Member Info for ShipwreckSheep

Rach, not gonna go into it more, I'm glad you found some more perspectives to explore from my post, but please be careful with things like "market put SP back to where it was, so it can't be good"

Because then you'd also have to say Pensana must be horrible, with SP going from 185 in March 2021 to 25 now.

As far as I'm concerned both have their merits, personally I'm interested in the province scale, ISR-suitable, heavy rare earths enriched deposit in a prime jurisdiction that Boland shapes up to potentially (!) be, with a board that holds 30% of shares and raised at a premium last time they raised. But that's personal preference, what is clear is that these two are hugely different, if you look for NdPr (which has a much more challenging outlook than Tb and Dy reading any REE focused news) and don't mind a high risk jurisdiction, or rather if you're okay with these factors for higher overall MREO grades (although also important to keep in mind that extraction likely will be much more expensive for Pensana), then I wish you good luck with your investment there, I can see it go well too, but for me for many reasons I wrote about at length, Cobra is the superior play, in particular with less than a tenth of the market cap, and with the similarities Boland has to MEI's REE resource (which is valued at 250m£)

The problem with your approach, Rach, is that you don't differentiate one bit between heavy rare earth and light rare earths. First things first, nobody says Pensana doesn't have nice grades, it also has over 10x Cobra's market cap btw...

Second things second, for Cobra's Boland drill results, of the MREO (and really that's what we look at, cause the others, well, Cerium Oxide and Lanthanum Oxide have a price less than 1/500th of Terbium Oxide, so who cares about the parts of TREO that aren't MREO?), 12% are Tb and Dy, 88% are Nd and Pr, that's the ppm split. The value split using current prices of the REOs, 47% of the basket value are Tb and Dy, even though they're only 12% of the MREO in ppm. For your guide, current prices are 760$/kg for Tb-Oxide, 253.5$/kg for Dy-Oxide, 50$/kg for Nd-Oxide, 53.5$/kg for Pr-Oxide.

Then you have to take into account the resource style and recoverability, if you even looked at the most recent presentation, you have the hard numbers how much more profit margin ISR produces at massively lower grades.

Then you have the jurisdiction, if you looked into it, you know at what discounts African miners trade to Tier 1 jurisdiction ones.

Then you have recovery % in the leeching process, the high 60-70% recovery rates at Boland are outstanding compared to pretty much all metrics for IAC-style deposits out there.

Even if we assume the same recovery % for e.g. MEI, which also is an IAC-style deposit and much more directly comparable, the basket value of MEI's resource is at most 2x higher than Boland average (across all zones, and in reality recovery % is lower at MEI). Then you have MEI in a somewhat dodgy mining jurisdiction, Brazil hasn't been great there, look at other UK-listed miners in Brazil like Serabi or Harvest Minerals, complete mess. And yet you have MEI at a market cap of 250m£ equivalent. So you're definitely missing some things here, the biggest ones being 1) the vast premium of heavy rare earths over light rare earths in market price, and the vaster premium of magnet rare earths over other rare earths (we're talking x50 premium of LREO and x500 premium of HREO over the others, making any talk about TREO completely obsolete, the ones that aren't MREO create zero value), 2) the jurisdiction the project resides in, 3) metallurgy, recovery grades, as important if not more important than the MREO %, what's the point of looking only at MREO %, when 1 has recovery rates of 70% of them and the other has 35% of them?

What does make this world-class, isn't the grades in themselves, but the combination of Tier 1 jurisdiction, very high recovery rates, the potential for very very low-cost extraction if ISR will really be possible, very decent concentration of HREO as part of MREO, and economic MREO grades (even if not the MREO grades that some others have, who lack the ISR potential and the high recovery rates, and the high HREO content, which yeah, is x10 the market price of LREOs, and the prime juri

I'm pretty sure Rupert holds more than 333k shares, Kuro. It was 333k shares in the Oct 2022 placing & 500k shares in the Nov 2023 placing that was at a premium to the share price at the time. See here: https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/COBR/result-of-accelerated-bookbuild-206pe5ciab1f0ew.html

I imagine it's impossible at the moment to buy for him with how rules for director buying work, there's lots of news flow in the next months indicated with the re-analysis of historic drill samples, the uranium side story, and who knows what kind of insight they already have in addition to what we know so far on ISR recoverability and/or offtake agreement perspective and/or attracting strategic institutional investors and/or any potential discussions about monetizing the gold assets, almost certain that any information on any of these fronts would make it impossible to purchase additional shares right now.

Also with 3 related parties (one of which is of course David Clarke) holding 30% of Cobra, and another 7% of shares held by Andromeda Metals, that's a lot of tightly held shares. So are my 3%+ that you also see in the major shareholders list on the website, I'd love to be able to buy more, but unfortunately am not allowed to buy any new single-name shares for the time being; however, sure as hell not selling any, and hard for me to understand why people aren't gobbling these up left right and centre at a market cap of 8m£.

