Member Info for skittish

I'm no geologist but aren't they trying to tell us something here in this RNS - without laying it on way too thick.

We know that there are four basic layers of rock here here - the upper Lake Bed formation, then the Red Sandstone Group (c500M @ Tai-1), then the Karoo Supergroup (c1000M @ Tai-1) and then the Mbozi block basement source rock, from where the helium originates.

This is shown on p93 of the prospectus.

They are expecting (hoping) that the traps they are seeking for the gas are somewhere near the tops of the Red Sandstone Group and the Karoo supergroup.

In the first week of drilling they've had to go real slow only doing circa 10 metres a day as the Lake Bed formation is so soft -

" Drilling progressed slowly through soft surface sediment until conductor casing was cemented at a depth of 55 metres, allowing 24 hour 'PQ' size open hole drilling operations to commence from approximately 5pm local time on Saturday 19(th) June"

After cementing, they then got a decent layer of shale and did around 15 metres in an hour and a half, and it was near the base of this shale layer that the 2.2% helium was detected -

"The gas show is situated at the base of a 20 metres thick shale unit"

Shale of course is useful for trapping helium gas - but it is still within the poorly consolidated Lake Bed Formation so not that great as a seal.

I think the diagram on page 91 of the prospectus shows us what they are trying to say, but as yet can't. That diagram shows seepage of helium through the soil above a reservoir trap.

Here at Tai-1 they appear to have seepage which has been trapped by a shale layer at 70 metres, above that layer the poorly consolidated upper Lake Bed formation cannot trap anything and the helium that escapes above this layer and simply seeps out of the loose rock formation into the atmosphere. But the 70M shale layer has at least trapped (or slowed down the escape) of some of the helium gas.

The Lake Bed rock formation at 400M and above is so loose that they daren't try to test it -

"Due to the poorly consolidated nature of the Lake Bed Formation encountered at Tai-1, it will not be possible to perform drill stem tests on any pay zones identified in the shallow strata in this well. This is to remove the risk of hole collapse during flow testing"

I think this is exactly what they were hoping to find - the moment they are though all the loose rock into a bit of shale shale, they find elevated levels of helium which have escaped from a properly sealed and commercial reservoir below, as shown on page 91 of the prospectus -

"Helium (gas) microseepage in soil directly over mapped enclosure is evidence of effective trap and seal".

I suspect there is high excitement in the Helium One offices, we shall see if it is soundly based.

Tempus in "The Times" today recommends Gore Street Energy Storage as a buy. They invest in industrial scale battery storage.

"Since the IPO, its fundraising has been more successful and it has steadily added to its portfolio. It raised £60 million at 100p in December last year and then in April tapped investors for £135 million more, at 102p per share, to fund the next phase in its “pipeline” of opportunities, which is said to have 1.3 gigawatts of capacity.

The demand for shares has pushed the company’s market capitalisation above £300 million, with the share price flat yesterday at 109½p.

The first deal from the most recent fundraising was confirmed last month — the purchase of an 80-megawatt storage project in Milton Keynes, the fund’s largest to date. The £30 million construction project is expected to take between 12 and 15 months. It also said last month that it had secured exclusive rights to a further 300MW of UK assets and was conducting due diligence and that contracts for four sites in Ireland had been extended by a year to 2024."

"“If you are a believer in the continuing growth of renewables and the decommissioning of coal, gas and to an extent nuclear, then you should be a believer in the growth of battery storage. The real growth trajectory is ahead of us.”

Thanks for that.

Although I must say that over on "the other side" on the MUST thread "Dontay" has reached broadly the same conclusion - although he posted his musings there two days ago!

I actually posted my research without first seeing his conclusions - but would in any event defer to whatever he was saying as he appears to have a deep and long term understanding of the Vanadium market.

One other thing - it perhaps explains why Mustang were willing to go ahead with the deal quickly without first getting shareholder approval hence the early suspension several months prior to a prospectus- if the deal is as good as it could be then many organisations would want to be in on this.

No doubt more will be revealed in the Mustang prospectus, but if the SA government is indeed involved in a big way, then this will be a ticket to ride.

I also think that first news would probably come from South Africa as politicians would want first credit for the battery plant investment, with RNS's coming maybe a matter of a few hours after.

Bushveld also already has close links with the IDC and Eskom, the state owned SA electricity supplier.

