Member Info for TigerByTheTail

Yes, Sotolo, Rance Holdings isn't the Pourolis family.
Between them, Adonis, Phoevos, and Loucas own around 43% of the shares in issue, and (as far as I can tell) they haven't sold a single share. I think it's fair to say their interests are aligned with ours!

The company had £39K as of Dec 31st 2020. Since then it has raised £363K in January.
It's run in an economical manner, so that should last for a while. There does seem to be a pattern of raising twice a year, in January and in September.
Hopefully, further drilling success at Thorny River will send the share price upwards, resulting in the outstanding warrants being cashed in, and avoiding the need for any more raises in the short term...

BOD also owns valuable diamond exploration assets in Botswana:
1. BOD owns a 15% free carry in Maibwe Diamonds, which reported superb micro diamond results from successful exploration drilling a few years back. Unfortunately, the state-owned nickel miner BCL, which was the 51% majority partner in Maibwe Diamonds and the operator of the project) went bankrupt. This put the project into legal limbo. The first liquidator of BCL was utterly useless, and wasted years of everybody's time before he was finally sacked a few months ago. The new liquidator seems to be getting on with the job, and BCL's assets are being sold off. It is perhaps significant that BOD announced new core sampling from previous drill results from Maibwe a month or so ago. Hopefully, the long wait for news about this prospect - which once seemed to be a very big deal indeed - will end soon.
2. BOD's other exploration assets in Botswana (which include the portfolio purchased from Petra Diamonds) are now part of a joint venture with Diamexstrat, which is in turn a partner of Burgundy Diamonds. It's complex, but in essence Diamexstrat can earn up to 70% of the value of any licence by funding all costs up to a definitive feasibility study.
3. Botswana also purchased a full trial mining diamond processing plant as part of the deal with Petra Diamonds. It's not clear what they plan to do with this equipment.
Finally, BOD also has attempted to enter Zimbabwe in partnership with Vast Resources. So far, the key licences have not been granted by the government there, and (to be honest) I don't think they ever will be. So I'm marking this one down as a dead loss.

The South African assets (including Thorny River) are a joint venture with Vutomi, who James Campbell introduced to BOD on his appointment as CEO.
Vutomi are a qualified Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) shareholder, which solves a lot of problems!
BOD have an earn in agreement on the Vutomi JV, which proceeds in steps from 15% to 40% to a final 72%.
An RNS of 24th Sept 2019 makes it clear that BOD have earnt in 40%. I can't find explicit confirmation that BOD now own 72% of the JV, but I think they must have earnt the right to this share by now.
Is this correct?

OK, I've decided to do a bit of digging around to get a full picture of where we are. I'll post my results and if anybody can spot any mistakes please come back to me!
First up, currently there are @ 782 million shares in issue.
The position with warrants seems to be not too bad, as most were issued with a 2 year expiry date. I make it that the following warrants are outstanding:
41.7m at 0.6p share expiring 28/1/2022
50m at 0.6p share expiring 7/9/2022
60.5m at 0.6p share expiring 22/1/2023
3m warrants issued to James Campbell at 1.75p per share expiring in 2023.
I can't see any options, so I make it that the share capital fully diluted is around 937m shares.
Theoretically, a £50m market cap (which really should be achievable given a fair wind) would result in a fully diluted share price of 5.3p and the company receiving £931K income from the warrants being exercised.

Market cap is currently £7m or so. IMO we could go to £50m in a flash.
The market hasn't reacted yet to any of the news from Thorny River - not to the discovery of the River kimberlite pipe, not to the superb test results. It has also ignored the excellent news flow regarding the Botswana assets.
I have a hunch that today is the day when the market finally stirred from its slumbers.

Apparently, the first question that Warren Buffett asks when he looks at company is, "are the company's manager's competent and honest?"
And I guess we all know the answer to that with Vast.
IMO, good management can't save a hopeless cause, but it can make the best of an average set of circumstances. Bad management, however, can blow even a golden opportunity.
By the way, the share price of Botswana Diamonds (BOD) (Vast's erstwhile partner in Zimbabwe) looks like it is ready to blow next week. There was a big jump in volume today, and interest has picked up. In truth, it should have already reacted to the news from Thorny River that has come in over the last few months, but the market was strangely blasé about it - until now. Just a heads up.

