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What is a "true long"? I'm rather curious what qualifies one as such.
You can quibble about the sloppy use of terms by a reporter over starting constructions vs. fully up and running a mining operation. That doesn't change the fact that you stated:
NioCorp & specifically Mark Smith stated that several times including in a 14 November 2019 news article:
There is a difference between getting tasks accomplished and delivering results for investors. Approximately 50% or US$150 MILLION in value disappeared in 3 months. Must be from all the great stuff that was accomplished.
I guess that old saying of if "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas ... for the past decade.
NioCorp had an intra-day split-adjusted high on 06 March 2023 of US$11.00 and closed at US$10.10. Today, 06 June 2023, it closed at US$5.11 (Source: https://stockinvest.us/stock-price/NIOBF?page=2). Schwab lists the current market capitalization at US$156.2m.
Even ignoring the roughly US$150,000,000 of value Mark has destroyed in NioCorp in the past 3 months, how the hell can he not sell a supposed resource or project with billions in value?
This is not an unfortunate situation. This is a disaster considering how long this management team has been working on this effort. Well, working part time on it anyway.
Name a single deal that has benefited NioCorp investors? None of the numerous off-take agreements have resulted in anything. German government loan resulted in nothing. Lind/GXII/Yorkshire only benefited Lind/GXII/Yorkshire. We don't even get rent income from local farmers signing a yearly contract to utilize the land growing crops.
I don't care how nice he is. I don't care how smart he is. He has done a terrible job while getting compensated a heck of a lot of money and destroying investor value. I would love for my sentiment to be different but he has delivered nothing while being highly compensated to work part time.
I was thinking that maybe they would use the funds to invest in Mark's other part time job at IBC so that one doesn't go bankrupt?
Curious to know if Mark flew commercial or private.
Yes, I understand that something was necessary to meet the per share price requirements of NASDAQ but it would have been really nice if management could have done something substantive to increase the share price and not require as large of a reverse split as they implemented.
At this point, I'd be open to the idea to rent the land to local farmers on short term contracts to grow crops and generate some revenue.
End the share split BS spin. I'm very critical of NioCorp management's lack of performance but let's put an end to the completely bogus "lost 90% of their shares" crap. I'm happy to be critical of the performance, but it is disingenuous to claim the reverse split caused investors to lost 90% of their shares without acknowledging the corresponding increase in per share price.
Stock splits don't change the value themselves of the market capitalization of any company or any share holder's total value. Market action post split or reverse split might.
Ten $1 bills or one $10 bill. It is the same amount of money and you don't lose any value if you convert ten $1 bills into one $10 bill even though you have 90% fewer pieces of currency.
I do agree that there are effects by share splits or reverse splits. Generally speaking splitting shares is positively received by the market and generally speaking the share prices increase post split. Conversely reverse splits are generally poorly received by the market and individual share prices tend to go down post reverse split.
This also doesn't diminish the fact that in early March, NIOBF was above US$1 and has since lost about 50% of it's value as NB and management has not been performing or supporting investors FOR YEARS while giving themselves very high salaries for part time jobs and continuing to give equity/options/etc.
Let's bash or praise what is legit. Unfortunately there has been very little to praise in quite a long time.
NioCorp is down 50% in 10 weeks and hovering just above multi-year lows. Yet I read how this project is "fully de-risked" or how patient I need to be (I'm invested over 9 years) or some ambiguous entity is holding down the share price (like they haven't had 10+ years to get in?) or some other claim about how junior mining is and you need to have a much longer time horizon (20 years? 50 years? 100 years? 200 years?) to why we are now 6+ years past when Mark said construction would begin. I didn't claim 2017, Mark stated in 2016 after years of working on getting the project together, he anticipated construction to begin in 2017.
Now Mark & Jim & the other's part time job at IBC is about 3 weeks from default unless they get new outside funding with yesterday's news release. (Think that will be a distraction?)
I don't care how good of guys they may or may not be.
I don't care about who technically has more shares.
I don't care about how you define "render" or "rendering".
I don't care about a lot of petty squabbling
Here is what I know.
1. Mark & Jim & Scott & the others have two companies that they are highly paid to run both via a combination of salary and options/equity/bonuses/interest on loans to pay themselves a salary/etc
2. They have zero revenue.
3. They have had zero revenue since ever. We don't even have a timeline when revenue could be received outside of a "X years after financing" which has been eluding Mark for 10 years.
Yet, their salaries have been going up despite not actually accomplishing anything tangible for investors in nearly a decade. WHY? I'm not opposed to them making money but what accomplishments has management achieved to justify increasing salaries & increasing equity options but not actually accomplishing anything tangible. This is like a baseball team rewarding themselves for getting hits while never actually scoring runs and constantly losing games.
