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If this is indeed what's going on, we would/should know after the next conversion, right? Given that the big trades from today are < 3% of outstanding shares combined, they don't trigger a TR-1 RNS, but the next addition would, assuming it is the same strategic investor they sell on to at 0.68p.

Don't really disagree triumph, it's been frustrating to see the size of discount time and time again, and while I do also agree with Blubay saying that they've been remarkably successful in raising funds from capital markets, it is sadly also true that the company definitely hasn't been very economical with their budgets.

But all of that is backward-looking, the fact that there is the CLN is also backward-looking, so while as always there are many "I told you so" guys on here, that doesn't help anyone other than their own egos, what matters here now is the forward-looking part, which is: Will more clips (maybe even all or the majority) of CLN conversions be bought by a significant investor at a pre-negotiated price, possibly the rest also at 0.68, or not? So while the CLN structure generally is harsh and nobody is a big fan of it surely, if that is the case, then there's a clear anchor to the SP, and could explain why we actually never even closed at or below the level of the retail offer (so far anyway).

I guess that could be it, CP - and in a way sounds like HE1 MO if they are/were aware of that at the time already, while unfortunately they have time and time again shown us that they are very willing to let II's in at a big discount, they - so far, at least over the past 2 years - fortunately have also several times had a plan to get the SP back up from there (or maybe I give them too much credit).

It would certainly explain why the trades printed on the day of the shares being admitted for trading, rather than on the conversion notice day. So it might not be too far-fetched that this dynamic could persist for the remaining tranches of CLN conversions as well, which still wouldn't make it the most amazing experience, but at least somewhat more orderly. I guess we'll have to see on the next conversion if similar price action happens on the day of admission of the shares. That said, somewhat odd that one clip printed shortly before close, and the other after the close, because undoubtedly the timing of those is chosen very intently, so would have assumed both prints during the day (if they for whatever reason had an interest in supporting the SP), or both after close (if they for whatever reason had an interest in *not* supporting the SP)

@Bluebay

"Definitely looks as though the short term CLN conversion blocks have been sold at a pre-negotiated price to a significant buyer rather than traded onto the market, also on terms that will tend to stabilise the price and VWAP. Should be another 50m share block somewhere."

Sounds like 1 plausible explanation, but I'd think that the pre-negotiated price probably already was agreed at the time the CLN came into place? If so, and a significant buyer was willing to provide a big amount of cash for shares at 0.68, why would HE1 not have opted for that funding in the first place "We bring a strategic investor on board who will provide [x]m£ at a price per share of 0.68, we also open the offer to retail investors", instead of opting for a convoluted CLN structure? Of course the possibility is that the significant investor in that scenario "only" wanted to contribute 1 or 2m£ rather than much higher (in the region of the CLN), but even then a split of 1m£ retail, 2m£ significant investor wants to come on board, 8m£ CLN would have been a more positive signal to markets than basically all CLN?

Well, the second one was after market close already, and it was the bigger one, so might well have closed in positive territory if that had been before close too.

Gotta give them one thing at the very least, it's very hard to get bored with this share. Sure looks like positive news could (!) be imminent based on that trade print.

Looks like still some selling interest left, guess some consolidation always made sense between the key RNS we got over the past weeks and the next key RNS (remaining batches of re-analysis results). It makes for an interesting dynamic if those selling volumes swap hands to sticky-hand LTHs (that's an assumption ofc), given that this happens in Pre-Season, by the time Super Bowl (MRE/Scoping Study) comes along, it might just be that an even (substantially) larger fraction of the outstanding shares will be in sticky hands.

Exactly Paul, truly think there's a good chance that from the MRE to the economic scoping study it will be a very short time span to wait.

As the others point out, of course there are de-risking steps remaining! But that's the case at the stage of an economic scoping study too, and at the stage of a PFS, etc. And looking at the 4 points Richy lists, all of which are entirely legit, my personal take is that about 2-4 Rupert and team have (a) a very good guesstimate, and (b) very high conviction, otherwise they wouldn't be all-in on Boland to the extent they are and they wouldn't have sold the rights to the gold deposit, especially (!) because from what I remember David Clarke (and some others of the original vendors?) would have been entitled to 7% of outstanding shares award on a gold resource of 750k ounces, so for him and rest of management to support the sale of the gold assets and full concentration on Boland, that speaks for huge level of conviction.

ISR I'd say they probably also have a very good idea given that all of them have been involved in uranium project development/production in the past, and the fact that they also convinced Ken that ISR at Boland is viable to the extent that he himself goes and pegs ground in similar paleochannel structures also adds weight to the conviction that it is highly likely to work in the field, at least for me personally.

