I managed to catch up with Mark for a short while at the Sydney expo. A good chat, with the odd exception of randoms trying to sell their services to them, but I got through part of what I wanted to talk through at least.
Overall, really impressed with Mark as a human. Approachable and energetic, which is important when you're looking to sell something and make deals. Honest and welcoming, so as investors or buyers of product you don't feel like you're getting shafted.
As for the timing, positioning, etc etc they obviously hoped that they were buying the right asset at a silly cheap price and entering into a good couple of markets. They are clearly really excited by the recent changes in China and what that brings.
I also had a really good 30-40mins with SXG. I'm not a holder there, although I have to say I'm tempted to be. The reason for mentioning them is that they are in the same markets that we are in, but they have had the antimony hype before us. They've had the USA Dept Defence talking to them when they were presenting in the USA.... apparently they were very keen to talk with the SXG team.
Now that's the reason for the SXG mention... you can only assume that the same people, likely Canberra, and potentially others are circling. Mark's not had time to create a clear strategy here on who to approach and how because the China news is a week old, and because, simply, they will come to him anyway.
Had a good chat about offtakes. As per announcements there's a lot of work on that at the moment. Personally I don't envy the work and the decisions that the team need to make here because off-take buyers will expect a lower price than spot, but where gold and antimony is heading is anyone's guess. It's tricky because the end consumer of the antimony are most likely to be USA/AU governments, but none of them are able to refine into ingots, because that all happens in china. That leaves us in an odd place, but also leaves the buyers in a very hard position. Sort out refinement, and we'll be laughing - I think this is the biggest challenge to closing off-takes, but it's a challenge of making the RIGHT choice, unlike many ASX companies who haven't the options to make ANY choice.
Options cheques now coming in, which is a bonus $6-7m potential (if I remember right). Icing on the cake.
Team very excited by the drilling, with high hopes / confidence to broaden out the resisting resource without impacting the AuEq
Great to see the significant price bounce here after yesterday's much needed stabilisation. I wouldn't be upset with a little further stability here before more movement up
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