Member Info for SquirtyFlower

The previous agreement did need exchange control approval.

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/BMN/exchange-control-approval-for-orion-transaction-hped7rtnyzugdw3.html

Additionally the previous agreement was announced on 30th September 2022 but not finally signed off until 30th November 2022. The current deal is taking longer, but it was always going to take time.

Colt45 full posting history is linked below. If this poster really is our new CEO I'd be pretty worried as it looks like he got a lot wrong on what may happen as well as making a lot of share purchases that can only have lost money.

https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/colt45/

One follow up thought to my previous comment.

If iron-ore flow batteries are going to become a big thing as one poster has suggested here on a couple of occasions (alongside or instead of VRFBs) then maybe we need to look at using our own ore and making our electrolyte plant dual product.

On Lemur, my expectation is that we'll get a nominal net sale amount, my hope (based in no evidence whatsoever, just pure hope) is that we get $5m, and my fear is that we'll need to pay someone to take it off our hands.

In time (sometime in 2024, it's not urgent over the next 6 months) the other resource I would like the new CEO to develop a proper plan for are the large iron ore and phosphate deposits we have. These have almost totally disappeared from the business radar, yet they are substantial and surely there has to be a way of getting more value from them than the big fat zero have over the last 10 years.

kirkwood and al**** were re-elected at this week's agm. they got about 97m votes for and under 2m against. the fact the other directors didn't need to stand for re-election suggests your statement about them needing annual re-election isn't correct.

we've had a new chairman in the last year. we've now got a new ceo. things are changing and seemingly for the better so kirkwood and coltman need time to do the rest of the things they're trying to do to improve governance, the core businesses and shareholder value.

The RNS doesn't say what the terms of the wage increases are ( it just says 'provides for' which is vague) so you're just guessing it contains no linkage to productivity increases....probably because it suits your agenda the FM was clueless and CWC is a genius.

Personally a 5 year deal seems excessive and a 2-3 year deal more appropriate, but this is easy to say from my armchair in the UK. You'd be the first to criticise if FM had done no deal when it was clear to everyone a year or more ago that inflationary pressures on wages were a worldwide issue and we'd had strikes and walkouts to clobber production even more. Also lots of training is pretty pointless if there is a revolving door of staff leaving for higher wages elsewhere.

Lots of claims Coltman is going to sort the issues out and is making a difference already. However we don't know this. In football parlance, he may turn out to be a Mikel Arteta or an Erik Ten Hag who is able to stop the rot in his club or he may turn out to be yet another Spurs manager who talks well, starts ok, and achieves nothing. Time will tell.

Nice to see the ask turn blue for the day and a couple of blue trades go through. Notable that it didn't take a lot of buying pressure over the last hour to get there. I get the feeling that last Friday and this morning will have taken out most of those who have had enough here and we'll see some price recovery over the coming days as others buy in or top up.

Pb940 - I don't have the RNS to hand, but I pretty sure it is doing the improvements to get to this nameplate capacity that was put on the back burner. Of course, achieving nameplate capacity is not easy as we've seen in getting nowhere near the currently stated 5k nameplate capacity.

It was a production report not a financial statement. If you were expecting statements on cash or P&L then it is your misunderstanding not the company's fault. They could have added a statement on prices realised so far this year, although they did so in the recent results RNS ($37.99/kg) so it would just be a repeat of this. I think most people were pleased to see sales from inventory so don't understand your quibble here.

Moneyman - the company has already stated that 8k production is many years off at best. They said this a couple of years ago if I recall correctly. Getting to a consistent 5k each and every year for several years is what the target is. Only then and only as finances incrementally allow will an increase to 8k be considered. This is the clearly stated company position and has been for some time now.

Benbutton - why should he do as you say? What is wrong in what he posted? Drop in Vametco production was the biggest disappointment, Vanchem was also disappointing, 335mtv is the second largest Q production since BMN too over and his statement on Vanchem costs is correct ( and not something anyone has commented on here today).

It may not be what you want to hear, but all of what was said is perfectly valid comment backed up by facts in several cases.

I really wish we'd sold 1.68 billion tonnes of Vanadium this quarter....at an average of $38/kg!

May e the cub scouts could release a range of "playground bully" badges for cappa and his associates to wear. They could get bronze, silver, or gold level badges depending on whether 5, 8, or more than 10 of them give Pdub a kicking on a single day.

The powers behind BMN are Acacia Resources and Oak Trust, both private investment vehicles for Jose Borromeo and family. Acacia have also been invested in the Mustang plans. Getting a new CEO will have taken time. Therefore my suspicion is that the process started when 4q22 went badly and Acacia/Oak decided to pull the plug on FM. Any possible second thoughts were extinguished by the poor start in 1q23 together with the ongoing Mustang delays.

The CEO process concluded in late June as we know, but FMs fate was already decided no matter how 2q turned out. Thus it is perfectly possible that 2q turns out to be pretty decent on the V production and cost sides of things even though FM was replaced.

Formal Q2 earnings (1H23 results) should arrive around end of Sept as you indicate. What we are talking about arriving this week is the 2Q production report rather than financials.

I think the Q2 production report will come before the AGM. This will be Coltman's first formal public appearance and for him to have nothing significant to talk about or to provide current context to his initial thoughts on the company would leave him seriously exposed.

Coffee cups, no need to apologise for the positivity. I understand the doom and gloom there has been, but I think it's been well overdone recently. Yes, there have been some major mistakes and there are still significant issues to resolve, but the company is far from being on its last legs as some would suggest and the idea that the new CEO has been brought in to close things down by Orion is laughable. If Orion were going to pull the plug why would their investment panel approve the deal that is being proposed, especially taking some of the debt at a notably higher share price than actual at the time of the deal?

I spent some time at the weekend wading through the BNP Paribas broker note. Yes, I know it's paid for and needs treating with care, but there's also plenty of good detail about how the costs will fall, cash flow improves, and the debt burden becomes ever more serviceable over the next few years even with just bottom end of the range growth in produnction and V prices around the current levels. I also found the discussion useful about V content in Chinese rebar increasingly moving to level 4 standards which is double the content at the current level 3 standard so even if steel production is flat or slightly down, V content will increase.

Lots to be positive about even if we hit a few more craters in the road over the coming months.

Are you alright, coffee cups? At first I thought I was reading something by Pdub given the volume of words and the general positivity!

Nice analysis Agricore, thanks for posting. Simplifying your 72.6% of 40% means BMN would hold 29.04% of Enerox plus $2.35m in cash so we own more of Enerox than under the old plan (albeit at some cost).

One of the downsides, of course, is who owns the up to 400m new shares and their intentions. Dripping these into the market will be painful (though a big chunk go to Acacia, I think, and they have been supportive over the years so maybe not so much of a firesale). It might also change Orion's thinking on the prospects for their proposed 6p shares.

Given the total amount of shares we're getting to a 10:1 consolidation might be beneficial in the near future as well.

A couple of other thoughts:

- this RNS seemed to catch Mustang out (as they copied our RNS and committed an update within 7 days) so I wonder if this is the new CEO clearing the deck ahead of production report. Better to announce bad news then (hopefully) better news, not the other way round.

- wonder whether Garnet will seek a US listing (Nasdaq) rather than London as I think that was their preferred choice all along.