Righto buddy bonders is lithium back if MMS tip and dirt in the
bloody Mount Holland crusher it must be that must be.
Is that a bloody clear signal? MMS have a look at this.
Rinse the ROM contract for Mount Holland rock Breakers.
Look at this. Jeez that's a freaking sexy
loader. Good work MMS, good to see
people like W farmers. Taking action, understanding how
to make money is to use the right contract.
Yeah, well done. You could tell blue chip
companies, you know, they do the right thing.
I. Think with him back yet though.
But you know this is this is a balance sheet to write.
Today this could, this could wipe out every other producer
potentially, right? So you wouldn't believe it.
We're probably talking about min res today also got.
It's like you wouldn't have picked it, would ya?
No, they haven't been in the headline.
Probably do it first too. Yeah, Yeah, right.
You've got a you've got an interesting Kiwi project going
on with the Siren Gold Federation thing.
Mate, this is right up my alley, you know, yeah, bit of a bit of
hostility, bit of contested acquisition of sorts.
I like it how you said that. Yeah, I like it.
What else we got? We got Paladin's Quarterly, West
Gold's could a bit of IGI missed a couple, but lucky or unlucky.
Then however you view it, let's start with men Rez.
What have we got today? A bit of an announcement, 1
pager from the company with you'd say a bit of a different
tone to last week. Take it away and let's dissect
what's going on in this. Well, one of you would say one
of it's one of the biggest stories in corporate Australia
that we've seen for a while, you'd say.
Absolutely. Apparently on the East Coast,
everyone's concerned with the Richard White because it's all
of the gossip of the, you know, Sydney, the Sydney, you know,
elites. But here mate, this is this is
important. One min Rez doesn't make it on
the Mamma Mia podcast. I don't.
Think actually, disappointingly, the West is like nowhere to be
seen on the reporting of this might have something to do with
the fact that, you know, it's a bit advertised, big advertised,
but anyway. Yeah, so the the good friends we
got at the Finn dust off the old word personality again.
I think we were a Jew, Jew, one of them.
Like you say Maddie, big, big story.
I reckon this is one of the biggest ones in our world for
for quite some time. And yeah, we actually we
actually haven't spoken about it since last Monday and quite a
bit more water has gone under the bridge since then.
So most most notably the the stock price is down 25 odd
percent the Friday before the news came out.
So that's sort of a week and a half ago now close to 46 bucks.
Now last time I looked closer to 34 bucks.
That is a that's a pretty hefty drop in just a week.
So I think the the key talking points for us are the the
Company Announcement like you said today, the one pager, the
latest news, a lot of that coming out of the AFR plus what
we think is going to happen next.
I think a few people might be came to hear the the uneducated
or maybe partially educated thoughts we have on on that
topic. I suppose interesting when you
say it did drop back, remember it like it did go down to 30
bucks and then there was the you know, all the China news even on
the back of lithium not doing too much, which saw it go back
up to 50. So it's sort of I even after all
this back to where it started after the initial drop when
there was the. Aussie Super was buying on the
way up and now they're selling. Also saw actually the the short
position, the natural position dropped a bit over the past week
or so. So that's sort of spiked up to
like 12 1/2 percent of shares on issue now closer to 10, which is
kind of an interesting side note.
But so we'll kick things off. Last week around mid last week
again, there was reporting done by Neil Chenawerth at the AFR.
This was regarding a company called Halfway Bay Station.
So it's a property just South of Queenstown in New Zealand and
there's a company of the of the same name.
This is Co owned by Chris Ellison and Tim Roberts who was
a former board member of Mineral Resources, a 7525% split.
They allegedly bought machinery below market value from a
mineral Resources subsidiary. This transaction was approved by
the former MINS chair Peter Wade who was involved in those
earlier transactions with Far East.
Those allegations that was initially put forward by Neil
Chenoweth. Saturday a week ago, Tim Roberts
came out in a statement and said at no time was plant and
equipment purchased at undervalued from a subsidiary of
Mineral Resources. Followed up and said at no time
did I request Minres to supply plant and equipment at a
discount. Now, part of the reason this
came to light was the whistleblowing by Steve Picotso.
This guy's the former procurement boss at Minrez.
He was sacked for misconduct in 2022.
Minrez followed up that sacking by suing him for contract
breach. He in turn sued Minrez for
unfair dismissal. And this case is sort of subject
to a lot of suppression orders, so it's pretty light on details.
I think he he was the whistleblower and then the
details of his whistleblowing were subject to suppression
orders and have struggled to make their way to light.
I think that is right because that was pretty, you know,
pretty widely reported at the time as well.
In 2022, we saw articles in the West in the fin of this guy.
I forgot. So leaving and having a bit of a
spat with the company. Are those court those court
cases ongoing or were they? I'm not.
Sure. It's been pretty minimally
reported, to be honest. I think like Sydney Morning
Herald are the only ones that are still, like, talking about
it. Yeah, yeah.
So that kind of brings us that kind of brings us to today's
announcement. And so in a nutshell, you've got
an update on the investigation. Mints has been queried by the
ASX as well. They said they'll address that
separately and shortly. Additionally, Mints will advise
the market read the the conclusions that the board comes
up with by November 4th. So that's one week.
They've also engaged Herbert Smith Free Mills, the previously
unnamed law firm. Now, it was sort of reported by
one group that these guys came into the fold late last year,
although another source challenged this, saying it was
only a few months ago. So it was a bit of a a bit of
disagreement on when they were exactly pulled in the.
Interesting thing JD was that McGraw and Nicola are now being
like put in the mix too. So you know clearly some
forensic accounting kind of assessing like your storage
transactions and everything is is going in.
Yeah. And I also mentioned the general
Counsel, without actually naming them.
Another detail is that Chris Ellison is on planned leave.
And lastly, the board said that they're also now working to
resolve inconsistencies in what's being reported by the
media. So it's a sort of expansion of
the investigation that's been underway.
