Red Rock Resources' Finest Hour!

For Red Rock's Management and Shareholders alike, Monday the 1st of March 2010 will be remembered as the day the the company turned the page on a new chapter in its development cycle.  To borrow from Winston Churchill, these events are likely to be seen as marking "the end of the beginning" in the ongoing story of Red Rock Resources (LON:RRR). The big news came from Jupiter Mines, (ASX:JMS) the Australian miner in which Red Rock are currently 25% shareholder. Announcing they are in the advanced stages of negotiations to acquire a 49.9% stake in the Tshipi Kalahari Manganese project in South Africa, Pallinghurst Resources (JSE: PGL).and their high profile investment partners. This will be a share-based transaction worth approximately A$245m, which will compliment Jupiters Iron Ore development operation and transform it into a significant developer and near term producer in manganese. After the transaction, Red Rock;s stake in Jupiter will be reduced to around 6% of the enlarged entity.

So why does this deal mark such a seminal event for Red Rock? Up till now, the successes of the Company's agressive growth strategy have been overshadowed by the ongoing need for funding by way of equity placements But all that changed on Monday. This deal has now opens up an early exit route for Red Rock in its participation in Jupiter Mines, thus allowing the company to sell down some of its £15m stake (which, by the way is greater than its entire market cap  - currently worth over 2.5p per Red Rock share), without impacting on Jupiters market value.

So with a new route to significant non-dilutive funding available, we expect that long awaited re-rating may occur in short order. Here is an interview Pallinghurst Chairman Brian Gilbertson gave to Bloomberg TV Asia yesterday. One has to admire his patience, given the anchor's obvious lack of knowledge of both the company's activities and the sector in general! Monday also saw the company's Uranium development vehicle Resource Star finally resumed trading after 18 months off the market.  Resumption of trading has seen the share price fall by around 25% from the 20c level. Taken in isolation this would be disappointing, but we view the relisting as more of a technical event and expect corporate developments and deals, (as referred to in Andrew Bells previous interview with miningmaven tv here) to add some value in short order . It is little over a 6 weeks since we updated our value proposition on Red Rock (click here to see) yet Mondays developments have left it in need of a thorough makeover. Over the next day or so, we will be putting together an updated value proposition which will take into consideration all the events that have happened in the interim, and we will be looking at where things couldgo from here. Exciting ahead times!