Ah…very clever. You aren’t as ignorant as what you make out to be. You are always asking what the Browns think so clearly you don’t like what you read.
For anyone that is interested, we continue our bullish outlook for the project and will continue to support the company.
Spoke to Paul Burton yesterday afternoon………business as usual to work through EPA requests and deliver commercial work streams. If I were to describe his tone and demeanor – upbeat on the commercial front and cautiously optimistic of the environmental front.
Our Views
Having had a bit of a read through posts of the last few weeks, I am surprised at the misguided attacks at Burton on the EIS and lack of pragmatism. This forum is now an echo chamber. Clearly frustration now outweighs all else for the small sample of the TNG register that posts on Hot Copper. It is very easy to blame an MD or a board and make ridiculous statements that it would have all been different if we only had an office in Darwin or this person had done this a different way or if only they engaged more.
Mining is in the family DNA…the old man and the older man both operated mines and are now predominately resource investors with a long and successful history in backing explorers that evolve into producers, or are acquired pre-production when de-risked. I’d suggest to all investors to attempt to cut through the short term internal emotions caused by the time this projects is taking, as well as the bollocks that is floated around on this thread by a select few with their own agendas. Our honest take is this project is well advanced and is closer than it has ever been. We’ve experienced successful environmental outcomes in much more testing jurisdictions than NT.
There are two very distinct works flows – environmental and commercial. Clearly environmental has hit a delay.
If we were to assess management - they have done a sound job to get the project to where it is. Are they below par for the course as many suggest - not in our opinion. Let us not forget that Mt. Peake is fully approved - given the actions of the NTEPA on the refinery EIS, I think management did a cracking job in delivering the approvals and native title.
We are not invested with +100m shares across the immediate family network for the instant gratification a 10c SP increase provides. TNG forms a small part of our portfolio however is a company that continues to excite us and we have high conviction that it will become another generational asset for the portfolio. It is just as likely that the project monetises via acquisition at pre-production when de-risked. I was only discussing this with my old man over a lovely Dominos Sunday lunch. Actually the old girl cooked up a cracking lamb roast and washed down with an equally cracking Syrah.
EIS
The EIS is simply a process that needs to be worked through. It is not an uncommon outcome to spend a half decade or more getting the relevant environmental approvals. I could give you a list, as long as Ando’s posts about remuneration and bonuses paid a decade ago, on EIS’s that have taken many years to come through. Such a list makes our Mt Peake mine site outcome look like a 10/10.
We are a major shareholder of HFR - they’ve just spent the better part of 5 years and $80m working through their mining approvals in Spain. Still haven’t got them but very close. They had to spend years jumping through hoops for a government that doesn’t even collect royalties! One such item was migration of birds that might sit on overhead power lines and defecate into a pristine waterway below. Outcome……after all such studies – put the lines under the waterway. The point? - THERE IS ALWAYS A SOLUTION TO BE FOUND! This will be no different with NTEPA on the Darwin site.
Are we disappointed at the NTEPA response to TNGs supplement? Very much so but the fact of the matter is TNG and its consultants need to pragmatically work through 23 items and submit the information for review. There is no skirting this so buckle up on this front. It might take 12 months, it might take years. TNG under their continuous disclosure obligations will need to advise that once they are in receipt of that information. On yesterday’s announcement, they presently don’t have those estimates and I wouldn’t expect in three weeks any consultant would be able to provide such timing.
Risk management | TNG Profile
If we could give any investor some advice about risk management, it would be don’t buy in to the agendas from the “I went all in” type that have the narrowest views and understanding of what it takes to deliver an operating mine. If you can’t wait another potential one-two years for an EIS, perhaps it is indeed time to move on. If you want to keep your capital allocated to a company that will deliver the commercial work flow throughout the remainder of 2021, hang around like many of the large holders have.
As some have seen, a number of top 20 and long term backers have indeed been buying options at levels between 0.2-0.5 of a cent. Time to maturity suggest that those options are very unlikely in the money come 31-Nov-21 however perhaps it should be taken as an indication that some of the larger holders understand and appreciate the weight that a completed FEED, EPC, product guarantees and indicative term sheets for senior debt will have on the value of the company, in isolation to an environmental approval. I think it also indicates that there is a strong shareholder appetite for this project and those shareholders will continue to financially support TNG.
I’m sure that shortly, you’ll be sharing a whiskey with family and friends just like I’ll be sharing a with “Daddy”, as Ando disrespectfully and antagonistically refers to a bloke that has created meaningful value time and time again, and a milkshake with my 5 year old, along with many of those quality investors that sit in the TNG top 20. If that’s another 2 years…..so be it as I’ll say it again, WEALTH IS CREATED THROUGH PATIENCE AND PATIENCE IS OFTEN MEASURED IN YEARS. You can argue all you want but that is exactly how wealth in the mining industry is created. Iron Ore and Lithium were opportunistic in terms of timing from extreme demand side structural shifts and are absolute outliers in the resource sector in terms on the number of mines coming online in a short period. Look at another other project globally……a decade of patience to get them online. That’s from the top end of town being Rio (You Tolgoi Copper), BHP (Jansen Potash) right down to minnows like a good old BNE based SolGold (South America Cooper/Gold). TNG is no different and vanadium and titanium are tightly held and opaque markets.
TNG coffers are healthy at $15m as at 31 March. They need a quality broker/ECM IB to soak up the churn and I have high conviction that the SP works its way north on the back of FEED > Product guarantees/EPC > Finance workflow. And yes this is still on the cards for 2021 albeit I accept that the EIS is not.
Specially on the options, $0.18 option exercise is a $220 million market cap. We’ve got 3 other current resources investments in similar positions to TNG (enviro/FEED/FID) with similar mid-tier NPVs (ie. > $2B USD) and their market caps are $140m, $270m $490m. There is much latent value in TNG however they are up against it with a government body like the NTEPA, represented by a rogue like Vogel making outrageous public statements.
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