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That'd actually be really fast extraction for ISR, from what I find at least. It's 6 months at least in uranium to extract by the looks of it, and I wouldn't imagine that to be much different for REE. But it's a bit different from an underground mine that has 1 or 2 declines and requires getting the ore out that way, what makes you think that with the scale that Boland shapes up to be we'd only have 1 recovery well when this goes to production stage?

114 days seems incredibly fast for ISR if anything. The permeability and low level of impurity are really in Cobra's favour there. What makes you think it's slow? Where do you take information from that it *should be* faster? Cause any source I look at suggests that this would be among the quickest ISR extraction processes, and I doubt that anybody challenges the truth that many many ISR operations across the globe are profitable.

You ask why it's not shooting up more?

Well, there wasn't much in the RNS today, was there? Great, so they managed to deepen the drill without operational problems (so that's good news). But else? In the end of January RNS after the initial drill of the target, it was "encountered helium shows x times baseline level & hydrogen shows y times baseline level". This time they only mention that shows of both gases were notably higher than last time? Why on earth would you keep the levels of [some number]x baseline level out of the RNS?

Hard numbers please! Yes, it's time to buy, yes, it's likely we get positive news soon, but they once again make their own life and ours unnecessarily hard, just say "We encountered x times baseline helium levels and y times baseline hydrogen levels" same as last time, why is it difficult when they managed to do that previously?

*"multi-100 million £ market cap company" what I meant of course there, multi-million £ market cap we of course already have

"Appalling investment since February"

Or fantastic investment since start of the year.

Of course if you pick the local high (unless the local high is now) to compare with, everything will always be an appalling investment.

I highly doubt that David increased his stake to that size (from an already very high level to start with) because it's REE rather than gold. From when I had the chance to talk to him he sounded like the metal that he's in general most excited about through the course of his long career is gold and that usually he'd have jumped on the opportunity to increase the gold resource, but that the REE indications were simply so compelling that it was the best thing to do to go after these.

He's a geologist, but also a successful investor, so it's safe to say that he increased his stake because he think the resource/company is massively undervalued at this price (a view I share with him).

If you think Cobra should go after gold just because gold is at a high right now, that's like saying Cobra should have switched to lithium a year ago, or uranium, or any other metal that is the hot commodity of the day. Fact is, Wudinna gold if they had fully focused on that, maaaaybe could have had a very optimistic case of leading to a 30-40m£ market cap company, Boland...a completely different animal with that scale and with - very likely - being mineable with ISR, that has an optimistic case of leading to a multi-million £ market cap company over time.

I love the current setup to be honest, it's pretty rare that you get to get into a share at a very low point of the commodity price cycle in that given commodity, when it's at the same time very likely that the company can prove up and develop a (what looks like) massive-scale resource within the next years and quite possibly be among the very lowest cost producers (if ISR is a go)

Thoughts so far:

1) 41% recovery rate might already be economically viable. The 50% was imo mentioned as a conservative estimate where it would always be cost-competitive even at depressed REE prices, and the comments were made before the Jun update of the ISR study that showed some really encouraging grades, suggesting that the high-grade zones are better than some of the early 2024 drilling campaign indicated (which were already decent enough grades due to the high relative HREO content)

2) Given it's the first test, even recovery rates of 20% wouldn't have meant ISR is a no. It's *unoptimized* recovery rates, and they have been quite good on the front of metallurgical optimization in the past, some in 2022 were tired of reading the word metallurgy because it was such a big focus. The fact that unoptimized it's over 40%, even if we assume that 50% is needed, that puts a very high probability on getting there, and possibly as soon as in a few weeks, given that 18th June RNS had the sentence "A second sample is being prepared for further bench scale ISR studies" which they also again referred to today, I assume they're already working on the optimization.

3) Despite this being overall very positive news imo, I would have wished for more colour on some of the statements in the 18Jun RNS, given that these were the final results of this first stage study. For instance in the June RNS, they mentioned "Favourable permeability rates of 0.12 pore volumes per day are being achieved at low pressures. This rate of permeability is comparable to ISR production rates achieved at operating ISR uranium mines. Testing, analysis and results are expected by the end of June 2024". I can't say I'm an expert on permeability rates, and I doubt many here can, so I would really have liked to read more about that today and have a bit more detail, or for it to be elaborated on in an interview, but that wasn't (yet?) the case. They seem to put an emphasis on trying to make it easier for investors to get educated about REE and ISR, like with the new investor community on the website, I feel the RNS could have been much better structured, with clearer-focus paragraphs & filling in gaps more.

