I have been following the COP26 two-week jamboree of the so called “great and the good” flying into Glasgow on private jets over the last two weeks. I have noted how some 18-year-old school kid from Scandinavia has been teaching our bonkers Prime Minister Carrie Boris Johnston to say Blah blah blah. It has been irritating and an insult to all thinking people. However, the implications to us investors are wide and many. A few views and opinions as the wafflefest comes to a close.
Analyst Steve St. Angelo of the SRSrocco Report says that energy is the main driver of the economy and we are now entering an energy crisis. This crisis will affect everything in the economy.
The oil price is panning out largely as I expected when I last drafted on this matter back in March. We are now at $84 as I type, compared to the $67 when I last commented. I saw a high probability of $100 by year end, and so far, I see little to change my mind. Oil and Gas equity prices lag the commodity prices, and oil lags gas. I see real opportunity here, but not without some downside risk.
If this rings any bells it should. Ben’s Creek Group PLC was only incorporated on 11 August 2021 with the “colourful” financier Adam Wilson of Daniel Stewart and Atlantic Carbon ( another US coal dog) infamy the driving force. Now it plans to raise £7 million valuing the shite within this company at £28 million. There is so much that I doubt Optiva and Allenby are telling mugs who are ponying up ahead of an AIM sewer listing in two weeks time.
I start with ITM Power (ITM) where I just don’t understand pipeline valuation and definitions and the valuation is absurd. But then green is where the zeitgeist is. Not coal which brings me onto the lies and reality at Plutus Powergen (PPG). I look at the fraud Supply@ME Capital (SYME) and Alien Metals (UFO) and the more general issue of related party deals after today’s expose on this website.
Having not completed an RTO within six months of becoming a shell, shares in Plutus Powergen (PPG) were suspended from the AIM sewer this morning but fear not: Charles Tatnall and James Longley have a US coal RTO “oven ready” as Lyin’ Boris Johnson might say. Natch it is what is not in the release that should horrify you although that contains at least one absolutely monstrous lie.
I have commented earlier today on NextEnergy Renewables (NREN). There is no question the UK grid has been under real stress this winter when the wind does not blow and the sun has set. The answer can only be gas fired stations in my view. Drax Group (DRX) is focused on Biomass power generation, but potential influence on gas fired generation worries me.
Primary Bid sent me, amongst many others, an e-mail yesterday advising that NextEnergy Renewables Ltd (NREN) is seeking to raise cash and list on the LSE Main market. With a target total fund raise of £300 million I thought I would have a look. If you are interested you can apply HERE but before you do….
Gary Newman got much grief in times gone by for warning folks about this dog. Today, I imagine he will be enjoying extra ouzo with his fishcakes as the shares were suspended from AIM as the one month notice period of, now, former Nomad Strand Hanson came to a close. But what next?
Hello, Share Pickers. As a shareholder in Black Rock’s Greater European Fund (BRGE), I take account of what the company’s supremo has to say about the future. And the interestingly-named Larry Fink says climate change worries will cause a "fundamental re-shaping of finance”. And that it’ll come a lot sooner than expected.
Thanks largely to the work on this website, the ludicrous proposal to reverse drowning in debt POS Atlantic Carbon into worthless Daniel Stewart Securities ahead of a Standard List came a cropper in early April as noted HERE. But the curse of doing business with Daniel Stewart and its toxic boss Peter Shea is now becoming clear for all to see.
All that Edenville Energy (EDL) seems to have managed to achieve over the years is to burn through cash at a rate of knots whilst failing to deliver anything for shareholders other than a steady and prolonged decrease in the share price. I can remember even back in 2010/11 when this company was being promoted as having huge potential, along with all the other rubbish that you tend to hear spouted about these small AIM resource outfits across the bulletin boards...
Oracle Power (ORCP) seems to have become popular all of a sudden and has seen its share price rise by around 80% in the past week, but as usual some on the bulletin boards seem to be claiming that it should actually be worth many multiples of its current valuation.
Investors in GCM Resources (GCM) seem to be shocked that recent news hasn’t caused the share price to rise much higher, and barring a very brief spike immediately after news of a deal landed, it has settled back to around the level that it was trading at before the RNS dropped. The news that has got everyone invested in this Bangladeshi coal miner so excited is a joint venture agreement with a huge government owned entity called PowerChina, which is involved in coal fired power plants and is a name that some will be familiar with as it also has similar deals in place with other small mining companies in various parts of Africa as well...
It never ceases to amaze me just how excited some investors seem to get over memorandum of understanding announcements, especially when the agreement is with a Chinese company.
If AIM gave out awards for achieving little and issuing billions of shares, then Tanzanian coal miner Edenville Energy (EDL) would be high up the list to receive one!
