Member Info for ShipwreckSheep

Those are the comments by the Swedish mining company itself, Reakwon...10 to 15 years before they think they can mine that thing...

“We are already investing heavily to move forward, and we expect that it will take several years to investigate the deposit and the conditions for profitably and sustainably mining it. We are humbled by the challenges surrounding land use and impacts that exist to develop this into a mine and that will need to be analysed to see how to avoid, minimize and compensate for it. Only then can we proceed with an environmental review application and apply for a permit,” says Jan Moström.

“If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market. And then we are talking about Kiruna, where LKAB has been mining ore for more than 130 years. Here, the European Commission’s focus on this issue, to secure access to critical materials, and the Critical Raw Materials Act the Commission is now working on, is decisive. We must change the permit processes to ensure increased mining of this type of raw material in Europe. Access is today a crucial risk factor for both the competitiveness of European industry and the climate transition,” says Jan Moström.

(https://lkab.com/en/press/europes-largest-deposit-of-rare-earth-metals-is-located-in-the-kiruna-area/)

Could be, but to be honest, why would anybody sell based on this?

It's great Europe has (or seems to have) a potential source for getting rare earths, but (a) that could well take longer to get to the market than Cobra's rare earths, I have not seen details on what style of deposit the one in Sweden would be, but I doubt it'd be IAC-style (which is quicker to develop, can be more economic to mine, and definitely has lower environmental impact), (b) while not knowing the Swedish legal system at all, I imagine it could even be more difficult to get all the environmental permitting in place there, (c) even if they get to mining as quickly, how much will they realistically mine each year and how would that interfere with Cobra's own plans for offtake partnerships? Lots of open questions around that deposit and most likely very little to no impact to Cobra in any way, the amount is great to have for Europe, and understandable why they celebrate it given how much in trouble Europe seems on the REE front, but nothing more than that.

Doubt that anybody "got wind" of anything, Wayne. Could be someone who sells because they need the money for a house deposit. Could be someone who wants to sell because they see a different opportunity that they have analysed in a lot of detail that they want to allocate the funds to instead. Could be someone who isn't bullish on Rare Earths for the next few years and was hoping that Cobra focus on IOCG targets instead - which now, with this exciting REE resource outlook (speaking of Thompson) won't be the main focus most likely, as there's lots to do in terms of gold and REE expansion with the existing sites. Could be anything, my guess is as good as yours.

The way I view it, it's a good thing that a few more shares could be available now after today's seller, cause in the past month or so, there were 2 factors that made it tricky for new investors to come on board. One was the spread (which tbh will never be super narrow for an explorer), but the other was that even if you were okay with paying up a few % of spread, there were so few shares available to buy - the number of days when Barclays didn't even quote me a buy request for 2000 pounds or around that was pretty high. So if that changed now a bit, hallelujah.

In terms of news, I mean, we just had a maiden REE resource. I've tried to do some more back of the envelope calculations today with Neodymium Oxide, Preseodymium Oxide, Dysprosium Oxide and Terbium Oxide prices, and if I didn't have an error in it, total Cobra market cap divided by total value of REE of the inferred resource in the ground is roughly equal to the same metric for Aclara Resources, and only a bit higher than for Australian Rare Earths (two other companies with an IAC-style REE resource). So if we assume that Aclara and Australian Rare Earths are both fairly valued, it seems to me that Cobra is still extremely good value here, as I've not even taken into account the 211k gold resource's in-situ value. And let's not forget that before all too long there's a good chance that at least 80 Mt (lower estimate of their exploration target) can be added to the resource, so if the current REE resource alone roughly justifies the ~9m market cap, where will fair val be with 5x the resource size with Thompson and most likely a decent expansion of the gold resource too? All this is just based on my opinion and rough calculations of course, but the way I see it, they simply need to keep their heads down and expand this dual resource now, make some deal for an offtake agreement (frankly, shouldn't even be that hard, with the entire world, and especially Europe and N America scrambling for REE and other critical metals), ideally even with some form of loan facility, avoid too much dilution (there'll be some, it's an explorer still after all, but they have always appeared to go for cost efficiency in the past), get en route to a PFS, and Bob's (if there's some cricketer that's called Bob) your uncle