The other point that is noteworthy for me on the less positive side is the recovery rates for Dy and Tb that are low 30s. Given that these are the high-value heavy rare earths, I hope these will improve a lot more with the recovery optimisation efforts. Granted, HREO overall have 37% recovery, but it's really Dy and Tb that are the most important ones of the HREOs by far.

In a nutshell: These results are actually very encouraging, presentation could have been better and there are small question marks that need to be answered by the metallurgical optimisation, BUT: When that is done, the hard part is done, for me this study and the optimisation that will follow is what derisks Boland, the scale is there imo, the grade composition is good, ticking ISR box is all that's neede

Will have to leave commenting about the news themselves for later, didn't have much time today yet to have a look

No LC, not me. I'd love to be able to buy more if anything

There'll always be some sells in a small-cap with lots of PIs, someone needs money for something else, sells stocks. But what large sells? Total volume in Cobr hasn't been higher than 8m shares on any given day since 25th March, that's buys and sells combined, never more than 1% of outstanding shares traded on any given day.

Imo it stands out a lot more that there hasn't been sizeable buying, despite news. Why I don't know - cause the news have been very encouraging and funding is sorted for another 6 months. Despite that, there've only been 2 days since end of March with more than 5m shares volume. Despite new ISA year, despite lots of news flow. Those 2 days were 20May and 10Jun, not really RNS days or close after RNS days. The latest 2 RNS were 18Jun (ISR study update) and 26Jun (Uranium results), on 18th June SP was 1.20p and since then, the highest volume day was 2Jul, with 2.197m shares traded in total (buys & sells). That's tiny daily volumes since 18th June. 0.25% of outstanding shares as highest volume? Where's the sizeable systematic selling that apparently caused the SP to go from 1.20 to 1.05? There simply hasn't been any buying worth mentioning on the back of these news, nothing more, nothing less, I don't know why as I think the news have been very very positive, but the lack of buying even when there's great news updates is a problem, no doubt.

Jollifant, "It's not a fortune but it's easy money if you received placing shares at 1p"...you don't need placings for that to be a trader?

It's not like you can't pick shares up at 1.05, maybe 1.07p right now and probably sell at 1.15-1.20 in the next weeks for "easy money". Before the placing at a premium back then, you were able to buy in the 0.80-0.90 range.

I don't really see your point about the placings tbh, because the smaller the discounts are in placings surely the lower the chance to make "easy money" and the easier for "normal shareholders" to buy at similar level through open market. The last 2 placings were one at a 20% PREMIUM, and the other at a 3% discount. It's a junior in the mining industry, raises are part of the game, but you have many many to pick from who raise at 20-30% discount, some at more than that, so I have my doubts that many pure traders who think "I just want to pick up placing shares cheaply and sell them in a couple of weeks" really are that common here, they have much bigger discount placings to pick from if they want to do that. And I'd also say it isn't consistent with what shows here, it's not like there's ever crazy volumes going through the days/weeks after placings, so I don't think that's what's going on much here.

To address your question:

Well, I think I already addressed your question. The obvious value driver would be an REE bull market. That's not specific to Cobra, and it's not specific to REE. Take the Cameco share price, from 42 to 6 during the uranium downward cycle, from 6 to 55 since that 2020 low. And that's a top 3 uranium producer that managed to do almost x10 in the metal's upward cycle - a junior can do multiples that are even bigger than that in such a scenario.

The REE downward move does show signs of bottoming out, although it already looked like recovering in April and then didn't do much, so it's hard to tell when the right time is. BUT: That's the beauty of Cobra, how conservative they are with raising more equity and how economical they are with their budget, while - like you write yourself - still having managed to make a lot of progress in the past 2 years with the project. I think many who have been in the share longer have averages similar to yours, and many probably ask similarly "what does it take to get back to that SP", but on REE bull market, this can go x10, can go x30, can go who knows how far. And we've seen that in early 2022 even, when it was a mini REE bull market, and we went from 1.30p in Dec 2021 (when I first bought) to over 3 within a bit over 3 months. WITHOUT Boland. WITHOUT MRE. WITH much lower grades. WITHOUT good indication that ISR might be possible. It won't take much. Green economy plans progressing is enough. But it could also get hypercharged: if (when?) China-Taiwan escalates, that wouldn't be a mini REE bull market, but a "EU nat gas after Russian invasion" bull market.

