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"back at 10p"? That'd be a market cap of £340m, about double the highest market cap HE1 has ever seen before. Would be quite something..

Yeah, there are uranium projects around there, but it's the same paleochannel as Boland and the reason these tenements were applied for is the similar mineralisation to Boland, which they also stated clearly in the RNS about the new tenements:

"Tenements EL 6966 ("Smokey Bay") and EL 6967 "(Pureba") cover over 1,000 km2 of the Narlaby Palaeochannel where previous uranium focused drilling encountered playa clays which are analogous to Boland mineralisation over extensive areas"

The previous uranium-focused drilling is almost certainly the one done by Adelaide Resources (which then became Andromeda, the company that Cobra got the Wudinna tenements from) in 2011 and no uranium mining came from it (see here on proactive investors):

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/147840/adelaide-resources-and-quasar-resource-start-drilling-for-south-australian-uranium-20877.html

Nothing to say it can't be that the 2011 uranium drilling campaign missed a big deposit, but let's be real, it's very unlikely that a uranium deposit is found by chance, if we get one, amazing, believe me, I'd be over the moon with >3% of the Cobra shares held by me. But the reason tenements in the Narlaby paleochannel have been picked up is the similar mineralogy to Boland and to expand the potential ionic REE resource that way.

Yeah, Richy, it's part of the deal for getting the remaining 25% of project ownership from them, number in the TR-1 coincides exactly with the number of consideration shares (p6 here): https://cobraplc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Circular.pdf

Also think talking a lot about uranium makes no sense. The additional tenement has been added because it's in the same paleochannel as Boland, the historic drill samples are tested for firming up REE conviction at Boland. I'd love it if Ken was right and there was an economic uranium resource around the tenements as well, but you've seen this all before if you were here long enough, 3 years ago it was "i'm really excited about tin potential that the company has", 2 years ago it was "when i recommended that we take on Wudinna, it was for the gold, but finding REE is super exciting" (at the time he had listed REE as one of his focus areas on his Twitter), 1 year ago it was "REE is worth zero, company should get rid of it and buy up a lithium project, it's all about lithium, nothing else matters" (at the time he had dropped REE from his Twitter and added lithium instead), now it's "could have uranium!" (after dropping lithium from his Twitter)...it still seems mostly like talking his own book, and even though I think he's an experienced person in mining and has interesting opinions, everyone who remembers all of the dozens of comments last year how "taking on a lithium project is the only way" while now no mention about how wrong that would have been in his posts, has to take these things with a pinch of salt. Please let's focus on what we know we have and what has been communicated by the company as plan for H1 2024, proving up the scale and ISR-suitability of a very exciting REE deposit at Boland.

Love your enthusiasm, Ken! Would be a surprise given that the paleochannel was drilled for uranium initially by Adelaide Resources (now of course Andromeda Metals) all these years ago - but hey, if there's uranium there that can also be mined with ISR techniques in addition to the heavy rare earths, that would indeed be amazing

Come on guys, when did the company first come across rare earths on the tenements? End of 2021, right? I don't think there's a single mining company on planet Earth that brought an initial discovery into production in just over 2 years, let alone an exploration company, and - at least in my opinion - by saying "dig the stuff up", you're insinuating that they should be able to mine the minerals by now, and if anything creating negative sentiment. Why? Do you genuinely think Cobra should be able to mine and sell rare earths a mere 2 years after discovery? Which company can?

As far as I'm concerned, they're doing everything right in the past months, from a placing at a premium (at a time when a range of other explorers struggle to raise funds at all), to obtaining 100% ownership of the project, to forming a useful partnership with a company with ISR expertise, to picking up prospective tenements with similar features as Boland. I get it, when you see there's a new RNS, you hope for goal-post-moving news, but ask yourself the question: IF Boland turns out to be all of what Rupert and co hope for (and seem quite confident in), will you not be happy that the company also picked up these tenements with similar features to it? All very welcome news in my opinion, and also sounds like we get more news this month

Could always happen, but with the scale prospects and with original Lady Alice parties still holding just under 30% and committing to a placing at a premium to SP in late 2023, pretty sure that could only happen at a substantial premium. Enough exciting steps and goalposts with Boland this year

Good to hear from you, Michael

To be honest, I'd rather see them scale it properly and de-risk it in 2024, production comes when it comes. We're now 100% owners of 2000 km2 of prospective paleochannels and I'm excited to see the reanalysis results of past drills in the paleochannels as soon as January, because if this is really gonna happen as a district-scale ISR operation, there's A LOT of upside.