This panel was chaired by our own Gary Newman and featured uranium cheerleader Paul Atherley of Berkeley Energia (BKY), coal bug Andrew Bell of Regency Mines (RGM) and waste to power enthusiast Keith Allaun of Powerhouse Energy (PHE).
It was around a year ago that I wrote an article about one of my then tips of the year BHP Billiton (BLT) observing that the world's largest mining company had just made billions of dollars of losses...but correctly the share price was going up. Billiton was a nice solid pick for 2016 but so far this year the share has been more volatile than remunerative.
Edenville Energy (EDL) has long been a favourite of small private investors, but ultimately I have to wonder whether it will actually ever get to a stage where its projects come to fruition.
I have been very pleased with the way that Glencore (GLEN) has performed since I covered it here a few months back, but I now feel that it is time to cash in, at least for the time being.
Many of you who put your hard earned money into AIM seem to love a boom-or-bust type of gamble, even when the odds aren’t in your favour!
Hargreaves Services (HSP) crosses the radar today on the back of a trading update ahead of full-year results which are set to be released in August. This fuels and logistics group has seen a tremendous collapse in its share price over the past several years, but it looks as if it may have now reached “value” territory.
A couple of months ago I covered Glencore (GLEN) as a short, but I now think it is time to consider closing and looking to go long on the shares, especially on any dips.
Shares in Australian coal play Altona Energy (ANR) have bounced almost 50% to 0.43p since we highlighted director Nicki Lyth’s recent flight to China to save the company’s 7.8 billion -tonne Arckaringa coal project in South Australia. Now sporting an AIM value of £2.8 million, the company, whose shares traded above 8p five years ago, awaits the first tranche of A$6 million (£2.75 million) due in early December as part of the A$33 million which its Chinese joint venture partners, Sino-Aus Energy Group and Wintask Group, have been persuaded to put into Arckaringa.
Shahruck Khan, entrepreneurial chief executive officer of Oracle Coalfields (ORCP), says he is now ‘working towards financial closure’ for the company’s $1.5 billion (974 million) project to develop a potential 1.4billion-tonne lignite (brown coal) mine and 600-megawatt power station in south-eastern Pakistan, following a key consortium agreement with Shandong Electric Power Corporation (SEPCO) of China.
We always thought that AIM listed Atlantic Coal (AC) was a 100% dog but the world’s number one mining analyst Roger Bade of Whitman Howard thinks otherwise and has initiated his coverage with a buy note. Whatever. In the interests of balance, the great man writes:
Sable Mining Africa (SBLM), the AIM-quoted company founded by veteran Zambian-born cricketer and entrepreneur Phil Edmonds, has for long suffered in investors’ appraisal because of its heavy involvement with iron ore, which now trades in the $50 a tonne region, a third of boom-time peaks. But its shares enjoyed a spike the other day on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with CITIC Group, the People’s Republic of China’s overseas investment corporation, to establish a 600-megawatt central African power station at the company’s Lubu coal project in Zimbabwe.
US-focused open-cast anthracite coal producer Atlantic Coal (ATC) is ‘actively looking for further high-quality and economically viable anthracite properties’ after turning a $272,000 (£175,000) loss into $3.7 million (£2.4 million) pre-tax profits in the six months to June. That is the word from chairman Adam Wilson, former head of entrepreneurial City stockbroker Hichens Harrison, following a near-40% increase in volume sales from the AIM-quoted company’s Stockton mine in Pennsylvania to 106,000 tons (not metric) in the first half year.
Shares in long-unfavoured Oracle Coalfields (ORCP) have been winning some new friends in the wake of acceptance by government of Pakistan’s Sindh province of the company’s pricing petition for its 1.4 billion tonne brown coal (lignite) project in the province’s Thar desert. Shahrukh Khan, entrepreneurial Chief executive officer of AIM-quoted Oracle, argues this acceptance, which will still needs federal ratification if the Sindh government approves, amounts to a ‘green light’ for the projected first phase of the project, which envisages producing four million tonnes a year to feed a 600-megawatt power station for the electricity-hungry region, at an initial price for the lignite of $76.48c (£49) a tonne, subject to later annual review.
It’s great to see a mining company on AIM doing exactly what it said it would do, especially in the current climate. This morning, Kibo Mining (KIBO) delivered its latest important milestone, on schedule. The company has released the findings of Phase 2 Stage 1 of its development plan for the Mbeya Coal to Power Project in Tanzania. Based on exploiting the 109.39mt inferred and indicated resource at the Rukwa coal deposit, this represents another significant step forward for Kibo. It’s now something of a surprise to see the company’s share price trading at 4.75p. Up only 0.63p on the day, it seems likely that Kibo’s shares are held back by the general headwinds blowing a gale against the resource sector. Unperturbed, the company continues to push forward.