Then add the potential drivers that are idiosyncratic to Cobra:

- Confirmation of ISR-suitability? That with the Boland maiden MRE later this year could do wonders to the SP, but not only to the SP, as also...

- ...it'd attract the big Australian REE companies with cheap production prospects and scale. So there's your second value driver on this side. I hope not tbh, I want to see Cobra go it alone and become a powerhouse, and that's not that unrealistic with CAPEX for ISR being much more achievable.

- Establishing a mineable uranium resource in the drilling program rather than the traces in the reanalysis? Sky is the limit

- Buyer for the gold assets? Hey, won't make SP go x10, but they might not be worth that much less than the company's entire current market cap

- Offtake agreement when Boland MRE drops? Why not, not impossible

- What happens if Australian government says "here's a 10m AUD grant to accelerate development of this project"? Also much more realistic once the scale is proved up.

There's a lot of potential value driver both on the macro and the company-specific side, and I wish I could buy more than my 3% in the company at this SP, but my new job means I'm not allowed to buy individual stocks anymore.

I don't really agree. Yes, UK miners overall didn't have the best 2 years or so, but it's also necessary to look at the commodity prices themselves.

Nd is 26% of its 2022 peak price now, Pr at 30%, Dy at 51%, Tb at 32%.

No secret that these are also exposed to cycles, and that probably juniors have a higher beta to these (which might not make that much sense given no revenue stream yet, but seems to be the case).

When (not if) the cycle turns in favour for REE again, so will the SP. And then some, as people will scrutinise REE stocks more again and see all the progress.

There's enough value drivers left for the next months, Cobr is fully funded for all of 2024, it's made tons of progress towards becoming a miner and REE price cycle seems to be bottoming out, they've been very reliable with raising at tiny discount or even at premium in one case, so if you believe in management's ability to deliver this project (I sure do), what keeps you from averaging down? Of course the SP won't rise if everybody sits on the sideline being all "it's way undervalued, but I won't buy more anyway". If you think it's undervalued, but don't buy shares, you do realize that you at least contribute to (if not cause) that exact spiral you refer to?

You mean no news in the next weeks OTHER THAN the likely most important piece of news this year so far? The results of the bench scale ISR study?

18Jun RNS: "...is nearing completion, with full results expected by the end of June 2024"

Carters, wanted to reply to your points too, as you seem to be new to the company:

1) "It's one thing doing lab tests but does this work at scale?" The conditions from the testing sure look good so far, the company made a bold decision in that mid-2022 drilling campaign to prioritize Boland as completely new target at the time over the Thompson exploration target (81-233 mt), based on their understanding of the mineralogy. Many other companies would just have taken a "let's just maximise the mt of REE in our MRE" approach, indeed many REE companies do just that, and leave considerations about how mineable the resource is for the future (think AR3 for instance, but even MEI). The fact that Cobra have had the mining approach, ease of extraction, cost of extraction, recovery rates, in focus from the very start, and opted for focusing on "the right resource" rather than on "increasing the MRE as much as possible as quickly as possible" is imo a very positive thing, and with Boland a lot of boxes were ticked indeed that they had always been open about.

2) "Are we to believe that this tiny company is going to do a world first for mining rare earths?" Alone? Maybe, given that they do have a lot of ISR experience in uranium across the team, both Rupert, and also David Clarke. The conditions for ISR surely aren't given everywhere and they have found a resource in that unique paleochannel that seem as good as they can be for it. Not alone? It should be easy enough, if they show proof of concept & scalability, they already have the partnership with Watercycle to optimize flow sheet, and Australia is home to several multi-billion $ market cap REE miners, think Lynas.

3) "The million ounce gold mine went up in a puff of smoke" Not really, but focus has shifted to REE, rightly so in my opinion given there's likely a 130 km^2 resource. But if you're looking for a pure gold explorer, this isn't the investment for you at the moment, granted.

