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I dropped Rick Rule I quick email yesterday just to see if he would respond. I basically asked him what the main reasons for his recent POW investment were. I got a short snappy response this morning stating the following:
"When I was much younger, I applied Power Metal's business model extensively, and did quite well. I like to invest passively in the top co, not the spin co’s. I believe London has room for this business model"
I cannot say for sure if the response came from Rick Rule directly, or a member of his team but the response did come from his main Rule Invest Media email address. What we do know for sure is Rick Rule doesn't get too much wrong!
Good show of faith from PJ today after standing down as CEO. Now adding to his large holding by converting all of his delayed 0.7p warrants today as he throws in another £43k. Takes his holding to 82,250,000 or just under 4% of the company. Just under £600,000 of his own money has been thrown into this and he continues to build on this holding. Very impressive if you ask me.
Worth noting the new CEO Sean Wade also put in £100k of this own cash in the recent placing along with a significant amount of capital from a company controlled by Rick Rule.
Worth noting that PJ converted his delayed 0.7p warrants today when the price to buy on the market was only around 0.72p. This is almost a market buy as far as price is concerned and also £43k more in the POW bank account.
Yes he will probably take a small adhoc consulting fee but he wont be on the POW payroll. He has a solid CV and he is a positive addition to the NEDs at POW in my opinion.
Mr Brodie Good will get his 3.25p options if price hits 5p. At which point everyone is a winner.
POW now cashed up for the next 12 months+ you would imagine and with a real big investor name in the mix. If Rick Rule's company takes £1mil shares at 0.85p, I make that around 117.6mil shares or 5.7% of the POW stock. Very very good news moving forward.
- No new director salary as no new director announced in the RNS.
- £2.7mil+ in the bank (probably a total of around £3.5mil cash in the POW bank as at today) but of course there is a considerable amount of dilution.
- Rick Rule on board who is some seriously successful commodity investor. Almost a bit of free PR for the POW group moving forward.
- Sean now with skin in the game with 11.7mil+ POW shares at 0.85p. This his a higher average than PJ who holds his 76mil POW shares around the average of 0.75p.
- Athabasca exploration about to ramp up
- Golden Metal resources IPO to go live tomorrow. POW to hold circa 60% of the IPO and the IPO will have almost £2mil in the bank for drilling.
- Roger65 still as emotional as ever.
From the GMR pre-IPO funding raising RNS on 09/12/2021 it stated the following "Paul Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Power Metal and director of Golden Metal has subscribed for £50,000 (749,625 Ordinary Shares) in the Financing."
Not sure about PJ's holdings in any of the other POW investment vehicles.
Optimistic GodOdin but not completely out of the question with a bit of luck along the way.
Remember, back in January 2021, POW had a market cap at its 3.49p peak of circa £39mil. Now their market cap is just £16mil with active projects, assays pending, IPOs to go live shortly and with most likely still circa £1mil in the bank.
PJ built a great looking portfolio on the cheap over the past few years. Lets hope Sean can take it forward with a few decent partners along the way. By "decent" I mean anyone that isn't in the same category as RRR, KAT & KAV (POW's current partners). If a partner can come on board on a 50:50 basis at either Tati, Athabasca or Molopo and as part of the deal agree to sink 10,000m+ of drilling into the ground, then POW suddenly have solid potential that the market simply cannot ignore.
POW have been uncharacteristically quiet over the past 3-6 months. Sean mentioned today on his written AGM Q&A responses "The Company is now focused on a number of important next steps for exploration and continuing with the value generation from key disposals. As we progress each area there will be news updates and we expect to be entering a news rich period in Q2 2023." - Lets hope Q2 2023 is the start of the much needed SP recovery!
Great points Doc83 ... to be fair the entire Uranium portfolio so far has been pieced together for about £100,000 tops. We have sold 2 licences to Uranium Energy Exploration for what should be a 50%+ stake in that business worth over £1million in equity. Once that IPO goes live, POW are 10x in profit on their entire Uranium portfolio (I've heard someone on this board call this sort of stuff a silly accounting adjustment but I can't remember his name ...)
