Interesting to read everyone's thoughts on the direction.
I'll throw in my irrelevant 2cents;
1. The way I see it is Apollo have a shortlist of projects across sectors and countries and once market shows direction they pounce. Looking at all past acquisitions its been with market sentiment, which imo is a critical part of successful deal-making; few smart operators know how to manoeuvre with the market flavour. During the epic Uranium boom (before it went exponential like crypto's) these guys pulled off 5-6 Uranium deals, especially in hot locations. Same thing was done with Coal, even Potash when that was hot for a short time. Iron ore aswell when Tony Sage was at his peak he sold an Iron Ore plant for $350M after buying it for $2M 2years earlier and floated Cape Lambert for $250M, Apollo went right next door and struck 2 deals over in DRC with EQX (**promotion blocked**) followed by acquiring 20% of Cape Lamberts Projects. So generally right trend and right location are covered by these guys. Imo this is the most important part, MRQ a sorta recent example for me, a cobalt shell I was a buyer...they did a quality acquisition but in mineral sands (good location, good sector but market sentiment wasn't there at all). Was -33% into acquisition ann. eventually bounced and provided just over a bag, but bet if they went for a lower quality cobalt project likely would've done more bags at the time.
2. Looking at all past acquisitions they don't go for stage 1 exploration assets. There is only a small handful of dealmakers on the market which don't do this, all which I happily back as they don't use Shareholder money to gamble some drills into a random piece of land.
Apollo being one of them, have a read of PIR, EQX, OMC, PLL Round 1, NMN, PDZ, CPL acquisitions, all had some combination of extensive drilling/prelim resource/geophys/infrastructure/feasibility/pilot plant testwork/historic production already completed or included. So market is given something to work off and it isn't complete guesswork on what lies under the ground like a game of Russian roulette.
So my guess's
1. Nickel; I see this being hot in 2019, also given they already have a prelim nickel vend here. In the end Apollo wont go this route until market sentiment is proven. Likely will take a scientific discovery from one of the majors battery manufacturers confirming a viable nickel only battery, or even a big nickel cobalt play.
2. Copper; LME spot has been smashed lately due to trump tariffs, but Chinese sales contracts are at an all time high. Which makes for easier asset vend shortlisting/negotiations, also easier for T/O or mergers if sales contracts remain high. Demands been strong from China that Coldeco largest copper miner has already sold out all of 2019 supply. So regardless of the fear around Trump Tarrifs China remains hungry for copper as of now.
3. Gold; Lots of M&A activity going on in the sector. NST acquiring Pogo, Barrick merger and about three other M&A or T/O offers in asx specs I've noticed over last month. Whats more is Woodman resigned from every Apollo co to take a senior position at a Gold Producer and now he's finally back for the first time since with more gold knowledge and connections now that ever. These guys also took the 800koz PIR project into 5.5Moz construction and merger with B2Gold.
As for when? Reading through previous announcements you'll be able to pick it up in the quarterly, once they mention in there it'll be game on. Would be great to be given clear direction/gameplan on the next quarterly...in the end these guys know best and we're just speculators from the sideline.
Another bonus is these guys have navigated multibaggers through GFC so this dummy spit isn't much of an issue to them. For someone like me I've been in market for under 3years I'd say worst I've experienced is now, Feb 2018, Brexit and then the mini-tech bubble burst in early 2016 which burnt me (if it wasn't for CR8 and SRT I would've likely been wiped out completely), so really best I can do is sit back a listen to those who have experienced it over the years, and learn from their words.
Anyways; here's updated T20 since A.R.
My system automates it so sellers are highlighted in Orange, Blue highlights those who have been adding, Green are fresh new entrants. The +/- is also automated by code which is just an "approximation" on minimum how much would've been sold or added to get into T20.
I've blanked out names outside T20 that have changed position size, just for privacy and following rules/procedure, the unblanked ones outside T20 remain same and were on the previous T20. But paints a clear picture - one seller (now out of ammo), everyone else adding.
Actual T20 will look a bit different but I've conglomerated entities that I know are run by the same party together. So example; Mark Pearce has all three of his entities put together etc.
T10 hold 35% of the register. Euroz and Argo running the show. Euroz have more of their clients involved (Pearce, Verve and few others), Argo holds more shares but I'm not familiar with their bigger clients.
I'll reduce posting here now until some new comes up or if I find something new among my research/sentiment as I feel at any moment someone's gonna come along and make the classic cliche comment "this is a heart pump stock designed to screw over retail" lol.
Cheers
(20min delay)