So I think the first thing that that's understands out that we
should chat about, guys is the change in tone, the kind of
change in language. There's no longer that full
support for Mr Ellison and his leadership, those words gone
that that really stands out. I'm not sure if you guys had
different thoughts on that matter, but just reading the the
relatively brief one page they come up with today, it's it
strikes quite a different tone. And the fact that they said by
Monday, November 4th next week, there will be effectively what
the decision is going forward of, I assume mostly in regards
to Mr Ellison himself and the position within the company.
Yeah, keep in mind that the they were scheduled to do their
quarterly, I can't remember what day was, but they pushed it back
to the very last day of the month.
So it's now a normally report before Pilbara and now reporting
after on the on the 31st Halloween then and then shortly
after that you've got the 4th of November where this information
is all due. So yeah, there's a, yeah,
interesting confluence of sort of circumstances ahead on the
timing perspective. I agree with you JD that the
wording was different. It was probably still like,
yeah, I wouldn't describe it as like as as as as a strong
position by the board. I would probably just describe
it as like a reactionary position by the board given you
know the external pressure both from clearly the media but also
even ASX have have given them a please explain with a bunch of
questions I've got to type up and now relates to the ASX too.
Yeah, I'm I'm in agreeance with you there mate.
The the word strong wouldn't be the first ones that that come to
mind reading this response. I think they've bought
themselves a bit more time, but you know, they've they've got
the clock ticking now. They've only got one week to go.
There was also interestingly, no mention of, you know, in
quotation marks, private tax matters.
That's how they addressed it a week ago.
It it's clearly not that. And that leads, you know, my
part to a couple more questions. Given the timing of when the
board knew about these Far East related dealings, it seems like
they had known for a while, which makes me sort of pose the
question, why did they call it just a private tax matter last
Monday given everything that gone on?
And yeah, just hoping they address that point when they
come out next week and report on it.
And I think again, you know, credit to, to Neil in the
reporting he's done. He, he summarised it in another
article late last week quite well, just sort of putting 2
questions forward to the board, 2 core questions as he put it.
Firstly being when did the board find out about these events and
following that up with why didn't they tell shareholders at
the time? And you know, I think that's a
nice and succinct way of putting the, you know, the, the huge
amount of questions that a lot of people would have forward to
the board, very keen to sort of see what they come up with on
that front. But like you say, Maddie, the,
the announcement we're kind of leading to is what is the future
hold for Chris Ellison? And this sort of ties in with an
article we saw over the weekend from the Australian's data room
column. They floated around the idea of
a, a circuit breaker, as they called it, and they referenced
the situation that's happened at Wise Tech, the Aussie tech
company Different, but you know, quite similar.
And ultimately what they ended up doing was changing the role
of their founder. The stock bounced back 12% on
the day. Now he's still at the company in
a sort of consult consulting role, earning I think $1,000,000
a year. So it's it's not all that bad.
Mind you, the guy's worth close to $15 billion.
But that circuit breaker is something that the market really
liked. And you can see by the way the
the stock rebounded, their stock had equally peeled off 25 plus
percent over the week. Now, when it comes to kind of
potential replacements that the Australian puts forward, they've
got a few interesting names. I'd love to hear what you guys
kind of think. I think I've got my own views on
it, but Andrew Cole, Sandy Biswas and Nevada Power, I find
all of them very much long shots.
I don't know why they would put their hat in the ring here, but
what do you guys kind of reckon on that point?
I wouldn't put much weight to either of them.
Throw a gown into run. Mean Reds?
No. Pretty.
Unlikely. That brings back the question
who? Who is going to put their name
in the ring? I don't know.
I think you don't necessarily like have have someone else
lined up like the the board will have a decision, does Bill stay
or does Bill go And I don't actually think you will have a
candidate lined up at the point. You feel like Chris?
Yeah, now we know who you want to put in there.
Trap that was leading to my bit. Keep it in there.
That's fucking hilarious. Yeah, I mean, that's the
elephant in the room. And that one's done a done a few
rumours. But I wonder how much of that,
you know, people on the long side trying to push, trying to,
you know, create a bit of an outcome for min raise going
forward to throw develop into min raise and bill run the PO
Bill Bayment run the pro forma. But it's where the bill wants to
do that, is the You'd have to ask him, I'd reckon I.
Reckon probably more is probably more wishful thinking from the
fundies. Like you say, Maddie, it's that
would seem like a bit of AI think he'd run a process.
I think you would if you if you'd if the board comes to a
decision that Chris has got to go, you say, OK, we're running a
proper process for a replacement.
Like, yeah. I think wouldn't, wouldn't you,
But you don't have to do you but like by by what by shareholders
would it be like you have to you would have to actually run a
proper process or not or you don't have to.
I just think this is a board that is under pressure to prove
that they're doing the like, governance by the book.
And I think governance by the book in this instance is not to
have, you know, some anointed person run the on the performer.
It's actually to source the best candidate from as far and wide
as you can. Yeah.
I also think Maddie to that to that question.
I remember reading a bunch back sort of about 10 years ago when
Uber had a a debacle as well, you know, famous founder leaving
and what what stood out, what in the reading there was that the
person coming in has a lot of power by drawing out the
process. Minres is in in pain and it's
it's not a good look for them. So for them negotiating their
own comp package, those sorts of things, their incentive
structures, once they get in place, not signing the dotted
line, you know, in in one week's time, hypothetically is a is a
smarter way to kind of go about it for them.
And you know, on the flip side of that, they'll be strongly
incentivized then to have the best outcome for min rays and
themselves, whoever that might be.
It's just a a side thought on the on the topic there.
Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't rule it out completely, but you
know something, something is going to have to happen.
But to, to make that happen, that's a lot of that ain't the
next week Jobby like you got to roll something, you got to do a
scheme or, or whatever and actually implement it.
Like it's not a it's a there'd be if like, and that's the
thing, there's a lot of ifs here.
It's all like it's, it's, it's allegations.
It's nothing's been proven yet. Nothing has been decided yet.
And there'd be a, if it was, there'd be a big interim period
before something like that would be able to happen because
there's so many moving parts to make it that way.
