Hi Furfural,
I will attempt to answer that question in a few ways.
For starters on the 26/4 BAR turned over 16m+ plus shares in the range of 5.9c to 7.2c. Why? Was it FOMO or RECOGNITION, perhaps a bit of both. Either way....this record breaking volume was not a baseless one off, nor would investors wager such big bets with the intention of losing. To quote
@accaeric signature "
Stock bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid base in reality - George Soros"
At a $20m m/cap we are way off being in a bubble. The bubble in fact may have only just taken is first small shape, with the anticipation of something much larger to come, as confirmed in expert technical analysis as well, which BAR is very lucky to have here in
@johnyb26 TA posts
Barra's accumulated losses are some $39m- BPL accumulated losses are not even 1/10 of Barras. This will greatly help as well when we start making good money.
I have difficulty determining just how much of those accumulated losses were invested into the Mt Thirsty Project- however can only say they may have as invested as much, perhaps even more into Mt Thirsty already, than BPL's entire m/cap.
Just when the Mt Thirsty project was at world class JORC levels, the Cobalt and Nickel price started to plunge, Barra started having cashflow issues, and the rest is history- the market forgot about BAR and Mt Thirsty in a huge way. Their ex MD Dean Goodwin resigned in 2010, and along came ex-Macquarie executive director Gary Berrell- who set about turning around Barra's fortunes, and its taken him almost 6 long years to turn it around and make Barra so operationally strong.
Was makes Mt Thirsty so unique is not the grades, but the intense oxidisation, differing significantly from typical WA nickel laterite occurrences, and contains high cobalt values.
There is no need for expensive blasting prior to excavation, the deposit is shallow and flat lying, occurring only 10-15m below surface, making mining extremely low cost and allowing the deposit to be high-graded during the first 3-4 years of production, dramatically reducing capital payback
Recent metallurgical test work in 2012 and 2013 were aimed at establishing the lowest capital and operating cost process which also delivered maximum metal recoveries.
I consider this a huge success, with the previous capex of some $400m being reduced to approximately $65-70 million.
Its worth noting.....
" The low capital cost and the fact that
cobalt prices would have to fall by over 30% for a zero return justifies continued work to progress to a pre-feasibility stage."
And what if Cobalt prices boom as forecast?
