Update on a couple of things..
Adriatic. Holders will be pleased to see the Vares processing plant finally, after delays since November, successfully commenced operations 2 weeks ago. If production ramps as planned to 800k tons per year by Q4 then I'd expect price to gradually re-rate over this year, past my initial £2.15 target to between £2.50 - £3. Upside to this is if they exceed 800ktpa as suggested they want to in last year's reserve update; if silver price does something wild; if/when Adriatic announce results/resource update for their Serbian asset 'Raska' (suggested by management to be this year); plus satellite discoveries from ongoing drilling around Ruprice. Long term a good entry is anything below £2 imo.
Alphamin. Annual financial report out last week. All you need to know about what lies ahead is in their MD+A. If you enjoy this sort of thing then
have a read and you can decipher without too much difficulty what the future brings, starting pretty much now. Can't emphasise strongly enough how good of a cash cow this company is, and is going to be for the next 10+yrs. It still flies somewhat under the radar due to location.
- Expect to hear an announcement by end of this month that the processing plant for their second mine Mpana south has commenced processing.
- Then first tin concentrate sales from Mpana South beginning in April. This will increase production from 12m tons to 20m tons of tin concentrate per year.
- Reading between the lines of the production forecast figures for 2024 they're guiding for a rapid ramp-up to full capacity during the April quarter (interesting to compare with Adriatic's guidance of gradual ramp-up to full capacity by Q4 this year).
- Capex is all paid, the mine/plant are built - they spent ~$120m of capex on construction of Mpana south last financial year.
- Weather conditions in DRC during Q4 last year resulted in roads impassable so tin sales down by 30% for that quarter, and sales of tin down 11% for the year as a result.
- The last 12 months average price of tin sold was 15% lower than the 2022's post-covid highs - ~$25,000 versus ~$30,000.
- They paid a huge DRC income tax bill for the stellar post-covid years of squeezed prices. they also forward-paid further DRC income taxes for financial year 2024. Meaning, this year their tax bill (on much higher profits) is going to be a $30m versus $130m in taxes paid for 2023.
Despite all this going on, they still generated handsome annual profit after taxes of $47m, and paid out $57m in dividends (from cash of $109m). Costs of production were flat year on year despite inflation.
A year of 'boring' development and high cash outflows is over and they're positioned to now reap the rewards. Notice that despite all the expense and setbacks in the last year, share price rarely dipped below 80c - the market knows this is positioned for strong growth.
I had impressive divi returns from AFM (bought at 48c) during the 2021-23 post-covid commodity squeeze. This year I'm expecting they announce perhaps a smallish (or no) divi in April during the AGM. Then from the second half of the year I expect a decade+ of sustained high profits and cash distributed to shareholders as a handsome dividend yield in the high single to low double %, relative to current share price. With sp growth back to the previous highs of mid $1's. This is from the production of 20k tons per year @ $25,000+ per ton tin, with all-in costs of production $15,000 per ton. If the tin market does what some expect and moves to an annual average above $25k then it just adds more cherries on top.