But it's, but as, as we said, this is completely separate to
the weight prices and financial pressure like 2 separate issues
into what? Yeah, yeah.
It's the management premiums gone.
It has. Yeah.
I think we might have been getting ahead of ourselves.
The better question to ask is, should Chris go?
Does he need to go? Does the board need to send him
on his way or does it depend? Yeah, my, I mean, my view with
everything that's come out is that him leaving would be the
right thing to do. I mean, like, who am I to kind
of comment on what Chris Ellison has built?
He's done a phenomenal job, you know, but if you're picking to
back a founder LED company or not, I'd always go like out of
the two always go founder. He's done a a really incredible
job. But I just think everything
that's kind of come out and how damaging it's been for the
company. And again it's that point of the
allegations put forward. So if they are proven to be true
that it was money that would have been profit of Minres went
into the pocket of that Far East entity, then I think the outcome
would be that he has to leave. But you know, with the with the
caveat of that has to be proven and you know, that needs to be
presented to the market. Daddy, what do you reckon?
Oh yeah, completely agree with you.
Essentially like it's yeah, innocent until proven guilty.
But the, the, the timeline to prove these things is usually
very, very, very elongated. But will they make a decision to
retain him during that process and trying out why the
potential, you know, PR that has on the company?
Yeah, I would think not. But the one thing I'd I'd add in
there is that what's been reported is that he went to the
Ato, you know, a session essentially in admittance that
this had happened. So it would just need to be that
those, you know, those documents are shared so people can see
like ASIC and others can see what happened.
Like these things. Yeah, like you say, generally do
take a long time, but it does appear from from what Neil's
sort of reported it at the Fin that a lot of this has sort of
been written in stone already in the past.
So yeah, again, we're in a bit of the dark on that one, but
that's kind of how I see it at the moment.
Was was the the lightest 1, the New Zealand, the New Zealand
side of it? Was that, was that disclosed to
the ITO as part of you said or was that just the Far East side
that was disclosed to the IT discussed with the ITI from?
How I understood it, that wasn't included in the previous docs
because that didn't have the same tax avoidance nature to it.
It was just dealing with a min raise subsidiary.
Yeah, yeah. And then this is what happens
when the the the all the outlets are hyper focused on this except
the West, as you said, but that new things keep coming up. 100%,
I think that's the fear you have as yeah, a shareholder, blah,
blah, blah, blah is the moment the spotlight is shone on some
things. You're worried that this is the
tip of the iceberg. And what's beneath the iceberg
is that is more is more stuff that can surface.
And that's been the pattern so far since the first kind of
investigative piece from Neil is like every day or every two
days, there's something new that emerges.
And I wouldn't be surprised to see more come out and I wouldn't
be surprised to see the severity of the things that come out
escalate. Yeah.
So I think the the last thing just to sort of pass comment on
is how proxies and major shareholders will see the
situation. So they were the Super funds,
obviously a big deal on the ASX were holding circa 30% of the
business. And the Chairman, James
Mcclements has been reportedly going around speaking to the
institutional shareholders. The likes of L1 Aussie Supers we
touched on earlier early are there and just trying to ease
their fears over the governments within the business.
Also been reported a couple months ago that ownership
matters. They they hadn't been happy.
That's spoken out in the past there.
Of course, a big proxy advisor and in and amongst the dates we
spoke about with the, the quarterly, the timeline the
board has put on themselves. You've also got the AGM coming
up on November 1st. So I think you'd be paying
pretty short odds that there'd be a fair few votes against a
couple resolutions. Ones that kind of stand out is
the adoption of the R.E.M. Report and the approval of a
grant for the grant of securities to Chris Ellison.
You know, this is a way for shareholders to air their
discontent with the business. Ultimately that voting against
these things might not lead to a huge outcome, but it'd just be
kind of interesting to see which way the proxies are voting and
therefore the institutional shareholders are voting on the
matter. Yeah, I reckon, I actually
reckon that the, the performance rights to to Alison will get
withdrawn before the IGMI. Just think they'll be in, you
know, amendment. Yeah, could, could be on the
money on that one. I don't think it's.
A good look, yeah. But the other thing I just want
to say to them, any of the money miners, if you're, if you've got
any information that we should be aware of, feel free to send
it through to us.jc@moneymine.com, but be very
curious. Absolutely.
I think we'll wrap that one by saying LEGC is a shareholder.
Ding, Ding, Ding. Ding Ding Ding.
We'll we'll strictly Fact Check it.
Absolutely. Right trap.
Next up, Sauron Goldmat. What is going on in Go Go the
All Blacks? Go the All Blacks yeah, Sauron
gold there in ASX listed Yeah, New Zealand gold kind of
exploration hopeful. It's the second time in two
weeks that Sauron Gold has has disclosed that the superior
offer has come on their table just hours before a shareholder
meeting to vote on. And a great deal already.
So in in this case, you know, both times it's been with with
rural Gold. But the story gets interesting
because I might even end up making my way to the shareholder
vote this afternoon at 3:00 PM. Ought to be rude not to,
wouldn't it? It would.
I'll do the edit, it's all. Good and the the Siren
shareholders they're they're scheduled to vote on the
transaction with this TSXV listed rural gold.
The only problem is that Aussie super backed Federation mining
wants them to do a different deal.
The whole conundrum actually reminds me a little bit of the
Battle for Leonora where there was a hostile kind of scenario
for the Leonora assets and at the time it appeared St Barbara
management were pretty wedded to selling to Genesis instead of
Silver Lake. You were publicly disclosing
that they wanted to potentially pay more.
It was still conditional in this case, Siren Gold really wants to
sell their reefs and project to rural gold.
Meanwhile Federation Mining wants them to keep it and
instead be the vehicle that kind of RT OS Federation to list onto
the ASX. And this is this is particularly
interesting because Federation Mining isn't listed themselves.
So unlike Silver Lake in the president I just mentioned
Federation, they can't exactly put out an ASX announcement
about their bid. Instead, the details have found
their way to the AFR twice. So it it appears to me that you
know, deal makers on the federation side are, are are
frustrated at the lack of engagement from Siren and the
the media is is the way to put the pressure on them.
