Member Info for Simms45

Yes just over £25m market cap for a company that has a $400m+ NPV and expected non binding offers well over this. The lack of news from MC i suspect is more about the closeness of a deal so it has been known in the past that keeps a very tight ship about deals. You would expect this month something must get to binding as we reach the 1 year point. Lots of value but like almost all shares on AIM grossly undervalued and illiquid so with fewer investors with spare cash even if investors want to buy they are not able to. Next week could be a new beginning in understanding what binding offer we will secure but certainly hope it is this month.

Mako Mining and Calibre are clearly great case studies for how to make a lot of money from gold mining in Nic. While its depressing we have not joined them when we could it also gives a lot of confidence to buyers of Condor that mining in Nic is highly profitable and highly stable and geo political risk is limited given plenty of western miners in the country doing very well. Mako today just announced a 5% share buy back as they dont know what to do with all the cash coming in the doors and equally think they are undervalued but at least can take action. Calibre are filling the cash balance so fast Condor could be side dish they could tack on the side and hardly make a dent. A few years makes a big difference and while Calibre is flying and worth £400m , condor is now £25m. Even if Calibre issued a small amount of paper and some cash Condor would almost be a freebie as in a matter of months as they could truck the ore to their mine and sell and payback the cash portion. Yes they might not be in pole position, as we expect Chinese are tabling a cash offer, but once the binding offer is in Calibre could easily swoop when the time suits. For calibre waiting is better for them as they fill their coffers with $100m a year currently. Mako is also a very interesting proposition but do not see them as a buyer but maybe a JV partner now they are bringing in high levels of cashflow that could fund a mine build and be a better use of cash than buy backs. Lets hope November sees a binding deal to get Condor out of the current malaise as 1 year is really a key point to get a deal done. MC will now have many options available so he is probably also deciding which direction to go in. Waiting while we have $2000 gold is a not the right answer as at this level pay back could be 9 months of production only so crazy not be speed track the mine build whether it is Condor or an acquirer.

When is the credit committee meeting? Major developments banks could be monthly or quarterly but for me we have nothing outstanding coonfirmed in RNS so really just a waiting game. I hoped it would be monthly but Harry must know these details and maybe a question. Webinar early December so if he plans to tidy up by eoy he needs this credit signoff asap as while latter stages are largely ceremonial they will take time and signatures as if we creep into December might be more difficult. Only small glimmer is Ethiopia does not have a christmas break so operationally Ethiopia is less affected. Patience is needed and having been in for a number of years now i just want to see momentum as last 12 months have been a procession of delays but transformation is near.

Waiting but not much longer :)

Confirmation we are waiting on credit approval that could happen any day

“Final credit committee approvals by the mandated development banks are now being processed “

Cash runway until TK financed so confirmation no placement

“ KEFI has working capital in place to underpin its planned runway to the intended launch of the Tulu Kapi Project finance in the coming months.”

so much happening in Saudi its crazy but we need TK otl in November that seems on target if we are in credit and nothing outstanding. Gla

We still have the non binding offers and since updates in summer on deal in the bag we still have a deal happening or they would be obliged to RNS otherwise. We are just waiting but as BenBen says $4bn flooding into Nic from China and Condor is probably a morsel to be added. When China moves this much capital into such a small country then it is serious about its plans and Condor will be part of that. I guess we nees to wait a little longer but a deal should be forthcoming. If it takes an extra 3 months from binding so be it but all we need is a binding deal ideally over 50p so theoretically all investment money injected is paid back out. Would not feel like a success but would be closure. Its a tragedy Condor has not been building the mine as this board would be very different and upbeat. $2000 gold is here to stay sometime to come.

Seems like a lot of good news is potentially stacking up with everything that is going on i Saudi. If i understand correct we should pass by the credit committee for debt part of TK. Would make sense to provide an update at the end of the month or hopefully confirm the already “in principle” debt is confirmed so we can move on. Potentially this could be before next monday or tuesday to coincide with end of October. Would be great to get update on Saudi also as its bubbling along nicely.

