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what is the bet that patrick has ****ed somebody high up off in that part of the world by suing them? then they think right we don’t like this guy, let’s cook something up and throw some mud in his face so he knows who he is messing with. just my speculation…

i have seen something like that recently with another company suing an african state, they got a high profile mercenary to conduct dialogue for them…

It’s trading like some good news is about to drop. Anyone monitoring any cases of interest?

Having done a lot of hard work, stock is now rising on much smaller volumes as sellers have flushed out and the share register is much more aligned to what it is a special situation investment…

With any luck a ruling by the tribunal prior to the end of the year.

At the pointy end of the stick here now…

Someone called them out publicly. Good to see:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ascent-resources-plc_amount-of-electricity-needed-to-power-worlds-activity-7316072130578714626-_lZL?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAADUOdVwB0uTsnorrr1STM5DqkHoGQiCkcTU

Looks at the comments and you should get a laugh…

Well it looks like Andrew Dennan has done something investors actually like over at Guardian Metals:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7315643399829663744/

don't you all now wish that project was in this entity?

Page 2

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tr8ybtZbkC7ETJsdB8phkp2mWGbLeQXV/view

The quartet from hell is an apt description…

Fund 1 did what it was supposed to do and shield us from the majority of the loss. How I crave for fund 3 where we only take on 10% of the risk directly!

This is a great example of the limitations of fair value accounting. All the smartest minds say you are onto a winner, but the panel of arbitrators have other ideas! Cash accounting is and always will be king. Until a judgement has been made, I am ware of any write-ups beyond the discount rate applied…

Yes investor relations a bit lacking here…

Really hoping the arbitration pays off here. Getting more company updates through the ICSID page than LSE news flow…

The other thing i had forgotten about, and others have probably not appreciated is the fact that Ascent was successful in obtaining after the event insurance.

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/AST/slovenia-ect-claim-ate-insurance-contracted/16136546

This is a second, independent set of eyes willing to risk their own capital on a case where they will take a loss if it is not successful.

Knowing how these are structured, lets say you think you want coverage for £3M in the event of a loss. They will ask for a premium of ~15% of that amount up-front, say £450k. Then, upon success there is a deferred contingent premium of approximately ~35% of the amount you wanted coverage for (so total premium of ~50% of the insured amount).

If Ascent is not successful, the insurer only gets the premium of £450k and then has to pay the adverse costs of £3M. Again they have vetted the merits of the case and were prepared to take that risk on, with information that you and i do not have access to.

luck will play a part, but willing to have a crack!

More updates on ICSID website

Could the hearing be as soon as next week? My senses tell me it’s imminent. Ascent should release an RNS to confirm dates, the dates would have been agreed to a couple of years back, and surely it’s set in stone now..

Admittedly Kenj i was not a shareholder back in 2020 so getting up to speed on the full sequence of events a little difficult with the amount of material that needs to be covered! I believe you are referring to this release:

https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/ascent_resources/news/rns/story/xpl2pmw

the question to be asked, is it typical for a stimulation to require the submission of a full EIA, or was this a case of Ascent being discriminated against as a foreign investor. What happened in the past when other operators of this field went to stimulate their wells? Was AST treated differently? I'm sure that the litigation funders looked at exactly that. Anyway this decision will be made by the 3 arbitrators accordingly.

Frustratingly though, AST now supposedly owns a producing natural gas asset in the USA. Nat Gas prices at multi year highs, you would think a great time to promote your story but its so quiet on this front. An operational update is overdue. Having owned a stake in the gas processing plant for what must be more than 12 months, can't say i have seen a real update on it since...

I play these legal situations almost routinely. AST is one of the ones i really liked compared to many others, but i always run the risk that i could be wrong. If it passes my smell test, i will give it a crack and AST does that for me.

Why is it a good BET? This is a project that was not based off a feasibility study, the gas field was shown to be commercially successful over many decades, so you are not going to run into the sorts of issues that Odyssey Marine Exploration did in their case against Mexico (have a look at that case outcome, OMEX won but not much - https://www.ciel.org/third-party-funder-is-the-only-winner-in-odyssey-marine-explorations-suit-against-mexico/)

Ability to claim back revenues won in litigation? if i reinterpret your question to be "ability to recover lost profits through litigation" look no further than GreenX metals V Poland. They have been awarded a substantial sum of money (lost profits) for exactly this, and this was a project that was yet to be built, so yes very possible. But i have a good fallback position here where if AST is only successful in getting an award for their sunk costs, i still make good money.

the crux of it all is that i have access to very little information here, but the litigation funder has information asymmetry, and they are risking their own money for a cut of the proceeds. That is the external validation i am after. If the litigation funder makes a killing (they are first in line), i will do bloody well to. The rest just comes down to a bit of luck and position sizing.

playing this space requires a lot of patience, patience that longer term people would not have (understandably so), but that impatience or lack of understanding creates the opportunity that i love. We are approaching the pointy end here...

Https://icsid.worldbank.org/cases/case-database/case-detail?CaseNo=ARB/22/21

"March 3, 2025. The Tribunal holds a pre-hearing organizational meeting with the parties by videoconference."

must be about to go for the big hearing soon considering both parties have now filed their second lots of evidence.

Had the business been operating on the old accounting method of cash accounting, this kind of result would probably have resulted in a positive NPAT.

Pretty poor trading update to be frank here. Expect better from the team...

Looks like they scored a win here, but did not announce yesterday:

https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2024/2024fca1472

To be clear, I have CONFIRMED, this was a fund 1 investment

To flesh out a little more. Fund 1 is for a total size of US$150M. Therefore under the 5% single investment cap, the fund can invest no more than US7.5M in any one particular case. If you equate that into AUD terms, you are looking at ~$11M per single case (estimating FX rates).

So as for QLD energy class action, fund 1 invests its maximum of $11M, LCM co-funds its share and then picks up the balance once fund exposure cap is reached, currently seeing us commit ~$25M (or 69% of the case). Great if you backed the winner, not so great if its a loser. I am led to believe LCM almost "anticipated" this outcome, and were ready to appeal.

The flip side to this, is that the GRX outcome is going to be better for LCM shareholders than i would have previously anticipated. GRX have currently drawn down on US$11.2M of their funding facility. Once again if the fund is capped to investing US$7.5M, then LCM shareholders have picked up the balance of US$3.7M, equating to 33% of the funding package (not the 25% i previously assumed). In addition to that, if GRX draw down any further on that facility to get the job done, they will be drawing on funds from LCM and not the fund...

I learnt something here today. Each of the funds have a 5% maximum exposure limit to any one case. So this case required a very large cash spend, so LCM has to pick up the tab for the balance over the 5% fund exposure. Hence LCM exposure was large (too large for my comfort in hindsight). Had this been a win (and it might still be, look at Katy Perry example where we won original ruling but lost on appeal), we get a bigger cut of the reward. As the funds get bigger, the 5% exposure limit gets less and less significant.

Again hindsight, but this would have been a great example of where a secondary market transaction would be highly beneficial to shareholders for the sake of portfolio diversification.