That I'll play book I that'll play been around forever will be
for the rest of time an. Initial deal with Rua was
agreed. Then kind of two weeks ago it
emerged in the IFR that Federation had an alternative
deal penned to Siren that they weren't getting much engagement
on. Then hours before Siren,
shareholders were actually meant to vote on the deal with Rua.
Rua, it appeared, had lifted their bid and and this Siren
shareholder meeting got postponed.
Imagine that the lift was sort of to butt out.
Any chance that the the other deal was a bit better?
And now it appears Federation has also lifted their bid.
But Siren's board is kind of adamant that, you know, the
rural transactions, the better one.
And they kind of refuse to, to, to engage or, or postpone the
vote, which is happening today as at the time we're recording,
you know, this podcast. So what?
What are the two? Explain the two bids.
Which ones? Yeah.
Different, better, worse. Yeah.
In a nutshell, the best bid from Rural Gold, which is the one
being kind of voted on by Siren shareholders at 3:00 PM Perth
time today, would have Siren selling their reefs and project
for about $20 million in cash and mostly script in Rua.
Effectively, Siren would end up owning 30% of Rua gold for
offloading their reefs and project, but they'd still retain
their Sam's Creek project. The latest bid from Federation
on the other hand though, it would be an, an RTO where SORN
shareholders end up actually owning 17.5% of the pro forma.
That includes Federation Mining and Federation Mining.
That's like a much more advanced, they've got reserves,
they've got, you know, development down down to the ore
body. They still need to build a mill,
but Aussie soup is there and can can kind of write a cheque to
help underwrite the the CapEx required to actually see that
through. Yeah.
So, so why do you, why do you think they're actually not
entertaining this Federation deal, which sounds compelling?
Yeah, I think the compelling part of the Federation deal,
it's like 17.5% is a pretty big uplift from where the first
offer that was sort of leaked was.
It's like a 70% uplift. But it's it's kind of the the
vehicle like Federation being RTO, having Aussie super sort of
back it having a pathway to actually being production in
this kind of gold market. It's kind of interesting, yeah.
Like I, I think you can eat your heart out with the with theories
on on why it hasn't been entertained and a lot of sort of
common sense theories might be the right theories to to go
with. You know, the board is putting
forward the conditionality of the of the federation offer as a
as a reason, one of the reasons why, you know, it's not up to
scratch, but like every offer is conditional on undue diligence,
of course. And I think what, what sirens
board should be doing right now is deferring the vote with real
gold. But call it, call it like a
month, then give, give federation like 2 weeks to
conduct their due diligence required for their bid to be
unconditional, to allow its offer to, you know, to reach,
you know, to DD to be done becomes unconditional.
And then once you've got the deal capable of being, you know,
unconditional or not or comparably conditional between
the two, let shareholders determine the best, the best one
on the table. Because yeah, the, the thing
that stands out to me a bit like dog bottles is in today's
announcement, you can see the board recommendation.
They've based it off the recommendation from only three
of the four directors. They say MD Victor Rajasuriya
was sidelined from voting because of his material personal
interest in the matter due to his holding of performance
rights. In Siren.
In Siren now Victor, he does have 13 million performance
rights, but I don't know if I've ever seen a director idled from
the decision because they have performance rights.
This is probably the first time I've I've actually seen seen
that. You'd think they'd want to make
the better decision, like they'd be more incentivized to make a
good decision. Well.
Performance rights vest on a change of control and in the in
the case of the ruler transaction, there's no change
of control. So, and yeah, so like you, you
could come up with a, a defensible theory for maybe why
there's a conflict, but I just don't think it's a very like
sensible conflict to point out. Or actually, I think it's quite
hypocritical because if if you look at the, you know, just the
annual report of, of Siren, you can see that two of the three
remaining directors that were part of the the group that said,
yes, we recommend the rule transaction.
Well, well, they, they're clipping about $200,000 each in
related party transactions. One of them gets the money for
rent, admin and marketing services and the other one gets
it for consulting services. So the city can make can't help
but wonder if if if those directors are truly without
conflict as well. That seems like a conflict of
interest to me to want to retain that annuity that comes in do
you as a result of staying in control so.
And and so correct me if I'm wrong, this fight that's
happening now, there would be proxy votes that have already
gone in for that vote, but there is new information on what
alternative deal is out there, yeah.
Right. I think that, I mean that's the
big point is the, the, the vote. Like for people who are voting
on the approval at the shareholder meeting, they at the
time that they've submitted their votes by proxy, keep in
mind not many people actually rock up to a physical meeting.
They normally submit their votes before the deadline to submit
them by proxy, which is normally 2 business days before the
actual meeting in person. So anyone that's done that would
have no information of the best deal on the table from
Federation. So they've approved something
without knowledge of what the best alternative actually is.
That's why I think the responsible thing of the board
to do was actually to postpone it so shareholders have a better
understanding of what the the two options are and let them
vote with their own capital rather than, you know, have
heck, like, you know, it's in their own language, a conflicted
board telling you what they should do.
They're right, anyway. I'm going to go to the meeting
and see what happens. Wonder if there'll be pastries
there whereas it's just gonna be the the Blen 43 and bickies
Don't know. Let us know.
I'm always keen, always keen to know votes and AG Ms what the
food is. I will let you know, that's my
big ticket. Item Big Ticket Item the.
Food might be getting thrown from side to side.
Look. Forward to hearing what goes on
there. Right?
Next up, Paladin buddy down 20% today in early trade on the back
of the quarterly. The results, a recent Ding Ding,
Ding. I bought the dip, Full
disclosure. Bought the dip.
Interesting. Tell me what you saw here that
yeah, that you thought maybe the market didn't see.
I was like oh geez it's down. It must be as cheaper than
Friday. So remember the a lot of the
numbers will go through here are on 100% basis.