Interesting point on the la lndia concession. my feeling is that since only last year Condor was given a huge new swathe of licenses around the la india concession and that given Condor own all the land and studies it should be a formality to renew. We spent over $5m on land recently. There is little point from the Nic perspective to not renew this quickly so that the sales process can proceed, if that is a any reason for the holdup. Nic just wants to get gold extracted so they can get taxes off the back of it. We have to assume the sale is proceeding and hopefully on the very last details as really this should be completed this month. November will be pushing it if there is any chance to conclude by christmas. We would be more than 60% of the way to production if they sorted the financing back in 2022 and at this level of gold price we would be looking at a much higher share price than today. Even if we raised £30m and borrowed the other £80m we would have been pushing well over £100m valuation by now and probably on excitement of production a lot more. furthermore other miners would be more inclined to buy just before going into production at a proper valuation closer to the $400m NPV

Since the Chinese came and MC posted “in the bag” it can only be delays on chinese side or MC side. If latter he should be working hard to make sure everything is sorted. I assumed it was land that he announced was all done so maybe ball is back in Chinese court. First Majestic sold us equipment at 50p a share so lets see if they might also want to take a shot at buying Condor. Its depressing to see Market cap 50% less than cash invested last 12 years. I really hope this month it is resolved but i hope Mc has not put all eggs in Chinese basket and stopped doing site visits for other parties as Chinese are known for last minute hardball. However gold price and swelling cash balances at gold miners must surely present some opportunities. Really hope this does not stretch much further as they would never have started this process if they had not originally had half decent offers and this process was supposed to firm bids and speed up process but here we are 10 months into the year. Come on and close the deal.

Calibre were constantly making approaches as they have a hub and spoke model designed to enable other gold miners to ship to their facility for processing and Calibre and Condor were spending years on a toll milling agreement that came to nothing. Calibre must be interested but its all down to price but as their cash balance balloons they could easily inject $25m and the rest in debt so really have no impact on dividends for shareholders, on contrary they would be able to ship ore within 3 months and payback even quicker. Obviously top price may come from elsewhere as we have plenty of bidders but so far no binding bidder so i suspect Calibre are considered a backup to higher bids. share price today is so low however that we can only sell assets as i cant see any bidder able to convince shareholders to pay a 300% premium on todays price to pay 60p. Sadly investors in Condor do not see value. I expect some agreement this month.

Calibre have over $93m in cash at end of Q3 and most of this has been created in last 9 months so adding $25m of cash a quarter. This is the same across a huge number of gold miners and will get even larger at $2000 gold. We have to believe these gold miners need to deploy that cash and Condor is a fair example of where that should be deployed. The market is strong for selling gold assets but Condor need go finalise a deal and move on. From recent updates JM is holding proceedings up waiting for a higher offer but he will at some point sell to highesr bidder and move on as i am sure they have bids north of $100m or they would not have promoted confidently a deal is in sight. That suggests price is agreed and details of land ownership etc was outstanding. we dont know what is the case but i do sense with last update 3 months ago that we will shortly find out. $2000 gold must also help proceedings as that go blow a lot higher over next few years.

Maybe the options had an expiry so needed to use before expiry but clearly shows confidence company is worth considerably more but is not helped by the extended time to conclude the deal as while it will take as as it takes you would hope October would be a key month to finalise.

Now Freddie Flintoff has settled for £9m with BBC he has cash to smooth over Logic if needed. I feel a little more confident that Logic might at some point settle as i wonder how much FF wants to get dragged into Logics way of doing business.

The value of Condor is intrinsically linked to the gold price. Obviously Condor is worth a lot more if gold price is higher.A buyer should be motivated to lock in the gold price as it rises as potentially other bidders might want to go to binding. anyway a rising gold price is definitely better than a falling one. lets just hope our deal is signed soon.