Cheers Michael, you taught me after all that Thompson and all the other sites are cricket-related haha

Have to say I'm very happy with that update today, especially the outlook for how much Thompson could add to the REE resource and that the resource could already be increased within the second half of this year after the Feb-Apr drilling campaign. Looking at comparable REE resources, it's striking how similar Cobra follows the Australian Rare Earths (which is listed in Australia only) path, both South Australian location, both IAC-style REE deposits, both very similar TREO grades, with Thompson also the size of the resource could end up looking very similar.

What I found interesting when browsing through the Australian Rare Earths website is that they recently signed a memorandum of understanding for offtake and technical collaboration with a global rare earths processor, TSX-listed Neo Performance Materials, also with the additional aim to identify and develop future clay-hosted REE projects in Australia and NZ together. I'm curious if the statement about "[...] commence strategic discussions aimed at project advancement" could hint to something similar in the making for Cobra, some collaboration with a REE processor would really take this to the next level in my opinion.

In any case, definitely like where we could be headed, given that Australian Rare Earths have more than double of Cobra's market cap, and let's not forget that despite all the similarities of the 2, Cobra also has gold (and with 2 official JORC resources, it makes it even clearer to me, just how fortunate that is for cost efficiency, everything they drill in Feb-Apr essentially will extend 2 mineral resources). And if they manage to accelerate Wudinna, possibly with Andromeda, or possibly with a global REE-processing firm similar to Australian Rare Earths' path, let's also not forget that there's also still a copper project in the company's portfolio that they'll be able to focus on more once Wudinna is producing from an open pit and has revenue. Yeah, it'll take time, and there's a lot of de-risking to do on the way there, but to me it feels like we're a big step further on this path with this resource (and its further outlook). And 9.5m GBP market cap? Hard to understand for me why there were only 16 trades even today (3 of which were sells).

There's a lot to derisk still undoubtedly, but that's a decent size for a maiden resource! I have to browse through other REE listed companies' resources, but for instance Aclara had an initial resource of around the same size (admittedly with 4x the TREO ppm, so higher mineral content, but also in a much more unstable jurisdiction) and were valued at around 200m CAD at the time of their spin-off from Hochschild - they then ran into issues with environmental permitting and the share price dropped, but imo with the gold that is combined with REE for Cobra, this should in time get to 50m+ mkt cap on these resources after derisking.

The strategic discussions are something that will be interesting to learn about, could be just a side note on entering into the JV with Andromeda soon, or could be more.

Magoo, I hope they won't follow the timeline of news flow suggested by you, it'd be sad imo. I've vented a bit in December saying "what's with all the delays", and I still continue to think that they could have communicated better about it, but the situation is this:

The plan was to get the RC drilling campaign done in Q4 2022, and then on the back of these results (yes, and other drilling results, but the RC drilling was a big campaign in the work programme) update the gold resource estimate and define a maiden REE resource. The insanely wet spring in SW Australia interfered with these plans a bit and delayed (& cut short) the drilling. How extreme that weather was? Well, here's an article about it, it's about crop harvest, but that's on the same peninsula as Wudinna: https://www.portlincolntimes.com.au/story/7982476/unusually-wet-cool-spring-places-bumper-eyre-peninsula-grain-harvest-in-the-balance/

Personally, I don't think it'd be great if they release the maiden REE resource without the drilling results of this campaign going into it. I'd say a realistic estimate is that they get the assay results in the next few weeks given Aussie turnaround times for these and then release the REE resource estimate shortly after. As for the updated gold resources...given that the Feb drilling campaign now is planned to be bigger, I'd be happier if they wait for the gold resource estimate until after that. For both the REE and gold resource estimate, what is clear is that those resource estimate updates aren't all that frequent for junior explorers, so I absolutely hope that Rupert & co try to include as much as possible in them.

