Edenville Energy EDL

Well I didn't re-buy ant BMR shares even though they were down to 4.05p! Instead I bought more Edenville Energy shares at 0.648p and today they closed at 0.75p so already I am getting some of the money I most on BMR back! It was interesting also that someone took out a spread bet for 1M GBP on Edenville, presumably that the price will rise. My original purchase was at 1.74p so if the sp gets back there then I will be nearly tripling my investment. If the sp gets above 0.92p then I will be breaking even. As the sp has been over 2p before then it seems a reasonable target.

I also had an RNS from Redrock today saying that Andrew Bell and another director had sold some shares, always a bad sign but later in the day an email popped up explaining the situation.

Dear Shareholders and Colleagues,

You may have seen that I and a colleague sold a few Red Rock shares this week.

Those of you who have been shareholders for a while will know that each time we exercise options, we also shortly after tend to sell a few to meet the immediate tax bill. In recent years, the tax regime on options has become quite unfavourable, and we have to pay income tax and NI on the difference between the exercise price and the market price, and do it promptly.

We do try to explain, and then the next time it happens, there are again some shareholders who worry that we are showing a lack of confidence in the company and sending a bad signal to the market.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, let me clarify that if and when I am in a position to sell options in the future, it is highly probable that I will again be obliged to sell some to meet tax obligations. I will not enjoy doing it, and this will say nothing about my view on the stock price.

The options we exercised in May expired at the end of May, so had to be exercised or lost. My colleague and I are selling about half of those we recently acquired, so that our shareholdings at the end of June are higher, not lower, than our shareholdings at the beginning of May. This has also been the case with past sales following exercise of options: each time the holding of shares at the end of the exercise is higher than it was before.

There is never a ‘right time’ for directors to sell, and I do assure you of our complete commitment to and confidence in the company.

Andrew 

So  it seemed a reasonable explanation and the sp closed up on the day so all's well that ends well!

Berkeley Mineral Resources BMR

Ok, so it is a really bad day on the markets and BMR is down. Tomorrow 145M new shares will be released onto the market so I decided to sell my BMR shares and try a short on BMR for today and then close the short tomorrow and buy some more BMR shares cheaper. Unfortunately, TD Waterhouse don't do short selling so I have sold my BMR shares at a loss and now hope that I can buy them back tomorrow at about 3.9p so that I end up with more shares! Will it work, I don't know but I feel it is worth a try!

I have had some more RNS today, I from BMR saying they know of no reason for the sp to drop! Perhaps they aren't aware of the effect of dilution on share price!

The second, I didn't actually receive but found on the LSE BB, and this was the 6 months results for PINN which were very good. Sales up, profit up but the sp didn't do anything much:(

Then one from Red Rock saying that Jupiter Mines had started a feasability study and also saying that their issue of equity will take place on 30th not 29th of June.

Finally, I had 1 from EDL saying that Nomura International had increased their stake in the company.

So all in all, a lot going on when there was chaos in the market. In fact I am thinking of staying out of BMR all together as I have lost confidence in the company.

A day of RNS!!

I have had 3 RNS today, 1 from Greencore and  2 from Red Rock. The Greencore one was mildly good as it stated that Sheffield Partners had slightly increased their holding  and it had crossed the 5% threshold!

The first from Red Rock was that they were issuing another 16,666,666 shares to raise 1M GBP and the second was a total voting rights RNS saying that they now had 723,983,283 shares in issue! I rang them to find out why they needed to raise more funds but no-one was available but later on the LSE board SpikeyDT posted this letter from them explaining the need for cash.


You may have seen that we issued shares at 6p today, in a placement to raise £1m before expenses.

Apart from our recent exercise of the right to acquire 51% of Mineras Four Points SA, we have a continuing exploration programme, and had a tax bill of over £800,000 to pay (a problem of success!), so our outflows in the first half of 2011 have certainly exceeded what we planned for at the beginning of the year.

We have been arranging, as we announced, a long-term facility which we want to complete soon. However, as our financial year end is 30 June, we need a plan B in case the receipt of funds from this facility is after rather than before 30 June, since we have to publish our balance sheet as at the end of June, and there is little point in spending more this year on a better produced and more informative Annual Report if the first page people turn to does not give a fair picture of our underlying financial strength.

You may have seen the encouraging upgrade and expansion in Resource at Resource Star’s Livingstonia uranium project, announced yesterday. We hope soon to have similar news from Cue. At the moment, uranium is not to the market’s taste, but outside the OECD delays to the building programme for nuclear reactors are not expected, and that is what counts, not Germany.