Rupert and team seem quite confident that this is what they have found, you can see that from talking about dual resource, the focus has shifted to 1) Boland, 2) Boland, 3) more Boland, for a reason. So personally that's what I want to see, with the 2 drill campaigns in H1 2024 and reanalysis of past samples from the paleochannel, that could give a sizeable MRE for Boland, then optimise ISR recovery rates and metallurgy in general with Watercycle as an expert partner for that, get the pilot project going, get a PFS for the full project done, potentially an offtake agreement signed, institutional investors on board at that point too, and maybe some strategic move with the gold assets that don't have to be core strategy anymore, bring in a partner for open pit there, as also hinted at by Rupert in the presentation. That would be a tremendously exciting 2024 for Cobra and for us.

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM9uveEfR8Y

Yep, just like I did in April after a rapid rise from 1800 to 2050, when everybody's grandma was saying it's gonna be the new support and we move straight to 2500, and it turned out to be the top and a 6-month grind lower to 1800 followed. That's exactly the point, there was always gonna be 2-way risk to the SP from gold price at the highs, and market did not re-rate from positive developments, especially Singida, but just moved in line with gold price.

Well yeah, it was also creeping up into April, then dropped all the way back to 9 without any negative news. I can't say I'm too happy about the takeover bid at this price despite having a lower average, but it was far from a guarantee that it surpasses the share price offered on its own, the natural value drivers like Singida producing over expectations have not re-rated the share price to one above that offer after all. In the end we get offered a price that is at a premium to any weekly close since October 2021, not a value I had hoped for, but not really an insult either. Let's hope there'll be interest by another potential bidder. All I'm saying is that if I put myself in EZ's shoes, I'd also see the downside risk, "What if gold price goes lower again from here and we drop back to sub-10 as market didn't seem to care that much about the increased production and exploration success and we almost only moved higher 1-to-1 with gold price", he was an optimist throughout all the presentations these past years, and yet despite (over-)delivering on all they had said since the 2021 drop, not even a new ATH gold price had brought SP even to that 2021 level, not even to 90% of it.

The devastating factor in all of this is the timeline, Eric always said that he's a gold bull in the investor presentations, and yet, when gold might finally take off, he puts a lid on the share price and only saying "the procedure should be finished in H1 2024", so that could be June. There is no way SP trades above 13.50 before June unless there'll be a second bid by a major. It seems odd that there isn't one, last time when they informed us about approaches by potential bidders, there were 3 in the tracks, without Singida producing yet.

But in the end, I can understand Eric's frustration. Since the technical issues in 2021 at NLGM when SP dropped from 16ish to below 10, they have brought a second mine into production, added lots to the reserves in Kenya, produce 100k ounces a year which they hadn't even before these 2021 issues, gold price is 10% higher than it was in 2021, and market didn't give a flying toss about any of it and kept SP depressed below 13p ever since. What is he supposed to do? Wait for a magical re-rate that might or might not come, as clearly all of these improved fundamentals haven't led to a re-rate?

Seems more like an opportunistic pick-up of a tenement grant next to a prospective project that could have similar features as Boland - I doubt that they'll stretch themselves too thin and drill it right now, it's one for the future, Boland seems like the clear development focus of Cobra right now.

So overall it might not have that much value now, but hypothetically, if in early 2024 we get confirmation that Boland is highly scalable and has economical grades throughout (fingers crossed for that), I imagine we'll all be happy that they also picked up another Australian tenement with similar characteristics to Boland.

Interesting timing for that comment when the SP has risen from 0.8 to 1 this month (25% return not too bad really), with finally 100% ownership of the project, and an equity funding done at a premium. Think we all want to see it at 3p+ again like first half of last year, but hey, this month has gone much better than anybody could have hoped for, let's face it, we all expected a placement at 0.7 or around that level when share price was 0.8 end of October.

Why there aren't more people buying at a market cap of 5 million with now no more equity placement needed until late 2024 & likely more Boland news in the next months, well, that's the real question - I think everybody on this board is aware that I can be quite critical of management at times, but they've done a very good job with getting the funding for the 2024 work plan done without as much dilution as was feared

Best guess is that it might still be samples from when Andromeda (or back then Adelaide Resources) drilled holes at Narlaby Paleochannel when they looked for mainly uranium: https://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/147840/adelaide-resources-and-quasar-resource-start-drilling-for-south-australian-uranium-20877.html

At least it's the same paleochannel, slide 5 here shows that Boland is situated in the Narlaby channel: https://cobraplc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Cobra-Resources-Aircore-Results.pdf

Pretty strong, isn't it? Great to see how much the original parties to the LAM deal back the company and also great to see the ownership structure of Wudinna simplified.