Remember Paladin only owned 75% of the laying of Heinrich Mine
in Namibia. The other quarters owned by
China Sea and and Sea. So they were guiding for FY25 on
100% basis four to four and a half, 1,000,000 lbs of U3O8 at a
plant recovery of 85 to 90%. But you can see what they've
produced this quarter, it's hasn't hasn't really hit the
mark yet. So they only managed to produce
640,000 lbs and the plant recovery was at 69%.
So I think that's been a big driver for the market reaction
today. So and look, they sided
variability in the stockpile law grade.
So I remember they're just processing the old stockpiles.
There's no mining going on here. Delayed Commission in the second
classification circuit, lower than anticipated tailings, water
recovery and you know, a couple other things, additional
maintenance for the screens and philtres.
So look and yeah, you look at how much the cost lifted as
well, they're up to 42 bucks a pound.
But you know, lower output, poor recoveries.
I'd bet $1,000,000 every time. The costs are gonna be higher
usually. Than than expectations.
Always, if you produce less pounds for the same amount of
work, you're gonna have higher costs.
So that's so, yeah, it hasn't they and that 'cause they also
fell below the sort of the required 1,000,000 tonne of
crusher throughput for the quarter, that's what they sort
of need to be hitting. They did indicate the crusher
upgrades did take place that eliminated some previous
bottlenecks. So all right.
And because if you look at the cash flow report, you can see
sales revenue was 24.8 million for the quarter.
But you look back at the June quarterly, it was flagged and
that so that was the partial advance payment for the off take
agreement for the £320,000 that they shipped on 12th of July
because I announced that at the end of the quarterly and saying
sort of that was coming up. So looks like from what I could
say they've produced for the last two quarters in total of
about £1.2 million. But it appears they've only been
paid for a bit over of 1/4 of it so far because they they sell.
I'm not and I'm not sure if that assume that £320,000 was they
got paid and then you know 25% goes to CNNC as the other
owners. So because they've they sold
600, it says they sold 620,000 lbs during the quarter.
I'm assuming the £320,000 partial is part of that is being
included in that. But they've only been paid, they
haven't been paid for everything they've sold in the quarter.
Gotcha. Because that, that the only cash
receipt exactly matches what they disclosed in the June
quarterly report. So effectively they've produced
£1.2 million, sold about half of it, but only being paid for 1/4
of it with cash in the door. That's that's how I interpret
it. So the.
Prepayment they would have gotten the money in the door
ages ago for. That Nah, they, it said they got
the pre it said they've, they shipped it on the I think it was
12th of July or something and received a prepayment.
Or the partial part of. Yeah.
But and that that that prepayment has been included in
this quarterly. It was just mentioned in last
quarterly 'cause it happened, you know, just a couple of weeks
after the end of the quarter. So look, there's possibly around
£800,000 still to be paid for that has been produced in what
they've got. So, you know, 75 bucks a pound,
that's about their 75% share will be US 45,000,000 revenue,
'cause they like, you look at it, you're like they're just
processing stockpiles. That's and they're losing money.
That's 100%. That's literally I went, I
opened the cash flow statement first.
I didn't read any of the words in the quarterly and I'm like
how are they losing money from processing?
Stock losses and it and it appears like and it so it
appears even after it it must have to they don't get paid till
it's well after it's shipped. That's what that's what it's
looking like. So 'cause they 'cause they
increased their drawn debt from 70 US 70 to 95 million.
So they've got 55,000,000 unrestricted cash and 55 of
undrawn debt plus the 95 of of drawn debt.
So, yeah, so there's obviously that bit of that chunk of to
sell and then obviously what they're going to produce beyond
that going forward as well. So.
And if the deal with Fission completes, I imagine like you're
paying transaction costs, all the success fees, all you
advise. Yeah, yeah.
So I think, I think it'd be a bit of chunky leakage coming out
of that. So and look, 'cause they're
still, they're still in regards to that fission deal, they're
still waiting on that Investment Canada Act clearance, ICI, they
refer to it as on the back of that national security review
that was called. So 'cause the final court order
got approved for the arrangement, but still waiting
on that ICI clearance to get finalised.
So 'cause I and I guess the question is if, if, if it does
get approved, as I say the disclaimer is in there, it's no
guarantee it will get approved, which means the arrangement
won't get approved. It's like how will the pro forma
perform? Because there's as I said,
there's no there's no geographical synergies with it
at all. Like for the Paladin Fission,
they're obviously getting hold of a development project in the
other basket basin plus the other stuff.
But that's the, that's the key thing is that the PLS project,
they will have cash flows coming in for Langa Hein from Langa
Heinrich. But big, a big development
project is a big CapEx bill and a lot of permitting and a lot,
lot far away. But and look, they are scheduled
to start mining at Lange Heinrich, I think 2025 to
because of that, that'll take them up to hopefully they're
aiming for £6 million a year too.
Much CapEx to spend to kick off that mining.
Don't know. Yeah, because I can be.
I'm thinking in my head, I think.
Probably a cutback was up. Yeah, I don't yeah, speculating
here without knowing the detail, but if if cash is skin, I don't
know they've got the debt and stuff, but maybe the the Fusion
deal completing is also a catalyst.
You can you can maybe raise some money and say you're going to
spend it on progressing. You know Fusion's PLS at the
same time as as allocate some of it to you cut back and.
Yeah, yeah. And it's all price, bloody price
dependent. I think they've got, was it 20
odd 1,000,000 lbs contracted out to £23 million of production
contracted through to 20-30, but they're going to, what's that
six, six years away, Their shares going to be 4 1/2.
So that's pretty much most of Paladin share contracted.
I think that's £6 million a year.
Maybe that's also part of the reason they're the the 4th most
shorted stock on the exchange. That's that's pretty hefty.
And you know, I'd be interested to see after today whether some
of them are covering, you know, using that you said down 20%
sort of bounce between there and 50 percent, 15%.
So I wonder if there is a bit of buying back.
But yeah, wonder if the thesis was also in part maybe a capital
raising again, like you say. Trevor, I'm saying that without
going too far into the weeds on this one.
Yeah. And and but it's just that it's
the age old you, you speak to the the people running these
companies. The age old playbook is get your
uranium market cap as big as possible to get the ATF inflows.
