Important Backdrop: Gecamines / Huayou, page-106

BNP own or manage the 8th largest holding in NZC with around 5 million shares.

Hypothetically, I can envisage 2 scenarios:
1/ BNP have taken it on themselves or have allowed the borrow of shares to a third party to undertake a short raid without their clients knowledge.
2/ BNP are actively trying to accumulate more shares cheaply through a short raid strategy to shake the tree and loosen stock at lower prices. If they wanted out they would simply sell down their 5M holding or arrange for an off market transfer to a suitable matched buyer.

At present, it doesn't really matter which strategy it is. To date (imo) our shorter has not been very effective, as the amount of stock they have loosened from the register and pressured into selling has been minimal. The temporary price may not be where we want it to be due to their actions- but with an illiquid stock comes the pressure of trying to cover the 2M shares you have shorted with (only) the approximate 0.35M shares you have gained from sellers during your campaign. Unless you get a big flush of sellers you are effectively trapped with 1.5-2M shares borrowed and bugger all sellers above to 40c/$1- and the majority of the register sitting tight for either a T/O or a profitable low capex mine trading at a 3-4x discount to its NPV. They may continue to just sit here and hope that without buyers that further holders will sell out on lagging price and frustration. But that carries a big time risk with a news driven season ahead of us in a sector seeing increasing T/O activity. We await buyers to put apply the blow torch.