Member Info for SquirtyFlower

Marc - yes, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't come a point where agitation for an upward adjustment to the agreement occurs. However, my point was more about SA labour and unrest. BMNs agreement with its own labour is one thing. It doesn't cover transport or port workers though so BMN isn't immune to wider pressures on cost or delivery delays due to strikes. This is all out of FMs control and may not happen in any case (eg I did recently read that the US Fed is coming under pressure to engineer a slight softening of the dollar as some in US are concerned about the impacts more strengthening is having), but it is important to keep in mind there may be some downsides for BMN if the rand falls further against the dollar.

Yes, but diesel is priced in dollars so will increase costs where used for electricity generation and for transporting product to the ports in SA. Shipping rates are also quoted in dollars. A weaker rand also makes life in SA more expensive which increases risk of labour and general unrest. It isn't all a one way street in BMNs favour if the dollar keeps strengthening.

Lawrence - capex (sustaining or otherwise) is not the same as cash in the bank so the bottom line that your statement that we have $9.5 cash in the bank is plain wrong.

Lawrence - where does your $9.5m cash in the bank figure come from? We didn't get an update on cash in the RNS.

This is a production report RNS not a financial results RNS. The cash position is reported twice per year in the half-year and full year results.

The article is just a re-hash of words in company RNS from Sept and Nov 2022. It's doubtful there's an original word in there. The 2 quotes you provide about Belco are word for word cut and pasted from the RNS for example, and are not more recent insight on whether these items will still occur on the planned dates.

I thought it was established last week that HMHG is just the latest incarnation of our long-standing cycling agent provocateur. In mythology, a Saytr is a HMHG and a Saytr is a make of bicycle. The usual MO of these avatars is to start off amiably and with some knowledge, but then increase their number of posts, then (typically on a Friday afternoon) start posting repeatedly and provoking arguments until eventually there's a lot of swearing and general nastiness so that good posts are removed and a bunch of posters get banned. The aim is to make sure the nastiness starts after LSE moderators clock off at the end of Friday. The pattern seems to be repeating today. Don't get sucked in.

I was going to say, better Comms, hitting production targets and some director share buys might have helped mitigate these to a limited extent, but the sheer number of shares being offloaded would have still cratered the share price given the ongoing world events of the past few years.

It has also been very unfortunate that the very difficult world situation over the last 3 years coincided with Dufferco bring awarded and the dumping 106m shares onto the market in under 2 years. FM isn't entirely blameless for this - after all he cut the deal with Dufferco that allowed 2 lots of dumping - but even in his worst case scenario he couldn't have foreseen the global events that whacked the company at the same time as the share conversions.

This came after Golden Summit dumped 60m shares (though their purchase proved the previous share price rocket fuel so can't really complain about their sale) and,I suspect, one or two major PI holders selling most or all of their shares. Several had 10m plus shares and Nick had nearly 30m. Bett

Indeed, it also needs to be remembered that the vametco and vanchem capacity expansion plans have been put on hold in the short-medium term and will be gradual as finances allow thereafter. Therefore once we consistently hit capacity (ideally next year) then any diversion to electrolyte production will be at the expense of revenue and profit from steel and other industrial uses not in addition to them. If V demand grows as some of the other posts today suggest then the company is going to have some tricky market balancing decisions to make to maximise returns across their various investments (particularly not to leave the electrolyte plant as a very expensive white elephant).

On Alibaba it looks like I can buy vanadium electrolyte for $20 per kilo or from $2 per kilo for orders over 1000 kilos so I'm not sure how you extract the sorts of profit you are projecting from these sorts of sales costs. Though I doubt the missus would be too amused if I ordered 1000 kilos of the stuff even at such a bargain price!!

The most likely outcome of the Orion debt is partial settlement in cash plus an adjustment to the terms of the outstanding balance in the form of higher interest on the new balance alongside a new lower conversion price for the CLNs. Yes, it'll hurt a bit, but it's not going to bring the company to it's knees.

However, if the company can demonstrate a V production rate above 5000mtv per annum in the first few months of 2023 and the V price rises and holds another 10% above current levels (both perfectly feasible) then the share price may well reach the 17p current CLN conversion price in time for the debt to be repaid via this route.

Yes, we will almost certainly see revenue from the electrolyte plant in 2023. However before we see revenue we will see operating cost once the plant commences operations (indeed as soon as the plant takes on labour, uses electricity etc) which may be some months ahead of the revenue arriving and it will be some time (months certainly, possibly years) before the plant gets its production costs per litre below revenue per litre i.e make an operating profit. Thus it will be a net cash flow drain in 2023 and probably into 2024.

We have no visibility into any sales contracts so it is unclear whether production or sales will get anywhere close to the 8m litre capacity anytime soon. Every litre below maximum drives the unit cost up.

Finally, it is likely that load shedding will impact production and so drive up unit production costs.

All in all, the plant is a move in the right direction but it'll almost certainly be a negative on the bottom line in 2023 and beyond until it is producing and selling close to max initial capacity.

