment did take its time & some luck, but no one was writing anything when the shares traded at 35 Cents. Bellavista took 12 months longer to be in production, and there will always be issues pushing delivery dates of an investment or project out into the future. Mineral & Financial is an investment company and not a day-trading institution. As all day traders should now, fast trading profits evaporate fast, and I never met a wealthy day trader.

Everyone should decide what he expects in future gains of the portfolio holdings. But for sure, JV wants to show growth in NAV to be a better manager than many guys running a mining operation. With the NAV growing, larger projects can be targeted.

The reported NAV of Q1 is based on all available data of pricing the investments on 30th September 2024. LUCA was trading at 45,5 Canadian Cents. For the valuation of Q2, it will be 54 Canadian Cents. All other calculations are based on assumptions of the writer of a message here. When the quarterly report is filed, more than three months have passed. We can assume that if a particular movement in the liquid (tradable) positions occurs, the management will take some action. Calculating potential gains on LUCA is okay, but how do we predict a 20% overhang of new shares out of the warrant exercise until April? Some 40 million warrants are in the money, and LUCA could use the cash, but it will be dilutive. The name was successfully pushed in different chat rooms in North America. However, the company has to deliver, and investors should not lose sight of market capitalisation and predicted annual gold production. Share price performance is one thing, but having a 200 million share count or 240 million at 1,10 makes a difference. Cerrado's market cap is 42 million and has a 2025 target of 50'000 to 55'000 ounces of gold; LUCA targets 60'000 ounces of gold equivalent as they have only 35% gold content, 16% silver and 25% Zinc, 22% copper and 2% lead. Companies like to report the metal which is in favour of investors.

The Lagoa Salgada project looks better now, and with the economic stimulus euphoria in Europe, a larger mining company could soon show interest. I still bet on Boliden, which will buy Ludin Mining's European mining assets.

The merger of Ascendant with Cerrado results in a swap of shares, and as the share price of Cerrado is low, a good base for a re-reading after the merger took place. Cerrado had a significant trading volume as some investors were fed up after acquiring an iron ore asset and now another industrial metal project. Cerrado moved away to be regarded as a pure gold play. But these sellers will be gone, and the management can (or can not) show up to deliver (finally). Ascendant's management held a low percentage of the company's shares. Therefore, it was not a buy-out of the management shareholdings. The dilution over the years with all the financings took its toll. Cerrado has the cash & the potential cash flow from its current operations to advance Lagoa Salgarda to the point of being a construct-ready project. With or without the Portuguese government involved, as this is all speculation, if they were part of it, they would have to pay their share of the construction cost, making it difficult to get political support. Otherwise, the stake dilutes down, and in the end, they are a tiny project holder of a low single-digit piece. But this is something that has been discussed several times here. At the end, there is the Bellavista mine in Costa Rica, targeting 20'000 ounces of gold per annum. It is on the way to producing and expanding production. The repayment of the financing can be converted into shares!

Https://www.precioussummit.com/event/2024-precious-metals-summit-beaver-creek/

he should be here

Consensus forecasts were 14.9 million ounces of silver and 157koz gold - clearly another miss.

Slowly, I doubt whether the responsible mine managers are doing their jobs.

It is another production miss in a long history of never-delivered targets.

The only positives are the higher metal prices - that's it!

It will be interesting to see when they finalize the sale of the BF&M stake or 3'389'000 shares, currently quoted at BM$23.01. That equals $78 million or £61.4, half the current market cap.

A group of investment banks fully supported the capital increase. The capital raise was announced in a rights issue at 9.5 Pence before the reverse split of 20 old for one new share took place. 9.5 Pence multiplied by 20 equals 190 Pence. The new shares placed were a massive dilution (276 million £) and represented the entire existing market cap. The rights which shareholders did not take up ended with the underwriters of the deal. Therefore, by approaching the 190 Pence threshold, a wave of forced liquidation took place. The underwriters did not want to lose money on the deal.

The current market cap is 255 million £, a whole turn of the former market cap evaporated. I think the company was forced to raise the capital after getting the new 480 million $ revolving credit line extension in March 2023. Management bought shares in June 2023, Michael Willome 55'500 at 72 Pence = to 1440 pence today and was probably sure to be on the right track. With the lagging turnaround, the banks pulled the trigger. I would say that management had no choice to save the company.

The 3.875% Eurobonds maturing in July 2025 recovered back to par from the low 80s in October 2022. There is more confidence from bondholders than from shareholders. In one way, it is understandable when you lose more than 90% of your investment.

But looking ahead, if they can continue to divest non-core business units and cut further costs, which they have done nicely so far, the stock has the potential to recover.

The Malaysian rubber manufacturers were facing huge headwinds after a golden cycle during the pandemic. After tripling sales and more than ten times profits the cold shower came in 2022 and 2023. Revenues cratered by 80% at Top Glove and losses were piling up.

Kuala Lumpur Kepong is the largest single shareholder in Synthomer and is one of the largest plantation companies in Malaysia. Their business is growing steadily over years, but not an industry which is very welcome by UK or European investors. The market cap is 4 billion £, about the same as the annual revenues.

Results will be weak as all major global chemical companies (Dow, DuPont, BASF) reported weak results. The expansion of China's chemical capacities is flooding the world market with cheap chemicals. They don't care if they are profitable; the Chinese must keep the plants running.

The largest risk I see is with weak results; they have to write off more goodwill & intangible assets - £1 billion at the end of 2022.

The disposition of non-core assets has stalled, and the entire M&A market for chemicals is dead.

It's really not an easy job for the new management who took over the mess of the previous acquisition-ridden managers.

Worst case, another capital raise this year - the last one was done under the pressure of banks to keep and extend credit lines.

I'm lucky to have sold at 50 before the reverse split took place that hurt - today, we are equivalent at 6.5 - ouch!

GLA

Hope!

13 million shares traded = 5.85 million £ buyers paid = they have to take up 3.9 million shares and pay an additional 7.7 million £ not to be diluted!

I found nothing in the documentation allowing the current shareholders to sell their rights.

It looks more like you participate or leave it (and you are fully diluted).

If you own 1,000 shares worth £430, you have to pay up another £591, and then you own 350 shares of the new Synthomer or average cost £2.9171 or £0.145857 pre-reverse split.

The low share price for the new shares was set, as the brokers fully guarantee the new share placement.

If the take-up is only the major shareholder, the brokers will sit on the shares, and the shares will trade at or below the issue price.

If you carry one billion £ in Goodwill and acquired intangible assets in the balance sheet and are not performing (profitability), you get an accounting issue.

No one is talking about the remaining non-core asset on disposal. I assume the M&A market for such assets is dead now, and if not oil-related, the Emirates or Saudis are not buying.

The news today looks to me as if investment bankers did a clear review of the value of the asset base and the potential cash flow of Synthomer and, on the other side, the debt. The potential profitability is there when the economic environment works for you. But you can have a solid business; if end markets are weak, you lose money.

Now, no business unit could show at least stable results. My concern is the revenue breakdown in the presentation: 22% Construction and 33% Architectural coatings. Two economic areas are currently facing heavy headwinds.

The Future Synthomer looks good in the presentation, but it will be tough when world economics is not with you.

They raise the cash to be on the safe side to weather the storm and if a recession shows up (or is already here).