The only people involved with NioCorp who are NOT making any money seems to be retail investors. But don't worry, there will be free beer tomorrow just wait for something like the BFS / PEA / PEA2 / Offtake agreements / German government loan / permits / kilns on backorder / EXIM interest or applications / NASDAQ pot of gold / some other distraction.
Hey good news, they're drilling for samples again so maybe we need to wait for those results in late 2024 in order to have a third FS in 2026 and then I'm sure financing in 2027 which will start construction in 2028 and finally get revenue in 2032 or some other crazy deal.
The next thing you know, Mark will increase the interest on his loans to himself that pay his & the staff's salary so we'll need to dilute in order to get the funds from investors to pay for themselves.
I'm tired of hearing how great their team is. They need to deliver some tangible results.
Something doesn't make sense here. They just announced the SPAC merger AND the Yorkville Convertible Debt Financing "NioCorp Closes Business Combination with GXII and Separate Financing Deals Providing Access to Up to US$71.9 Million in Net Proceeds Over the Next Three Years" (https://www.niocorp.com/niocorp-closes-business-combination-with-gxii-and-separate-financing-deals-providing-access-to-up-to-us71-9-million-in-net-proceeds-over-the-next-three-years/)
If I read that right, they're diluting for $2M at near multi-year lows of $6.36/share? How badly do they need capital? What did this SPAC and NASDAQ uplisting do for them if they're needing to dilute already at this low of a stock price?
Can anyone explain what is going on with this?
On March 1, shares were at US$0.90/share. Since then we have had the EXIM news on March 6, approving of the merger by both NioCorp (March 10) & GXII (March 15) , $71.9M in funding (March 16) ... and we are down over 10% on all this "good news". Down more from some of the spikes, but down from before all this good news.
CNBC app shows GXII down between US$0.03 - $0.02 pre-market. Only about 4k shares, but it doesn't usually move much and I don't recall much pre-market or after hours. It also didn't move up on the news yesterday.
NioCorp up over 10% on the news, GXII has barely moved. Must have some meaning
Can anyone translate this into practical and understandable language?
PM - respectfully disagree in that it is TSX, OTC, & Frankfurt Exchange. Even the NioCorp website states: https://www.niocorp.com/about-niocorp/faq/#about-niocorp
$2.00/share overnight because of a reverse split is not the same thing as the price going over $2.00/share. There is a huge difference. One doesn't change market capitalization, one does.
We already have off-take agreements for 50% of production to ThyssenKrupp? Not sure if those have an expiration date or not so how would that affect potential sales to battery manufacturers.
Plus I would think battery companies would be more interested in securing existing supply than waiting years for NioCorp to get into production. This is why we need to get this thing going before the market need is met and commodity prices drop lowering ROI,
I currently do not have a sell order, but I have in the past had them in for around $10/share. With the R/S looming, I stopped doing that for the time being.
My point is there is a lot of excitement right now with the potential merger. There was a lot of excitement 12 months ago. And the year before that. And the ...
I do have my shares and actually increased my position modestly in 2022. Mostly because I'm neither significantly positive nor significantly negative between the various accounts that I hold shares. We don't have sufficient volume to easily move out of (or into) positions.
I think there is big potential here, but I'm tired of nothing coming to fruition. NioCorp stated in December in 2016 that they anticipated construction to begin in 2017 based upon the BFS. Somehow there is always a reason that they can't get financing to begin construction. Yet Mark & company get paid a hell of a lot more than I do at their part time jobs at NioCorp. They are years behind what they said they would do. They are rewarded for not delivering but investors are not. It has been long enough. Time for them to deliver.
Recall, if you will, about 12 months ago how many people were saying that 2022 was going to be HUGE for NioCorp? It was likely to happen before 4/4/2022 since that was when the air permit was going to expire, we owned the land, yada yada yada.
Here we are down over 20% since that time and then after all the good news of 2022. Now we have new reasons to be excited that 2023 is going to be the year that it finally happens! I am tired of the NioCorp Groundhog Day.
You want "4 months under a dollar"? It has been under US$1/share for a decade.
It is long past time.
Ok, but that is still dilution before they would need to offer a lot of shares on Nasdaq in order to get funds for construction. That will be a lot of dilution.
I'm all for rewarding performance and results, I'm not a huge fan of rewarding promises without delivering.
Recall when OMG THEY'RE GOING TO ADD SCANDIUM AND TITANIUM ... JUST WAIT FOR THE PEA / BFS / BFS 2!!! Only they also said it would cost just under US$1B to build it and the stock went from about US$0.80 to US$0.40. Notice that the stock price is still in that area years later and we're talking about how valuable adding more products will be. Deja vu all over again.
They are paid well for part time jobs at a company with no revenue. Get this thing built, start making money, reward investors, and then they should be making truckloads of money and I will praise them for it. Until something happens, they're rewarded for making promises. It is time to harvest, not talk about what what to plant.