POW have now committed a bit of exploration spend to their Uranium assets for 2023 as some of the recent £900k placing will be used in Athabasca. Will be interesting to see what gets announced over then next few weeks/months. Maybe a little bit more further staking activity will occur in the meantime.
For me, POW are riding their Uranium assets for free as they have made their money on the sale of the two assets to Uranium Energy Exploration. POW will throw a bit of cash at their other Uranium assets, but in my opinion the main goal here is just to sit and wait for the Uranium space to heat up. A lot talk about $70-80 per lb as being the key figure. At the moment the spot price is around the $52. Once that happens there would be plenty of M&A activity in the area and POW are sat right next to several thousand know Uranium occurrences and ground already pegged by big firms in the Uranium space.
Maybe POW will group a few of these Uranium licences together and spin them out into another IPO but for now I think a small amount of exploration spend will be committed by POW on Uranium exploration directly until market conditions improve. The land package they hold is one of the biggest on AIM and there are several bull cases for Uranium in the medium to long term.
I guess POW are at fault for declaring the staked ground before it was absolutely set in stone. The error appears to be an admin error more than anything but nevertheless shareholders do not like to see zero errors on the RNS feed.
The error represents around 3% of the total Uranium licenced land owned by POW. After the additional staking of further licences on today's RNS, the net result after the error, is that POW hold more Uranium licenced ground than they did on the previous RNS update dated 2nd February 2023.
No I do not agree with any of your last comment apart from the point where you state you are impatient.
Take a step back, think of POW down the line when the sector is in a far more positive frame of mind, and then think to yourself "will POW be valued at £20mil then?" ... surely the answer is "no, it will be valued far far higher"? POW in its current state could be £50mil+ tomorrow if the sector turned a little more positive due to its exposure and strong balance sheet. Very strange (and worrying) as a big investor that you do not care about a company's balance sheet!
Come back in 2024 and I can almost guarantee you significant exploration would have happened across multiple POW assets. If that doesn't lead to anything, then that's the high risk game we all play investing in this space. POW are as active as you get in the land of AIM juniors. PJ and the team are giving you a chance of a big return whilst having a strong balance sheet to fall back on if things fail in certain areas, that is all you can ask for.
POW released exploration results yesterday from their NBGC JV with RRR showing three holes of initial visible gold with assays to follow in the next month or two .... Molopo results are coming in the next few months from a multi hole campaign, Tati is active and will be producing results by Spring/Summer 2023, Athabasca is about to go live and will be producing results most likely by Summer/Autumn 2023. Then you have bunch of fully funded IPOs ready to go live with good looking drilling plans already drafted up.
What more do you want from a junior explorer may I ask? Your posts make no sense. You must surely still see POW are a solid punt otherwise you would have sold up. Or is it just the case of you "wanting the SP to go up" .... we all want that Roger, sentiment is poor in this space and there is nothing PJ or the team can do about that unfortunately. POW are probably one of the most active AIM juniors valued at £20mil or below at the moment.
£16-17 mil balance sheet value is your base line value here and that's 1p a share at the moment , but of course you just call having future access to £16-17 million in potential cash as a clever accounting trick as you so bizarrely call it. The market just pricing in zero potential at the moment which is the case across almost every single junior exploration company on AIM.
Once sentiment returns POW should do extremely well from these prices, when that happens, no one can predict accurately. 3 projects in 2021 and this stock hit a £40mil market valuation, just imagine what POW could be valued at once sentiment returns and the speculators arrive back in this sector.
PJ has already hinted on a Telegram post last month (shortly after the recent placing) that due to workloads the quarterly report may not be produced moving forward. The quarterly report for a UK company listed on AIM is not a statutory requirement.
I personally do like reading through the quarterly report but at the end of the day 95%+ of the report is just information that can be found on the POW website, RNS feed or by listening to PJ's interviews.
Another potential indicator that POW are working on some positive things behind the scenes if they do not have time to produce the quarterly report. If PJ had the time to produce the report, I see no reason why he wouldn't continue to release the quarterly report every three months.