And that that because that's what drives a lot of this market
with these, when you've got these uranium, you've got such a
limited amount of producers around the world in a sector
what there's, what is there eight, I think been told, eight
people producing uranium around the world.
That are listed that you can buy.
Yeah. So it's not like, yeah, it's
just so it's such a different commodity in that sense for the
Atfs that want their exposure to production.
So and that's and that's just what that's until there's a shit
load more coming on that's going to be a lot of the driver
between behind equity movement as as training price and fuck
ups. As Kaylee kind of told us on on
Friday's episode as well, maybe a strategy that more miners in
different commodities should utilise as well, hey?
What's that? Have less of them.
Yeah, just just merge and buy a scale, attract more generalist
funds and grow that way. You know, it's, it's not a, a
sort of feature completely unique to the uranium market,
although the the ATS in uranium land are pretty chunky, but
that, that lower band threshold for the big money managers
around the world does chalk off a lot of the mining companies
that we talk about, I think. When that happens, I, like I
said, the ETFs drag here your share price beyond where true
true value, you know, intrinsic Navy is the you as a management
team, you've kind of got a backfill value now through M&A
that's actually creative, which is also hard to do when the
whole sector is sort of buoyant. You got to yeah, you got to buy
stuff that looks cheaper and backfilled value because flows
don't happen forever. In fact, the generous flows, as
fast as they come, they can't go when the theme changes as well.
So you cop it the the not a stride on the upside.
But then you're, you're vulnerable when the flows either
slow or or reverse that you know, you're, you're
particularly kind of yeah, yeah. I think it off and I think it's
and when you, I suppose when you talk, it's all the it's from the
underlying that when you say the theme, like the underlying theme
is like, what is your bet on uranium and nuclear right now?
That's what that's what Paladin is.
And I guess with the all the recent news about like, you
know, the whole data centre thing wasn't really in the
initial thesis a year ago. Now that's sort of being added
on top of the structural supply deficit that everyone keeps
talking about. So it's yeah, it's going to be a
very interesting year in the yellow cake, I think, or bloody.
Oh, I've I've never stuck to enjoying something for so long.
Fucking love uranium. Oh boy, used to have ADD.
I'll be like fool, I'm under this now I'm back on the rare
earths. But anyway another another
company with yellow on the logo. Look at this yellow West gold.
Not mining uranium FYI, but they could if they want it because
they've just increased their bloody balance sheet strength,
upped it by 200 bucks with this with their existing lenders. 300
mil in the bloody war chest now. So are they?
Going to use it on Maddie. That's a big question.
Kaydrill. I reckon they're going to give a
shit load to Kaydrill for organic growth.
Kaydrill. Kaydrill punching some holes in
up at Makethera for Westguard. So punching.
Using using guns to. Punch using Ryan's hands like
he's like they've got the RC going, he's like pre collar and
just beating the shit out of the ground.
Just just manhandling the district.
The legend that is Ryan O'Sullivan.
Westguld's future now in the hands of Ryan O'Sullivan.
I've never felt more comfortable as an Australian citizen really
for for anything bloody. That's a tick from money of mine
for Westgard. I wonder how they set these
records of yeah, like metres per shift but.
Pretty Ryan's Ryan's are violent pre colouring, just beating the
shit out of the ground and it's just then she's just proficient.
Can't be unlocked through Maddie Mechanical machinery.
No, it can't be Travis. They're at.
Imark as well. Oh mate, don't.
Forget ladies and gentlemen, before you engaged K drill for
some arse and diamond holes just like Westgard have made a good
choice. Go have a beer with this good
looking guy. Have a look at Druba.
You know why he's smiling? Because he knows there's a few
schooners on the way over in Sydney.
Make sure you say g'day to Druba and the team at iMac.
We're not gone by the way, even though we're on the website.
I just found out. Really.
We're going to the on Air page. It's a big thing of us.
No wonder everyone's been asking if we're gone.
We're like. Yeah, that makes a whole lot
more sense. That makes a Oh God, I'm so used
so yeah, that's extra the words going around.
What's the money for for West gold Pantoro keeps getting a
bloody keeps getting a mention 700 odd $1,000,000 company.
Now Pantoro, their market cap since they've had the recent run
on on the gold price, obviously got the the synergy with the
Higginsville mill down that way. Whether even though Pantoro got
their own mill, but there's probably a lot of other
potential stuff to of Pantoros to feed into the Higginsville
mill like there's obviously I know they've probably been
doing. I would assume they've been
doing DD on that for a while. I don't know.
Yeah. I think that one makes sense.
Like the facility was interesting because basically
said, you know that and we've got very little detail on the
terms or anything like that. But it said that it expired if
not drawn down 30th of June 2025.
That to me you don't, There's probably a commitment fee
involved in getting one of one of these.
I don't think you get it unless you have a plan to draw it down
in the, you know, in the like 6 odd months.
You've actually got to use the thing 77 odd months so.
How would you go to the effort? Yeah, it'd be interesting to see
if they're going to pay like in whatever form, a billion for
Pantoro. I don't know, don't know.
Yeah, sometimes when you talk about things, the less chance
I've got of of happening. But.
Maybe, yeah, maybe that's a new technique for us.
The other one, The other one, the other one that's
interesting, that's going on a bloody run is Astral.
Have a look at the bloody spark chart of Astral.
That's she was up another frigging 7 odd percent today
because they they got their their Mandela projects just
that's just north of Higginsville.
So it's sort of you'd say it's closer, closer to Higginsville
than Lakewood, but you know, that's you know, what is it one
point? What is it?
1.2 million oz 1.27 million oz at 1.1.
So big pit, but yeah, I'd be interested.
That's I think what are they kept at 100?
And 20. On 20, yeah, it's on the no,
it's on the spark chart, the thingy, 179 on 79 now, yeah, So
you'd have to pay up, pay up a bit for it, but it's a, you
know, Greenfields, Greenfields project, so that'd be another
one I'd have me eye on there. So what happens?
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, New person in the district in Yeah, W cold.