I haven't participated in the placing this time around for what it's worth, not because of lack of conviction though, I'll aim to get back to my ~3% holding level over time once the new shares hit the register.

I'm not an investment banker, bcb ;)

I just decided it makes little sense to stay put at this price. Yeah, funding will have to come soon, one way or another, but the REE prospects here and the potentially very fast track to production - if Boland plays out in a positive way - make a market cap of 4.5m£ great value to buy.

It is small volumes taking it down, but it is close to zero volume buying. And there wasn't really a need for that, was there? Could have gotten the raise out of the way at the time of MRE update and Boland update, you would have bought more after it to get back close to 3%, I would have done the same, new investors could easily have jumped in. I mean, new investors will still be able to jump in after the raise whenever it comes, and will be even happier, it's just that existing loyal shareholders like us get diluted more, not exactly great. It's possible that they "don't need the money just yet", but it still wouldn't have hurt to fill the coffers by now, or at least then the communication in the interview should have been "yeah, we'll do a raise sometime, but we still have enough in the bank for another drilling round". It's been a month without any news (half-year report aside, which wasn't news, only a backward-looking report), and it's not clear at the moment what/when the next news will even be?

What they can do: Well, as far as I understand, directors are only restricted from buying shares when they are in possession of material information that the market does not have yet, right? So given that the MRE update and the drilling is out, what they could do is buying shares themselves.

What they could have done is also: Realise that a funding round will be needed soon after the MRE update and prove up a lot of the Thompson exploration target and give the market a headline of "Cobra Resources quadruples REE resource", and then focus on trying to do their thing at Boland after the funding round. A headline like that would have done more for the SP than "Potentially there's something big there in the paleochannel, but we can't really say too much yet other than the initial results look promising", these aren't the headlines that make SP fly. From a pure "what will get us to revenue fastest" perspective, Boland is probably the right thing, but there was an inbetween step "what will allow us to raise funds for the 2024 work plan with the least possible dilution", that wasn't Boland. That's easy to say ex-post, but what they could have realised is that SP hasn't been flying on the MRE update and that they wouldn't have anything concrete/substantial to add in the following weeks, and rather do the raise right there instead, when SP was around 1.25.

It would have been a case of "Ok, MRE isn't bad, Boland could give a lot of upside, funding is in the bag for the next ~12 months, so no dilution coming anytime soon", conditions overall that allows new investors to easily buy in, whereas now it's a case of "Not entirely sure when the next substantial news release is coming, but what is sure is that they need funding, so dilution coming very soon", and frankly, why would a new investor rush to buy in now before that?

So overall it's not clear to me why they have waited so long with raising new funds, and why they keep waiting. I'm thinking they must have something up their sleeves. Either they think the metallurgical results from Boland will really make the SP fly, or they have enough funds left for another AC drilling at Boland that they are confident in, or something else, I find it hard to believe that they didn't think it through at all when/how it would be best to have the next funding round, but who knows.

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YiMvmI-TrM

Leaving this here, new interview with Rupert

Hey fairview, nope, no changes in my holdings, still just below the 3% threshold. Reason you don't hear from me every day is because I don't feel there's that much to talk about, I commented on the resource update already, I think it is promising, but without an Mt and grades number for Boland as an exploration target at least, I'm in the same position as everyone else, uncertain about the size of it all. I believe it could be big news, but they'll have to prove it up to some extent first before it's easy to be excited about it, right now it's "Seems promising, but it's only been a few holes, so gotta see if there's scale". That requires more drilling and as some pointed out (or also Rupert hinted at in the Crux interview) that probably will require new funding from the market - which is totally normal for an exploration firm of course, but might explain why there's not many new buyers, cause if you buy now, with this spread, say at 1.15, and then you get hit by a "new raise" RNS the day after and are 15% down straight away, that's no fun for anybody. The fact that Cobra are holding out with it longer here makes me think that possibly they have sufficient funds left in the bank though for another set of drilling at Boland that hopefully gets everyone excited enough to be able to do the funding round at a better SP / less dilution, and the half-year report this morning shows there was at least money in the bank end of June, which was already after the drilling round earlier this year, so they probably haven't spent all that much since.

The MoU is interesting, and will come in handy for ISR if Boland is of scale, and the partner company has lithium expertise, which, hey, if Cobra actually ever get a lithium project in addition (I'm not against that at all if Ken can find a great lithium project to pitch and it's at a good price) could be useful too.

Other than that I'm just sitting on my hands, I'll buy more either in the next funding round or right after to get back to my "just under 3%" level when there's more shares in issuance.