Anyway, I plan to do some calcs on the weekend trying to replicate the slide in Rupert's presentation that shows heavy rare earths in the basket to be superior to what MEI have, because these are the most valuable by far, and also the outlook for Dysprosium and Terbium is much better than for light rare earths (see for instance the article on the right side here: https://www.metal.com/Rare-Earth-Oxides ). For me that slide really drives it home that it isn't about the TREO grades, MEI have grades around 3x of Boland, and yet in terms of basket value, as HREO are so much more valuable, they aren't far from each other. With MEI's market cap at some 250m£, and COBR's market cap at 8m£, that's well...a big difference. Too big? Yep, way too big a difference as far as I'm concerned. Have to say there were times when I questioned the decisions by management, I can't say I've been a huge fan initially of how the plan to drill the Thompson exploration target was scrapped very abruptly and Boland was drilled instead last year, but they've done everything right really by the looks of things and I gotta say the confidence they have on the drilling/mineralogy front (confidence that is built on huge experience for all David Clarke, Rupert Verco, and of course also Robert as exploration manager, also with ISR) gives me huge confidence in the company. Which is why I have increased my holding to > 3% in the first place.

Very interesting watch imo, as everybody who has been here for a long time knows: REE projects are notoriously difficult to compare, but in the video, the part after min 10:00 ticks all the boxes for me personally. It shows a good example how ISR mining of lower-grade resources can lead to immensely better results in both Total Metals produced/sold & AISC per unit (and consequently profit margin per unit) vs high-grade non-ISR mining. And doesn't use a random example for that demonstration, but the biggest uranium producer in the world (ISR) vs the second-biggest uranium producer in the world (only partly ISR).

The comparison with MEI that follows right after it in the video is also fantastic news in that for heavy rare earths content, Cobra's results are better than MEI and scale could end up being very similar. Considering that MEI has a market value of ~250m£ (470m AUD), personally I'm very happy today.

Some new names on the board today, which is nice to see too - and since some strange comments have been posted today by both the obvious rampers and the obvious derampers, well, I'm not getting into all of it, but let's please keep the facts straight:

1) several posted "this is AIM, anything can happen" or similar. Fact: This is not AIM, Cobra is not listed on AIM, this is LSE main market, a regulated market and not the wild west of AIM.

2) "They will raise anyway and you can buy cheaper". Fact: Again, it's not AIM, Cobra are known for being very economical with the funds they have & if/when they raise you can't bet on that being at a big discount, in fact the previous raise in November was at a premium to the share price. And undoubtedly another thing to consider is that the coffers could get filled by other means than an equity raise, it's been communicated more than once by the CEO that they're looking at monetizing the gold assets, it's also well known that the directors and related persons hold 30% of the outstanding shares, and it's well known to anybody who has been here for a bit that South Australian government has very interesting grants for critical minerals projects in development and it's safe to say that these results, with hopefully soon more re-analysis results on top of it, will put Cobra on the radar for these grants. So yeah, it might always happen that you get the chance to buy cheaper, it might also not happen, when I see the CEO of a company that is known for being highly technical in the presentations rather than a lot of PR compare the company's path to a similar company (in recoverable grade and resource scale) that has market cap of 250m£ with Cobra having market cap still < 10m£, personally I'm not waiting, when it already seems very undervalued (ofc DYOR and usual disclaimers).

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPh71OXwrQ

Https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/cobra_resources/news/rns/story/x58nq8x

Great results, it looks like 1000 ppm+ across all the zones that have been targeted, these results from only 5 sonic holes are...well, no wonder David Clarke said "It sure looks great". The district scale size according to their model is also encouraging. If this doesn't spark market interest, I don't know what will.

I'd argue that in the environment UK listed mining stocks operated over the past 18 months or so, boring hold is pretty good haha

But yeah, agree with you, would like to see the Boland results to accelerate project derisking steps a bit

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o6SBGdqUJc

Definitely happy with that appointment! It'll help with the network that he has. And yeah, not the earth shattering RNS yet maybe that makes people buy, but with Boland drill results in the next few weeks that will possibly really drive home that this has not only scale but also high-grade sections (I think we'll see average TREO above 1000ppm this time), hard to understand why there's sells over these past days - this next RNS in April might just be the most important Cobra RNS since the maiden REE MRE.

I mean, partly I agree with you there that the wording in the RNS is often a bit too conditional, like "making the right steps", "has the potential", it's all very passively worded, I'd very much like to see an RNS that is going on the offense. Take the re-analysis RNS alone, 2 of the bold items are "potential": "Results demonstrate massive scale potential" and "In situ recovery ("ISR") potential". Even though "demonstrate" is a strong word, adding "potential" always weakens the impact. Even "Results indicate massive scale" would drive the message home much better, despite "demonstrate" being a stronger word than "indicate".