So yes, it's not all done, but if there's any wobbles along the way, we have a very experienced and aligned management team that will unwobble the wobbles, and if there's no wobbles, well...just ask ChatGPT something along the lines of this (making sure to prompt that production isn't imminent yet):

"can you value this resource: 500Mt of 1000ppm TREO (250ppm MREO) in Australia this is an ionic clay resource, assume average recovery rates of 65% and mining through in-situ recovery (ISR)

What market cap should the project's company roughly be valued at (pre-feasibility study)?"

This is the upside case, and for anyone who doesn't use AI, it returns that the market cap of such a resource pre-feasibility study (!) should be several 100m£.

No, there's nothing to prevent them from doing consecutive conversions, but let's face it, likely they were forward selling before the conversion, and now forward sell for the next conversion, so the second 1m£ conversion clip. They did the conversion at 20% discount to VWAP, the retail offer was at 0.54p, the conversion was at 0.5p, the SP closed today at 0.59p, which is a mere 1.7% lower than close on 5th August.

So while there is nothing to keep the lenders from converting consecutively, the first tenth of the amount & the retail offer only lowered SP by less than 2% compared to the close before the retail offer. But of course then some push the narrative that each time of conversion the SP will move 20%, despite there being clear evidence that it's not the case, if there wasn't that narrative and creating fear and over-caution, retail buying could simply be normal volumes rather than subdued and absorb a lot of the conversions with some of them potentially not lowering the SP at all.

Yeah, patience for real news. It's shameful tbh some of the posting here just creating a narrative. Before the PI equity raise participation: "This goes to the raise price tomorrow anyway, it always does" (It didn't). Then the lenders choose the option to convert part of the loan to shares, as was always clear, since the initial announcement of the funding, the same people who said it'll go to 0.54p anyway on 6th August spread more doom and gloom for what reason exactly? Given that you all said it'll go to 0.54p on 6th August before any CLN conversions, the fact that on 19th August it's 0.575p after partial CLN conversion isn't all that bad?

Not a huge fan of this management team either, but what's the need of creating 10 negative posts a day from some of you when there isn't real news today (CLN conversion was always obviously gonna happen)? And 37m£ market cap with 11m£ cash, 1 asset close to starting production and 1 asset with pretty substantial contingent resource to prove up over the next months, there's worse risk/reward setups.

Yeah, no doubt, but do most of those have the goods to back it up? Bring it to production? So many here (including me at times) were critical about such big focus on metallurgy rather than focus on proving up the resource and scale it and do all the PR.

But the truth is (or looks like, as there are no guarantee for anything), this was the perfect approach for any private *investor*, they ticked off all the difficult to-dos first, have a very good idea now of acid consumption, acidity needed, permeability, recovery rates, all without getting the SP overhyped (which would only have been the perfect approach for any private *day-traders*), letting long-term investors building their stakes and building trust while dilution wasn't crazy either with strong participation of insiders whenever there was a raise.

So yes, a lot of PR-needy CEOs jump around saying "We have a gazillion Mt REE resource, look at us" when they have zero clue if it's (a) mineable (with the clays, does it support the right extraction methods, or also is it prime farmland that likely means it will be a massive hassle or might never get mined due to it) and (b) economical (as they have done zero work on metallurgy).

Cobra's MRE will hit completely different, because not only will they be able to show "We have a gazillion Mt REE resource too", but almost all of the remaining work has been done, so Rupert - if he chooses to take that approach - will be able to say "Here's our MRE, this is the tonnage, here's the average composition, at current market prices 1t of the basket is priced at x$, and from all the work we have done on recovery rates and acid consumption, we have a very good idea of cost of producing 1t of the basket, at roughly y$", allowing everybody to have a very good idea of actual profits they will make. No one cares after all if a company has even 5000 Mt resource, if it would never be mined, and that's where Cobra is different. So at the point of the MRE, we'll be very close to economic scoping study release as well, given that the tonnage is pretty much the only metric they have to add as input to assess the economics.

From there, PFS/FS and getting production permits will feel like a mere victory lap rather than a big challenge, offtake agreement will be zero problem, the only open question then is the capex for refining the product that is mined, I imagine there will be different options, either the offtake partner gets involved in that capex, or an Australian major miner, or a government or semi-government entity.

So yeah, let these others have their 200% up days, who really cares, if they haven't ticked off the difficult steps from initial find to eventual production, that value won't hold, while Cobra's value will unfold sustainably, given most of the difficult boxes have been ticked by now.

As you say, Ken, "that will come". Keeping their heads down and working on the things that really will define the value of Boland and Yaninee (MRE, metallurgical optimisation, regulatory permits) will do the talking, there's many REE players who don't do that and rather focus on PR more than the actual work.