The other news flow...well, it sure could have communicated better. Feeling a bit left in the dark about the 75% earn-in threshold, they were on track to reach it in the Q4 drilling campaign, but since they cut it short to be cost efficient, have they reached it in the end or not yet? That could and probably should have been addressed in the 5 Dec RNS. The results of the EM survey similar, not sure where we stand, but then again, the survey results mostly are informing future drilling campaigns and - at least for me - didn't have much standalone informational value in the past (could be different for people with a geologist background), so personally I don't care so much about that one.

The much more puzzling thing here imo is how Barclays won't even quote any decent size, 2000 GBP worth is the most they will quote for a buy request. Fine, that has sometimes been the case in the past, it's not news that many have sticky hands in this share and that therefore there isn't that much free to be picked up at any point.

But...I've also checked how much they would quote for a sell order, and there it's also less than 7000 GBP in size, anything higher they won't quote (those bid quotes are at 1.66 for what it's worth).

Not very tradeable at the moment when you want to buy bigger amounts, it's a bit strange, if they can't quote more than 2k pounds worth for a buy, one should think they'd be happy to quote in big size for selling *shrugs*

I think there will be market expectation of these, dvharrison, but more likely in January. With the RC drilling campaign being finished on 5th Dec, is it really reasonable to expect an update this side of the year?

Surely for the RC results + maiden REE resource they will want to take into account the assay results here and not sure what assay turnaround times in Australia are by now, but last time I checked they were definitely over a month. It's also at this point better to hold out until January and have all of the results go into the resource definition, rather than a rushed REE maiden resource before year end without these drilling results imo

"This will provide more data than originally scoped to feed into updated gold resource"...

So this means they push the gold MRE update all the way back to March/April (if no issues with the February drilling) or am I reading this wrong? I really hope we get a new presentation by Rupert soon, 5 presentations on the website from February until August, not a single one since, when really in times of slow/delayed news flow shareholder engagement would be so important. Personally I really wonder what's going on lately, yeah, fine, it was rainy in Australia, but these were the news items planned for Q4:

September 2022
· Results of Accelerated Discovery Initiative ("ADI") co-funded Loupe TEM survey

October 2022
· Reverse Circulation ("RC") drilling to commence
· Project JV 75% earn-in milestone

November 2022
· RC drilling results
· Results of ADI co-funded Controlled Source Audio-frequency Magneto-tellurics ("CSAMT") EM survey

December 2022
· Maiden rare earth resource estimate
· Updated gold mineral resource estimate

So okay, we got the TEM survey results, albeit in November instead of September, and due to rain delay instead of 2000m that were planned in RC drilling they only did 800m (which we still await results for), and doing 3000m instead in February, which pushes the gold MRE update back to late Q1/early Q2 2023 apparently. But, what happened to the CSAMT EM survey results? What happened to the 75% JV earn-in milestone? Why no information on that?

I'm glad they got rid again of the detailed itemized timeline of expected news flow in the RNS, that was completely unnecessary, given the slightly less detailed 2022 work schedule was in the presentations anyway. The 2022 work schedule in the presentations had these items for Q4: "RC Drilling - Priority Targets", "Rehabilitation", "Resource estimation". If that had been the only information from them on work schedule, nobody would care that much about the TEM or EM survey and most wouldn't care so much about the timing of reaching 75% earn-in either and they could just have said "Look guys, it was unusually rainy, we drilled a bit less now and will drill more than we had planned in February to optimise cost management" and it would have been totally fine, frustrating that the weather delayed things, but fully understandable. But by putting "We'll give you TEM survey results in Sep", "We'll give you JV update in Oct", "We'll give you EM survey results in Nov", it feels unsettling not to have 2 of the 3 in mid-Dec, and it would be important for the company to address these, either as a presentation, or at least during a Proactive short interview. The timing of the raise makes more sense in retrospect, they probably were aware at the time that there's downside risk to the signalled Q4 news flow.

