Member Info for adamsmithfreethi

They'll want to conserve cash in order to develop the new open pit mine. With nearly 20m in the bank and, at this gold price, money pouring in they'll want to maximise the amount they can fund themselves without borrowing or diluting.

Shame they didn't broadcast the quarters ASIC - that might give a clue as to how quickly they can build up cash reserves

Hopefully the quarterly RNS will land this week to give us some hard numbers to supplement our realistic but also optimistic expectations...

Yes buybacks would be my preference except for one caveat namely the impact it may have on director bonuses. I can't recall what the metrics are but if EPS was one of the measures by which managers are judged a buyback would automatically reduce the denominator and thus boost the performance measure irrespective of the real underlying performance of the business.

I'm all for rewarding success but this would be money for old rope!

Sorry Adriatic - wrong body of sea!

Well good luck with AAZ and if you do invest I would do so to buy and hold as the bid/offer is consistently against trading.

Well we probably got to know a bit more about each other's respective investments than if we'd not had the debate. I'll add Atlantic on to my alerts just for interest sake. Not planning to invest in them but you never know...?

OK spotted equity fundraise.

Well that's your defining difference between the 2 companies. Even in the deep deep dodo AAZ did not fundraise. It was really squeaky b8m time but bought 4 tranches at an avg price of 22p and haven't looked back since.

With Atlantic I can expect continued dilution if anything goes wrong!

No contest really....

I was only going on what I saw in the BS as at 31 Dec 24. Then cash and equivs 20.6m. Then you (and the company claim) cash before debt repayment of 95m. So somehow they managed to increase cash by 75m.

That's pretty good considering their turnover during the quarter was 33m. Q4 trade and inventories together were only 29m so on the wild assumption of 100% profit margin and 100% cash conversion of other current assets we're still missing 10m+

I'm clearly missing something here but what?

Like to stray into other shares on a given board or diss contributors but really.

Out of interest I nosed into the Adriatic BS and BS is really the right term.

No cash pile instead a debt mountain. The CL/CA ratio is 2.4/1. That is precisely the inverse of what it should be.

The way I read it is that Adriatic need to ramp up bl88dy quickly or their creditors will move in and take the company from under the shareholders noses.

AAZ are entirely a different kettle of fish. They've proved themselves time and time again. They are not risk free as recent events have shown but they have battled through and the share price is at last reflecting that hard work and competence.

I always use a quick ready reckoner as to the honesty and operational competence of management when they communicate with shareholders. If the CEO report is front loaded with guff about ESG then expect only incompetence and bad news further down in the weeds.

That is exactly what is in today's missive.

I'd certainly support a management change as suggested by other posts...

Sorry why Monday. Am I missing something?

Much appreciated! I've had a modest shareholding in this company for some time made more modest still by events in Mali. I too have been in contact with the company over the years but when in the news broke I was in Oz on me hols!

Cue feverish attempts to up stake made more difficult by being +10hrs ahead. Clearly I missed the initial boost and I could only buy in amounts max £3-4k but very happy I made the effort. Might even show an overall profit as some point in the new future!

Decided not to set up trading operation in Australia. Nice place, great climate, friendly people but a bit out of where the main financial action is taking place...

After a small investment and attending the AGM, I had a problem trying to get my head round this company. The value of my investment kept dropping but given my 25% loss was peanuts it didn't bother me. What did was the capacity of the company to continuously disappoint its not inconsiderable number of retail investment fans (the AGM was well attended).

On today's showing I thought oh here we go again. There's always something going wrong before the promised land is reached. However, somebody below put me on the Leon interview and listening to him answer some reasonably tough questions something clicked. Or at least I think it did!

Apologies to those for which I am about to say is blindingly obvious but in essence Leon is at heart a trader. He's managed to build a team around him who can build plants to process his trades but what he is not interested is patiently building up inventory either above or below ground and then through careful cash management and forgiving bankers turning that into profit without diluting the shares. This is not slowly patiently building a company along the lines of say MTL.

It's all about the moment. Wham - let's get into Zambia because Dr Copper is going crazy. Bam - look two new shiny plants in the middle of nowhere. Ahh forgot about security of power supplies. Never mind I've negotiated a power agreement. Oh dear - the supplier has let us down. Ok here's a new one with distributed suppliers. And on and on it goes. A wild ride, high risk and definitely not comfortable for investors .

Still I think Leon the trader might have actually done a profitable trade today since his explanation about desperate owners of the high grade copper sort of stack up. That plus the new power agreement might actually means this gambit could pay off handsomely in the next 3-6 months. My big caveat is that if he decides to go ahead with the long term contracts he does so on the same terms as the initial 200k supply and secondly uses the cash from the 200k supply to pay for the longer term stuff AND DOESN'T DULUTE ANY FURTHER.