Not saying it wouldn't be nice to have Cobra mentioned in articles a lot more, it sure does get overlooked at times, like the article about Arafura on BBC that was focused on "breaking the Chinese dominance in REE", would have thought that a UK-publicly funded media article could mention the only UK-listed rare earths-focused company with Australian resource when writing about an Australian REE miner.

But you say yourself, they are on track to attracting majors, that's far more important than masses of new shareholders right now, when there's enough cash to avoid raising any from the market, and when there's barely enough free float for new sticky hands to come on board (with many existing investors still looking to increase their stakes for the re-rate to what is a fair market cap). All in its time, we don't need a 9000% intra-day pump like that ASX junior, I'd say we don't even want that, all that's needed is a steady convergence to Cobra's fair value - is that eventually at 20p? 30p? higher? Who knows, but it sure as hell isn't at 3.70p, and it's refreshing that the set of long-term holders (and the handful of new serious holders who joined here recently) gets to build their position the way they want without the s***show in so many other mining explorers/developers on LSE that just get hyped in pump/dump schemes with zero actual value in the discussion boards and tons of cross-ramping. That's one of the other beauties of Cobra, that this discussion board has always been working towards a common goal, understanding and unpacking the value of the company together and supporting each other with taking good decisions.

To be fair, all 4 Nd, Pr, Tb, Dy are far far from the 2022 peaks, not even back to start of 2024 levels, so massive sweet spot that the underlying metals lifted off comfortably now from the cycle lows, but have a big gap to fill to the previous cycle's peak. Just another factor that will constantly support Cobra over the next couple of years with the usual cycle lengths in rare earths.

I don't think LC is talking about REE ticker, Paul, but about the underlying commodities, HREE (heavy rare earth elements)

As you should :-P

But it made Ravenspads drop his target price by 35p compared to when they thought it's AIM! from 40p incoming in previous post to 5p incoming in this one

Exactly, somewhat silly that even with this there are fist fights about whether or not it's good or it's bad, it's neither, it's been known already anyway, it's simply (part) execution of an amount from the previous RNS. Can't it even with those kind of "news" be a mutual "Alright, that's not really news, just confirmation of previous news, back to business as usual" on here, does it really always have to be max drama from both of the living-in-their-own-reality groups on here?

Don't really think a dual listing is needed. It's been considered no doubt, but dual listing is both expensive and higher regulatory hassle, Cobra has a small, streamlined team, so dealing with the regulatory hassle of a dual listing would need to be the best use of their time to increase value in the company, and it's just not. From capital needs perspective it's also simply not needed, firstly because the UK market for that is very well structured still, and secondly (maybe more importantly) because ISR is low capex low opex, and project financing will not be a massive problem once the scoping study or PFS are out.

There's value to the UK listing with Cobra being in a good position to negotiate a partnership with one of the European industry giants as one of the few Europe-listed rare earths developers/miners, for offtake. Not an expert on dual listings, but from the few I followed they rarely add all that much value for miners, even in GGP's case the dual listing caused some headaches in the end with the CEO probed whether the numbers were projected as too good before the ASX listing despite potentially already knowing that they weren't realistic, etc.

Good to know sir, to read your assessment is always interesting - and given you were less on board with ISR and the economic viability of most rare earths projects in late 2023 and early 2024, can't really blame you that you had sold a lot (and gold producers have done incredibly well, so i'm sure you did well out of that too); would be great to see you increase your stake again or add your expertise to the mix again on the way to production, as a former director of the company.

Still would be interested in your take on when they might be ready to bring it to production. Rupert and David are both enthusiastic about it no doubt (for good reasons imo and seems you agree these days as well given what you write about ISR Metals and pegging ground in similar formations) and I imagine will want to bring it to production sooner rather than later, but what's realistic with the Australian regulatory timeline/pipeline? And when you talk of "on track to attract a major partner", is your expectation a JV or more likely a full acquisition?

Just for context for the new people on the board: Orion is Ken Watson, former Cobra director

Lol that's crazy 1-day moves, not gonna lie, ASX is special! Will check those out, but not that easy to invest in smaller-scale ASX for UK investors, just like it isn't super easy for Australian investors to invest in smaller-scale LSE.

How are you Ken? What do you think of Cobra potential from here on out? Given your experience with the Australian mining market, would be keen to know what timescale you consider realistic for bringing Boland (and the additional high-grade zones in the Yaninee paleochannel that are shaping up) to production in the jurisdiction.

Very odd tbh that MMs don't tighten to 3.70/3.90 and move mid to 3.80, there's solid buying interest at or just below the ask and doesn't look like anybody is still willing to sell at the bid, actual bid quote they show is above 3.70 anyway, not the most inspired market makers if they just leave bid at a level that makes no sense. 670k shares were buys so far today, 80k shares sells