It is good to see an update from the field, but it also bears the question: What's with all the delays in news lately?
RNS (12 September 2022): "Reverse Circulation ("RC") drilling to commence" showed as item for September 2022
RNS (16 September 2022): It's pushed to October in the timeline.
RNS (8 November! 2022): "[...] drilling is expected to be completed in approximately two weeks."

Yeah, they mentioned the unseasonably wet weather in the early Nov RNS, but still expected the drilling to be completed in about two weeks. To see them post a video from the field on 25th Nov (more than 2 weeks later) in which the exploration manager mentions "we're partway through our RC drill programme", I find it a bit concerning to see him say "partway" and not "close to finished" when it's been over two weeks already since the point when they indicated to investors they'll be done in 2 weeks, after really a 2-month delay of that work item, given that was marked for September and got pushed further and further back. Unfortunately that's been a theme and there wasn't a single piece of news in all of Q4 yet, other than the TEM survey, which I admit I didn't understand much about other than "yeah, the gold and REE are still there", and a placing, which understandably rubbed some people the wrong way, given they had previously announced that the 2022 work program is fully funded (+ that the 75% threshold has not been reached yet, so they were really indicating that they had spent under budget so far this year) and also given that the previous placing had been as recent as February.

I like the potential of Cobra, I like the asset, the vast exploration area that is yet to be tested, the proximity to huge IOCG projects, their conservative approach to spending money, I think Rupert is doing a great job as well, but frankly PR has been a nightmare lately (the placing, while fine by me, was awkward at a time when everybody was waiting for substantial drilling news and the resource update; the second RNS with "additional equity issue" for late application to the actual placement and another issue of 34k pounds (!) was even more awkward; and adding the timeline of expected news flow to the RNS structure in September, then pushing each item at least 2 months back really has been far from ideal). I really hope they step up their game again soon when it comes to communication, cause it's been one of the things I liked so much about Cobra, that they laid out the work plan very clearly, with timeline, and delivered that very accurately through the first 3 quarters of the year (sometimes with 2-week delay, but not more than that). Fingers crossed that we get drilling results soon, but if they're really only "partway through the RC drilling programme", I'm not holding my breath for next week, despite "RC drilling results (initial)" being marked for November 2022. COBR, you're better than this!

Frankly, of the 4 trades that were traded at 1.50 or 1.80 here since Tuesday, the 1.50 was 11.5k GBP in size, that size will always widen out the spread in a small market cap, illiquid (cause many sticky hands holders) share, and 2 of the 1.80 trades were below 70 GBP in size. Pretty much every single average-size trade (let's say 200 - 5000 GBP) traded at maybe a 5% spread, so telling me "but i'm sure that everybody who didn't trade was shown 1.80 to buy" is a bit absurd really, as it's not in line with the data at all. I very much doubt that you'll get shown a price of 1.80 if you open whatever platform you use on Monday (say 30 mins after open) and ask for a quote for 500 pounds.

But anyway, there's other things to discuss, whatever spread is shown here doesn't matter, when the vast vast majority of PIs are planning to hold this for a 12 month+ horizon anyway.

More important things: 75% threshold soon. I'm pretty sure they must have reached it by now, so that would suggest that the statements have been sent to Andromeda to check and agree that the 75% threshold has indeed been reached. At least that's what Rupert said in the past they'll do upon reaching the threshold.

Well, yeah, so of 40 trades since Tuesday, 4 have traded at 1.80 or 1.50, so the other 90% traded at some price inbetween. I'm not defending anything, if 90% of trades execute at a much narrower spread, then the 20% spread 1.50/1.80 simply is not where the vast majority trades, and hence only theoretical (a number that shows here on top of the page) rather than the market spread.