So anything's on the table Addie.
OK, Drew might just find a shit load of.
Expression. It could make sense to you.
Yeah, there's yeah, it's me. They're up the north at the
moment. Wait till I get start punching
holes in down the South. Holy snap and duck shit, right?
He's a, he's a we might be seeing another bloody, another
little deal coming up here. The the detectives are bloody
not too hard to figure out. I don't think you got Broadstar
and Orman both in trade and out or Broadstar.
Broadstar is actually suspended from quotation on the back of
going into trading out end of last week.
But it was around speed and ticket wasn't around any
transaction or anything. But then Orman just went into
trading out today in relation to commercial discussions with
respect to a potential joint venture relating to the
Sandstone project. OK.
So yeah, so I I would now you'd think the logical play is
Broadstar because of obviously the scheme of arrangement with
Alta the the gateway side of the deal transactions being
completed the 19th of November's when the Alta deal gets scheme
gets voted on. So just might be the next step
towards Santone Sandstone consolidation possibly.
They always had. They always had that.
Yeah, that little a little bit of tenure where the mill used to
be in the sandstone district there, and they've got like a
mineral resource that has kind of, yeah, historically kind of
copped a bit of flak for being a tricky 1 to mine because it's so
skinny and so, so deep. Yeah, I think it's only about
100 metre strike length. Yeah, but it looks like it
looked at the hits. It looks actually, I haven't
gone too deep into it, but it looks like it's got a bit of
thickness to it. I think it was like it was.
There's 1300 oz per vertical metre, so it wasn't yeah, but
there was, yeah. I think that the resource .4
metres at 9.3 grammes is one of the hits.
I could be wrong but this I'm pretty sure when I went to the
weeds and the resources this is like back in 2020.
The pitch shows were optimised at a $3500 gold price, which is
finally past that. Yeah, yeah, she's up to 4000
now. Chuck 4 1/2 on.
It. So it might be mineable now,
yeah. And but that's the thing.
That's what like these a lot of these historic things at 4000
bucks an ounce, like everything's like right?
Where does gold exist because they've got what they've got
881,000 oz at 1 1/2 bit over two third of the resource resource
is underground. About 3/4 of the resource is
inferred too. But look, it's very it's very
low grade for an underground. But it as I said, it does look
like it's got a bit of thickness to it.
So you know, I've got 1.6 gramme underground.
Might bloody get a look in these days over 4000 bucks an ounce.
But I would assume this when they're talking JV arrangement,
I would think it would be for the satellite pits which you can
see in the resource table, there's a lot of them.
There's, there's 11 resources they've got in that sandstone
project for 307,000 oz, which are two third 2/3 indicated.
So there's that old half a million tonne per annum mil that
needs a bloody good reefer or knocked down and completely
replaced. I think from what I saw, that
last operated in 2010. Troy.
Resources, so she's she'd be a bit of a rust bucket by now, but
it is it is permitted yeah to produce half A to for 1/2 a
million tonne throughput does have associated infrastructure,
but I'd imagine there'd be a lot of work to get that making gold
again. So anyway, probably just might
be a there's 11 pits MMS can RIP the RC out of.
Yeah, probably a good job for them.
Yeah. Well, that acquire, if they're
on an ML for example, like that kind of unlocks the like a
processing location in some ways for, yeah, for, for Bryce's
other regional stuff. But you're not like for what
there there are other regional stuff you you wouldn't be.
Well, we're they're going to have.
To they're going to build, they're going to either.
Where's that blank? Got to go.
They either got a bloody buy Kirk a locker or build a
2,000,000 tonne mill at Sandstone to feed the Alto stuff
into. So this one doesn't really,
yeah, might be might be just a a shorter term option for a bit of
cash flow to start ripping pits out.
But when we say shorter term takes a while to get those
things approved. So anyway, we'll wait and see.
I think to the point on the gold price running and then all these
deposits just becoming sort of in the money if you like only
works for a period of time like we've we've talked in the.
Past about that. Yeah.
I mean, we, well we talked in the past about how gold costs,
mining costs just track it. So sooner or later, you know,
I'm at least of the view that gold mining prices will, will
get there like the, the margins don't just blow out and stay out
indefinitely on gold like they haven't historically.
Maybe they will for quite a while.
But I think we put a chart in the, in the director special
just last week and you can see over, you know, decades that the
costs track the gold price that they have.
And I think we're in a period of time where gold miners can make
a good bit of money because the price has sparked a lot more
than what the costs have. But I don't think that sort of
tends to to last forever. The only rebuttal to that would
be is if I think it'd be different when all commodities
are lifting. We've seen lithium, nickel and
all that fall off the Cliff and you're thinking what's your main
cost is the mining of it. So if other commodities are
stressed, that one's up and you're still trying to get
doesn't an underground mine isn't contractually priced on
what the commodity price is. It's just.
Yeah. And gold price is international
and the the costs are much more local.
So it's it's not the same everywhere.
And just remember, the cure for high prices is high prices
because there's margin and all these marginal things.
Now, well, guess what? People are mining all of these
little satellite pits, which creates a lot more sort of
selling pressure for physical gold.
Yeah. Will the market absorb all that?
Or, you know, does it just sort of like, yeah.
I think I think on this size of scarlet, do you think ape a
little satellite jobs in Australia are going to affect
the international gold price A. 100% this is, this is what
happens. This is, this is like there is
no period in history where you have the 4th quartile of the
cost curve making margin for 12 months, 24 months.
It just doesn't work that way. You incentivize new production
to come online higher on the cost curve and that new supply,
you know meets, meets the incremental demand at some point
and then you get price balance again.
I think that people are out there that would fight you on
the the supply demand dynamics of of gold pricing and how it's.
Sort of started some. Different type of asset and
these sorts of things, yeah, not going to be the one that that
gets into that. It's a bit of I'm not.
Saying, I'm not saying the marginal ones in WA alone, I'm
saying the marginal ones globally.
And I'm saying the, the, the, the gold producers who have a
bunch of, you know, marginal pits, all of a sudden they just
start feeding that through the mill as well.
