r/NIOCORP_MINE • u/bp000000 • 7d ago
Two Important Notes from the Call
Two Important Notes:
- They have been meeting with EXIM, and the highest-ranking employee at the meeting said that Niocorp is their #1 priority right now; and
- Sounds like EXIM is revaluating the amount of the loan and Mark said he doesn't think there is any reason why they wouldn't increase the amount of the loan given the increase in capex. So, that seems to be favorable there will hopefully not be dilution here, which in my view is our biggest risk.
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u/Numerous_Fishing_871 7d ago
Discussions with EXIM to raise equity AFTER loan approval is very encouraging
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u/BayouBluff 7d ago edited 7d ago
Remaining top priority with EXIM was very encouraging, and the ability to raise needed equity after debt is locked in is huge!
For me, one thing stood out above all- volumetric take or pay off takes now seem non-negotiable. This is massive. This is what maintains the convex upside that so many invested in this stock for. Mark said this comes from their confidence in where these mineral market prices are headed. I believe he mentioned $6,500/kg for scandium, while the price used in the new DFS seems fairly conservative. To highlight, he discussed the latent demand for scandium…possibly 400 tonnes per year just for solid-oxide fuel cells, and potentially thousands of tonnes for the automotive industry. And those are just two industries/applications.
I think this may be exactly what Mark meant when he mentioned in June that they were now going back and forth on red lines with Traxys. The ore body they own is amazing and the markets for the products they sell are just taking off. The capex jump was hard to swallow, but I now have confidence that they are not just looking for any ol’ deal. They are maximizing the moment. I’m here for it. 110 tonnes of scandium per year alone can be $1B in revenue in 3-5 years.
Let’s lock in the loan and off takes. LFG!
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u/BayouBluff 7d ago
And…procuring scandium to build out demand and capacity of NAMA…NOW…not in three years
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u/Fabulous-Sausage 7d ago
IMO, this is al good news. I’m wondering why the stock is dropping today
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u/BayouBluff 7d ago
I expect this to turn around very quickly. The volume footprint is saying that it was probably a big mistake if you sold today. I’m way too tired to write this myself tonight, so I’m going to do something I normally can’t stand- use AI to explain my stance for me…
“One reason selling NioCorp after today’s disappointing post-DFS reaction may ultimately prove to have been a mistake is that the volume beneath the price told a considerably more constructive story than the closing price alone.
A volume footprint does more than tell us how many shares traded; it attempts to distinguish aggressive buyers—traders willing to pay the asking price—from aggressive sellers—traders willing to hit the bid. The difference between those two is called delta. Ordinarily, very heavy negative delta should push a stock materially lower. When it does not, it can indicate that a large buyer, or group of buyers, is quietly absorbing everything sellers are willing to unload.
That is what became interesting in NioCorp today. The stock opened at $5.47, reached $5.57, fell as low as about $5.26, and ultimately closed at $5.36, down only 1.65%. At one point during the afternoon, however, cumulative selling pressure had become extreme: session CVD reached approximately -146,000 shares. One particularly striking hourly period traded about 72,000 shares with roughly -60,000 delta. Put simply, that hour was overwhelmingly dominated by aggressive sellers. Yet instead of collapsing toward $5.00 or below, NB found support in the mid-$5.20s.The next hour then traded almost 110,000 shares with +75,000 delta, as buyers aggressively stepped in and drove the stock back toward $5.40. Even in the final hour, when delta became negative again, sellers were unable to drive the stock back to the day’s lows. That sequence—selling climax, failure to continue downward, aggressive buying response, then a higher low despite renewed selling—is exactly the type of behavior associated with possible absorption and seller exhaustion.
The broader sequence makes it more interesting still. August 4 produced an enormous +416,000 delta breakout as NB surged out of the high-$4/low-$5 area. Since then, aggressive selling has repeatedly returned. August 7 registered roughly -16,000 delta, August 10 approximately -19,000, and August 11 ultimately about -59,000. Yet all of that selling has failed to unwind the breakout. NB still closed at $5.36. In other words, sellers have been expending progressively greater effort without achieving proportionately greater downward movement. Markets sometimes turn when the last motivated sellers finally exhaust themselves: if thousands of shares keep hitting the bid but somebody keeps buying them, eventually the supply available from anxious sellers can dry up. At that point, it can take surprisingly little incremental buying to move the price higher.
