The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
another month flies back. atherley says thank you for his $30,000, george appreciates his $50,000 and ****** his $40,000. btw this excludes share awards. $2.0m of annual remuneration for the board. maybe for another million bucks you might even get to find out what’s really going on with the non-binding term sheet.
AS1971, you don’t have to worry. Investors and shareholders might have got the impression that all these people work for Pensana. They don’t. They are, I think without exception, consultants that Pensana may or may not use, they are not on the payroll. A bit like the large team working on Saltend. And the non-binding term sheet. The green bond. Did you know that Atherley’s share grants, all 4 million or so, originally had a vesting condition that construction at Longonjo had to start by May 2023? So you might think they would extend that. No, they just waived the condition, all shares now fully vested.
Tuesday will be the anniversary of the company’s declaration that financing was at an advanced stage. More recently we had the cryptic non-binding term sheet, all interspersed with the usual guff, amazing results from Coola, some garbage about infrastructure, anything to kick the can down the road. So is there an informed market? Does anyone really have even the faintest clue about what is going on with the financing. At some point very soon the company has to come clean, admit that talks have broken down and new finance options are being explored. The directors are having a ball, lots of nice business class trips to see family and friends, all serious business of course, four years on the gravy train, sadly for them this is going to hit the buffers very soon. Just leaves them with Alkemy, another Atherley get rich quick stunt.
The more I look at this report the more I realise how stunningly naive the board of this company is. It’s almost childish it is so so unprofessional. Nobody would read this report and buy or hold Pensana shares, you’d just want to get the blank out of there as far as possible. What must M & G think? They’re meant to be professionals. How on earth did sane heads get caught up in this caper? This project will never be financed, the shares have already started their drift back to hope value alone, the 15 to 20p zone.
The silence from the company tells you all you need to know. They tell you what they are trying to put to together but don’t tell you when the plan falls apart. ECIC project funding is very rare. It’s usually small ticket. ECIC state that one of their project funding requirements is that the borrower has a track record of delivering on similar projects. I think Pensana have got a bit carried away. As we approach the first anniversary of the company’s announcement that financing was at an advanced stage we might wonder what happened with the $220m equity investment that formed part of the 3rd April 2023 announcement. Obviously it was rejected by the investor’s committee. Fair enough, you win some you lose some, but why hasn’t the company informed the market? They seem to be serially incapable of being open and candid, but perhaps that’s all part of the plan? They have burned through what, $60 or $70m of investors money getting absolutely nowhere, directors are doing extremely nicely thank you, costs worldwide have soared, Longonjo cost has plummeted (apparently), it’s all a nonsense.
Mumbles. Are you sure you have figured this correctly. ECIC would be supporting the South African exporter of mining equipment by underwriting the political risk and possibly some of the commercial risk. I say possibly because the analysts at ECIC are not, imo, likely to take Project risk. Also the deal size looks to be a max $20m, taking this from the ECIC website. I cannot see how ECIC would be reducing the interest rate on Pensana’s debt, they are not giving a guarantee to the lenders or removing project or political risk for the lenders. They are just supporting the exporter so South Africa gets the benefit of South African jobs and foreign currency. Do you agree?
I think the lung procedure is significant. The reason for very low survival rates from long cancer is the colossal difficulty in getting into the lung. Its fern like structure makes large parts of it inaccessible for rigid devices and I know that Creo have been confident for several years that they could crack this problem. The key word is "flex". The Creo device is highly maneuverable and can reach into the lungs crevices, or at least this is how it was explained to me. Sometimes I am disappointed with Creo's PR. They did what I thought was a very poor job supporting the recent trading statement and here is another instance where Creo could have really promoted this achievement. Its the same with their annual report. Page after page of pretty dull stuff but very little of what investors really want to know, addressable markets, sales forecasts and strategy. Plus impossible to extract what their acquisitions really generate in terms of earnings. That said its nice to see the sp regaining ground.
Thank you Sundrum. I would imagine that the non-binding conditional term sheet would include a requirement for an offtake agreement. Maybe that will be announced in the next week or two. Or three. Possibly four. Whenever.
Thank you Hogsnipe. Odd that this would be in a presentation not an RNS. Compared this with the recent self publicity in Mining Weekly. No mention by Tim George of a letter of intent. Funny the corporate presentation makes no mention of the Mou with who. Sailing very very close to the wind. I wonder if the non-execs conduct any due diligence?
31st August 2021. ABGSC will be initiating their detailed due diligence review shortly and will look to be in a
position to target a bond issuance during Q4 2021 once FEED and site preparation is complete.
21st December 2022. Initial site works are underway at Saltend and Longonjo, and this additional investment will take us
through to main financing and the commencement of main construction at both projects during Q1 of
2023.
3rd April 2023. As reported the Company is at an advanced stage in its financing of both the Saltend rare earth separation
facility in the UK and the Longonjo mine in Angola.
31st October 2023. The Company is in early discussions with the UKIB and with other potential equity
partners for the balance of the funding, namely circa US$100 million equity
requirement
3rd January 2024. Financing for each of the Longonjo and Saltend projects is currently underway.
25th February 2024.The Company, through its 84% owned subsidiary Ozango Minerais SA (Ozango), which owns
100% of the Longonjo project, has concluded a non-binding term sheet.The Facility is condiOonal on obtaining guarantees from the relevant export credit agency for which discussions are well advanced.
The company has never ever announced that it has run into a problem with financing so which if any of the above statements were to be believed? The latest update says they have a non binding term sheet but still do not have either the equity or the export agency guarantee. Hardly encouraging. Meanwhile the directors continue to trouser over $100,000 a month of shareholders' money. So why hurry?!
This is more bash than bosh. All of you have read Tony’s posts for several years. You know he has a more technical approach to investing than most of us. In fact I reckon none of us think about bond yields in the context of investments like Pre. Give him a break.
Meanwhile great excitement. A non binding term sheet with unnamed lenders conditional upon equity conditional upon guarantees, should buy the company another six months. SP drifts back to low 20’s.