Member Info for TheMadStork

"Alternative views have always been welcome on this board"

In a board chock full of fantasy, this may be the most fantastical post I've ever seen! Anyone who fails to fully full in line with the cosy deluded narrative of instant riches is swiftly shouted down and abused, no matter how polite their arguments may be.

Not even having a go; it's human nature to only want to take in information that conforms to one's pre-existing beliefs. Escaping confirmation bias is damn difficult, especially when money is involved and especially when one has made the extremely bad mistake of becoming emotionally attached to one's investments. I've done it myself loads of times!

Fair enough. I recently got a hot tub myself. Highly recommended!

Would strong suggest not putting all your house cash on one punt, no matter how likely you think it is to pay off. If it's 5% or so then go nuts.

Ethio: You have been loudly and enthusiastically wrong every time I have seen you post. I honestly can't be bothered responding to this particular gish gallop.

The only new 'argument' I see there is you seem to think I was expecting a placing immediately after the EGM? This again is wrong. As I have said several times, there will almost certainly be a placing at some point before the AGM date in June. I have never said anything about it being literally the week after the EGM.

I'm trying not to be rude here, but every single one of my posts has made it clear that we are talking about **THE PERIOD BEFORE THE FSP**

kira: Unfortunately, you are flat wrong. We are discussing the period before the company put itself up for sale, so before Oct 2019. Pd prices had already started rocketing: https://www.gold.co.uk/palladium-price/3year/ounces/USD/

We are further discussing the period before the FSP started but the company was up for sale ie Oct 2019 - July 2020, during which time Pd prices rocketed further and yet nobody bid and not a single share was bought by the board. Again, this is before the FSP started, when the board would have been free to buy at any time.

RMR1969: First off, I will say that you are the most reasonable and polite of all the bulls I've debated here, and you have your own original arguments as opposed to the usual mindless c/p nonsense. Kudos.

To your points:
Yes DS already had loads, but remember, under your scenario, this is a *certain* 100 bagger. If they weren't absolutely convinced of 100 bags from 0.5p then they obviously would not have employed the otherwise insanely high risk strategy of refusing all bids (again, under your scenario). There would be no question of it being too risky, as again, it would have to be *certainty* for the bid-refusal strategy to pay off.
Yes buying on the market would have pushed the price up, which is why it would have made more sense to do a subscription for x amount to raise money and have it all subscribed to by the board. They did a placing in April 2019 for £500k, board taking 0 shares. If they knew they were sitting on a certain 100 bagger then that placing would have entirely gone to the board.

Your theory is well put, and is the most plausible of all explanations for the lack of bids pre FSP, but unfortunately it is still completely nonsensical.

Look like I was too late with my second post. Once again, the fact that DS and CS took £45k each of shares in lieu of fees -representing a tiny proportion of their overall holding- does not mean anything.

Do you really think that if they were going to refuse all bids at anything less than fully 100x the prevailing pre Oct 2019 SP, that they wouldn't have bought and subscribed for every share going? It's a ludicrous theory.

And before anyone says it, yes I am aware that CS/DS took £40k odd each in shares in lieu of fees on 24 Jun 19. That's not the same as actively buying on market/subscribing for serious amounts, which they most assuredly would have been if RMR's scenario is correct.

That scenario did come up before and it is the only logically consistent reason I can think of as to why there were no bids pre FSP. It still doesn't make any sense though. If this was 'years in the planning' and the BoD were so confident they were sitting on a billion quid+ company, to the point they'd point blank refuse bids under, they why on earth were they not buying every share they could lay their hands on in 2019 when the mcap was £10m? Why not do a premium placing fully taken up by the board if they didn't want to buy on market? Instead, they bought no shares. Sorry, but I don't buy that for one single second.

I'll respond to the other thread tomorrow as there's a few points raised there.

cj62: Even if it weren't the case that Russia routinely massively favours Russian-owned firms over foreigners (why do you think there is almost no multinational mining presence in Russia?), NN is a huge company with vast production, revenues, profits and expertise. So even if NN *weren't* best mates with the government, it would still make zero sense for Rosgeo to give first refusal to EUA, a tiddler with minimal production, burning cash and uncertain ownership due to the FSP.