And finally in the interview he was musing about selling some of the lower grade stuff. Well as any trader knows, if you can get the good stuff cheaply because of market conditions any lower quality stuff you're sitting on is worth nought!

Anyway I put some serious stuff in today so let's see whether my hunch is right!!!

Thanks...

Could you point me in the direction of the Canadian omi forum please...?

According to google the all time high was 289p. That would make my current modest investment equal to 700k

Never mind "cup and handle base" and all that twaddle. I'd need something stronger than a cuppa to cope with that!

I've held this share for about 3 years and have attended 3 agms and gms. I've been able to ask questions to the directors during and after the meeting so got a feel for what was happening in the background.

The first thing to say is that this has being going on for some time. A certain individual occupying a senior position in the company has been attempting to take control of it by effectively bankrupting it. similar to Yukos (another listed company in the UK) but the chosen weapon was and is the legal system not the tax system. From what I understand the whole story about illegal sale of waste products is cooked up. In my opinion this has the ring of truth about it. After all who wants to buy waste products and certainly not to the tune of $3.7b. The clue is in the word "waste". This is not an argument about FXPO illegally dumping the stuff or despoiling the environment - that I can understand.

So ridiculous though it is the matter has been rumbling on and on. It's a continual battle. The individual finds sympathetic individuals to advance his case the the company then has to scramble to appeal against it using non corrupt officials. It's a sisyphean task!

Until now I think the claims was around $100m but clearly the individual has been emboldened by Trump not caring about corruption in Ukraine and gone all in.

Now purely my chance I sold out a couple of weeks ago because of a better M&A opportunity and I must confess this case was nagging at my mind plus the possibility the Russians might even capture land as far as the operations. I had not inkling of this fresh development.

So am I glad I sold? Yes.

Would I go back again at the lower price. No?

I'm afraid Ukraine is gradually slipping back into the swamp and despite the best intentions of the Western orientated Board they are going to lose this attritional legal battle just as I fear Ukraine will lose the attitional real battle.

I'm happy to take high risk for the right price but right now, for me, there are too many undertainties.

GL to all those willing to tough it out.

Makes you wonder about the previous management, it really does! Proving up resources to reserves must have been expensive and only then to realise they we uneconomic in the first place.

It's not like MTL had the money to throw around anyway.

Thanks again...

LMA - thanks for providing clarification of Maliiberg. I don't want to denigrate the contribution from Carefree but he/she should have mentioned that it was deemed uneconomic before lobbing it into the conversation. Just out of interest how far back should I go before I can find any material on it. Also some further questions spring to mind now you've clarified it. 1st both of you mentioned reserves not resources which implies a fair amount of drilling must have taken place to prove this up. Was it ever put into an official e.g. JORC estimate or is the 330 k/oz an internal estimate. Second is the 54m figure stated by Carefree. What is the production fee deed and why can it be avoided after 2029. Finally, given the price of gold what chance Maliiberg becomes viable? Were any break even prices for gold supplied at the time?

Anyway thanks for the info - much appreciated

I was going to look up the "Malilibeg" target that you mentioned as I've never heard of it! Having 330k/oz knocking around on your doorstep sounds too good to be true.

I've looked at the most recent annual and half year reports and no mention of it. Darren's not mentioned it on any of his interviews and nobody else on this board has either.

Where can I find more information on it please or is this a wind up!?

CFC - thanks for the information. It kind of makes sense that given the 8 year total period permitted for an EP to be held it fell between the cracks during MTLs struggle to become profitable. From your knowledge of the company's early history did it undertake any exploration or are all the grades and resource information contained in last week's RNS a result of mining that took place in a previous era?

Also I'm surprised no other entity took up the EP license from the then struggling MTL. Does that bespeak of the relatively small opportunity at Dupax or just the lack of interest from exploration companies in the Philippines?

Finally as I said the RNS didn't move my sentiment not because I didn't think Dupax couldn't be a positive contributor but because the information it contained had pretty much been said already either in the offer documentation or various interviews given by Darren. I think the only thing that struck me as new were the new access roads being built. Clearly Darren thinks it worth spending money now on these as presumably they are o the critical path even before the license has been officially granted and the various proving activities undertaken.

He must be pretty confident that enough that what's there exists in profitable form and which can be transported to the plant which can be properly converted to deal with sulphides and which output can be sold at a profit.

Either that or he's taking a big risk!