Jupiter continues to make great progress, but this has not been reflected in the share price. We believe the quality is there, and quality will out.

In Colombia, the improvements from here we hope to be in leaps and bounds rather than tiny steps, as has been the case recently. Progress is progress, but rapid progress is what was needed and what we now aim for.

In Kenya, the exploration effort is so intense that although we have staffed up, we are always undermanned, but as we have consistently said, there should be a steady news flow in the second half of the year and we have great ambitions for progress.

Greenland sees a virgin exploration territory getting attention from our ten-man geological team. We had encouraging results recently from the satellite ASTER interpretation, with one 3.5km feature previously mapped as sandstone (to take just one example) now understood to be a prominent iron ore feature and therefore a priority target. If we map and sample and find no major targets at the end of the season, we may of course walk away, because there is no point in such a latitude looking for anything but a major deposit, but we have fair prospects of success.

So the message is that all is well, and we see steady progress. We cannot blame shareholders who are impatient with the share price, and hate to see us raise money at low prices, but in sailing our boat we sometimes have the wind behind us and sometimes in our face, and we have learned, like sailors, to be patient. T

So, it seems reasonable and the letter was quite upbeat. Lets hope that the sp moves north after the shares are admitted to the market next week.

Berkeley Mineral Resources BMR

Well they finally issued their RNS this morning on the acquisition of Kabwe and as I suspected there was not much reaction on the sp. There were 22M shares traded in the first 15 minutes but the sp moved only 0.3p!! The RNS announced that there would be a placing of 145M shares at 4p next Tuesday and with each 2 shares there would be an excisable warrant for 6p a share. In other words more dilution! There won't be a JORC RNS until the end of July so I don't see much upward movement in the sp before August. I still have my sell order and it runs out on the 1st August so it will be interesting to see whether it is triggered!

Update: This morning the sp has fallen to just over 5p as many shareholders have got fed up and are selling to use their money elsewhere. I have thought about selling and buying in at a lower price but I am afraid I am afraid I might get caught out if the sp rises! I see that this is going to fall to around or even below 4p next Tuesday but I am still holding and may top up to lower my average price if it goes lower. Difficult times on the AIM market at the moment but there should be news on some of my shares in the next week!

Victoria Oil and Gas (VOG)

Despite the market being in chaos, Victoria Oil and Gas is doing OK. Since yesterday the sp has been blue whilst many other shares are red! OK its not setting the world alight but it is holding up well.

At the weekend, a poster posted an alleged email from Masoud Alikhani; the main man at BMR, suggesting that the Kabwe deal was done and an RNS would be issued shortly. Whether it was real or not I don't know but in light of that you would expect the sp to rise, more volume etc. Instead the sp has fallen and currently stands at 5.49p so it is not doing well.

Things are not going well at Edenville Energy EDL where the sp has dropped substantially and is currently 0.7p. I bought at 1.75p and the fundamentals have not changed but the sp is doing badly. Yesterday they issued an RNS saying Gradinex had sold some of their holding and crossed the 10% barrier and today they issued an RNS saying that Barnard Nominees had increased their holding to 13.74%!! So funny old times

Weekly Roundup

Well, it's been a bad week in the markets with the Greek debt crisis. My portfolio is down 30% as are many other peoples'. I just read an interesting article stating that a number of hedge funds are going long on gold and short on gold miners! There was a similar situation to this in 2008 and it recovered about 7 months later. I am not panicking and not selling any shares at a loss as I don't need to realise the cash at the moment.

June is the month when there should be news from a number of companies and there is only 2 weeks left so I am hoping for a little excitement soon. I am expecting news on PTCM, PINN, BMR and RRR are committed to giving an update RNS every fortnight!

VOG is slumped down around 4p when it should be approaching 7p but in Q4 the situation should improve dramatically. It is interesting to note that Cameroon are keen to develop industry in the country and for that VOG are well positioned to supply gas for factories and homes.

Red Rock Resources PLC RRR

I bought into Red Rock Resources PLC yesterday as they had just issued a good RNS. They are engaged in gold mining in Chile and Kenya and have interests in Australia also. They are producing gold, which is good and means that they have revenue coming in. The management have just been out to Chile and whilst they were there the output improved as did the % of gold mined. If they can keep this up then I will be looking for the sp to move up soon.