Thor still hold circa 23mil based on their latest quarterly report (dated 31/12/2022). The final 12mil that was restricted for selling purposes is now available for Thor to sell from 01/02/2023. I think as at today it is still safe to say that Thor hold 20mil+ POW shares.
Thor's CEO has stated they do not intent to hold equities in other companies, however, it would appear even the POW share price is too low for Thor to sell down here. Thor did get away a big placing a few months ago so they do have the cash to wait for POW's SP to increase before selling down. Thor were clearly selling half of their original circa 50mil holding when price was in the 1.6p-1.8p region a few months ago.
The key for POW here is to now create a big buying liquidity event. 100-200 million buys and everything starts flushing out, new buyers arrive, sellers can get out for a decent price and momentum starts moving in the right direction again. Loads of warrants in the 2p zone which would bring in millions in cash for POW and would limit dilution to what we can already anticipate through the known warrants in issue. At the moment, a few million shares traded here and there when you have a 1.7billion+ float is just going to do nothing. The SP has dropped about 25% over the past few months off no news and minimal volume. It could easily go back up 25% from a small amount of buys. For the sustained moves in the POW SP, the volumes need to increase by at least 20x-30x the current daily volumes in 2023.
PJ mentioned in the latest Stockbox interview that POW are working on some meaty things behind the scenes. Let's see what happens if and when they are announced to the market in the short term. PJ & the board have not converted a warrant/option or undertaken a market buy since January 2022. Before January 2022 market buys were almost a monthly occurrence for PJ between 0.5p all the way up to 2.5p. As soon as PJ & the board convert their delayed warrants and start buying on the market we can assume that all market sensitive info has been released via RNS. Until this happens there is always optimism that some chunky deals are being worked behind the scenes.
We all have our own investment strategies Legalwolf ... not sure what yours is but as 75% of your LSE forum posts are from GCAT and ECR, I'm not so sure you are going to be the next Warren Buffet anytime soon.
POW have a solid diverse portfolio and this will be a slower burner but the price of commodities are on the up and you would have to assume based on demand/supply that the interest in UK junior companies will return at some point too. POW are hedging their bets across multiple commodities. They have licenced ground in world class jurisdictions and in some cases with a stone throw of known mineral deposits. Market sentiment could swing to the upside here any moment. When it does so, POW have a stack full of equities in other junior exploration companies as well as many planned IPOs. When sentiment rises, the value of POWs investments rise and so does its balance sheet.
Made me laugh the other day when you were moaning about a 2,000m drill programme being announced at Tati. That is far more active than most UK junior exploration companies. This is to run along side a 2,600m Molopo diamond drill programme, Athabasca spring/summer exploration and a 1,000m diamond drill programme in the Aussie planned IPO.
What did you want? a 25,000m diamond drill programme costing several millions? I think you are investing in the wrong space if you want that sort of programme. The tiny cap junior exploration space is all about utilising the small amount of funds that you have. If the 2,000m programme is a success then it gives you options, if it fails (like most do) it still gives you options. If a 25,000m programme fails you have no options because you have blown your finances to smithereens.
Any placing funds are always utilised well within POW in my opinion. 90% goes into exploration and it always has done. A circa £16mil balance sheet now vs a £20mil market cap. Thats the market currently pricing Molopo, Tati and Athabasca (all which will be active in 2023) plus a lot more directly owned POW assets at just £4mil. This to me is as much of a bargain as it was at 0.85p in August when I filled my boots. I would happily do so again at these prices if I had the capital.
Seriously no idea why you are still invested Roger. If I had your attitude towards the stock I am invested in I would have just moved on by now.
If you could point out 25 other UK junior exploration companies all doing +500% in a month whilst POW were static at these levels then I would fully understand your frustrations. All UK junior exploration companies are struggling with the exception of the odd few.
You are aware that you are invested in a non-cash generating high risk business? How many other UK junior exploration companies valued at sub £25mil have a huge influx of income coming into the business bank account? The answer is pretty much zero, hence why they are valued at these levels.
