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Billy that’s pretty common. Happens more with AJ Bell than HL. Difference is always tiny, I believe they call it optimisation!

Yana if you think privately maybe best it stays private! Glencor is fed up so it buys a mine. You need help.

I would think that the cornerstones recognise they are unlikely to recoup their original investment. What they must be about is minimising their loss. The $20mm clearly signals that they think the best way of doing this is to complete the mine. The equity requirement will be the outcome of their negotiations with the banks. Once they have that number they will then decide whether it is better to share the burden of that raise with all shareholders or put up the full requirement themselves. I think they will want to minimise their further outlay which is why I think there will be an open offer and I still think that, for the reasons I have set out before, this will come in at 20p. Trading volumes are still quite low which is why the sp will remain volatile. The MM's will simply broaden the bid offer spread to ensure liquidity and to avoid holding stock unnecessarily. Most pi's will be nursing a big loss and will have decided to wait and see rather than sell for a pittance. The market will be dominated by people who think they can trade the beta and earn a buck, though generally that ends in tears. I agree with wasarunner. This has to be a hold at least until the forthcoming RNS.

Brazil gdp for Q4 obviously not out yet but Q3 showed a sharp reversal. I spend about 6 weeks of the year in Brazil and a friend of mine owns and runs one of the largest retail chains in Brazil. True the economy has enjoyed a substantial post Covid bounce and there are some positive indicators but on the ground the feeling seems to be that they are by no means out of the woods yet.

Strow, I spent a good slice of my career in project finance, modelling cash flows for aluminium smelters and such likes. I am certainly not seeking to be negative, I am just cautious. All the variables behind the original calculations have changed, many of them massively. I doubt whether there is any value in any of the original calcs, such has been the enormity of the changes. But I do know that if you plug in a much higher upfront cost, push back the inflows, maybe up the discount rate, yes some help from exchange rates, nickel I think back in line with original forecasts but not higher, etc etc, your NPV is unlikely to increase.

Strow, the Brazilian real was hammered during Covid but has been clawing back lost ground steadily for 18 months. The economy remains weak with massive youth unemployment. Unfortunately whilst it is good to have costs on reals and revenues in dollars as others have pointed out the cost of the materials has rocketed. Furthermore in any NPV calculation once you start pushing back the revenues and bringing forward higher costs the numbers rapidly turn rather ugly. I would be surprised if there was any increase in the NPV8.

A lot of damage has been done. The additional cost of completing the mine plus huge financing cost is going to negatively impact the sp for a long time. I am certain there is considerable upside from here but I would be very very surprised if we went north of, say 40p, in the next 12 months. Only a surge in the nickel price could lift the shares higher and that won’t be relevant until 2025. And of course Glencor will take a bite out of revenues. Maybe a much bigger bite. Imo.

I believe Glencor offtake is already in place, part of the original financing?

Pickled, great post though not sure why you waste your time on Publican. He has an obvious agenda, best ignored. I think what we are seeing now is the way being paved for a raise at not less than 20p. I don’t agree with Infinity, I think there will be an equity component. Two reasons for this, one, a raise at par or above is now viable and two, any cash raised from non-cornerstones will reduce the burden on the cornerstones themselves. To me the $20m loan is very positive and the sp now reflects this. The interest rate on the loan is irrelevant because the term is so short. The loan does however confirm that this company is not heading for administration. No surprise that the surge in the sp reflects the downside risk having been massively reduced. My bet remains on an open offer at 20p (maybe more if the sp moves north of say 30p this month), the ratio will depend on the outcome of the assessment of what the company needs to get over the line and what deal is struck with the banks. Glencor could remain on the sidelines, they retain the rights they have alread, ie control of the output.

China old boy, I have to give it to you, you never cease to entertain me! I had a pleasant lunch at the OBH Cottesloe and believe this I have rustled up a few more dollars and am off to King Island tomorrow. Given that you know everything can you tell me what you think the capital costs of Longonjo are going to be? Do you buy the $200m figure? And when do you think finance will be finalised? The sp seems to be telling us that just isn't going to happen.

Well Mumbles, it looks like M & G have made a mistake then. So they pumped their millions into Pensana because they thought that a refinery would be built in Saltend? Really? Might have been an idea to wait and see if Pensana had something to refine first. And if Pensana cannot finance a mine how are they going to finance a refinery? The Pensana RNS in October 2022 stated this:

Wood has finalised the Process Design, optimised the Site Layout Plan and has increased its multi-discipline engineering team to 65 people which is implementing the long lead time packages including:

· FRP Settlers

· Agitators (Mixer Pumpers)

· FRP Tanks

· Bagging Units

· Scrubbers

Wood has mobilised its early construction management team and appointed the early enabling works contracts for site preparation, pioneering facilities, security and the third party works by Yorkshire Water.

Over-the-fence service packages being supplied by px Engineering which include tie-ins to power, water, steam, compressed air and effluent are underway.

