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.

I wonder if the fall on TMC and IVK is anything to do with Atlas as below ?


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/db9540e4-3eb1-11dc-bfcf-0000779fd2ac.html


Atlas considers London listing

By Roel Landingin in Manila

Published: July 30 2007 17:10 | Last updated: July 30 2007 17:10

Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp, the Philippine mining company that owns what was once the worlds third largest copper mine, will next month meet institutional investors in Europe as it eyes a secondary listing in London in 2008.

The move comes as Manila tries to attract investors to restart scores of idle mines abandoned because of debt and disasters.

Alfredo Ramos, chairman and Atlass biggest shareholder, said plans to list in London would cap the companys efforts over the past 12 years to revive the Carmen copper mine in Cebu province, which ceased operations in 1994 after almost collapsing when a tailings dam caved in.

Mr Ramos bought Atlass debt in 2001 and converted that position into a majority shareholding. Last year, Crescent Asian Special Opportunities Portfolio, a private equity fund, invested $34m in an Atlas subsidiary rehabilitating the copper mine. In June, Deutsche Bank lent Atlas $100m for the effort, which is expected to be completed by next May and push 2008 profits up to 2bn-3bn pesos ($22m-$33m).

Atlas, which was losing money until 2004, expects profits to surge to 500m pesos this year when a nickel mining unit starts shipping ore to China.

Martin Buckingham, executive vice-president at Atlas, said money from the listing would help Atlas develop other copper ore bodies in Cebu, and ramp up production to as much as 150,000 tons a day from 20,000-40,000 tons initially. That brings us in the category of a medium-sized producer. Our objective would be to get into the top five or 10 producers in the region.

Last week, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Philippines president, stepped up efforts to offer as many as 65 idle mines to investors. Many of the mines were abandoned in the 1980s and 1990s.

On Friday, she said she had issued an order transferring supervision over the state-owned Philippine Mining Development Corp, which owns rights to many mines, to her office from the department of environment and natural resources. The move would allow the Office of the President to monitor and oversee the efficient and effective implementation of the countrys utilisation and development of its mineral resources.

MM's seem concerned about something have widened spread and now showing purchases as sales?

the latter can be just a system idiosayncracy, but certainly agree about MMs not wanting to deal in either direction! ..... spread is currently nuts at 20p and has been like that all morning ..... even tried dealing in side that (to buy) but was unable to fill the order

Seen this scenario before, I suspect a larger holder could be exiting at present. If so an RNS will confirm this shortly.

i read you well, but why would MMs then widen the spread so dramatically?

I don't know, other than to try and confuse or hide what may be happening. I am sitting tight at the mo as I wouldn't be surprised to see this fall later. I hope I'm wrong but am in a position to react either way as I see fit.

On line bid 241p max size 25000 offer 250p max size 4000?

There you go halifax, does the trading position in post 717 almost confirm my guess. Large 130,000 sale gone through, how many more?

but still 15p spread showing ...... 130k is not that large = only about 300k

Does anyone know if it is possible for the market to set up a spread within a spread to give a totally confusing picture of trading. If there were 700,000 genuine sales against 80,000 genuine purchases on this stock, there is no way that the SP would be up 22p. If however the larger sales were purchases made just below the mid point of a false spread, this would explain a rise in sp.

Price just fallen 5p, could suggest first scenario taking shape.

hope that made sense to someone!
surely, old friend, spreads are really no more than an indicator and deals can and often are done well inside that or very occasionally, as with the sale of a large slab of POG, at a good premium to same

Missed the chance this morning, spread 205/206 at 08:45 approx. Price shot down to this level and then returned almost as quickly. Last time this happened 2 hours later a large inst buy was recorded.

ah well, we could all say that, like i reckoned Wall Strett was prob a short before the opening yesterday, but did nothing about it until near the close and then took the profit prematurely this morning ...... isn't hindsight such a valuable commodity!

Richard, what I am saying is that that was probably the bottom, when they retuned the spread to 1p to encourage normal trading.

prob m8, or at least i hope so ..... very interesting to see spread now reduced to a half-way respectable 7p (228/235) ...... thouigh i am having a surprisingly solid (not quite the same as good!) day, am not inclined to attempt the falling knife trick just yet

Moving up?

Down to 213p today. Very unnerving as this was 480p just 2 months ago

Good time to top up

It may move down to 150p