@Growler I attended the meeting in person along with a few others who are heavily invested, one in top 20 as well. Happy to clarify some of the above.
There are two parts of Due Diligence from IDC - technical DD has been completed ✅ - legal component hasn’t begun . Michael explained $15.9 from IDC will be the last $ used by the company as is subject to west wits getting remaining $35/40m needed as per DFS (for the 3 yr total cost). They tried to convince IDC to give the initial as $16m is enough to get started & could actually last yrs in production profitably (on a smaller scale operation than the DFS) with all metrics on revenue etc but they didn’t budge & given it was tier 1 debt (with no options etc attached), they wanted to ensure wwi has the balance $ before IDC releases their 300m rand.
Having this EOI from IDC has helped the company in moving discussions forward with other interested parties. He was unable to name because they’ve signed NDA’s with them (which is normal practice) till it gets to a stage where can be announced.
One of those interested parties was Wingfield, who being current holders & more aware of the project potential were quicker to move through the process & their EOI announced in Oct. Wouldn’t be surprised to see due diligence from both IDC-Wingfield completed in proximity to each other. As Michael said at the recent interview, this $10m from Wingfield will also be used after the remaining lot of funding is confirmed.
By expedition, he explained that with IDC there are two tiers, 300m rand is the most they can given on an expedited process. Asking more $ would shift them to next tier lending which has an even longer approval process.
Total need just under $50m based on current pog & exchange rate he said
Off which we have EOI for $16m from IDC. This is subject to us getting the balance amount first. Then $10m from Wingfield, who also want to ensure safery net so subjected to the wwi getting the remaining $24-25m first.
> 90% of small cap resource stocks don’t become mines, so yeah there’s still risk here. Still, happy that we’re half way through the funding req & $25m rough more for this last hurdle to be ticked off & start a domino affect.
With Uranium, in order to confirm the 12-16 mlb resource they need to do drilling spaced closer to ensure its in line with 2012 jorc standard, for which they actually measured will need $1.5m or so for the program (which acc to him given the current cash balance & mcap isn’t prudent as priority is becoming a gold mine first & generate revenue for which all studies are done).
Also was heartening to get confirmation both from holders who didn’t get their full allocation in the recent raise & from Michael that it was oversubscribed. Wanted $1m, got $1.7m, but instead of taking the full amount, they’ve reined in expenses & took $1.2m because didn’t want to dilute further at current sp (which is good because most specs would simply take all the $ offered). Between MQ & Simon who was there as well, they have > 55m soi thats also relying on the project coming through.
Can assure you many attendees were asking questions on the time its taken. Some of that was to do with Taurum’s incompetence who initially said will need toll treaty before reaching out to debt providers & once we got it said yeah yeah we should get funding by feb march this yr, only to then tell the board its hard market & unlikely to get debt etc. hence were fired early this yr & since then its been DIY with funding (which has at least put us in position where we get $25m to be used up front & it’ll lead to ticking the boxes for the $26m debt from IDC-Wingfield).
Board did accept they’ve made numerous mistakes, timings if raising (though understandably hindsight is always easier) & Tarum failure, but did get the sense their heart is in the right place. For an < 50m mcap company trying to get its 1st project going, that too in SA, with little cash on hand isn’t easy.
last couple yrs have been hard for every holder, but while the sp has declined, company has progressed. Eventually (or so I hope, yes hope isn’t a good strategy), these boxes being ticked off one by one will result in better sp for holders.
(20min delay)