Member Info for TigerByTheTail

Just had another peek into the future. No, the BP licence is still "imminent" in 18 months' time, but fortunately people have learnt to ignore the whole mess as a sideshow, and are now valuing Vast correctly on its producing assets. Apparently, AP did some great deals in Zimbabwe next month.

WARNING! The above message accidentally slipped through a hole in the fabric of space-time, and actually reflects Vast's share price in 18 month's time.

Have a care there, Ronnie; you'll be triggering our local resident paranoics. Any moment now I expect the board to be deluged with conspiracy theories and speculation as to your "true" identity. P.S. Of course news is due here. We all know that. Why else has Dan Betts been so silent for so long?

Hi Fundraiser! Firstly, if you listened to the interview carefully, Martin Eales indicated the drilling results would be next week, but not necessarily Monday morning. So they could take a few extra days. Secondly, FWIW, here's how I will be "scoring" the results: IMO there are three ways the drill results could be good, and one way they could be bad. "Bad" is simple enough: the drill results are dust all the way down. "Good" is more complex. Here are three possible "good" results: THIRD PRIZE: the "lopolith" at Kiyenzi turns out to be not a solid lump of bastnasite / monazite, but a dense network of narrow veins interspersed with waste material. That would mean that there is less rare earth bearing mineralisation than we might hope; let's say instead of 500,000t (company figure for weight of anomaly) there is only 100,000t of it. Even so, that would be a win - 100,000t of easy to mine narrow vein material would equal approx. 70,000t of concentrate. At an end 2019 production run rate of 6,000t per year, that would equal a 12 year extension to the life of mine. Not too shoddy. SECOND PRIZE: The drilling confirms that the source of the narrow vein material is several carbonatite pipes, the largest of which has a diameter of approx. 2,700m, and which descends several hundred metres into the earth in a rough funnel shape. The carbonatite pipes grade at an average TREO (total rare earth oxides) of around 5%, and there is little to no radioactive material (thorium and/or uranium) present. This material would require different processing (i.e. extra capex) from the existing narrow vein material, but there would be simply huge amounts of it. I'd expect Rainbow's shares to rerate strongly on this news as this would mark the discovery of a true "world class" rare earth deposit. FIRST PRIZE: The "lopolith" at Kiyenzi is indeed more or less a solid lump of high grade rare earth mineralisation weighing about 500,000t. I worked out back in February that such an object's excavation would equal approx. $400m of profit (after all costs and taxes etc.) for the company. God only knows what this bonanza would do to Rainbow's share price! NOTE: It is of course possible that we "win" both my third OR my first prize together with my second prize; they're not exclusive.

I'm happy to buy at these prices as well. In the long run I'm confident this will turn out to be an excellent purchase. But I'm not sure where the share price will go in the immediate short term - Pageant seem to be a pretty motivated seller. So, I'm buying in smallish tranches to average out entry price.

Here's a link to the horror story of Zion Oil. It's well worth the read: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/03/14/1521015907000/Eighteen-years--five-wells--output-zero--Zion-s-long-quest-for-oil-in-Israel/ Of course, those of us who invest in mining stocks should know about the Canadian company Bre-X. The movie "Gold" is based on its own horror story, although (in a first for movie-making) the original tale is even more unbelievable than the Hollywood version. Or, perhaps, we should all just read the history of BMR - now more than 25 years old without ever making a profit! BTW, I don't like the current silence - the JV could and should have been signed by now. This is not good.

Dispersions are aspersions gone bad...

Here's a link to the interview: https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/stocktube/9138/rainbow-rare-earths-on-track-to-ramp-up-following-first-full-quarter-of-production-9138.html

Hi David Brent! Read NomZ's post about Cora earlier today. Unfortunately, he is right; Cora's drill results from Sanankoro are a bit iffy with lowish grades, and it's not clear yet that the deposit will be viable to mine. There is still a lot of work to do. Hopefully, Cora's drill results from Tekeledougou will be better. There's really no need to allege a conspiracy. I'd say the market priced Cora's RNS about right today; that is, down a bit but not a lot. p.s. I'm a Cora shareholder in a small way!

If the next RNS announces another purchase of a very attractive distressed asset in Zimbabwe (which is what I expect), what does the board think the market will do: a. Value the deal on its merits, and realise that Vast is ridiculously undervalued and correct the share price? b. Throw a hysteric about the endlessly delayed Balta Plai license and drop Vast's share price? Surely, there must come a point where Vast announce to the market that they can't obtain the Balta Plai license, and that their capital is better deployed elsewhere (like in restarting the Eureka mine).

