Interesting little company. Did a series of asset swops to leave them with half of the 4th largest Nickel deposit in the world.
The deposit itself is in the Philippines has been known about for 30 years but due to low prices and lack of demand in the Far East it was never exploited. With the explosion in demand from India and China the nickel price has climbed from $2 to $6.50 but oddly enough is still considered low.
The final approval stage for exploitation is just about to be approved and extraction will begin. The company already has one contract with a Japanese smelter and is in discussions with smelters in a series of countries.
Nothing clever about the operation, as the ore is of sufficiently high grade, they dig it up and ship it out. Infrastrucure is already in place for operation.
TMC is currently priced at 18m, the initial Japanese contract is worth 4m and each additional contract will hopefully be at this level or greater.
Final approval turns the company into a producer and each additional contract simply increases their size.
The management is tight with cash and has some good quality mining skills onboard.
The Philippine government is fast tracking the final approval and the company says it expects it shortly.
One to hold for approval and through the series of RNS's as more contracts are won. Company should be worth 50m in 6 months and 100m in 12-18 months.
Buy it, ignore it, just pointing this one out.

It's all good news, got that SP moving, nice little uptrend since mid-March. Pity the MM's have jacked the spread up to 8p.

Shortage of stock is likely behind the increase in the spread, to deter buyers from buying.

It's not working; we're up 4p today :o)

Anyone can have mine for 5 a share - how's that?

They can have mine for 4.99 then ;) thats a bargain :)

I can't compete . . .

Actually, about 20 a share would be more like, once production is up and running and the co starts posting some decent profits. Patience . . .

Now today's news has filtered down through to the bulk of players out there (that's the delay inherent with a mid-morning RNS). We're up 8p, at 130 to sell. Nice.

Now the MM's are narrowing the spread again, this time dropping the bid price (in view of the price rise, I'd say they're having a good day).

TMC Bid: 130p Offer: 133p Change: 7.5

From uk-analyst.com

News that Toledo Mining had begun a 2 million dollar re-sampling and evaluation programme at its Ipilan nickel project, helped lift shares in the company 8p to 132p. The Palawan Island based project, has a combined inferred and indicated resource of around 75 million tonnes of nickel ore. Toledo holds a 52% economic interest in the project with options to increase this to over 71% once the decision is made to develop the project. The re-sampling and evaluation programme being undertaken maintains the company's momentum and keeps it well on track to commercialise the Ipilan Nickel Project in 2007. The project is thought to have the potential to export up to about 1 million dry tonnes of laterite every year with trial metallurgical bulk sample shipments targeted for mid-2007.

Up 3p this morning - very pretty graph over the last month or so.

A higher low, thats nice to see :)

L2 is 1 v 2 with 3 MM's up and blue the only moves today.

TMC the top tip for him !! Full article on the link, extract below.


http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ca9e46a2-f29d-11da-b78e-0000779e2340.html

Roger Whiteoak Framlington UK Smaller Companies Fund
By Isabel Berwick
Published: June 3 2006 03:00


............What's your top tip?

A small company called Toledo Mining Corporation, a nickel resource company in the Philippines. It's a high risk-reward company, but there's a low market cap and they don't need to build a huge plant, so the cost of production is relatively low. They will be shipping the product direct to China and Japan. They should be shipping ore by the end of 2006 and generating positive cash flow next year.

Nickel is a commodity where the price should be well supported in the medium term because of structural undersupply.........

Good one PP. I'm still out at the mo after cashing profits on the recent slide, but continuing to watch.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5171654.stm

Wednesday, 12 July 2006

Philippine 'attack plot foiled'

The army says the men wanted to install a new government
Six fugitive army officers arrested last week in the Philippines were plotting an attack on parliament, army officials said.
The group planned to seize control of the House of............................

This stock has been creeping up nicely, with shipments due to be delivered later this year, i still sence this stock is heavily undervalued.

You may well be right, expert - I haven't looked at this since my brief in-and-out in the spring, but with Nickel now almost double what it was back then (now $27K a tonne, natch!), surely the case for this stock only gets better.

FYI

http://www.pse.com.ph/html/disclosure/pdf/dc2006-4318_AT.pdf

Interesting article....lots of discussion as to whether this recent change has now affected TMC, in terms that the TMC Berong project is not part of the 24 Priority development list, so therefore, what is going to be the effect ??



http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=50200

Mining conference postponed on policy concerns


An international mining conference in the Philippines next month has been postponed, the local industry association said Tuesday, amid reported concerns over government policies on exploiting the country's vast mineral resources.

The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines announced on its website that the October 3 to 5 meeting had been postponed until next year, with the date "to be announced later."

The statement gave no reason for the postponement.

Mining executives here had planned to use the Manila meeting to make foreign investors more aware of the country's untapped resources sector, said to be worth in excess of one trillion dollars.

Meanwhile, Manila newspapers on Tuesday quoted a Chamber of Mines letter to President Arroyo which said the meeting was postponed in order to shield the administration from "operational and governance issues that will inevitably surface in an international conference and could reverberate to the global mining community."

In the August 29 letter, Chamber president Benjamin Philip Romualdez noted a policy shift on mining, referring to a government decision to offer only 24 permits on priority projects rather than open up the industry in full, as had been approved by the Supreme Court.

This "has led mining companies to believe and confirm their early suspicions that investment policies in the Philippines are not stable and are heightened by high political risks," Romualdez said.

"This has led to stymied investment inflows affecting the country's competitiveness as a mining destination, and a wait-and-see attitude once again from our foreign investors," he added.

The Supreme Court last year ended a seven-year legal dispute over the constitutionality of the country's Mining Act by ruling that foreign investors were freely allowed into the industry.

That move had been, and continues to be opposed by some very influential groups, including some in the church, who argue that foreign mining companies will despoil the country and strip it of its mineral resources without giving a fair return.

It was to head off such opposition that the government, after pressing for the Supreme Court ruling, decided to allow only 24 permits, effectively limiting the scope of foreign investment.

The Chamber of Mines also noted moves by some sections of Congress to repeal the mining act which increased permitted foreign ownership of local mining companies from 40 to 100 percent. AFP

http://www.chamberofminesphilippines.com/

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Board of Directors of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines in its meeting on August 24, 2006 decided to postpone the holding of MINING PHILIPPINES 2006 scheduled on October 3-5, 2006 to 2007 to coincide with Asian Pacific Mining Conference co hosted by AFMA and COMP at a definite date to be announced later.

Does one not think, that the fourth largest open cast mine in the world, would be amongst the Phillipine governments top 24 priority projects, or am I just being biased. The last two days price drops, backed up by no market news, sugests to me that someone is getting very nervous and wants as many private investors out of the way as quickly as possible. If TMC want to produce 90,000 tonnes by the end of this year as per their last stock market release, Update on permits, dated 4th Sept.This update being released a whole 11 days after the cancelation of the meeting in the Phillipines tells me that if they are not on the list of 24 then they themselves are not yet aware of it. The time frame suggested for producing the 30,000 tonnes bulk sample was approx 1 month, therefore my thinking is that to produce 3 times this ammount would take approx 3 months. 3 months before the end of this year would be the end of this week. Does anyone out their agree with me or am I the only optimist amongst us.

Hmm . . this is a pity as I was eyeing TMC for another purchase.

Does anyone know if this issue also applies to offshore hydrocarbons? I have just purchased a load of FEP and am hoping this news won't undermine the case for investing in the stock.