So Mumbles, 15 months on, how is the team of 65 people doing? Are all these works complete? How much has now been spent on Saltend now? What is the "early construction management team" up to? Or was Pensana rather gilding the lily?? In April 2023 Pensana stated that the capital costs of the Saltend refinery would be $195m. Iluka reckon theirs will cost north of a billion. Pensana boasts that Saltend will be the third largest rare earths refinery in the world. Really? HZM are adjusting to the harsh realities of the cost of developing a mine in a location in some senses comparable to Pensana's. Yet the Pensana mine just gets cheaper. Or does it? What do you really think?

It is interesting to see Iluka's woes with the building of their rare earths refinery in WA. They announced in December a blow out in costs to an estimated A$1.5 to 1.8bn, blaming inflationary pressures and all things West Australian. I appreciate there is a great deal of difference between a refinery in WA and a mine in Angola but it does seem extraordinarily far fetched that you could build an commission a mine in Angola for just US$200m, and confirm that the past 12 months has seen no necessary cost review. Personally i don't think the numbers are for real, just as I do not believe the company's explanations for the delay in finalising the finance package. And one thing we do know from Iluka is that Saltend will never happen, nothing has changed my opinion that Saltend was no more than a sleight of hand intended to draw in funds from the UK government. Now the company realise that isn't going to work Saltend has been abandoned.

thanks for the link. chris han**** is very impressive. when you listen to him you are in no doubt whatsoever of the quality and value of the creo technology. he is adamant that there are no competitive threats to the creo technology. it is not just the precision of speedblade, it is the fact that procedures can be carried out very quickly plus recovery times are slashed. you are saving the cost of say three nights in hospital, whatever that is, plus you are increasing the capacity of the surgeon or consultant to carry out these procedures maybe threefold. the only downside is that every consultant needs to be trained to use these instruments and that takes time and resources. i see the key to be getting the creo technology coupled with robotics so there are two sales tracks, one necessarily slow and the other much faster. in the interim, as several other posters have observed, there has to be very strict control of headcount and costs. getting to breakeven cashflow before existing cash is depleted has to be the holy grail. whilst another raise could be achievable if progress is very solid it is time for management to start meeting targets. the next sales update could be one of the most important and hopefully the recent sp movement is telling us they are well on course.

Thank you Souville.

There were raises at 75p and 125p as I recall, do not remember one at 180p.

Yes there was a raise at 20p putting the market cap at around £60m, following a steady decline from a high of around 230p. Main reasons for the decline were failure to get any traction with core sales of devices, not helped by Covid, a blow out with costs including an extraordinary increase in headcount to 350. In March the company pledged to reduce this to 250, something they said they could do because r & d had peaked. Other poor decisions included appointing a new director who promptly joined the remuneration committee which then awarded key directors massive bonuses. Imo a very poor decision. Since the March raise there are signs of a revival, early traction with sales, new fda approvals, a lot of hope of a deal with one or more of the robotic surgery leaders. I am guessing that the recent uplift in sp is on the back of some positive news in the arena but this not confirmed. Would be very interested if anyone has details of current headcount, even better details of cost reductions. I remain confident that the company will prevail because the technology remains cutting edge however I think there is a call for a management refresh. Back to basics, cut costs, narrow focus to sales of devices, maybe even jettison acquisitions which have sucked in cash and distracted from main objective.

Schemes of arrangement need court approval, that’s not happening here.

Thus will bore some rigid but here goes. Condor Gold has devised a scheme to enable them to issue new shares below par value. They basically proposes to swap the 20p Ordinary Shares for one new £0.001 Ordinary Share plus one £19.999 Deferred Share. Adding the two together enables them to claim that there has been no reduction in capital. I have worked through this with a couple of mates who are still in banking. We are not convinced that the scheme is legal. The reason is that we consider that the Deferred Share has been created to circumvent the Act, it is in fact an essentially worthless piece of paper created solely so that it’s par value can be aggregated with the new ordinaries. The deferred shares will not be listed. They are stripped of all rights other than the right to participate in a distribution of net assets in the event of bankruptcy. The deferred shares will stay with the existing ordinary shareholders in perpetuity. So if after the split you buy a new ordinary share you will not receive a deferred share. Why does any of this matter? Because new shares could be placed sub current par. The legitimacy of the Condor scheme is also questionable because it has been dressed to look like the scheme was necessary to accesss the £1.00m loan. Or were the loan terms created to try and add legitimacy to the structure? We concluded that the legal efficacy of the structure was uncertain at best. I would love to know if the company obtained a kc’s opinion. A Condor shareholder could ask that question. I acknowledge that the scheme could be entirely legal and that all shareholders have the right to participate.

China old boy, I wondered where you had got to! Did you know that there is one 18 hole course in Israel? I was going to Google it but decided just to ask my Shylock masters (where on earth do you find this rcap?!). I can see that darling Paul is still leading you and your Alkemy chums a merry dance. Jam tomorrow or tomorrow, did I say tomorrow? As he picks up his $50k a month. Due diligence of course. A very lengthy process. So January is the date now when the plug and play $200m Longonjo will be funded and unleashed. Or could it be February? Or March? 2024? Or 2025? There’s a lot of pigs at the trough now, guess cash will be a problem soon, how many $10 millions do the Angolans have??

Publican. A little tip for you. If you make 40% here, £33k there, keep it to yourself. Saves you from looking like a Richard.