We shall see what develops but all the ducks appear to be just about lined up, and I do think you would have to be seriously demented to sell now - downside is very limited, upside potentially very large, if you have a bit of patience.

All IMHO, DYOR etc, of course.

Also of interest is that Bushveld broke ground on its Vanadium Electrolyte plant in the East London IDZ on 9 June 2021.

https://twitter.com/BushveldMin_Ltd/status/1402864116142907397

This is a JV between bushveld and @IDCSouthAfrica - idc.co.za

The plant is located somewhere near here, I'm guessing close to Zone 1A,

https://www.elidz.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ELIDZ-AERIAL-MAP-scaled.jpg

but plenty of room to build a battery manufacturing plant close by, if required.

Bushveld obviously need to find a market for their locally produced Vanadium, and also need to prove the technology on a large scale. The Vanadium Electrolyte Plant provides an outlet for the Vanadium but the electrolyte also needs an outlet.

The SA government needs to solve their critical power problem using renewable power and storage technology and also empower local businesses (literally and metaphorically) so a JV with SA government and others build a battery plant next door to the electrolyte plant would seem appropriate.

Bushveld must feel that they now have an outlet for the electrolyte, hence ground broken on the plant to produce that last week, some 7 weeks after the Enerox deal was announced on 27 April 2021.

If this speculation is correct then the Enerox deal must be all but tied up, and presumably the Enerox battery plant would alsothen be built at the East London IDZ.

The recent SA government announcement on private power generation would also feed into this narrative.

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2021-06-10-ramaphosa-twists-mantashes-arm-to-free-up-new-power-generation/

No wonder Primorus appear to be excited by the Enerox deal. If all this is correct, and it is somewhat speculative, then Enerox will have a guaranteed road to market for all the batteries it can produce.

All makes sense - to me at least :-/

07-Jun-21 08:14:53 4.82 150,000 Sell* 4.70 5.10 7,230 O
09-Jun-21 08:16:47 4.8625 100,000 Sell* 4.80 5.20 4,863 O
10-Jun-21 14:23:06 4.71 100,000 Sell* 4.70 5.20 4,710 O
11-Jun-21 15:32:00 4.56 100,000 Sell* 4.50 4.70 4,560 O
11-Jun-21 15:32:38 4.50 100,000 Sell* 4.50 4.70 4,500 O
11-Jun-21 15:40:53 4.50 400,000 Sell* 4.50 4.60 18.00k O

It looks like there has been a recent seller about, who has been active over the last week or so who was really hammering it on Friday afternoon. Clearly the limited buying over that period is insufficient to absorb the shares coming onto the market, hence the largish fall following the results announcement of 8-6-2021.

This looks like it has become something of a waiting game, pending activity on MUST, which may come (if some posters are to be believed) at the end of this month, although equally it could be end of July/early August.

Interesting that there appeared to be a bit of a spat on the other side between a poster who appears to represent the old board and one who appears to represent the new. Clearly some open wounds there and maybe some score settling to do - could that be related to the recent selling? Who knows, but the selling could present an interesting buying opportunity.

Recent tweets from Primorus do seem to suggest that our Enerox/Mustang focus will involve South African interests, and Bushveld have recently been tweeting concerning recent South African energy industry reforms which should boost private sector generation, and solve endemic power shortages from inefficiencies at the main state run supplier.

Hopefully the Mustang prospectus will reveal who is the remaining 45% investor into Enerox - maybe a South African state backed entity (?) - which would open up the South African VFRB market to Enerox as a preferred supplier of batteries.

South Africa intends to be one of the top 5 suppliers of VFRB technology and the Mustang/Enerox/BMN deal could be one way of achieving that.

I suspect and hope that the share price will be considerably north of 5p come the end of summer.

And the share price continues to rise incrementally despite trading being dominated by the sellers.

There must be some background activity of which we are as yet unaware.

Very good set of results, and the investing policy is full of ambition.

A few weeks ago I did calculate that after their recent investments they had around £1.9M cash remaining, of which £1.5M could be taken up by the MUST share options @ 30p.

Bearing in mind their present funding levels , I would love to know what they have up their sleeves in order to achieve -

"- To continue to build working capital, preferably through organic means, by exiting investments which have generated significant returns on investment.

-- To continue to build our external network and to develop our managerial team to provide confidence in the market of our abilities to achieve our strategic business objective of identifying significant value-enhancing investment opportunities.

-- To proactively continue the work the Board has already started to achieve crystallisation of value from certain investment opportunities which it has identified, which may be via their own listed entities.

