Member Info for TigerByTheTail

Sandy, those you call "liars" have been proven to be 100% right about Vast. You - blinded by God only knows what - were 100% wrong in your tireless ramping of this share. Have you no shame?

I rather suspect "Mark Sidley" is an intern at a brokerage, "employed" to post on sites like these to sucker a few more naive PIs into buying shares at the inevitable next placing.
Also note that the next Atlas "death spiral" loan conversion is overdue - perhaps Vast need to consolidate first before they can issue the shares required. Any road, if I were Atlas, I'd be pressing very hard for payment asap.

Rhodium dropping back to $28,500/oz. Average price this quarter so far is around $22,300.
Iridium making a new all-time high at $5,300/oz. (All JMAT)
As for the idea that the rhodium price is just a short-term spike, I'd say this...
This isn't a market "corner", like the Hunt Brothers famously tried with silver. Nor is it a sentiment driven trading frenzy - rhodium's one and only ETF is tiny, for instance. Rather, IMO it is a long-term deficit of an industrial metal which has finally reached crisis proportions. I.e. Essentially it is a question of demand persistently exceeding supply.
So, can more rhodium be brought onto the market in the near term? This is very hard. Rhodium is only mined as a by-product, and normally it is found in small quantities (THS and SLP are quite exceptional in having so much rhodium in their prill split). Essentially, you need to build a whole new platinum mine, ideally in South Africa - that takes years and costs a huge amount of capital.
Can more rhodium be recycled? This is also difficult, as the vehicles currently being scrapped mostly date from the years when the car manufacturers were cheating on their PGM loadings (the "Dieselgate" scandal).
Can rhodium be replaced with another catalyst? (E.g. the vanadium price spike came to an end when steel alloy manufacturers substituted it with cheaper niobium). The answer to this is apparently not. Rhodium is uniquely effective in dealing with NOx gases.
Can the car manufacturers reduce the amount of rhodium they use? Also, apparently not. Clear air regulations worldwide are getting tighter, and I don't think any serious car maker would risk another Deiselgate style scandal.
Eventually, the rise of battery EVs and hydrogen fuelled cell vehicles will change the picture, of course. But that could be 5 to 10 years away.
So my working assumption for the average rhodium price for the next few years is $20,000/oz. If that's right, or even half-right, then THS is wildly mispriced. And that's without considering the recent substantial improvements in platinum and chrome (and iridium) prices.

Hi Sotolo!
I've not followed the Impala Platinum story closely, so I can't comment on it. It certainly got very cheap a couple of years ago - bankruptcy fears?
Hi Sirius!
The past is the past - and Tharisa certainly made some hard and costly decisions back in 2019. My point is that Tharisa is making far more money NOW than SLP. For more or less the same market cap, you have two companies producing PGM concentrate which has a very similar basket price. Only one of them produces 160K of 6E PGM ounces, and the other produces around 90K ounces (@ 70K 4E PGM oz x 1.3). And that first one produces 1.5 Mt of chrome as well. And it has a longer mine life, far better growth prospects, and no worrying dependency on Samancor. By any rational analysis THS's mcap should be at least 1.5 times as big as SLP's. Possibly two times as big.

We're back in crazy town again - SLP's mcap (given today's rise) is only £10m or so less than Tharisa's.
SLP is an excellent company, and I don't think it is overvalued by any means. But there is just no way that it should be valued about the same as the much bigger Tharisa.

I've looked at this and I've decided that it's not for me. They were an excellent profitable dividend-paying company, but Covid has done too much damage. Really, they need to raise fresh equity to pay off some debt and to start over. But, no, they are going to struggle on, closing stores and avoiding all but the most crucial Capex, in the hope that in a few years' time they'll be able to pay dividends again. I'm not buying it. Zombiedom here we come.

They are turning into a corporate zombie.

Remember that the Lombard Odier 90 day lock-in has just expired.
I'm expecting them to sell - albeit via the company broker, and in an orderly fashion, as per the RNS.
The medium term prospects here are still excellent. But some short term downward pressure on the share price wouldn't surprise me one bit.

"Limitation barred" - actions (court cases) need to be brought within a certain timescale (how long depends on the the type of action).
The implication here is that there is a dispute about whether the time allowed to bring the action has expired, and that requires the court to rule on it.