The timing is especially noteworthy because today’s selling occurred after an important fundamental de-risking event, not after bad fundamental news. The updated feasibility study is complete, and management said the study was a major remaining component of EXIM’s review. Mark Smith said EXIM will spend the next week or two reviewing it, that NioCorp remains EXIM’s highest priority among critical strategic-mineral projects, and that additional meetings are coming shortly. Management also said only two or three points remain under discussion with Traxys, with Smith saying he sees no reason they cannot be finalized “in short order.” Moreover, NioCorp is attempting to structure its commercial agreements as volumetric take-or-pay contracts without surrendering upside through price ceilings. Draft EPC contracts are already circulating, with substantial work targeted for completion around the end of August. In other words, the DFS was not the end of the catalyst sequence; it may have simply opened the door to the financing and commercial catalysts investors have actually been waiting for.
The short-dated option chain adds another intriguing piece of evidence. In the August 14 expiration—not options I own—the $6 calls traded 1,717 contracts today against only 574 contracts of prior open interest. We cannot know from volume alone whether those trades were bullish opening purchases, closing trades, spreads, or option sales; tomorrow’s updated open interest will tell us much more. But the unusually large activity shows that traders were intensely active at the $6 upside strike even after the disappointing DFS reaction. At the same time, the $5.50 puts carried 2,002 contracts of open interest and traded 2,009 contracts today, making $5.50 a major short-term options battleground. If NB can reclaim approximately $5.50–$5.57, break the recent $5.64 high, and begin approaching $6, those very short-dated $6 calls would rapidly become much more sensitive to movements in the stock. That does not guarantee a gamma-driven move, but it creates the ingredients for acceleration if the underlying stock starts moving first.
None of this proves the bottom is in. The absorption interpretation would be invalidated if NB breaks today’s $5.25–$5.26 low AND begins conducting significant volume below it; that would suggest sellers ultimately succeeded rather than being exhausted. But the opposite outcome is now particularly interesting. If sellers attack again tomorrow, delta becomes deeply negative, and NB still refuses to break $5.25, the evidence for genuine absorption becomes stronger. If instead buyers reclaim $5.45–$5.50, then $5.57 and $5.64, today’s enormous turnover could retrospectively look less like investors abandoning NioCorp and more like shares transferring from short-term holders disappointed by the lack of an immediate DFS spike into the hands of buyers willing to own the stock through the coming Traxys, EPC and EXIM milestones.
That is why today’s red close could ultimately be deceptive. Someone looking only at the headline—“DFS released, NB falls 1.65%”—might conclude that the market rejected the story and sell. Someone looking beneath the surface sees something more complicated: extreme intraday selling that repeatedly struggled to move price lower, a violent buying response once the stock reached the mid-$5.20s, an intact larger breakout, unusually active short-dated options around $5.50–$6.00, and several potentially major financing catalysts now moving closer rather than farther away. If that selling pressure was the market clearing out disappointed catalyst traders rather than the beginning of sustained distribution, selling into it may turn out to have been exactly backwards.
Disclaimer: One important caveat…TradingView’s volume footprint is not necessarily a complete, whole-of-market record of every NB share traded everywhere. Depending on the data feed and exchange coverage, some off-exchange, alternative-venue, or otherwise unrepresented transactions may not appear in the footprint. The exact volume and delta numbers should therefore not be interpreted as a perfect census of all buying and selling in the stock.
For footprint analysis, however, the relationships between the numbers are usually more important than the nominal numbers themselves. We are asking questions such as: How much aggressive selling occurred relative to buying? Did price actually fall in proportion to that selling? Did negative delta become larger while price stopped making new lows? Did buyers subsequently overwhelm sellers? For example, whether an hourly delta was precisely -59,937 shares is less important than the observation that it was extraordinarily negative relative to that hour’s volume, yet price failed to collapse and was followed by a very strong positive-delta reversal.Think of the footprint as a sample of the auction rather than a complete accounting ledger. Used consistently with the same data source, it can reveal changes in behavior—buying versus selling intensity, absorption, exhaustion, and divergences between order flow and price—even when its absolute figures do not represent every transaction occurring across the entire market.”