But I hope they'll improve at that whole "attracting new investors" game. On the plus side, they're doing all the right things imo, divesting the copper project for some money today another good step, that was just sitting there without an exploration plan anyway, focusing on the prize asset, being very economical with genuinely making the most of historical drill samples that are already in the samples library & choosing low-cost exploration techniques, etc. Personally I prefer a company like this, who can be a bit amateurish at PR (for me the website still not being up to date is the biggest criticism there) but good at actually developing the project in the right direction and economical with the budget they have and doing raises only at smaller discount or last time even a premium, over all these explorers that just talk the talk, but waste a lot of funds, exaggerating results for a short SP pump and dump, and raise at mega discounts.

What makes you think so? If he didn't care about shareholder value, he wouldn't have cared about raising at a massive discount in Nov like many other small-cap UK-listed explorers do, but they raised at a premium. The work is also progressing, we just had a drilling campaign at Boland (which is hopefully the prize asset and all the first signs look great on that front) and waiting on results, had first re-analysis results from historic samples that showed solid intersections (especially if we keep in mind that the historic samples were from drilling campaigns that didn't target rare earths, so any targeted drills will improve on these grades), more at the lab now, then we had the update on new tenement and an update of the uranium prospectivity on that tenement (which also is in the paleochannel that Boland is in, so REE + uranium really), we've also been informed that they are working on the ISR study.

News flow is all as indicated by Cobra in Q1 as per the end of year presentation: https://cobraplc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Cobra-Resources-December-Update-FINAL.pdf

Only thing that is a bit irritating to me is how the website takes ages to get updated, still way too focused on gold and making it appear as if REE is the secondary focus, which clearly it isn't, still showing 75/25 split between Cobra and Andromeda even though Wudinna is 100% ours for a while now already, I had sent an email to them about it and was told they are working on it, but very unclear to me why it seems that difficult for them to keep the website up-to-date, especially with the recent PR effort with several interviews, it would seem logical to have the information on the website as accurate as possible to be able to attract new investors (which the fundamentals of the company at this market cap should be easy really)

Well, with Cobra, "the market" is us, I'd say. There's no big institutional investors (yet), there's no shorting going on, the 30% that the original parties to the Wudinna agreement hold are in sticky hands, so the price moves are caused by the other 70% of outstanding shares being traded by - almost only - retail investors like us.

So the question is, for any retail investor: If you do think this is severely undervalued, wouldn't it make sense to increase your position? Because that answers your question why "the market" doesn't take the similar stance on the valuation...as the market is us, there's apparently a reason why many - despite thinking the fair value of the company is (much) higher - don't go after that by buying more shares.

And you could have said the exact same about Meteoric Resources, carters. Whoever bought when it started exploration in 2004 at 0.2 and held until September 2022 which had a price of 0.013 had lost 93.5% of their money. And then it 20-bagged within a year.

Why I choose MEI for that example, and not one of the many many others, where exploration companies don't create shareholder value straight away? Because it's an ionic REE resource (like Cobra), that has scale and grade (like Cobra are demonstrating as we speak with their work program). Because it went from 20m market cap to over 500m market cap in a year.

It's possible to be overly critical, you know...Cobra is known to be extremely economical with their budget as opposed to many many other explorers and they haven't been secretive about anything, it's been discussed at length by Rupert that the plan with the gold assets is to monetize them, it's been again covered in that linked interview (which I hope you listened to) that recently smaller gold project in Western Australia have seen M&A action with close to 100$ paid per ounce in the ground, which would be multiples of the Cobr market cap on its own.

If you want to say "they found REE by coincidence when looking for gold, and focused on it" was wrong, that's a possible opinion to have for you, if you want to say "REE are useless", that's also a possible opinion to have for you, but when the sonic drilling RNS just showed grades over 2000ppm, and we know that Cobra holds over 2000km2 of land in that exact paleochannel, and that it's an ionic resource that showed recovery rates of 60% within 6 hours with acidity of orange juice in the tests that have been done so far, and you say "Why are they pushing forward with that?" then with all due respect, what are you on about? When those are exactly the metrics that pushed Meteoric Resources from 20m to at the high 500m+ market cap, in a way worse mining jurisdiction, without the potential of an ultra low-cost recovery technique working.

So ignoring trades below 5£ value, we had the following volumes and prices yesterday and today:

5748£ at 0.958p

4800£ at 0.96p

4850£ at 0.97p

512£ at 0.975p

2772£ at 0.995p

6000£ at 1p

2563£ at 1.025p

with volume weighted average of 0.9803p.

And mid gets marked at 0.95p, below any of the trades? It's a bit silly really

Cyprus, did you really go from "Great opportunity here now selling is very silly well done all holders 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻" (Strong Buy) to "RNS results two weeks away price will drift till then" (Hold) within 4 hours? Wowzer!

I doubt my decision not to buy more today. But nothing else.

"These results from the Itumbula West well are... *pauses and looks up* ...DO OFFER a transformational opportunity for the company" (time: 10:35)

So yeah...they are...they don't just "offer".

What are your thoughts on it bcb?

Now they quote 2m shares after moving mid lower though, guess sell order must be filled if that was what was behind it.

He's right in this case though, no quote for a proxy 100k shares sell order, on Barclays at least. Highest number they quoted was 75000 shares (which I also didn't sell).