-- Invest in a series of new special purpose acquisition companies ("SPACs") with Primorus as a founder investor, or as a co-founder investor where circumstances permit, where we seek to identify suitable target companies to reverse into the SPACs

-- To invest in third party SPACs, where such opportunities fit within the Company's investing policy."

Quite a shopping list.

Bearing in mind the directors and associates own 30%+ of the share capital, all of which has been acquired over the last 21 months, I suspect that they are already well on their way to achieving those objectives, and there may well be a few surprises in store over the next 12 months or so.

It will be interesting to see whether we break the 5p barrier this week.

Interesting recent trading - with a number of smallish sells being hoovered up by a few large buys.

Even the fairly large sell this afternoon had little impact on the price - lets see if it is balanced tomorrow by a 300K+ buy, which would take out that and the other smaller sells of today.

The buying is not enough to move the price up, but then it ain't going down either.

Interesting article on the BBC website today -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57313991

"A major project aims to overcome a barrier to electricity grids that are entirely supplied by renewable energy.

Output from wind turbines varies because wind speeds fluctuate; output from solar cells changes according to cloud cover and other factors.

This is called variability, and overcoming it is crucial for increasing the share of renewables on the grid.

A group of leading nations will invest $248m over the next decade to solve the issue by 2030.

The effort has emerged from a clean-tech research programme called Mission Innovation (MI)

Environmentalists say the sum’s a fraction of the many trillions of dollars of damages that climate change is projected to wreak on society, unless it’s curbed.

But the 23 member governments involved in the programme are spending US$5.8bn per year more than in 2015 – and they say they’ll commit more public funds to clean tech if they can afford it.

Solutions to the variability problem will include energy storage; for example, smart power systems which respond to changes in demand; advanced controls and artificial intelligence.

Those behind MI say that half of the global emissions reductions required to achieve climate targets by 2050 depend on technologies that exist today, but are only at demonstration or prototype phase.

These include hydrogen power, advanced battery storage and zero-emission fuels"

Over on the other side someone on the MUST thread seems to think that the Mustang Energy internal target date for a return to trading is Thursday 29th July 2021. This is around 5 weeks earlier than we had been led to believe by published information, but would make sense to complete matters prior to all the movers and shakers going on "holiday" rather than after - whatever passes for holidays this year.

We will see - if correct then the Mustang prospectus is probably only a month away.

Is anyone aware of the precise location (Lat/Long) of our likely drilling location?

Hi RKB,

I had missed that tweet from Primorus yesterday, so thanks for pointing it out.

That they have tweeted the BMN interview (of 20-5-21) certainly suggests that the S A project is important to Primorus itself, and lends some credibility to the conclusions of the bigbitenow series of tweets also dated 20-5-21.

When the MUST deal was announced there was some speculation that MUST would ultimately take a much bigger interest in Enerox, whether by purchase of shares or issue to Enerox shareholders, and this would be the route for Enerox to list, thus fulfilling the SPAC mission for MUST, rather than it simply being another investment vehicle.

Interesting times, especially if we somehow manage to maintain our 24% interest (or close to that) in MUST as it moves forward with this project.

At the front of my mind is that directors and associated parties have built up a stake of around 30%+ in PRIM, were buying more immediately after Acacia invested in MUST on 12-3-21 (this investment allowing the DD on Enerox) and that someone (there is only one likely candidate) appears to have bed and ISA'd 7M PRIM shares as soon as the latest tax year commenced on 6-4-21.

Messrs Labrum and Holden also own a sizable chunk of MUST, and Mr Labrums appears to have been bought post the Acacia deal of 12-3-21.

There was also the options @ 4.1p announcement of 2-3-21 vesting at prices between 6p and 10p.

Everything from the directors point of view appears to be geared up in the expectation of a sizable increase in PRIM's share price and it is noticeable that their activity accelerated markedly post 2-3-21 when presumably details of the Enerox deal began to crystallise.

21-May-21 15:43:43 5.20 384,403 Buy* 4.60 4.80 19.99k O

5.2p!

Late on a Friday.

Either someone was done over or there is significant difficulty in buying in size and a premium is required.

Over on the other side MUST fans appear to be getting very excited over the following set of tweets -

https://twitter.com/bigbitenow/status/1395299788631990272?s=12

They appear to believe that the S A government has taken a stake in a 45% BMN owned electrolyte plant which will result in a VFRB installation, the batteries to be supplied by Enerox, in which BMN also has a stake - which will result in a big push by the S A government into VFRB technology, and a ready market for Enerox manufactured batteries.