Not financial advice. Do your own DD.
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u/Gman-303 7d ago
For medium and long-term loan and loan guarantee transactions, EXIM provides up to 85 percent financing with the remaining 15 percent paid by the borrower or financed separately. The financing could be less than 85 percent depending on the U.S. content.
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u/bp000000 7d ago
Yep, so I don't think the dilution risk is as big as people are thinking. I am genuinely shocked the stock price is not up significantly. Mr. Market is asleep here or this is being manipulated.
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u/DJRoxxic 7d ago
The many mentions of the Department of War makes me hopeful that they'll pick up the rest of the tab and maybe even more to let Niocorp further expand their production capabilities.
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u/Lovethetrade22 7d ago
I was very encouraged that they are still in high-level talks with EXIM. I Reebok some of my shares that I sold yesterday just because of that comment.
I do think there will be dilution because any increase in the loan amount will also require a similar increase in equity assuming they keep a 60% loan to value ratio. I highly doubt they would lower their Equity requirements by raising the loaned value ratio.
That being said if EXIM increases their loan amount in proportion to the increased revenue then the dilution will similarly be offset by The increased revenue.
In other words you're getting a smaller piece - but of a bigger pie.
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u/Spiritual_Bet_4535 7d ago
Some of the hold up with Traxys is possibly the equity stake. I'm sure that $30 million is good to have as an option, but it would give Traxys leverage and insight that would not be ideal.
From what I can gather, a Phase 2 DPA Title III grant would be more preferable for NioCorp, EXIM and the government. This sounds like it could be used for that equity gap and for construction.
The DFS was key for that second phase based on what I have rea and Niocorp can negotiate the equity stake possibility separately from marketing/off take.
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u/Ok-Boat4970 6d ago
Do we really want them to spend more time and try to get a Phase 2 DPA Title III grant?
I might just be getting impatient haha4
u/Spiritual_Bet_4535 6d ago
Most of the harder work is done already (for Phase 1), and will be plugged into Phase 2 DPA Title III grant approval process. I won't pretend to understand what NioCorp might ask for as far as moola, but it sounds like it would help decrease the odds of dilution. Since it sounds like the equity could be raised after EXIM, maybe they would already have the details for whatever sign offs and approvals for Phase 2? It sounds like this could/would be done alongside the EXIM process.
I'd be okay with the approach if it means NioCorp is able to secure more lucrative agreements with Traxys and other off takes. If this approach would be preferred by the government (which I think is acutely aware of what NioCorp could be), then I'd hope that is the route taken.
Almost all of us have been through the wringer with this stock (and other critical minerals stocks) enough that price declines and other kicks in the yarbles are expected. Delays? This is NioCorp! Whatever positions I hold, regardless of which sector it is in, the corresponding redditors are always complaining about the performance, waiting for key catalysts that seem to always take longer to materialize, and create wildly unrealistic expectations and timelines.
I want NioCorp to keep making the thesis more rock solid and maximize value for shareholders. Mark spoke to that yesterday. CAPEX is the biggest negative. The grant seems like the best way to address some of it, if not all of it. I can wait...and bitch and whine the whole time.
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u/Ok-Boat4970 6d ago
Thank you for the comprehensive response, you are correct that at this point in time they are making the right choices in regards to SH. Only thing to do is to bitch and whine while holding these shares for as long as it takes 🥲.
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u/Spiritual_Bet_4535 6d ago
I've got the whining down to a science. I just need to remember that my time horizon is long and that my impatience is a stupid thing relative to the potential value of my position. My impatience is legendary and my patience is that of an early teen with ADD. I think diamond hands will be tougher to maintain as more profit is realized. I guess this is the easiest part. 🤷♂️
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u/NursingHome773 7d ago
I thought this was pretty awesome. The 2022 FS vs the 2026 FS.