Not sure how you've calculated the figure of 156mtv extra. I'm guessing you've multiplied 600mtv in 2 months by 3 to get 1800mtv in 6 months (1800 being 1644+156). Apologies if I've misunderstood your number. If I've guessed correctly then you also need to take into account that the 600mtv is a US shipment figure whereas the 1644mtv is a worldwide number. Will will almost certainly have shipped elsewhere as well. I don't think we'll have shipped to the US at the same rate in the other 4 months of 2H22, but once you take into account shipments elsewhere then I reckon total worldwide shipments will exceed 2000mtv for the half year which is greatly exceeded in my book.

To add further context to Pub/Paludina's observations, the 1H22 results RNS stated that BMN shipped 1644mtv worldwide in 1H22. Therefore to ship 600mtv to the US alone in 2 months strongly suggests the overall 2H22 shipments are going to greatly exceed the overall 1H shipments. I appreciate we had inventory backlog to ship from and we may have shipped more than 45% to the US in 2H, but it does look very promising for the full year shipment results. And with V prices recovering it suggests the financials may surprise to the upside as well.

Whatever your BMN shares are now worth is the same whether you keep it invested in BMN or whether you sell your BMN shares and put the proceeds elsewhere. Therefore if you think BMN is going nowhere then sell up and put the money where you think it will do better (unless, of course, you think every other investment will do worse over the timeframe you are investing for). It really isn't a difficult decision. If you go elsewhere then good luck; if you stay in BMN then please stop moaning on here every other day about your investment choice. No one else is interested.

Ferro-vanadium isn't a newly EU sanctioned item from Russia. If you pull down the lists of sanctioned items for April and July it is in those lists as well. A nice story while it lasted, but I'm afraid it just ain't true.

As stated in the recent RNS, the main reason for the inventory remaining flat over 1h22 were shipping issues, both general global shipping issues that have affected many products and markets and specific issues shipping through the port of Durban. Both of these are improving according to BMN, but we await the 3q and 4q results for the proof.

There will always be inventory on the annual accounts. Yes, we'll sell the current inventory, but the upcoming year end finances will include V that has been processed (and incurred cost) in Nov and Dec 2022 but not sold until early 2023. That's business as usual.

Overall, my view is we will come in well ahead of ARC estimates for 2022. We're already in Sept and averaging $46/kg in 1h22 against ARC average estimate of $40. 3q pricing has been weaker but still keeping us above ARC, so 4q22 pricing would have to collapse to not beat ARC average pricing model. Current ZAR exchange rate is also way better for BMN than their model uses so expenses will be less than modelled. In other words EBITDA, cash and net profit will all likely come in ahead of their model.

UncleJohn, thanks for your reply. Plenty of food for thought in them. One particular thing they helped me with was that I wasn't clear about the sort of PI I was thinking about who isn't investing. It's not the PI who has perhaps up to a £20m portfolio who is primarily looking at UK stocks. I was thinking about seriously wealthy individuals or groups who have portfolios in the hundreds of millions who are looking at global growth opportunities and who may even have investment teams on tap. They are borderline mini IIs, but still PIs. They have deep knowledge of certain industries and technologies or countries. It is this sort of deep pocketed investor who knows about rare earths, South African mining/resources, energy storage, or opportunities in Africa, etc that I was thinking about. We do have one in Acacia (Jose Borremeo), but he's been here even longer than my 9 years. It's the lack of apparent interest from anyone else similar who has more recently cast their eye over opportunities, perhaps had a chat or two with FM, and thought that building towards 5% of BMN at sub 10p a share is a good investment. These folks don't need years of annual results. They can see where technology or resource demand is heading, they can see increasing operational stability, they can see growth potential, they can see integrated value chains, they can see barriers to entry for competitors, etc and they back their judgement with early stage investment. I know there's a lot of choice out there, but the fact that no-one new of this type of PI appears to be dipping their toe in BMN given all the good progress being made is a niggling background concern of mine.

Still, Monday is a new day and maybe one of these folks will be turning up at 8.01am for their first tranche of shares!!

I completely agree with the 4 absurdities you state and the comments about the MMs being able to rinse and repeat short tactics to take money from the short termers and gamblers, but I'm struggling with why there still appears to be no new II or significant mega loaded PI who sees sufficient value at this level (or any of the higher levels we've been at) to start building up a major stake. I appreciate you've been adding to your holdings, but you've been here a long time. It's the lack of new major investors who don't appear to see even 6p as worth dipping their toe into the BMN water for that bothers me somewhat. Surely there is one out there who can see the absurdities you cite alongside the clearly improved production stability at Vametco and the healthy positive cash flow that the current V pricing is generating as being an excellent entry point. These folks aren't bothered about timing the exact bottom of the market, they just start accumulating at levels they see as good value and wait for the returns and yet there remains no evidence whatsoever of any sort of accumulation going on at present. For me, that is the biggest concern about BMN that I have at the moment for all the absurdities and progress being made.