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.

Up 3.5p at last. Time for me to go to bed, speak again later.

Finally the JORC has been posted. Now we should stay in possitive territory

Now its starting to fly at plus 11p.

Nerves of steel, up 21p now.

Sorry cant keep up, up 31p and flying.

and i was about to post that fall in sp was due to news being out of the way and therefore just consolidation and profit-taking ...... if it was, then very short-lived - lol!

Morning All. Oily, you're getting very excited, don't blow a fuse and miss out on the future benefits of this share. :).

I'm more into oil and gas so can relate to BOPD and MMSCFD. Can someone with more experience of mining terminology give a summary of what the latest resource update could do to the Company balance sheet, Net Asset Value and the SP.

Thanks in advance.

amateur interprets it as lots and barely below the surface!

You crack me up :), Thanks Mr C.

IVK still up 26p at over 8% on the day, therefore IMO TMC will rise again later after mm's have had their fun.
Darradev, yes am a little excitable, but then I always have been. I can assure you that I shall not be missing out on the future benefits. Within 4 years the earnings per share will be greater than current share price.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=avGltjFAwmik&refer=australia

Can somebody do the maths on this, basically saying they get 15% for each ton of ore for the spot price of $54000 @900,000 tons this year quadrupling to 3M next year, seems like huge amounts of cash this year ie $55M going up to $170 next plus celestial coming on tap at another $50M gives us forecast production rates at $200M plus.

Is this the gist of it?

Any calculation depends on the price of dry ore FOB Palawang. Only TMC can tell you what that is at present. Now that JORC report is out one would expect TMC to announce some supply contracts as previously indicated in earlier RNS releases.

20p spread, why?

To stifle trading, to help mm's frighten out hot money leaving more of the pie for themselves and their more valued customers, the institutions. If everyone ignores their shinanigans, and continues to hold the price will eventually rise. You will notice that as they get desperate for stock the spread narrows to a couple of pence. As soon as they have filled any orders on their books at that time, the spread then opens very quickly.

oilyrag

You seem to have a thing about MMs. The current spread is 4.6%, not unusual for an AIM stock. Volumes are low and the MMs are there to make a profit. Seemingly everytime the spread widens or the SP falls it's those pesky MM's fault. Treeshakes do happen but not as much as PIs would like to believe, generally it's market forces at work. Desperate for stock? When there is interest and buying momentum the MMs are competing amongst themselves and naturally try to attain pole position, hence the spread closes and the SP rises, when interest wanes the spread opens once more, no conspiracy, again market forces at play.

pth

ellio, heres a go at the maths, all approximates and as halifax points out TMC havn't declared what rate they are getting from the pig iron trade.

Each shipment of 50,000 wet tonnes equals 37,500 dry tonnes.
37,000 dry tonnes times 1.8% nickel equals 675 tonnes nickel.
675 tonnes times 27,000 equals 18,225,000 gross per shipment before discounted rate.
18,225,000 times approx 15% equals 2,733,750 actual payment per shipment.
Multiply this by 56.1% TMC, and again by 50% MPSA, and by 50% for approx production costs. This equals 383,408 cash per shipment.
900,000 tonnes divided by 50,000 tonnes equals 18 shipments this year, equals 18 times 383,408 which is 6,901,344 profit this year.
For 2008 target of 3,000,000 tonnes multiply by 3.33 times as much as 2007 figs, equals 23,004,480 approx.
2009 estimates for 12million tonnes would multiply this by 4 equalling 92,017,920 which is almost the current market cap.

These are only estimates made using logic and what little info we have, but IMHO I feel that this is the ball park earnings, before vat leaching, or any other value enhancing methods are used.

I would be intrested in any comments that any one else may wish to add, or confimation that this is the right area for valuations.

For example SCAP have just moved up on the Bid from 415 to 418, looks like they need some stock, so the spread closes. If the other MMs are interested they will move up also.

pth

pth, thanks for the insight but I am well aware of how the market works. I was just giving ellio who asked the question (20p spread why?) an answer. With respect I have held this stock for over 2 years now and have analysed it every which way and to be fair the 20p spreads have only just started in the last week or so. With reguard to treeshakes, this stock has been one long shake after another. The only reason that the market dosn't let it go is because they want it all, and by hook or by crook they'll do their damdest to get it.

Oily, with equal repsect, IMHO your answer to ellio is flawed, mainly becuae it is predicated upon your apparent paranoia with with the manner in which MMs conduct their business. Calls of FSA investigations are OTT, as is the assumption that the SP is being held back to allow institutions onboard, quite misleading in fact, unless of course you know that for certain.

BTW, I have held TMC since it was Toledo Copper and probably long before most if not all on this thread had even heard of the company. In those days it was 4p!!

pth

pth many PI,s bought these shares when they were 2p prior to the 50-1 consolidation. I don't think MM,s deserve defending as I observe they regularly report trades late,and change the spread in order to show purchases as sales and vice versa thus trying to deceive investors.TMC shares are not by far alone in this respect. I agree with oilyrag that MM,s have regularly manipulated the sp to suit their order books. The proof of the pudding etc will occur after the next positive newsflow when demand cannot be held back.