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Originally posted by bpurkis:
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A few key takeaways from the webinar for me:The exploration potential and opportunities to expand the current resource base are quite large - Mark noted that they did not spend big on drilling out in the early days in order to save capital. As a result the resource as a whole is under defined (Niska as well as other targets Mark didn't name specifically). Now there is genuine interest in the project from some larger OEMs it seems these deposits need to be drilled out and defined to satisfy their projected future demand. Niksa scoping study out by the end of September should give us a better idea of the true potential of the resource base and potential output going forward. In addition, Mark confirmed that the surrounding deposits all contained the same ore characteristics as Nunasvaara South.Off-take/ Supply agreements - The timeline on page 13 of the presentation shows the EV anode pilot starting at the end of Q1 2021. While the market is craving an off-take or supply agreement, it seems unlikely to happen in the next 6-9 months. Given that the customer would get the samples from that facility and need to do further test work before signing anything. Mark noted they are big companies and they don't rush through any qualification processes. On a positive note, he did confirm that this facility was being built at the request of a specific customer/ group of customers. Capital Position - Whilst every capital raising you hope is the last one (at least before a major project financing), it seems likely that Talga will have to come back to the market at least once more. Mark mentioned that the financing for the Pilot plant will be set up differently from the overall facility, implying that they do not yet have finance for the Electric Vehicle Anode pilot.Graphene strategy - Didn't provide a huge update here, other than to say that the strategy is still progressing. Won't get any results from the Coatings trial (on the ship) until mid next year (although did state the owner of the ship was happy with the progress so far). Concrete market for graphene offers lower margins than they would like, so they have slowed down their development in this space. Overall the graphene strategy can only work once they get the anode product up and running, otherwise in its current form (very low volume) it is uneconomic. Recent Capital Raising - Received some strong inbound interest from a new institutional investor and wanted to secure the funds straight away, rather than doing a rights issue and having them hang in the market for 6 weeks to see how much they would raise. The placement to a new institutional investor may be the reason why we didn't see Smedvig or Mark himself buy anymore shares in the capital raise. When asked why he didn't raise more than the $10m, Mark said he didn't want to dilute current investors (including himself). Patience - Company is in a great position of having a lot of interest for their anode product, but this is going to take time. Further qualification is needed by the OEMs before they sign on the dotted line. Even then we may never find out who Talga is actually supplying. Covid-19 has slowed the progress down, but the OEMs are now starting to ramp back up their supply chain and all the associated activities that come along with it. Investors will have to be patient a little while longer before being rewarded.
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Thanks for the great summary! I wasn't able to tune in unfortunately so this is a great compliment to the slides that were shared (which didn't add anything much new).
(20min delay)