Bit of jigsaw puzzle but I see where they are coming from.

I wonder where exactly the $30M raised by Enerox will be invested, and who the other investors are, apart from BMN, MUST, Acacia and ourselves. $14.8M of the $30M is coming from outside MUST/BMN.

Presumably all the details are being worked on at present, and will require sign off by all parties, hence it is taking a while.

IES doing well last week, market valuation £136M, so if my earlier calculations as to the present value ($100M) of Enerox are correct we are now buying in to Enerox at a rough 50% discount to the present value of IES.

Interesting to note that BMN sold down its stake in IES, possibly weakening the price in order to invest in Enerox.

Possibly an indication that this really is the real deal.

MUST are expecting the deal to take around 4-5 months to conclude, the rationale for the "delay" being the need to get in on the deal early before anyone else snaffled it. PrimForAll suggests it will take around half of the 8 months remaining until the end of the year - both estimates take us to around the beginning of September, when all the movers and shakers are back from holiday - or whatever passes for them this year.

It could be a long hot summer.

Figuratively speaking, of course.

Very dull in Cheshire, atm.

Quite a bit in The Times today, and a piccy of Beksy!

Guild gets an approving mention in the "market update" section of The Times this afternoon - one of only 5 shares to get a mention.

Good chance it will be mentioned in the print version of the paper tomorrow and the "Market Report" online tomorrow morning.

Could explain the flurry of buying mid afternoon, and MM's gathering stock just after 4pm to sell on tomorrow am.

20k subscribers is roughly £1M pa income.

If this a hit then I would say that 200k subscribers worldwide is quite feasible. The potential rewards for a gaming enthusiast are significant, and there is therefore a considerable incentive to subscribe.

Wait

Monday apparently will be a big day, according to twitter.

And Ahem - I've actually made another mistake - tut tut..

£4,637,500 less £2,686,000 invested is £1,950,000 remaining.

Less £50k expenses is £1,900,000.

After warrant conversion at a cost of £1,500,000, if we did that, we'd be left with £400,000 - still a tidy sum and plenty to get us to year end, when there is a possibility some of the other investments could bear fruit.

So after the present MUST investment, we still have £1.9M in the kitty.

Expenses should be £15K per month - which means we actually have around £50k more in the kitty than I had calculated.

But either way despite the heavy spending over the last few months PRIM remains well cashed up.

Whilst we await a Mustang update I've just done a quick calculation of how much money we should have left by way of firepower.

Considering the company is very low key management have been very active, and two of the three investments have been in companies which were originally selected by previous management.

On 15-2-21 we had cash and listed investments in "excess of £4.8M".

The only listed investment was Truspine where we held 1,805,554 shares @ 9p or £162,500 - so that leaves £4,637,500 cash.

Our investments since then are

11-3-21 Fresho £637K
6-4-21 Engage £264K
27-4-21 Mustang £1785K

Which makes £2, 686K invested since 15-2-21 - quite a tempo considering our market cap of circa £6M. Take that away from cash and it leaves you with £2,686,000 cash remaining.

Management expenses are now running at 30% of 2019 levels when they were around £600K per annum - so that is now £180K pa or £30K per month. Say around £100K since 15-2-21 as they have been quite active.

That leaves £2,586,000 cash rounded up to £2,600,000.

Provided the Mustang deal goes through we get one warrant for every two Mustang shares we own. The exact number of MUST shares in unknown, but I'd previously calculated it at approximately 8.928M, so we'll call it 9M for convenience.

So we will have 4.5M warrants @ 30p - which will cost £1.5M.

So PRIM could, if it wishes convert all the MUST warrants and still have £1.1M cash left over, less £45K every 3 months for expenses.

I suspect part of the purpose of PRIM is to provide funding for the deals which are sourced by MUST, partly hence why our running costs are so low, MUST do all the work. MUST may well require further funding in the future, maybe to take a larger share of Enerox, but PRIM are well placed to maintain funding there without having to raise cash themselves.

Still mystified why we remain under 5p, but hey ho! - that is the market.

We will rerate eventually.

Delayed appreciation of the Mustang/Enerox deal - all buys today, following all the selling last week?

There will be an EGM at which you can vote on the deal.

Your shares will remain just as they are.