Farmers don't eat based upon what they plan to plant, they eat based upon what they harvest. Hunters don't eat what they aim at, they eat what they kill.
Funny that doesn't seem to apply to NioCorp management. We have yet to close the deals needed to get revenue, yet compensations went up significantly.
https://www.conferencecalltranscripts.org/summary/?id=11438567
They should be paid on what they deliver at this point, not what they plan. I've heard too many stories that never came to fruition yet to be happy about this. I'm all for Mark & company making money, but increasing his compensation 37% prior to delivering after years of failing to deliver is not a good stewardship of investors money.
It seems another important date on the calendar has come ... and passed ... and we are down about 3.7% after it. Will March 2023 be any different? I hope so, but to be honest, it has been hard to get excited about this.
I would agree with you generically. However, the management team is very highly compensated to have part time jobs.
Jim Sims makes over $270k/year from NioCorp while also working for IBC.
Neal Shah makes over $270k/year from NioCorp as CFO of a company with no revenue to report for a decade.
https://www1.salary.com/NIOCORP-DEVELOPMENTS-LTD-Executive-Salaries.html
I am hopeful for the company, but holy cow are they behind their own schedules and they are well compensated while doing so.
Just like NioCorp, Artemis launch is delayed.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/29/live-updates-artemis-i-moon-rocket-launch/7927941001/
NioCorp is an American company. The headquarters are in Colorado. The project is in Nebraska.
It's stock is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but that doesn't make it a Canadian company. The stock is also listed on the US Over The Counter Exchange and the Frankfurt Exchange.
December 9, 2016 - Lincoln Journal Star - Article titled "Niocorp hoping to start mine construction next year".
https://journalstar.com/business/local/niocorp-hoping-to-start-mine-construction-next-year/article_0a54bf8a-704d-51f4-9b99-fa4713ef86b0.html
June 30, 2017 - NioCorp News Release - NioCorp Announces Results of Positive Feasibility Study
https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2017/06/30/1035397/0/en/NioCorp-Announces-Results-of-Positive-Feasibility-Study-for-its-Elk-Creek-Superalloy-Materials-Project.html
Question: What is so different between the news releases from 2016-2017 and what we've seen in the past year?
Answer: The calendar.
Mark may have loaned a lot of money keep the company cash flow going. But it is to pay his own salary & he's in charge of what debts the company pays. I don't want to bash him. I want them to start making some revenue.
Every single conference / symposium / convention has coffee breaks or luncheons or social hour or whatever sponsored by someone. That's how the conference companies make money.
I disagree with most of the comments which state something along the lines of "all we need is ..." or "the one thing missing is ..." I don't care about supply chains, or kilns, or if the demo plant results are done by X date because all of those things are details and not the bigger picture.
I'm starting to get the feeling that NioCorp has only two courses of action. Well, three but that's a poor one.
1. Mark is painting us into a corner with the REEs. By that I mean that everything is now riding on that revised FS. The future of the company and our investment relies on the results of the Demo Plan & REEs bringing more promises of revenue beyond what the old/revised/previous BFS with Nb, Sc, & Ti.
We need the results of the demo plant trials to be good enough or Mark needs to at least be able to sell that story. Mark hasn't demonstrated that he can do yet.
I mean, can they really go to this REE conference and say "well, we were hoping, but turns out, we don't have that much"? I think not. Thus everything is currently riding on the demo plant. Even if the demo plant results aren't completed by the October conference what difference does that conference make? We're already 5 years past when they said construction would begin so what is a few more months?
2. If REEs aren't enough to sell the project to get financing, then we need to go find a way to make a viable market for scandium which shows promise, but isn't there yet at scale. Niobium has a market but also has producers who don't need $1B before they can deliver product. Same with titanium.
Mark's been in charge long enough with so many off take agreements but can't close a financing deal. I don't see a future path outside of these two options. Maybe sell the mineral rights but that wouldn't amount to much IMO given the CAPEX needed to realize those rights.
I don't mean to be overly negative, but at this point, I don't see another way to get this investment to deliver any returns. I've been following for a decade and invested for over 8 years now and we have zero revenue yet pay handsome part time salaries.
Good questions & IMHO this is where things get interesting or tricky depending upon your point of view.
Remember that market cap is a function of total shares and share price. If the market thinks a company is more valuable, then share price goes up. Assuming that total shares are constant, therefore market cap goes up.
Similarly, if the total number of shares goes up without a corresponding increase (or decrease) in share price, then market cap goes up also (assume constant share price). However, this almost never happens as the market notices and share prices will generally go down because the market as a whole (meaning ALL investors) has a general perception of the total value (aka market cap) of a company. This is referred to a dilution because of the corresponding drop in share prices leaving the total market cap about the same.
