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It’ll be most likely the resource update, primarily the maiden REE resource, which could be substantial imo. Unless there’ll be an IOCG hit before end of year, or another big value driver could be the JV with Andromeda, if Andromeda shouts from the rooftops about Wudinna too, but this last one isn’t one I expect, they are currently fully busy with delivering on their DFS for the kaolin project, so for the moment they’ll probably rely on Cobra driving forward Wudinna in the background. Nonetheless the 75% earn-in threshold is a milestone and the fact that we haven’t heard about it yet (and that Cobra added the Thompson reanalysis to the work plan in last update) almost certainly means they delivered the work plan so far below budget, which would be amazing.

Come on guys, keep it relevant, if any new potential investor checks this board and sees the first 3 posts are about cricket or have no content even though exciting results are upcoming, they’ll feel less compelled to look into Cobra more.

So which one of the upcoming results are you excited about? For me it’s the fact that they added more to the 2022 work plan, namely the Thomson REE reanalysis…that suggests they’re still well funded, very encouraging with a junior explorer in times of inflation. Also love that Rupert mentioned Andromeda in the video from the Twitter link, as exciting as pure drilling results are, it’s good if he gets into a long-term mindset of how the company will eventually turn into a developer/miner hopefully and unlock all of the value there is - mentioning Andromeda is a good sign that this is on his mind, and that the 75% threshold must be close.

Biker, that sounds similar to how it was late last year and early this year, good to hear that it's difficult to get ones hands on a large number of shares easily again, as any more good news releases that lead to buying interest should create similar SP moves as we've seen then.

Still wondering why for the past 3-4 months it seemed much easier to get a larger number of shares in one go, as there never seemed to be huge selling flow and there's 30% of all shares held by the "significant shareholders" that are listed on the Cobra website including David Clarke and definitely a handful of PIs with sticky hands who hold close to 3%, including me + I'm sure with the positive news updates we got ever since February, there must be other PIs who are interested in increasing their exposure to Cobra. But at least we're back to share scarcity now, and with impactful news like the 75% earn-in target reached (and more results from the regional drilling) imminent, it feels good to be in this share and makes me optimistic that we will trade on a 2 handle again before the resource update in Dec that will also most likely include a maiden REE resource. From there, the SP move is anyone's guess, but the direction should be up and put them (and us) in a good position for obtaining funding for their 2023 work plan at a decent enough share level.

Updated work plan also looks great in the presentation, added a Stage 6 for the REE work program, nice to have a junior explorer overdeliver on what they had communicated

Very very nice REE results again, grade around Clarke higher too at >900ppm.

I wouldn't say there's any games going on. It's still one of roughly 10% of UK-listed mining stocks that is up YTD, so things are alright in a bigger context. Of course it's a bit puzzling when SP is lower than on the initial REE results in Feb, when really we had a lot of positive news on that front since then with the confirmation of REE presence over a much greater area and positive metallurgical assessment, but still, it has to be seen in the context of the industry and entire stock market, and especially the industry's stocks simply haven't traded well this past quarter (or even year).

This will turn at some point, mining stocks being loved or unloved is clearly a cyclical thing. And we have real value drivers left on the stock-specific front this year, in particular JV news on reaching the 75% earn-in threshold, and a maiden resource for REE, both of which should be far more important than drilling results imo.

The only thing that concerns me a bit, and maybe someone has some insight on this: When I first bought into COBR in size last Dec, it was pretty impossible to get a price for a 10k GBP buy request (at least on Barclays) and that was even more true after the equity raise early this year and the REE results in Feb and Apr. When I increased my position some weeks ago, it was no problem at all to get a price for the same size request. I wonder why that has changed, how have we gone from "Getting your hands on shares here is almost impossible" to "How many do you want? I can offer you 1 million more shares than that too"? From following the daily buys/sells here, it never seemed like there was any large-scale selling going on (okay, maybe apart from the 10k pounds sell yesterday morning), so it seems odd.

Fantastic news that the tenement has been granted so quickly however, now fingers crossed for the next couple of results and let’s get a great maiden resource for our REE by year end. We’re all in here for the long term prospects I imagine, so in general some SP fluctuation is fine, but would be great to have a higher SP in early 2023 for the yearly placing so they’ll have a good amount of cash to make the 2023 work plan as exciting as the 2022 one!

Can’t really see Andromeda do that, even though they’re the mid-cap in this relationship, they’re the junior partner in our projects, it’d have a weird feel to communicate to Andromeda shareholders: “Hey, you’re down 50% ytd, but instead of focusing on our own core assets, look, we get another 25% of tenements that one of our partners - a junior explorer - acquired and that they might explore in some years’ time as they are for now busy exploring tenements that we already hold a part in”

Long term everything is on the table, but for now that makes little sense.

Thanks for update. Did anyone ask about relationship with Andromeda and his view on plans with JV?

5y plan is nice and all, but I don't think that'll be much of a value driver, whereas any news on getting closer to a formalized JV with our mid-cap partner would be a huge one.

Sadly can't make it due to work, if anybody can ask Rupert to go into a bit of detail on the quality of the relationship with Andromeda and his view on JV timeline and share the insight here, it'd be much appreciated. Would be interesting to know how close the relationship is, how often they talk to each other, expected timeline, etc.

One thing I've missed in the RNS about the new exploration tenement is that it's 100% owned by Cobra, as would be the other tenement that is still at application stage. I like having a mid-cap as partner in Andromeda (even though I wish they'd cover more of the exploration results on their website too, they only reported the initial REE results from Clarke, not the recent ones with 100 holes), but 1400 km^2 of wholly owned exploration land for Cobra soon? Not too shabby.