POW are raising money now to develop their directly held assets, how else would they do this at this stage? Do you want POW to just sit on their hands? No .... so it is their only option in the short term. The other arm of the business is all about getting a chunks of equity whilst stock prices are low with the hope of holding it into a strong bull cycle in our sector. That isn't "clever accounting", that's "balanced risk management" which allows POW access to multiple favourable finance streams. Not many on AIM buy equities in other companies because they want cash in the bank to pay director salaries for example.
POW are building something that could be self-sustainable and very attractive in the future. Its high-risk but unique and the potential is off the scale but ultimately it could all come to being worth nothing. Maybe they get some fantastic results at Molopo shortly and the share price does in fact move swift upwards, Tati was a great first campaign and the SP hardly moved because sentiment in the sector is just poor. Athabasca and the Victoria Goldfields landgrabs look superb on paper but again the markets just are not bothered at the minute. Things change quickly in this sector as many would have experiences both to the upside and downside. Any return to a positive sentiment in this sector would see many eyes on POW with their portfolio exposure.
P.S it's Jan 2023 right now and there are only 14 days left .... I can't see your moaning stopping in the next fortnight so I agree with you on your last point.
Whilst it all feels a little quieter than normal in POW, below is a a quick list detailing what areas of the POW business we should hear news on by the middle of 2023:
- Molopo - Initial assays (PJ confirmed will be released in batches due to multiple holes)
- Molopo – Further drill programme to be announced if the above assays are good.
- Tati – More info on next drill programme and commencement of the drill programme
- Athabasca – Uranium exploration to potentially commence in Spring/Summer 2023
- ION Resources – Commercial updates to come regarding the Lithium & Graphite assets.
- Golden Metal Resources – IPO to go live & drilling in 2023. POW with circa 50% post IPO
- First Development Resources – IPO to go live & drilling in 2023. POW with circa 40% post IPO
- New Ballarat Gold Corp – Gold drilling results at Berringa Mine to land around Spring 2023.
- Uranium Energy Exploration – IPO to go live. POW with circa 50-55% post IPO.
- New Aussie IPO (Containing the old Wilan project) – IPO to go live in Q2 2023 possibly on the Australian markets. POW with 20% pre-IPO.
- Haneti – Next Steps to be announced
- Silver Peaks – Next Steps to be announced
- Quarterly Update Q4 2022 – Most likely to be released week commencing Monday 16th Jan.
- Year End Accounts (YE 30/09/2022) – Most likely to be released in March 2023.
- AGM – Most likely to take place at the end March 2023.
- Appointment of more board members and chairman.
- Highly likely to be several acquisitions and disposals regarding the POW portfolio in 2023.
"Big question is. What's underneath and around that sample given that it was from surface rock sample."
Take a look at the entirety of the New Ballarat Gold Corp licenced ground. It is very very impressive the exploration land the company now owns. They are right in the thick of multiple gold occurrences as well as several major mines.
I guess the market just isn't taking it seriously yet. Could be because POW only have 49.9%, could be the fact that RRR hold the other 50.1% or could be the fact that the IPO is not live yet so drilling funding is going to be limited in the short term. Either way it is a very solid looking proposition.
RRR clearly do not have the same work ethic as POW and with RRR being the majority holder of this IPO, it is clearly the reason why the IPO has not advanced in the slightest over the past 18 months.
ECR minerals currently have a £10mil market cap and they hold far less Victoria Goldfields licenced ground than NBGC do.
Worth noting that everything is being packaged up under ION Resources. This will make life much easier when disposing or spinning out the assets into an IPO.
PJ has voiced many times that Golden Metal Resources was a nightmare to get "IPO ready" due to the projects being held in multiple different holding companies across the globe.
Picking up assets on the cheap again whilst the market is in a down phase. Commodities prices starting to look hot again and once sentiment picks up in the junior exploration space, POW are very well positioned with multiple 100% owned assets and a bag full of shares in several listed companies.
A financially savvy long-term play here .... just so many investor don't want to look past the end of the day at the moment unfortunately!