Czech coal miner New World Resources (NWR) has slashed its annual deficit from E914 million (£672 million) to E 21 million thanks to an advantageous capital restructuring and is ‘identifying new business opportunities’ while coal prices remain weak. Formerly part of the Czech state-owned coal industry, the company, which is listed in London, Prague and Warsaw and operates through its Czech mining subsidiary OKD, increased output 2 % in 2014 to 8.6 million tonnes, with hard coking coal for the steel industry 3% ahead to 8.3 million tonnes and thermal coal for power generation down 30% to 3.5 million tonnes.
Shares in bombed-out Oracle Coalfields (ORCP) have bounced on confirmation that the company has had its mining lease over a lignite (brown coal) deposit in south-east Pakistan’s Thar coalfield potentially holding more than a billion tonnes reinstated by the government of Sindh Province. Entrepreneurial chief executive Shahrukh Khan says AIM-quoted Oracle, whose shares fell from a 10p float price in 2011 to a recent low of 0.37p before rallying to 0.9p, is now talking to major potential Pakistani and Chinese partners about putting together a $1.3 billion (£840 million) project funding package.
So second day back at school and today I will give you my thoughts on the Mining sector which really has had a torrid time for about 3 years now and you have to start thinking it cant keep falling forever..............but that also doesn't mean it is ready to be invested in.
Louis Coetzee, entrepreneurial chief executive officer of Tanzania-focused Kibo Mining (KIBO), says he is talking to 12 companies as he looks for a development partner in the power side of Kibo’s $60 million (£38 million) Rukwa coal and power station project in the country’s south-western Mbeya region. Kibo, which had last year signed a memorandum of understanding with Korea’s state-owned East West Power group about possible participation in Rukwa, is now concentrating instead on a pre-feasibility study, due this month from energy-to-infrastructure specialist Aurecon, of its plan to build a 300 to 350 megawatt power station there.
Fortune Mojapelo, the lawyer and investment banker running entrepreneurial AIM-quoted vanadium, tin and coal hopeful Bushveld Minerals (BMN), argues investors can assess the company’s prospects with greater confidence now that it has extricated itself from a financing arrangement with offshore investment concern Darwin Strategic and raised £1.25 million at 3p a share.
Kalimantan Gold (KLG) has been a perennial jam tomorrow POS stock on the AIM Casino. Directors fees all round. Advisors fees all round. Placing after placing after frigging placing as it hypes up one target, raises cash, moves the goalposts and them raises cash again. All the time it is private investors who get screwed. Let me tell you about the placing it failed to do earlier this week.
The world’s No 1 mining analyst Roger Bade of Whitman Howard has produced his quarterly review and while there are a few new buy ideas, such as Amara (AMA), on the whole his tone is as bearish as ever. Anyone who says how some mining juniors should be “viewed with contempt” is a top man. Although Mr Bade’s less than complimentary words about the quite excellent Women in Mining organisation run by mining guru Amanda Van Dyke (pictured left since she is a tad more photogenic than Mr Bade) have “been noted”. Naughty. The review makes for sobering reading for anyone still investing in this sector. Mr Bade writes:
The world’s top mining analyst Roger Bade of Whitman Howard is known for his cynicism and caution so when he initiates his coverage of a stock with a buy you wake up. Today he has done just that on Hargreaves Services (HSP) at 645p.
Bombed-out Coal of Africa (CZA) is turning the corner in its struggle to eliminate past losses and surmount a raft of problems. The company could soon start creating value for patient shareholders from its two billion tonnes of coal in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Algy Cluff, the veteran resources entrepreneur and former owner of the Spectator magazine, is on the look-out for deals to propel Cluff Natural Resources (CLNR) into the business of turning off-shore coal deposits into gas-producing assets in a way he and the company’s backers claim will be able to provide cheap and environmentally acceptable fuel supplies for years to come. Speculation has suggested potential partners could include German engineering and electronics giant Siemens or Swiss-based chemicals group Ineos, active at the Grangemouth oil refinery in the Firth of Forth, but AIM-quoted Cluff Natural remains tight-lipped.
On January 17th, Edenville Energy (EDL) caused outrage among its shareholders when it placed £1.4million at 0.07p. This was a greater than 50% discount and illustrates exactly the problem, which faces cash strapped junior would-be miners. Without sufficient backing, the “assets” these companies own are, to all intents and purpose, worthless. Today, Edenville has hardly helped any attempts at making a value case for this stock, as it placed again. This time it raised £250,000 at 0.06p. Further dilution, for such a small amount and at this awful price further calls into question Edenville’s viability. Oh, but hang on moment, I heard its shareholders cry, what about the Expression of Interest the company signed only nine days ago? Well...