Like there's extra cash at elevated prices, Yeah.
You see it in every commodity. Like again, like we spoke about
last week, that sort of difference in people stealing
copper when it jumps from 9:00 to 12:00, you know, US $1000 a
tonne. That's the, in a sense a
different type of marginal supply.
I think it's a, it's a real thing.
People realise the opportunity. Well, the only probably
guarantee I can give is that it's an Australian earthworks
and allege site clearing jobby coming up out here like that's
like we can argue on supply and demand all you want, but that is
as certain as death and tax that Reece is going to go bloody
mate. He he can turn an absolute ship
bucket in of a side into looking like the F3 from Newcastle to
Sydney like. Interesting.
Mate, have a look at him out here.
Reese Pitalni on the bloody dozer, outright enjoying the
sunshine of the salt lakes. Mate he's oh look at that for a
highway. That is, that is, that looks
impeccable. He makes the he may even makes
the salt rust proof like that's how bloody good he is so sight
clear he's. Got to get him on site.
Mate it just get bloody aeh to come and sex up your joint and
just make it look like the Rolls Royce of desert race is the man.
Clearly, Yeah, he'll go move anything on it, man.
Oh mate, it'll be go from the sandstone to the sexy stone
after Race does his bloody work on it.
So mate, good work Race. Thanks for making.
Thanks for just making the world a better place.
Good on you JD. Speaking of, is this company in
a better place now? IGI.
Interesting. It's an interesting one mate.
The, the quarterly had pros and cons and I'll I'll run through
it kind of quickly. I think that the three kind of
stand out points are that green bushes performed better
operationally sort of not notwithstanding the lithium
price. Nova didn't do so well.
It's been a good few quarters now where it hasn't really
performed. And the the third thing that
stood out was that the company has stopped disclosing a, a bit
of info. So no more underlying EBITDA at
a site level, no more sort of COGS on, on green bushes.
And that lack of disclosure obviously naturally became a, a
real sort of talking point of the quarterly call they put on
today. So on a in a bit more detail,
TLA didn't pay a dividend. Of course, that's the the joint
venture through which they are in their Greenbushes stake due
to weak lithium conditions. Not a massive surprise, although
Greenbush, Greenbushes unit costs dropped from about 340
Aussie per tonne to about 280. So that was great to see.
Although Kwinana prepared for a shutdown through the quarter
that should be complete by the end of this month and we should
see already performance improvements in the next
quarterly report. There was a few sort of question
marks around how much cash sits in the joint venture and what
that's kind of being used for and questions about why there
wasn't a a sweep with cash paid out to the the holders or the
owners of TLEA Quinana needed investment.
That was one of the reasons clearly they sort of said that
20 million were spent in sustaining and improvement Capec
there. But yeah, I think a lot of
people will be scrutinising it was sort of slightly better
quarter on quarter the tonnes that came out of the hydroxide
plant there. But you know, we're talking from
a very, very low base on Nova. There was lower mind volumes and
lower grade that meant it just didn't really perform.
Unit costs were as high as they've been in quite some time.
Forestania is now on on care maintenance too.
And yeah, just to kind of round out on the the lack of earnings
details, they had kind of pre flagged this and and spoke about
it, but it just makes the the jobs for the analyst quite a bit
harder. And a lot of the numbers you can
still kind of get 2, They kind of give you enough.
It just creates a bit more work. So it's kind of frustrating.
The, I mean, the one thing they probably should do is is Chuck
in a, a waterfall chart. I don't know too many other
companies that don't at least put in a waterfall chart.
And it was interesting to see the company's rationale for, for
not giving this disclosure was that it sort of simplifies their
business and reduced cost. So I'm, I'm not personally sure
how much effort and money goes into just being able to give a
few more details in your quarterly, but maybe it's more
than I'm kind of anticipating and maybe I should give them the
the benefit of the doubt there. But that was a a defence to
that, that I wasn't expected. Just to finish up on where they
are now, the balance sheet sort of perspective, net cash is
sitting at about $260 million. This dropped off over $200
million because of course they paid about $200 million in
dividends. That was the FY24 DV that they
distributed. That was a pretty big miss
though, because consensus was sitting around $340 million.
So they came in a a good bit below that.
And to kind of cap things off, the company warned that should
the conditions in the lithium market persist, there'd be a
drain on cash. So nothing new there.
It was just a bit of an ominous kind of sign to to leave the
report on shares ended up pretty flat.
I think the the good side of green bushes and operating
better outweighed some of the negatives in the company.
But yeah, just a bit of a recap on what's going on at IGO there.
You bloody go, you know now that Forest Stone is on care and
maintenance. Got me eyes peeled when
Medallion will do finalise the bloody deal to get hold of the
processing infrastructure there because I think that was waiting
on them to finish final bit of processing on that site.
So if it's on care and maintenance.
Additional on on raising the money required to do it too.
Yeah, yeah. So they've had a bit of it.
They're really bloody. They've doubled since they first
announced that. So got my eyes on that.
Be good to see another bloody gold copper project going in
just WA. Good morning.
And seeing the seeing the meal just on care and maintenance,
get it in, get it in use for someone else.
That's it, Yeah. Yeah mate, it's bloody eepoo.
This will all come out tomorrow. All me flagged predictions
guaranteed. You're fucking great.
I I actually know Maddie. Who else could help the guys at
Medallion? But who?
Might that be Jonas Benedict darling?
I I might suggest Mineral Mining services, grounded cross
boundary energy, Sandvik, CRE insurance, Greenland's
equipment, K drill, MMTS, Australian earthworks and
haulage and then they can use a spark chart and just watch their
stock price go flying after they've hired the rest of them.
Oh mate, we've just offered a turnkey solution.
Hooteru buddy. Hooteru, guys, Hooteru.
Cheers Bras. Information contained in this
episode of Money of Mine is of general nature only and does not
take into account the objectives, financial situation
or needs of any particular person.
Before making any investment decision, you should consult
with your financial advisor and consider how appropriate the
advice is to your objectives, financial situation and needs.