Public Equity Investments
The public equity investment segment includes active and passive investments in our trading portfolio. The trading portfolio consists of investments in listed mining entities that the board believes possess attractive underlying assets. The focus is to invest in mining companies that are significantly undervalued by the market and where there is substantial upside potential through exploration success and/or the development of mining projects for commercial production. Ultimately, the aim is to make capital gains in the short to medium term. Investments are considered individually based on various criteria and are typically traded on the TSX, ASX, AIM or LSE.
During the period, our public equity investments generated an unrealised loss of £3.10 million (2022: £4.59 million). These unrealised losses tracked our largest holding, European Metals Holdings (“EMH”), down some 49% over the year. Overall, our return to date on our investment inEMH is approximately 147%. We realised an accounting loss from sales of £3.70 million (2022: profit of £0.55 million) of our Hastings investment as it is booked against the sale price of the licenses rather than against our original purchase value, using the later metric our return on the original investment (inclusive of post-year-end sales) was circa 44.46%. Our investment in EMH is the only active investment in the public equity portfolio.
Portfolio
As of 31 December 2023, our public equity stakes consisted of the following:
| Company | 31-Dec-23 £,000 | 31-Dec-22 £,000 | 31-Dec-21 £,000 | 31-Dec-20 £,000 |
| European Metals Holding Ltd | 2,339 | 4,882 | 11,287 | 13,426 |
| Charger Metals NL | – | 301 | 342 | – |
| Macarthur Minerals Ltd | – | – | 181 | 329 |
| Evergreen Lithium Ltd | 1,481 | – | – | – |
| Hastings Technology Metals Ltd | 321 | – | – | – |
| Eagle Mountain Mining Ltd | – | 37 | 122 | – |
| Miscellaneous | 21 | 24 | 42 | 6 |
| Total | 4,162 | 5,244 | 11,974 | 13,761 |