Agree, I like that they are starting to focus more on the presentation of a hugely promising project as well; in a perfect world it'd be enough to have great exploration results, but with precious metals (and to some extent mining in general) still being a somewhat unloved sector compared to historic investment levels in it, this is what it takes and Cobra are tackling this head on.

Having the investor Q&A and lunch is also a great first step. I still think that sooner or later it's more important to get a session with Q&A on either one of the LSE forums or on Investor Meets Company in order to engage with potential new investors better, but this is a great initial step in that direction, engaging with existing investors and giving Rupert a head start for when he will speak in similar formats on these other platforms in future hopefully. I gotta say I'm chuffed with how they approach this and will try to attend the investor lunch if work allows me to do so.

If we get more results in May, i'm happy, if we get them in June, I'm happy too. But you asked why people might be selling the stock, and I do think that a 1-month gap between the recent results and the next results (it's a 1-month gap in the exploration plan as well) is enough reason for some people only trading the stock to sell and buy back later, especially with things like US CPI tomorrow that are pretty binary events for broad risk assets.

As for presentation of the REE results: I think the economics of the projects are fantastic and I've read enough of the research on Cobra and asked the company questions via email to feel informed. The threshold for a new investor is higher though. If I was someone completely new to the company, I'd not feel reassured when I hear "The grades needed for IAC-type projects aren't high", nobody says it'd have to be grades like rock-hosted REE, that's a totally different type of project, but they could do more to put the grades into context comparing it to other listed companies with IAC-type REE projects. Apart from that, even though it is true that REE complement the gold resource, I still feel it is important for them to communicate that the REE occurrence is a project with huge upside in its own right rather than just "a bonus to the gold resource", which is clearly what they think too, otherwise they wouldn't spend all of 2022 on REE definition, but they could be better at spelling it out for new potential investors.

The thing is, there's investors here who have done a lot of research on the stock themselves, BCB holding just under 3% I think, I also hold over 2%, but in the end for prices not to fall in between RNS, that'll take new investors coming into the stock, and I think all of us are happy to help with company-specific questions on here, but there've been several times now that someone asks about the grades on the share chat here and it'd make things a lot easier if we could just point to a report or interview like "Hey, IAC-type REE projects do not need such high grades, as it's easy to recover, AND here's a link to a presentation in which the company gives an overview of grades that comparable REE projects have". Being able to add that latter part would give potential newer investors much more confidence to actually invest, I have no doubt about that, and hope that soon they will create a slide like that in a presentation.

Broad market not doing well (I think yesterday only 15 out of 175 UK-listed miners were up, today not much better).

Plus existing investors with sticky hands not buying (much) more after filling their boots on previous REE results, which is why I also mentioned in the post some days ago that it becomes important to present a clearer picture of the REE results and perceived upside by the company, to attract new investors without making them guess completely.

Plus no results expected for the rest of the month, Stages 1-3 results were about 1 week behind the 2022 exploration plan schedule, so if we extrapolate that to Stages 4&5 and the metallurgical assessment, that takes us from last week of May expected results to early/mid June. No problem for me and you, but a long time for people who're just trading in and out of a stock.

Plus it's in Australia, let's not forget that either. For both reasons, the fact that it is a much safer mining jurisdiction than pretty much any other UK-listed company with decent rare earths exposure, and the new factor that Australian government has schemes that target rare earths directly now. It's the entire package that makes this so compelling here - the stage of the partnership with a mid-cap is quite advanced (we'll reach the final earn-in threshold by summer according to the 2022 plan), the stable and supportive mining jurisdiction, the JORC gold resource open in multiple directions, the REE occurrences with promising grades for IAC-type projects, not to mention the potential upside from defined IOCG targets.

As others have pointed out, grade != grade for REE projects, IAC-type projects need much much lower grades to be economical due to the much easier and cheaper ways to process the rare earths. It makes these projects hard to evaluate sometimes, granted, but all you need to know is: They'd have drilling targets for trying to prove up a bigger gold resource, they have separate IOCG targets, they own a copper project in addition, and yet the entire 2022 work plan is fully focused on REE. You can be a cynical and say they're just messing around, or you can see it as a sign that these REE results are shaping up to be something big, something they prioritize over spending this year to prove up a potential 1m oz gold resource for a good reason.

Correction - meant Stage 2 and 3 of course. Got too excited about RNS after waking up to be factual it seems haha

So they reported all 100 in one go after all for Stage 3 and 4 of the 2022 work plan ;)

Gonna be an interesting day!

Most likely, yeah, the exploration plan had them as separate items, 38 for Clarke (Stage 2) and then 66 for Baggy Green (Stage 3). Who knows, they might decide to publish in one go, given that both were planned to be released by end of April, but then again, the next stages should only produce news by end of May or June, so if they spread it out over 2 RNS for the next 2-3 weeks, that would make our wait for Stage 4 and Stage 5 results shorter, also fine.

Agreed, to be honest, as long as it's a short wait for the new results, it's even better; it's not like the share price has taken a dive today just because "Rupert had said [hopefully] end of the month", on the contrary, looked like more buying interest than selling interest today (including me buying a bit more). They've been pretty reliable with getting us regular updates, so for me the lack of RNS today just meant another day to give us the chance to fill our boots a bit more in anticipation of the - hopefully positive - news.

Of course an RNS on Tuesday morning would be the icing on the cake. But hey, it's around 100 holes we get results for, right? Even if we have to wait for those for another week or 2, so be it, still pretty much in line with the 2022 exploration plan he presented last month.

Love the optimism, and hope you're right, but at the same time "This can only go up now" and "Our only hope is a cycle of optimism in the sector" aren't the most consistent statements. If we need sector sentiment to save our investment here, that suggests that upwards might not (yet) be the only way