Interview was solid and subject to some tightrope walking next 3 months this could be a rapid growth story in 2024. They mentioned strategic imvestor interest but in same breathe said their status was the problem but what this normally means is that maybe Idex would invest for 5% of something but it would be too small an investment so not worth it for legal people, bankers and most of all eqtec. My expectation is DP will hang a carrot for Idex etc to tell them to sign off agreements asap to help share price recovery and then when we are back are fair value of maybe £50m or £100m lets so that 5% strategic investment. It should not be much more because the problem then is Eqtec will be less able to sell to others due to this possible conflict. I just hope they are able to navigate and come out into 2024 with plenty of news and maybe got the Italy refinance, North fork or Logic settlement in place. Plenty of options for fairly lumpy cash to come in. Logic they must get the thumb screws out as they owe us a big chunk of change. we should collectively call and email their company to get them to get a move on.

October i hope is the month we find out. We have land all sorted and a deal was supposed to have been agreed in the summer from all the tweets so now is getting this deal OTT as MC should be pushing as hard and fast as possible to close the deal this month before natural delays start to kick in to conclude this before christmas.

Great article and some nice quotes and points backing up what has been said in the RNS :

"Recognising the strategic importance of Public-Private-Partnership projects, we are enabling the opening of an offshore account," said Fikadu Digafe, the central bank's vice governor.

"Mining officials disclosed that permanent security has been deployed near Tulu Kapi gold mining project."

"They would have been producing by now if there was peace," Tsehay Mulugeta, head of legal affairs at the Ministry, regretfully acknowledged.

It would take a considerable amount of time to sell 380m shares at anywhere close to .7 but Thursday would have helped a lot and i suspect RAB has been selling into the market for months and we have rarely got over the last placing of .7 as it is being sold into. As you say they only need to issue a TR1 once their sell was complete. Hopefully positive momentum will resume on the next news as last news gives us green light to go to credit for rubber stamping but resulted in fall in share price. this baffled traders and investors that led to a wave of selling but it was actually RAB under this selling 100m+ shares to get out of Kefi. They are clearly a forced seller as they probably lost a fortune for their investors and they might have been removing cash from the venture forcing RAB to sell at a loss. onwards and upwards as Ethiopia is firing on all cylinders and looking like a country about to unlocks the billions of dollars stuck in capital controlled Ethiopian entities who can know legitimately recycle cash through projects like Kefi and out to offshore juristictions.

The background seller is gone. Rab has been a constant seller no doubt for months and probably last 12 months but today we get notification they have sold out fully. This is great news as i hope we can now steadily rise to a more realistic level pending credit sign off and news like last year will not be sold into quite so heavily. RAB probably sold in the region of 100m+ shares last thursday so i think we will quickly recover lost ground going forward. Would not be surprised to go past 1p this week on this news and no one else will be selling of any significant position.

It does appear 300m shares changed hands on thursday and there was some 50m sells so lets hope the .7 overhang is cleared. This is key as its hard for investors to understand what is going on when someone is simply simply selling because they never intended to hold shares at last placing. Chances are if we have removed the overhang then next week should start to see some normality.

Back down to £30m market cap and TW confirms from Harry is not planning a placing, which seems obvious to me as the EG and all parties are now keen to tie this all up this month so they can get on with building the mine this quarter and we raised enough cash to do that. This really puts pressure to deliver the funding this month though to keep to the schedule. Gives a little more time for investors to rejig their portfolios is the only consolation as it should have continued to rise today but the Harry discount has not helped. When we get the $390m funding package and our 80% stake and convert our $90m sweat equity into capital in the largest mining project in Ethiopia it will have been a major achievement. It will be hard for anyone to think that Kefi is still only worth £30m at that point as projected cashflow after production starts is substantial and dividends drawf current market cap in 5 years from Ethiopia alone. A low valuation post funding is over £100m and a more realistic one with JQ and Hawiah is double that but the market is the market and as long as there are sellers then the share price will have to work through that but bigger pockets will be watching and waiting .