I attended the GM today, the formal part of the meeting took less than 5 minutes, then we had a good hour of Q&A, not many shareholders in attendance, at least 2 from the T20.
Both Lindsay & the Chairman (Paul) were very positive about how things are going, the previous time I met them they were still positive, not to the same extent.
The project is on time despite having just had 3 weeks of solid rain, as Lindsay posted on LinkedIn the drainage ditches are working well despite not having the liners yet.
Although I couldn’t pin him to a time frame for Bank BAI, Lindsay is very positive it isn’t far away. He said it’s just the way they do things going through their system. He also said they had a ribbon cutting on site event planned for the end of May. The Minister of State (not sure thats the exact title) + Chairmen of Bank BAI, SWF, IDC? will all attend. Lindsay pointed out once construction is started it would be a very bad look if it was halted because eg BAI were slow with the loan. I got the impression this was almost like insurance.
Lindsay said although they still talk to Carrinho they are not ready to sign up for the MOU tonnage, though they will be a customer. He said possibly they were a bit too ambitious with their plans & have scaled back a bit.
Rob Newbold is in Angola atm and has assessed internal demand, distributor by distributor + larger farms, they expect this internal demand will satisfy IDC. Lindsay pointed out when IDC 1st approved the loan, they did not have SWF invested, did not have BAI loan approval & hadn’t commenced construction. He said these 3 things will go a long way with getting the offtake CP relaxed. An export offtake would also satisfy the CP. Foskor’s testing was delayed when they moved their pilot plant from the mine site to Richards Bay. They also have potential export customers in Brazil & China, DRC, our phosphate is low in calcium which creates gypsum when it reacts with sulphur so it is very sought after. he didn’t mention export customers by name, but there seem to be quite a few, and demand could exceed our supply so it will be competitive.
The Port is still on schedule to open in December, if for some reason it was delayed, they would look at barging to ship.
Going from stage 1, 187kt to 400kt saves about $40/t due to fixed costs, which is why exports are important + for Forex
They have satisfied the SWF tranche 3 conditions & expect that money soon.
Minbos is no longer paying all the salaries. Just a few from Head Office, the remainder by Soul Rock funds, so admin expenses will be lower this Q
Amufert was mentioned, doubt we’ll sell any phosphate to them, Lindsay thinks it would be highly unlikely for them to get going, $2b project for a product that doesn’t work in Angola. Even for export he said Qatar are building a $6b Plant - sounds like a bunch of dreamers.
Lindsay is very aware of missed time lines, he said words to the effect - we don’t want to announce it, just do it & announce it when it’s done. From that statement I got the impression he doesn’t want to make predictions any more, just make an announcement when something is done - no fluffy stuff.