Sorry, £2.8bn.
£2.8m would be cheap! I reckon around $50m-$100m is about right for EUA's early-stage assets.

Well, Lamstree, would you like to do a little research?
Tharisa have a 96m ounce PGM resource along the Great Dyke in Zimbabwe (at a healthy 3.6g/t, open pittable, low cost, easy to mine). It's much more advanced than EUA's projects as a Definitive Feasibility Study is due later this year. Yet, Tharisa's market cap is around £350m - and this despite the fact that net debt-free, cash-rich, dividend paying Tharisa also has a highly profitable mine in South Africa producing both chrome and 160,000 oz of PGMs per year (including a record high proportion of rhodium in its basket). All in all, the Zimbabwe asset (despite its size and prospectivity) doesn't add a single dollar to Tharisa's share price.
I could quote other producers with similar very large PGM assets which the market doesn't value at all, in South Africa as well as Zimbabwe.
So, either the market cap of Tharisa is completely wrong, and its at least ten times undervalued. Or the market cap of EUA is completely wrong, and its ten times overvalued. (Or, perhaps more realistically, Tharisa is 2-3 undervalued, and EUA is 3-4 times overvalued).
Feel free to do some actual research and come back to me with arguments. I know you'll claim Zimbabwe is a high-risk jurisdiction, but Russia is worse. Even an oil major like BP couldn't defend their assets there.
In short, £2.8m for EUA?!? - You're having a laugh...

Hi TotalTrader!
Well, if that's how they justify their numbers, Peel Hunt are being ultra-conservative.
If you use H1 basket prices to calculate H2 FY2021 expected realists, then you are assuming that rhodium falls back from its current high of $29,000 to around, say, $10,000 by the end of September, resulting in an average price of $19,200; and that the iridium price simply collapses; and that all the other PGMs also do badly over the next six months as well. Oh, and that chrome falls back towards $120 t as well. Despite all evidence that car manufacturing is thriving (bar the chip problem), and the world's economy is expanding.
I truly hope Peel Hunt is wrong, because the only way I can see them being right is if either a major war breaks out, or a new, more deadly, vaccine-evading form of Covid arises.

Hi Catsick!
Phoevos has made the point in presentations that Tharisa's test 1MW smelter has been developed in-house using their own research and development. But it does seem to share some of the same characteristics as the Kell smelter - use of leaching, enormous reduction in power use etc. I wonder if the Tharisa test plant doesn't use a similar approach to the Kell plant. Certainly, I expect an in-house full-scale PGM smelter to be the next major item of capex that Tharisa announces, and given its economics, I make it a very good use of money!
As for iridium, I knew I should have bought some physical metal back at $1,500, but the enormous spread put me off! If gold makes silver look common, and platinum makes gold look common, and rhodium makes platinum look common, then iridium is the metal that makes rhodium look common. The entire world market is only about 250,000 ounces per year. It's possible that the market is still being affected by the Amplats outage last year (iridium takes over 4 months to smelt and refine), so there may be a price dip coming. But, in the medium run, I'm sure the price will go over $10,000 per ounce; it's a key catalyst in the making of "green hydrogen" and in all likelihood demand is going to massively outstrip supply as the decade progresses. That (high) 4.3% of iridium that Tharisa produces in their prill split should become very valuable indeed!
Rhodium swinging back up to $29,000 / ounce, by the way (JMAT prices).

Hi Ragnar!
I'm thinking that FY21E cash figure (of $45m) in the Peel Hunt broker note (as reported by Proactive) must be a misprint or a miscalculation. It doesn't make any sense when compared to the $303m EBITDA that they say Tharisa are generating. That or Tharisa are going go on one hell of a spending spree!
Has anybody seen the original broker note? Does the number come from there, or have Proactive simply made a typo?
I still remember the apology my local paper had to make for calling one war veteran "bottle-scarred", and saying that they of course meant to print "battle-scared" instead...

Hi CamdenLad!
I'm invested in both SLP and THS - more in THS, but plenty in both. As regards SLP, keep an eye on Africa Asia (i.e. host miner Samancor) selling down their stake. That could have the effect of dampening any rises in the share price.
Hi ScoobyDoo!
I'd be very interested to learn what you make of BOD. Just a disclaimer - this is a hit or miss exploration play. So it's a gamble. But one I like - the CEO is both honest and competent, in fact he is more or less the world expert in his field and in partnership with the Chairman he discovered the AK6 / Karowe mine now owned by Lucara Diamonds (this was as African Diamonds, a 90-bagger in its day); and at Thorny River the odds of success have shortened a lot recently, but the market hasn't reacted to this development.

