Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
So in theory FM would know the outcome by now, although bushveld would not have been the lead company in the consortium. Nothing seems to have leaked about this one either way, including who led the bid. Didn’t someone put up a list of prospective bidders, although I’m going back about two years at least
In the operational updates the company quotes the average price on the metals market. We do not get the companies selling price until the financial reports are issued. This contains both the price realised over the year and profit margin based on operational cost and any extras, admin, etc. to go on top.
These extras are not usually known until the financial year is complete, although a $7/$8 figure has been used in the past. We may get some information on this in the H1 report. The broker forecast for this year is to average $45 a kilo.
Dates fine in the RNS, although the large discrepancy between the Shareholders information as published on the company website and the information now released needs addressing. Duferco clearly did not have 55 million shares at the end of March.
I’ve just had a quick look at these and I’m going to crunch some of the numbers as they do not seem right, a few people have picked up on this.
Duferco should have informed the company once they had gone below the 5% threshold which was now almost 4 months ago. I commented at the time when they reported they had offloaded 10 million shares from the original 65 million that this threshold had been breached. Likewise for the 4% and 3%.
These figures do not tie up with what the company have reported for the shareholder Holdings. They have Duferco at 55 million shares at the end of February yet this states that they had 49 million the day after? Then 14 million were sold in three days? I’m going to look at these in detail
Not sure why some of that was croPped, hopefully starting with HL
Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Mgt 264017047 247999165 16017882
Interactive Investor 231574279 225880426 5693853
Halifax Share Dealing 135441272 132574880 2866392
Orange Trust 72322657 72322657 0
A J Bell Securities 66911259 64360968 2550291
Grafton Commodity Trading Limited 55178573 55178573 0
Acacia Resources 45595938 45595938 0
Barclays Wealth 44702071 42576470 2125601
Bushveld Minerals Ltd Director & Related Holding(s) 26365089 26365089 0
942108185 912854166 29254019
I hope this reads ok. Crunched the Feb and March shareholder numbers based on the top 9. First figure March, second figure February, third figure difference. Difference is a gain of just under 30 million shares in March on Nominees. I believe most of them are unreported Duferco (Grafton) sales. Could even be more. That would bring the Duferco total down to circa 25 million at the end of March. Get chasing Grafton FM.
Grafton Commodity Trading Limited 55178573 55178573 0
Acacia Resources 45595938 45595938 0
Barclays Wealth 44702071 42576470 2125601
Bushveld Minerals Ltd Director & Related Holding(s) 26365089 26365089 0
942108185 912854166 29254019
If they continue selling at 20 million a month then they will be finished in four weeks time, by the end of May. I estimated that they were down to less than 30 million at this point, but it could be far less than that depending on what they’ve shifted in April. Hey there are certainly the big professional traders churning shares which muddies the waters, and there are also certainly people selling out. So if the same number of sales are achieved in April as in March, the Virchow could be left with less than 20 million now.
The company had to reissue its February list due to Duferco not informing them of the ten million sold that month. List initially published mid-Feb and reissued a week later which then included the Feb sales of ten million for Duferco. Went from 66 to 55 million.
I believe the same thing has happened again. Duferco selling about 20 million in March and not informing the company. This now shows as an anomaly on the share register. Those missing 20 million are now showing up on nominees accounts , Hargreaves is showing an extra 17 million shares, ii an extra 6 million. We can only see the top nine. This needs rectifying.
And I believe the Duferco failed to inform the company. And I estimate approximately 20 million shares have been gained by the major nominees. I would put that down to Duferco which means they will have been down to about 35 million by the end of March. I think they will have gone under 30 million by now.
I’ve taken two screenshots in April. Both are the same and the figures , for the nominees at least, are all different from the figures updated today. I did check earlier today and they had not changed, the update must have been done this afternoon/evening. But definitely different. Barclays now 44 mil from 42 mil. I estimate that the listed nominees have collectively gained over 20 million shares. They have come from somewhere
The problem is that “letting others in” has got to eventually translate into a better share price for pi’s, otherwise the only beneficiaries are going to be those let in and recipient’s of free shares. You then get the traders (pro’s and others) trying to work their own agenda within this which adds to the volatility, the net result is that the convergence of all these makes it that much harder for the average pi to reap any rewards.
I have always said that any share scheme should be a linked to share performance, however there is not a cat in hells chance of that happening here. And I believe the management sells in February last year had a very negative effect on the SP, it’s all still there for everyone to see. AIM runs on sentiments, damage that and it very difficult to regain it. Certainly not impossible but takes a lot longer.
The use of social media (Twitter in particular) has risen greatly in recent years. Five years ago there was hardly any mention of this company on Twitter. It would seem these days most of the activity is there. Its quite interesting to see the various agendas being promoted, there is certainly misinformation out there and even some cases what would be called fake news. Part of the dyor should include dyor on the research itself.
I don’t believe Duferco are selling at the minute, I think their bottom price is around 11 but we await the shareholding figures for March. Another problem here is the they don’t seem to be informing the company in a timely manner. Or maybe its the company just slow to react. We will probably never know for certain.
There are no doubt ongoing supply issues but I doubt that is the reason for the low sp. Whether the shipment data is light or just a lack of orders at present remains to be seen. The shareholders register is still to be updated from February but having someone with a finger on the sell button certainly impacts the sp directly. I think at this moment in time Duferco have eased off as its below their minimum sell threshold which I believe could be around 11.
The revised shareholder list is also ‘imminent’. It was updated on the 21st last month. We will get an indication of how much Duferco have sold down in March. They held 55 million shares at the end of February. I believe the Q1 operational update will come out next week. The company did promise more timely releases of this information now that they are not bundling it with other updates , not that there was too much else going on.
Pdub. The Duferco sales are being reported to the company. There was a 10 million drop reported, albeit late, for February. The holding as of end of February was 55 million, about 4.5%. We await news of what they sold in March.
I would expect it around the 20th. Certainly by the end of that week based on recent patterns. The company were rightfully getting grief for the time taken to release these, sometimes seven weeks after quarter end. I would urge caution though on the impact this may have on the SP. These are not financial statements but operational statements. The price of vanadium which there is almost a blind obsession with, did not spike up until the Ukrainian invasion towards the end of February. There is also a price lag with it.
If people are looking for some news that could have a more stronger impact on the SP I would suggest look out for the revised shareholder list, also due out in the next couple of weeks or so. If this shows a substantial decrease in the deferco holding, then we could see their departure in a matter of weeks. That would remove the major anchor at present on the SP.
The Chinese do not have any sanctions with Russia and are trading* normally as are a lot of other countries. No doubt the Chinese are taking advantage of the.situation. Each country has its own list of sanctions, EU countries are aligned on some. The more obvious one is Germany still buying billions of dollars worth of gas.
https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/SANCTIONS/byvrjenzmve/
The sanctions are only being carried out by a limited number of countries, basically EU, UK, USA, Canada, Aus/NZ and a few others. Africa, China, Asia are still trading with Russia and I expect that Russian vanadium, and other precious metals is still being sold to these markets, and any slack probably taken up. Some things will be more adversely affected than others.