Hi JSB!
As a rough and ready guide, allow for an AISC of $100/t for chrome. (N.b. this will drop when the Vulcan plant is finished and production increases to 2Mt per year).
Current mid-point guidance is 1.5Mt per year.
Chrome prices are shrouded in mystery; especially as both Metal Bulletin and Asian Metal aren't giving our nearly so much information "for free" anymore. But the chrome price is definitely much healthier nowadays. The last company presentation quoted a chrome price of $180/t, and judging from some headlines, it may have risen a little more since then. All in all, chrome has risen 50% or so over the last six months, and earnings from it should now be substantial.
All has gone quiet for months on the proposed South African chrome tax. But there is an article on Metal Bulletin which suggests that the proposed tax might still be implemented. Let's hope not; it's a really dumb idea.

Hi JSB!
There is a full Tharisa prill split in the 2020 interim results presentation.
It is: platinum - 55.1%; palladium - 16.9%; rhodium - 9.5%; gold - a negligible 0.2%; ruthenium - 14.0%; iridium - 4.3%.
So, for iridium, 4.3% of 160,000 ounce PGM production (guidance) = @ 6,880 ounces production p.a.
It's possible (even likely) that the refining process for iridium is more expensive than for the other PGMs, so some allowance should be made for that.
(BTW, Iridium today is flat at its all time high of $5,100 / oz. Rhodium is off its high by $100 at $29,000. - JMAT prices).

Hi Sotolo!
Remember that each catalytic converter system (they often consist of more than one "box") will contain a mix of PGMs, of which rhodium will only be one smallish but crucial element. So your figures for total PGM content is about right, I believe; it's just the remainder of the PGM content will likely be platinum (for diesel) or palladium (for gasoline).
Rhodium is uniquely effective in treating NOx gases, and it is not easy to substitute or to thrift. JSB knows more than I do, but I believe that palladium can be used - to an extent - for the same purpose, but that it requires much higher loadings of Pd than Rh (I've read 5 to 10 times as much metal).
All in all, my best guess is that EVs will be adopted slower than many people assume, especially outside Europe. And that the number of vehicles on the world's roads will grow through the 2020s as the developing world urbanises and industrialises. And that emissions regulations worldwide will grow tighter and tighter as the years go by, necessitating ever higher loadings of PGMs. And that there will be very little new rhodium supply (this is a near certainty). So my base case is for several years of very high ($20,000/oz?) rhodium prices.
One of my fears about this stock is that technology is developed which eliminates the need for PGMs in emissions control systems. But I see no sign whatsoever of that happening. (If anybody knows better, please let me know!)

Mark Sidley is here - which means a placing is near. 543 posts, all on Vast, and the account falls silent between placings!

Hi Sotolo!
I misread Ru (i.e. ruthenium) for Rh (i.e. rhodium) in my notes, so it shouldn't be 14% but 9.5% rhodium content in Tharisa's prill split. Sorry, my chronic dyslexia strikes again. Long ago I even got the cane for it ("persistent poor orthography!") from my history master at school. Even now as I write this I can smell the stale whisky on his breath.
Which makes the correct calculation $29,200 / oz (today's price) x 160,000 PGM oz guidance x 0.095 rhodium content = $443.8m rhodium revenue. Against a mcap of c. $500m.
So not quite so bonkers as my earlier post. Only as crazy as a box of frogs.

There is a post on ADVFN stating that rhodium is now $1m a kilo. This surprised me, so I checked this - and it's almost true. I make it that rhodium (at today's spot price) is $938,780 per kilo.
Put another way, if today's rhodium spot price held for an entire year, Tharisa would make $29,200 x 160,000 PGM ounces (guidance) x 0.14 rhodium prill split = $654,080,000 revenue from rhodium alone. Which is bonkers, considering Tharisa's mcap is only £362m = @ $500m, and the vast majority of that record rhodium revenue would drop straight to Tharisa's bottom line.
So the market is either pricing in that the rhodium price will shortly crash by 80% or more, or it is simply not paying attention. My money's on the latter.

Rhodium flat at its all-time high of $29,200 / oz today (JMAT). Iridium making a new all-time high at $5,100 / oz, and ruthenium also up at $365 / oz. Palladium stable around $2,200 / oz, and platinum under some pressure from the falling gold price - see kitco.com for latest. As for the sixth E in 6E, gold, that's dropping, but luckily it is only a tiny proportion of THS's basket - far smaller than that of most other PGM miners.
Here is an article on the proposed EU Europe 7 emission standards which are currently being negotiated. (The current price boom in PGMs is in part due to the tightened emission standards in the current regulations - Europe 6).
https://www.euractiv.com/section/alternative-renewable-fuels/news/eu-plotting-ban-on-internal-combustion-engine-as-of-2025-industry/
A few notes:
1. Remember that hybrid EVs actually contain higher PGM loadings than conventional ICE vehciles. (It's all that stop-starting of the conventional motor). Their mass adoption is actually a positive.
2. Large hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles (such as trucks or buses) contain about 10 times as much platinum as their diesel engined equivalents, so the EU's promotion of them is also very much a plus.
3. I'd bet that the proposed timeline gets stretched out - apart from anything else, there simply aren't enough charging points for EVs. And how do all the people who live in flats or who park on the street charge their vehicles every night?
4. Note the moaning from the car manufacturers about the increased costs these new emissions standards will force on them. That's money headed Tharisa's way!