Yes, there isn't a financial calendar on the website so we can find out the expected dates of the various restyle announcements.
If anybody from the company / PR company reads these boards, adding one would be a good idea!

Hi dmacd!
Tharisa is a serious, well-managed, growing, highly-profitable, dividend paying business trading at a very low price (EV/EBITDA ratio around 2 according to analysts). Almost any PGM miner which is currently producing in volume will be making good money at the moment (bar Norilsk Nickel which has serious issues with melting permafrost). So the entire sector is appealing. I believe Tharisa is the best of the lot, due to its very high basket price (9.5% rhodium on a 6E basis!) and its growth options. I can also see strong arguments for putting money in Sylvania Platinum and Sibanye Stillwater, and even Anglo-American.
EUA is a ridiculously overvalued early exploration play (its mining operation at WK is so tiny as to be insignificant). The board over there is best compared to a religious cult where dissenters are not tolerated, and most of the "facts" quoted over there are not facts at all. As for the "Final Sales Process", I've no idea what the Takeover Panel are playing at letting it go on for over nine months without either a named bidder of a PUSU (put up or shut up) date. More red flags than a communist MayDay parade over that one.
Sorry, I can't put it otherwise.

Hi Aubery!
Yes, there are risks regarding the execution of the turnaround plan, though I have confidence in management.
I just wonder if the rampers have done enough research to realise that a major share lock-in ends in about six weeks time, and that there are also a large number of warrants "in the money".
In short, are they doing anything more than supplying liquidity to sellers who will happily take advantage?
IMO, this is a strong medium/long term hold. Short term, I'm not so sure...

Hi Aubery!
These boards are useful when used for sharing knowledge, but when they turn into an inane fact-free rampathon there's no point in reading them. I'm almost tempted to post some of the downside considerations (yes, they exist) around RMM just to balance things out a bit.
Anyway, I'm still holding my RMM shares. Not adding but not selling. And signing off.

Hi Sotolo!
My guess is that Tharisa know exactly what they are mining (which seams of the UG2 reef), and are deliberately targeting the areas higher in the minor PGMs (esp. rhodium). Which would simply be good business sense, if I'm right.
The "cost" of this is a lower proportion of palladium in their current prill split. Which is a price worth paying.
Note how Tharisa published their PGM results metal by metal this quarter for the first time, as if they wanted to point this out to us.

Hi Stoodio!
Without making a precise calculation, your figure sounds much closer to the mark.
There is no way that the average basket price for this last quarter is not way higher than the basket price for any time in 2021. Rhodium prices took off through $20,000 at the New Year, and have stayed high ever since. (This without considering the boom in the by-product prices as well).
I'm guesstimating $36m profit for the past quarter, which would easily be a quarterly record.

Rhodium, iridium, and ruthenium have all ticked up this morning (according to JMAT). So that's good news.
Peel Hunt lifting their target for Tharisa is also good news, though I think a price of 220p is still too low. I wonder how they justify it.
(Off-topic)
Hi Sotolo! As regards Centamin, I don't think this is the "season" for gold. IMO, gold needs "something" to happen to change the current "Here Comes The Roaring Twenties Again" zeitgeist. That "something" could be China invading Taiwan, or Russia invading Ukraine, or the emergence of a vaccine resistant and more deadly strain of Covid (Brazil P1 anybody?), or inflation rising quickly, or an unexpected economic slowdown, or a bond yield spike and the Fed implementing Yield Curve Control. But whatever that "something" is, it involves fear getting stronger and greed getting weaker, and so far it hasn't happened. So I'm watching and waiting on gold stocks.
(BTW, as regards HOC, I am also concerned about P1 Covid and about the Peruvian election).
If anybody fancies a wild gamble, I'd suggest taking a look at diamond explorer Botswana Diamonds (BOD). Early signs are that they may have hit the jackpot - a second Marsfontein. (The first Marsfontein paid for itself in its first 2.5 days of operation). I'll explain more over on that board if anybody is interested.