Opto:

The 104moz is not a JORC resource. It is not a Russian state-approved resource. There has been very little work done on these assets and they will require at least a decade's worth of drilling to get whatever resource is there into a minable category, to do DFSs, BFSs etc and then actually build the mines. The costs of doing this will be vast and in the meantime PGM prices may be massively lower than today. This is why nobody is interested, and why even if EUA owned the assets, which they do not, the "104moz" would in fact be worth very little.

Calamari: I think the fact that this option was even offered to EUA suggests that NN/other Russian buyers are not interested in these assets. Regardless of the utter nonsense posted elsewhere about EUA being 'the favoured company' in the region (despite the fact that NN is Russian owned, has management close to the government, has vast production, revenues and profits and EUA has none of these things), the fact is the NN will always get first refusal on any decent assets going.

I would therefore venture to suggest that Rosgeo has not given anything up and has in fact potentially opened up a new revenue stream from EUA exercising the option on assets that nobody else wants.

Literally all of those Blackrock Funds are automated index trackers, as a 5 second Google search will tell you. All these hundreds of hopeful posts discussing Blackrock's holdings are discussing the automated whirrings of a computer algorithm.

Lenoman:

I do enjoy a good maniacal laugh now and then, while twirling my Evil Shorter mustache, obviously. Good times.

Who knows how EUA will justify the incoming placing? My guess would be they'll say it's needed to develop the Rosgeo assets, but the reason given could be a number of things. That there *is* an incoming placing is in my view not in doubt. The only reason to have the EGM was to get the authority to issue shares, and given that the AGM is only two months away, it follows that those shares will be issued at some point before the AGM. Otherwise why have the EGM at all?

Calamari: I disagree. Rosgeo get some cash upfront for an option on some incredibly speculative assets that will take years to develop. If EUA raise the money and exercise the option, then the Russian government can extract cash from them for years and years. It costs Rosgeo nothing to issue the option, so why wouldn't they? Vodkas all round!

If Putin/his cronies were at all interested in EUA's assets they would have found some way of 'legally' appropriating them by now. Either that or had NN, which is run by people close to Putin, put in a bid when EUA first went up for sale in Oct 2019.

I think the explanation for the Rosgeo deal is simple: Rosgeo get a bit of cash upfront and maybe further down the line they can extract more to develop some extremely speculative assets. EUA get to put out an RNS with "105moz" in it, successfully distracting the market from the neverending FSP, and giving them a good reason to justify doing a raise.

I appreciate there is some uncertainty about its value. However I think it is rather unlikely that said uncertainty stretches into the realm of Rosgeo having sold EUA an option for $0.5m that is in fact worth hundreds of millions (or even billions!) of dollars. That's what I have seen claimed here and it is obviously complete nonsense.

In my experience, most people would rather not be challenged on their beliefs, especially when they have made the mistake of becoming emotionally attached to an investment. They'd rather just read nonsense that confirms to them that they are right. It's human nature, and I'm guilty of it myself on occaison. The EUA defenders are relatively well-mannered compared to those of a few other stocks - some charmer who was invested in Cloudtag physically threatened me when I suggested it was a fraud. The same guy threatened the kids of another person who was short.

Does anyone have anything re the Rosgeo deal? Is it worth more than EUA paid for it? If so, how much more and why?

Macman: First off, I appreciate the relevant, non-abusive answer. Something of a rarity round these parts!

As to your point, it may very well be that the deposit at MT has extremely low extraction costs and this may justify something of a premium. However, there is no Definitive Feasibility Study, no Bankable Feasibility Study, no all-in sustaining cost estimate and no NPV. That work simply has not been done and without it it is impossible to say exactly how valuable the deposit is. Any buyer would similarly be in the dark and have to spend months/years doing that work before they could even begin to build the mine.

The fact is that MT is a mid-stage exploration asset with a relatively small JORC resource which still needs a ton of work doing to it before that resource is minable. If it is worth the vast sums being thrown around, then so are any number of other mid stage exploration assets, yet nobody (to my knowledge) has sold, or is in the process of selling, anything similar for anything like the numbers being thrown around here.

Anyone care to answer my question re valuation of mineless, DFS-less deposits? Has there ever been a comparable transaction where a mineless asset with no DFS and a JORC resource of (x)moz PGMs was sold for anything approaching 10% of nominal in ground value? Or even 1%?

If such deposits are so fantastically valuable why on earth are other miners not selling off their mid-stage exploration assets for vast sums?

Also anyone have an answer re Rosgeo option? Is it worth more than EUA paid for it? If so, why?