Hi tq!
To be fair, a lot of the other metals have been playing "catch-up" in prices as well. Chrome was $130 or so, now $180 (see page 6 of latest corporate presentation for THS's most recent price); iridium was $,1500 and now its $5,000; platinum is strongly up as well, etc.
So it's not only rhodium which is driving the explosion in revenues here...

Hi MorningSun!
Looked at coldly, the whole Romanian adventure has been a disaster. If Vast had kept to mining gold in Zimbabwe, it would now be in a strong financial position. It could have become another Caledonian Mining (CMCL). Instead, largely thanks to Andrew Prelea, it is a hopeless mess of a company.

Consolidation - however it is dressed up - simply must happen now.
I do wonder if the recent establishment of the Vast diamonds subsidiary in Botswana isn't the prelude to a split of the company into two - one half becoming a copper producer in Romania, and the other half a diamonds explorer / developer in Zimbabwe and Botswana. This would presumably be accompanied by a share consolidation and a major refinancing (i.e. massive dilution of existing shareholders) to get rid of the Atlas "death spiral" loan, and to provide some working capital for both entities.
All in all, I struggle to see why anybody would buy Vast shares now. Anyway you slice it, Atlas must be paid, and that means more dilution and a lower share price to come.

Just to add, I asked myself the question how much rhodium is in a typical car, and how much is buying it costing the car companies?
It seems (courtesy of JMAT) the answer is that a vehicle contains between 1g (light gasoline car) and 15g (truck) of PGMs, with rhodium representing roughly 1/8th of that amount. This (ballpark) puts the value of the rhodium in a light car at $120 at a $30,000 / oz rhodium price, and at about $1,800 for a truck. So even at this price it's affordable for car manufacturers, if not exactly a welcome increase in costs.
And, after the Dieselgate scandal, the penalties for cheating emissions regulations are very high...

Hi Sotolo!
Rhodium (IMO) isn't a speculative investment bubble, like Bitcoin. Rhodium is an incredibly rare and irreplaceable industrial metal whose use in vehicles is effectively legally mandated (China 6, Europe 6 clean air regulations), and which has been in chronic deficit for years. Thanks to growing Chinese auto production and problems with South African supply last year (from Covid and the Amplats shutdown), this deficit has now reached crisis proportions. Rhodium is directly traded, so there is no futures or conventional spot market on which traders can speculate on the price, and the one Rhodium ETF is tiny (Heraeus estimates it holds only 25k oz. of rhodium). This is all about industrial supply and demand - in particular, a supply which can't grow quickly or easily, if at all, and a demand which is legally enforced.
I do think that South African rhodium supply will increase in the next few months - Amplats came back online in December, so the effect of that may still be working through the market. And you may be right that the market will retrace at $30,000 - it dipped back at $20,000 before. But I do believe rhodium prices will stay high for some time. For how long? Well, the demise of the ICE (internal combustion engine) is much predicted, but looked at from a world point of view, it's a process that will take at least a decade. Apart from anything else, a mass change over to EVs would require enormous work on the electricity grid. And a lot of new lithium mines.
IMO, much the same "industrial" argument (but in a less acute form) goes for palladium.
Platinum is affected by the gold price and investment demands, as well as its industrial ones - hence, its current price drop.
Long term, of course, the hope is that the demand from fuel cell technology (particularly for platinum and iridium) will replace the demand from ICE vehicles. If that's right, platinum will once again be "the rich man's gold".
Chrome demand (i.e. demand for stainless steel) is also predicted to grow through the next decade at c. 5% p.a. All has gone quiet on the suggested chrome export tax front, and it wasn't mentioned in the recent SA budget.
So, no, I don't think the current PGM basket price is a one-off never-to-be-repeated bonanza for Tharisa. BUT, even if this was a one-off bonanza that enabled Tharisa to pay off its debts and to cover the $50m Capex for Vulcan and to build up a cash pile, wouldn't Tharisa still be underpriced?!? Business has never been better for Tharisa (by a country mile), but this share is still trading at well below its all-time high (c. 160p). That's a nonsense. Or, IMO, an opportunity.