Hi Fundraiser! Welcome aboard! In answer to one of your questions... Yes, Gankara is the highest grade rare earth deposit in the world (as far as I know). Importantly, it is also NOT radioactive - very often rare earths are associated with deposits of thorium or uranium, resulting in a much increased cost of processing / transportation. The rare earths at Gankara are about 2/3 contained in the mineral Bastnasite, and 1/3 contained in the mineral Monazite. These are the two minerals with the highest total rare earth oxide (TREO) content - from memory, pure Bastnasite has a TREO of about 75%, pure Monazite a little bit less. From this, you can see that to get 47% to 67% TREO content from a vein means that the vein must be largely made up of bastnasite and monazite, with very few impurities. Rare earths are not particularly rare, in themselves. But it is very rare to find a deposit with a grade over 5%, let alone like this.

Hi m@aim! IMO, the new run of mine ore (referred to in that puzzling paragraph in the RNS) could well be Kiyenzi. The "lopolith" (or whatever it is) is buried only ten metres down (see ProactiveInvestors article from January). That's less deep than the foundations of many buildings. Given that the material around it can be free dug, you could excavate the top of a section of it with a digger in a few days. And you'd know if it was worth digging up or not just from a glance at the relevant drill cores; you wouldn't need the full drill results. I could be wrong about this. But, whatever it is, it must be pretty interesting. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the narrow vein resource at Gashirwe (see company presentation). So why suddenly change targets?

Hi Nick_Rac! No, it's not just you. I also think the Q1 results are not all that bad, given that they reflect the first three months of production ramp-up (and the rainy season, as well). To be honest, I feared the share price reaction would be worse. My back of the envelope calculations are a little more optimistic than Hazrat's. I'm thinking that at a 5,000t per annum run rate the company makes about $4.8m free cash flow. I'll have a more detailed look at the numbers later. Anyway, onwards and upwards to the drill results next week.

Has anybody else noticed this rather puzzling paragraph in today's RNS? "All run of mine ore ('ROM') processed into concentrate during the quarter by the plant at Kabezi was sourced from the Gasagwe pit. Rainbow is now developing highly attractive additional sources of ROM ore within the Gakara Mining Licence area in order to reach its target run rate of 5,000 tonnes per annum (approximately 400 tonnes per month) by the end of 2018. These areas are now expected to be in operation in advance of Gashirwe, the originally planned second mining area, due to their vein prospectivity and speed of development. Further information on these new mining areas will be provided in the quarterly report to 30 June 2018." This couldn't be a reference to Kiyenzi (aka, the location of the lopolith), could it? Have they drilled it, seen the drill cores, and moved straight into mining it, in preference to Gashirwe?

Has anybody else noticed this rather puzzling paragraph in today's RNS? "All run of mine ore ('ROM') processed into concentrate during the quarter by the plant at Kabezi was sourced from the Gasagwe pit. Rainbow is now developing highly attractive additional sources of ROM ore within the Gakara Mining Licence area in order to reach its target run rate of 5,000 tonnes per annum (approximately 400 tonnes per month) by the end of 2018. These areas are now expected to be in operation in advance of Gashirwe, the originally planned second mining area, due to their vein prospectivity and speed of development. Further information on these new mining areas will be provided in the quarterly report to 30 June 2018." This couldn't be a reference to Kiyenzi (aka, the location of the lopolith), could it? Have they drilled it, seen the drill cores, and moved straight into mining it, in preference to Gashirwe?

It's worth noting that "late April" for the exploration results has now become "around the end of April". I think that translates into human-speak as next week for the drilling results, and not this one.

I worked in Russia in the 1990s. There was a time in 1992 when lots of mining assets there could be bought for a few cents on the dollar. And these assets were fundamentally good assets; they were only distressed because the whole country had gone bankrupt. In fact, many Russian oligarchs' fortunes were made by obtaining control of these assets then. I realised on Friday that Zimbabwe now is like Russia then. Thanks to Mugabe's crazy economic policies, there are lots of basically excellent mining assets available for a few cents on the dollar. So, of course, Vast should be trying to buy up as much as they can whilst this situation lasts (probably it will only for a couple of months). Hopefully, there will be news of another Zimbabwe deal soon.

Board reports one buy this morning at 18.99p (and no sells). Yet the MMs have upped the bid to 19.80p. Large buy order in background? Or what?

I'm not really sure I believe this - company does deal on Friday to buy 23.75% of 70,000 ounce per year low cost gold mine (LOM 15 years +) for the price of roughly eight months of the free cash flow generated by that mine, and the share price goes down? AIM is simply incredible! Personally, I'm hoping that there is another similar deal available in Zimbabwe; perhaps Castaway's suggestion of the Rebecca Freda mine. If Vast can pull a deal like that off, I'd suggest that they give up on the Balta Plai license, and concentrate all their capital on the Zimbabwe resources instead. I'm sure the return on capital employed (ROCE) is better in Zimbabwe than Romania, and there aren't any licence problems there, either.

First, the joint venture agreement between JLP and BMR needs to be signed off! The deadline for that is 30th April. I'm assuming there won't be a problem with the JV, but given BMR's past record of total business incompetence, I'm a little wary...