Well, but where do you see trades at these prices, Pablo? Fine, so they show the spread here as 20%, but all trades are at 1.70 (2 of which today were mine with new SIPP money) if they are buys, 1.62-1.63 if they are sells. Don't know about you, but if any actual price i see to buy is ~1.70, i don't care much if here they show a theoretical spread of 20% with ask of 1.80. The only slightly annoying thing about it is that it might put potential investors off if they only check the spread here, rather than on whichever platform they'd trade on and say "oh, but the spread is 20%, i won't buy due to that", when the spread they'd get shown on Barclays (or for that matter probably any other broker, Barclays just being the one i use) is really 4-5%

Pretty sure most 1.6 trades were buys, fairview. The roughly 3k GBP one at 13:40 is mine and was a buy.

Weirdly, I checked first what Barclays would show me as ask price for 100 GBP (usually doing this as first check when trying to buy a few k worth to see how much higher the larger amount is quoted) and it would have let me buy at 1.63, then I put in my full amount, 3k incl fees, and it showed me 1.5999 for the larger amount. Not sure what was going on there, but I'll take it. Time to get that percentage of ownership back up to where it was before the placement.

Could also easily have been somebody with an existing holding adding to it and not a new investor, if someone had bought in during first half of 2022 and expects a good Q4 (75% threshold, RC drilling results, resource update) with some of these results coming soon according to the schedule in latest RNS, it wouldn't seem crazy to accumulate more at this price imo.

The only thing that is completely clear, is that it doesn't take huge volumes of trades for Cobr to move, with 30% of outstanding shares in David Clarke & co's hands according to the website, and another few big holders with very sticky hands judging from posts on here over the past months, if there are news that bring a number of new investors to Cobra, SP here also tends to move quickly like...well...a cobra. We've seen that in February, we've seen that in April and to some extent in June. We've also seen that today.

Sadly it's still a tough investment environment for miners, and especially junior miners i suppose, with Fed still being in aggressive hike mode, but it's only a matter of time for Fed to pivot, which should support precious metals and lead to a sentiment shift in mining stocks as well imo. That's the setup I hope for (and that i don't find unrealistic): a broad sentiment shift in the industry AND news flow that will attract more new investors, and hey, ideally before the 2023 fund raise. No idea about you guys, but with the final earn-in threshold falling into the next 2 months and the maiden REE resource, the scene seems set and at least to me it seems much more likely than not that from this, Rupert will be able to deliver some news that we will hopefully all be pleased with.

I like how Rupert begins with "[...] starting to demonstrate a province-style opportunity for clay-hosted rare earths", which is exactly what he should do with all these results, rather than adding the word "potentially".

Maybe it's time to drop the "potentially" from the RNS updates as well, it's been in pretty much each RNS:
6Apr "To have potentially Ionic Adsorption Clay hosted Rare Earth Mineralisation overlaying a defined JORC gold mineral resource of 211,000 ounces is a compelling value addition."

20Jun "The reported rare earth grades and widths to date demonstrate that the Wudinna Project is potentially a world-class rare earth province."

16Aug "[...] whilst the growing regional occurrence across our 3,261 km2 land holding places Cobra in a position to define a potentially extensive clay-hosted rare earth resource [...]"

31Aug "These results further validate our belief that the Wudinna Project is a potentially significant, high-value rare earth jurisdiction."

12Sep "We are excited to commence RC drilling later this month aimed at adding gold ounces to our existing resource and defining a potentially significant maiden rare earth resource."

26Sep "The significant footprint in which REE mineralisation has been defined provides expansive potential from which a potentially significant rare earth resource could be defined."

Wording it as "this is starting to demonstrate..."/"this is demonstrating" is much stronger than "this potentially shows..." and imo the ongoing positive results expanding the REE occurrence from 4 sq km to 22 sq km with mineralisation open in all directions would allow them to drop the word "potentially" from the RNS. Hey, sure, Cobra is still a junior explorer, so nothing is ever certain, but personally I hope for him switching from "This is what could be there" to "This is what we have!" wording not only in interviews, but RNS too soon. Especially because the sentences make it clear that this is based on Rupert & team's conviction anyway, it's time to say "These results further validate our belief that the Wudinna Project is a significant, high-value rare earth jurisdiction." rather than "These results further validate our belief that the Wudinna Project is a POTENTIALLY significant, high-value rare earth jurisdiction."