4) "The share price has done nothing since listing over 5 years ago". Well, rare earths prices decreased a lot since 2021, these go in cycles. You can say the same about most other London-listed rare earths companies for that reason, Rainbow, Mkango, Pensana, all of them are pretty much at listing SP, if you go on google and put Max on the graph. The good thing with Cobra is that the board and related persons have huge skin in the game holding over 30% of outstanding shares, raises have been with small or no discounts (one was at a premium to SP), and spending is very conservative, that's a nice thing to have for an exploration company.

5) "everything is hanging on this highly speculative method of mining rare earths. Near £10m market cap and no precedent for whether this ISR is workable for rare earths." What makes you say that exactly? Market cap was close and at some points higher than now before Boland was the focus. If ISR works, this is off to the races with huge upside, if not, there's other methods of

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3rp8ySW43M

LC, it's not like there's no context on it given its mentioned these rates are comparable with operating uranium mines using ISR. I suppose it makes sense to go into more detail only when the full results of the ISR study are released by end of June

The Dy & Tb grades are ridiculously high if there's zones of this high-grade heavy rare earths footprint.

Let's keep in mind that these are by far the most valuable rare earths oxides.

Pretty excited to see the ISR study results within the next 2 weeks according to the RNS, not gonna lie.

Yeah, the only thing that a buy marked as a sell means is that you got a very good price - as your buy was below the displayed mid price (or I guess looking it from the other side, you could also argue it means the mid mark is too high vs where actual market is, if that bid/offer is in line across brokers).

Anyway, hopefully ISR results in the next weeks, if those are good, Boland looks very very promising indeed, with the modelled area of mineralisation (which has been supported by the historic sample reanalysis results), sky is the limit if they can show "We can mine this in an ultra low-cost way that also has less of an environmental impact than conventional mining". You guys have been talking about JVs below, which...if ISR looks like a go...I don't think Cobra would need, both upfront capex and opex would be manageable, and South Australian and federal government could well give grants, and offtake agreement with some credit line would do the rest. Pretty sure that some of the multi-billion REE/mineral sands companies in Australia would try to get a piece of it if ISR works and scale is there, so JV could be easy enough in that scenario, just saying i don't think for Boland they *need* a JV.

However, in the medium term, JV could have other advantages, let's not forget that after Boland, there's also a highly prospective tenement in Tasmania adjacent to an ionic REE resource, there's more to do in that Narlaby paleochannel than just Boland, and there's several prospective IOCG targets that rightly for now aren't the focus, but could easily become relevant quickly once there's either revenue or JV.

It'd be surprising tbh.

Yesterday the market cap was 42.73m£ (with 3.72 billion shares outstanding).

Today they'll have 8m£ more cash, so even if you fully want to fully discount that additional cash balance and say "market cap with the additional cash shouldn't be higher than before it", why should market cap fall in your opinion?

42.73m£ market cap with post-raise shares outstanding of 5.32 billion shares -> SP of 0.80

If this drops to 0.5 for real, that'd make it a market cap of 26.6m£ today (including 8m£ more cash than before) vs 42.73m£ yesterday (without 8m£ in cash), so I guess it'd make many many people buy.

Sure, the discount is annoying, but it's far less dilution than the raise last year, right?

Before this raise:

Shares outstanding: 3.71 billion

Market cap (at 1.1p): 42.73m£

So let's say they raise 8m£, 1.6 billion additional shares.

New total shares outstanding 5.31 billion shares, so what share price would put us at the same market cap as before the raise? Exactly, 0.805p.

If we say "they have 8m£ more cash tomorrow than they had today and we should add that 1 to 1 to the market cap", to end up at a market cap of 50.73m£ instead, that would put the fair (i.e. market-cap neutral vs pre-raise) share price to 0.955p.

Add to it that the uncertainty about the funding of EWT is out of the way, and quite possibly pricing out that uncertainty we end up at a fair SP over the next weeks that exceeds the pre-raise SP.

Outrageous discount, and ridiculous they haven't raised a lot more in February when this was the most traded stock on all of LSE. But still, the dilution is far far far more sanguine than what happened in December.