As far as NioCorp, I think the shelf offering is to provide options to the company (note - not stock options). While I will often be critical of the leadership team for failure to deliver, I do not believe for a moment that they are stupid.
I think that the shelf offering provides a less administratively burdensome means for NioCorp to offer more shares (aka dilute) when needed to raise fund for operations like demonstration plants, studies, and - not least of all - salaries to Mark & team.
It also provides a means for them to offer shares (still called dilution) in case there is a significant possible event. This could be a means to raise funds to cover expenses or maybe if they can get investors or loans which don't cover the full cost of construction.
A big change can be if the company uses the money raised to help the business, then it can be rewarded by an increased share price because the market believes that it is more valuable with the addition of this new business aspect.
Bottom line is the shelf offering is a means for them to sell more shares to the public without having to have a vote or register them with the government for multiple offerings (e.g. they could have 4 offerings of $50m in shares all covered under one process vice 4 processes).
Market Capitalization is simply the product of multiplying the share price by the number of total shares outstanding as Prudent Capitalist pointed out. Why it matters is another thing entirely.
If market cap is low, then institutions & large investors can't make much of an investment to affect their portfolio without artificially driving up (or down) the price of the stock by their own buying or selling. It can also affect how much they would even desire to invest in a company because it could cause them to take a huge controlling interest in the stock in order to make a noticeable investment in their portfolio.
For example, Berkshire Hathaway is not likely to invest heavily in NioCorp because at roughly $250m in Market Cap, even it the investment were to double, how much of a difference can that make to their portfolio? Realistically it cannot do much more than a fraction of a %. It could however invest in Apple or Amazon or Exxon or McDonalds without artificially driving up (or down) the stock price (ignoring the affect that simply the news of them investing in something moves the price).
Alternatively, Market Cap can help investors understand how much a controlling interest in the company could cost. For example, if I wanted to control NioCorp, I could target 51% of roughly 275M shares at about US$0.80 would require about 140M shares or US$112M. It would obviously cost more than that as the is not enough daily volume of shares being traded that you could acquire enough shares without significantly affecting the price and changing the calculations.
Market Cap generally just means how much is a company worth.
Maybe, but you know what Mark doesn't have? A mine. Revenue. Financing to build it.
He's only sitting pretty on resources that he currently can't bring to market and needs at least $1B to do so. NioCorp is currently spending over $1.2M/year for 5 people doing part time work so there's also that nagging cash flow problem (unless he loans himself more money). We are far from in the driver's seat (yet).
Excellent find DemoMan ... how in the name of all that is good and holy can there be an article in Reuters which mentions Rio Tinto producing 3 tons/year of scandium and the problem being a lack of supply but no mention of Niocorp's supposed plan to produce 97-100 tons/year?
What the hell does Jim Sims do for $272k/year at a company with no revenue if a major news outlet writing about one of your primary products doesn't even know you exist? Where is Mark Smith at $400k/year either screaming at Jim's or maybe get on the phone with Reuters himself?
What good did this press release do now that it is nearly 3 years old? https://www.niocorp.com/niocorp-announces-success-in-producing-aluminum-scandium-master-alloy/
Or maybe they did know and deemed Niocorp unworthy of mention since it is nothing more than an idea at this point. They did state Rio Tinto's "project took less than two years from drawing board to commercial demonstration, needs no extra mining ..."
So why haven't they been able to secure financing then? What happened with Deutsche Bank? I've been in this for the long term and the REE theme sounds a heck of a lot like it did when they added scandium & titanium to the products list.
I'm tired of what could be and want this to start doing something with our investment besides pay Mark $300k/year (& others) for a part time job.
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not anti-Mark or others. I just want this thing to start doing what they said would be started in 2017 - begin construction and start making money.
Please let this be the catalyst that we've been waiting so many years. I have been and am critical of them being years behind schedules that they posted. I just hope that this finally begins to come to fruition.
Does anyone know if they have released any updates on CAPEX? If I missed it, my bad as I took some time away figuring not much would happen until spring anyway.
What I'm wondering is how much inflation and/or supply chain issues would affect construction timelines or costs (and thereby also financing)? Inflation at 8% of $1B is a lot of extra money needed.
We shall see what Wednesday and future days bring so I'm tempering my excitement. I remember when they announced they would include scandium and titanium and how that was going to make the project more annual revenue and be more attractive to investors.
Only it didn't do much beyond having hotly contested discussions about the actual price of scandium once there really could be a market for it.
I hope for the sake of all that is good & holy that this gets us over the financing hurdle and start construction. My fear is that the inclusion of the phrase "the company won’t know for sure whether it can economically produce those rare earth elements until it does some additional analysis of the latest data" means this isn't a home run yet.
I hope that my concerns are wrong, but this just feels a lot like the Sc & Ti announcement which resulted in nothing to the share price.