Hm, most of the Roadmap coincides with the 2022 work plan that has been in each presentation lately: Thompson/Anderson reanalysis, the RC drilling timeline, the updated gold and REE resource, timing of these hasn't changed vs latest presentation. The one new info in the roadmap is that they expect to reach the 75% earn-in threshold in October now.

If you compare this to the initial 2022 work plan ( https://cobraplc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/REE-Growth-Stategy-Indicative-Work-Programme-Slides-Only.pdf ), they had expected the 75% threshold to be reached in July.

Since Cobra delivered all the tasks from this initial 2022 work plan AND even added additional ones since with the Thompson and Anderson reanalysis & since the 75% threshold really only depends on "amount spent", this means that Cobra has managed to spend much less than they had budgeted, essentially, the amount of money they thought will last until July ended up lasting until October!

Yes, of course there'll be a raise to fund next year's program again, that's the name of the game for junior explorers, but the fact they managed to stretch their 2022 budget further by an entire 3 months while also adding an additional task to the work plan, that's nothing short of impressive and encouraging.

Richy, just clarifying, as I had addressed a post to you after last RNS: Absolutely fine for anybody to have a different view and definitely don't see you as a deramper, you've been posting a lot on here for, well, for longer than I've even been invested. My post was simply out of surprise that your view has changed so much since April when you seemed quite happy and optimistic about the prospects, at a time when funding for this year and work plan for this year was already clear. Hope you keep posting! And personally hope you also find good reasons to be positive on Cobra's outlook again and stay invested.

Richy, I get it, we all need to vent sometimes, but let's face it, Cobra is doing quite alright. I'm tracking performance of 171 miners that are UK-listed (all I could find), 44 of which are up in share price YTD, so just over 25%. 10 of them have higher YTD return than Cobra, making Cobra's 2022 performance 94th percentile of all UK-listed miners.

Would we all like to see it higher? Hey, for sure. Would I love to see it at 40m market cap by year end, like you wrote about in April? Absolutely. But that'd have been almost a 250% return over 8 months, a bit ambitious in this market environment. Not impossible, there's 3 UK-listed miners that have this (or more) YTD performance, but let's keep in mind, that's 3 out of 171 (and all 3 of them are coal miners, a market with completely different fundamentals).

In terms of work plan, I don't know how much news flow other junior explorers with <10m market cap generate, but I feel that the 2022 work plan was very encouraging and that the company overdelivered on it if anything with adding the Thompson reanalysis for Q4. Again, would I have loved them to get to 1m oz gold resource this year? Certainly. But the Feb and Apr results were what made this share rally, due to the rather exciting REE news, so is it wrong of them to focus on working on that front to get to a maiden REE resource within a year of first discovery of that mineralization? I wouldn't say so, and the fact that they made this progress with low-cost analysis/drilling and got as much done as they have this year without massive budget (and that there are signs they stayed below budget so far) is actually a huge plus the way I see it. I agree with you insofar that I hope the share price will move up by Q1 2023 to make it possible to have more budget for 2023 work and drive this forward faster, but (a) this can still happen with the main value drivers of the year left in Q4 (or early Q1), (b) they've shown, at least in my opinion, that they can deliver good work without huge budget that still enhances the medium-term prospects of the company, and (c) it's a junior explorer after all, moving from explorer to developer to miner doesn't happen over night, and you yourself quoted Craig Moulton saying that the company would suddenly generate momentum as it progressed, many people (including me) seem to think there's many different scenarios in which that happens. If for you the only scenario is/was for them to focus on IOCG and nothing else, then that's fair enough, everybody has their different reasons for an investment, but what changed vs your view from April when it was already clear they will focus strongly on REE for the balance of the year? Other than the share price? Which admittedly has been more exciting in April, but hey, 94th percentile of all UK-listed miners in YTD performance, not that awful still.