Member Info for chanticlair2015

Definitely I agree with Rebess on all points. It’s now becoming a sort of trend that Centamin flops in Q3 having over sold its Q1 and Q2 performance albeit that ultimate achievement of guidance is heavily skewed towards Q4. I.e. pats on the back for achieving a small production output and then announce something to fall short of guidance again. This is the third year running. We know that Josef has left, Andrew Pardey (former CEO) was asked to move on (i.e. blamed) and that Jeremy Langford is or has also moved on which defies logic given his impressive CV of achievments. The only constant is Mr Jerrard whose token gesture, or purchase, of shares announced today was probably better left out. Mr Jerrard is an executive director and has been for some time so it is surprising that he is still retained. More surprising when this financial year Centamin announced its annual result in May whereas in prior years it had been January or February. What an alarming slip on the reporting timeframe. I have listened to Mr Jerrard on several conference calls and he is hardly impressive but rather unconfident mumbling his words and drowns the audience out with worn out cheesy clichés. Time for him to exit as well.

I agree that no more surprises are needed but achieving 480k ozs is still 10k ozs under guidance for the year which was at the last related announcement informed to be "closer to the lower end of guidance". Well the company had fallen well short of that (i.e. the 490k ozs level) and failed to inform the market as it is obliged to do as soon as it became aware that it would miss the guidance. Whey have guidance statements at all when this management just ignore the disclosure requirements. The LSE needs to not let this pass and investigate because to turn a blind eye now just condones what CEY management have done. I gather they did not want any bad news to enter the market while Endeavour are hovering around.

Well said Rebess. I agree that the Centamin board would know by now whether guidance will be met or not because it is a single mine operating at sustainable production. So saying nothing could be a good sign. But if they know they are going to come up short and not saying that now then I think the word brazen is a little too generous and not to mention in default of continuous disclosure listing rules. It will by all accounts be a very interesting next 3 weeks.

You know Rebess I tend to subscribe to your point of view that confidence in Centamin doing the right thing for shareholders is questionable. I've read many postings in this forum and articles on line about both parties not wanting to sign a standstill agreement and thus open themselves up to a full due diligence on each other. That is actually quite scary and one line of thinking is that both parties have some dirty laundry to hide. It would not surprise me that between now and the end of the year an announcement is made by Centamin saying that the lower end of guidance will not be achieved. That's how much suspicion I have on this current management.

Yes it is quite galling how poor performance is rewarded financially. What happened to the good old days of just sacking people and then those people having the integrity to accept. Now every sacking is negotiated in advance with dollars involved to avoid the inevitable unfair dismissal case which surely follows and only serves to highlight the inadequate performance management systems in place at a company. Although I do dip my hat to Josef and Andrew for forgoing their bonuses last year because of the tumultuous year, although the CFO declined to forgo his bonus no doubt declaring his "I am in it for myself" intention. One would think that with a salary of £400K plus per year and a swag of share grants he could share our investor pain. As for your other points yes the portfolio of assets looks good but nothing is happening with them. Personally I think above £150m has been spent on Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire in exploration in the past 4 to 5 years and all there is to show is a 1 million ounce resource at Doropo and nothing above what was already in place at Konkera in Burkina. Next guy out the door this week in my book would be that Norm Baily guy as exploration manager because his contribution seems to be nothing thus far. And I would forget that court case delivering anything because in the background the world bank has given Egypt 3 billion in the past couple of years and would certainly not let a reasonable chunk of it go out the door to a mining company and from a purely social perspective subsidizing a mining company with its fuel does not make good country fiscal policy to me. Lets hope Centamin gets a more clear path going forwards and starts doing what it actually says it will do, and they should change their website to get rid of that silly section called "What we do". Really they have done one mine in 20 years and that's all.

Apart from the obvious that the change at the top is required as some type of peace offering to markets and shareholders two reasonable questions are hanging. Firstly why is it just the CEO in isolation and not other members of his team around him? I am not sure what the CFO's contribution is as together these two have taken Centamin backwards, made a mess of the same old presentation strategy blurb of growth and maybe in excess of US$100m spent on West Africa exploration with not much to show for it. It seems a significant clean out of no doubt highly paid underperformers should be occurring?? Secondly, based on last year's play, is this first announcement on achieving "the lower end of CY2019 guidance" just a teaser to avoid an outright statement of failing to meet guidance? Surely if a second announcement does follow in the next couple of months it would confirm many an opinion that this management has no real idea what the mine production for any give year is and that future forecast statements and the paper they are written on is only good for fish and chip wrapping!! One shining light is that Jeremy Langford guy as COO a real straight shooter and super track record at Endeavour Mining building their plants and being their COO. He is one dude at Centamin who can say from experience that he knows what growth is.

Thanks manu. Btw to everyone is there any truth to a rumor (love a good rumor don't we) that a meeting took place in December last year chaired by the minister of mine where SIG made a offer to AML to pay all their external debts, pay all penalties owed and clear the shareholder loans between each of them to zero, in return for the equity positions to be reversed to SIG 75% and AML 25%? Now if that rumor has some merit why would FT, Watling and the BOD walked away from shareholders retaining a 25% supposedly convertible interest in an asset and instead accepted a position of hey let's just go and appoint administrators? Purely speculative rumor unless confirmed but something did appear in the local paper in SL in December re a meeting. So hypothetically AML could still be trading on the LSE, be debt free and have a passive 25% interest in an asset valued conservatively at $500m for argument's sake. Right now poor shareholders who have placed their trust and savings in this group have nothing.

While not defending the Chinese, do you actually blame them for their actions given the unforeseen predicament that they find themselves in where $1.0B of phase 2 supposedly ring fenced funds has been whittled down to $100m and somehow AML have also tacked on $700m of debt; that is a rather large turn around in finances since the original deal with inked finally in 2012. Project funds are disappearing at an alarming rate and with some funds used to pay for bad corporate deals such as GIO; how these directors can live with keeping FT on the board after the public disclosure of the GIO transaction and obvious dodginess is beyond me. Sue them all I say. Hats off to Miguel Perry for building in a trap door to the PFX and knowing how to snooker AML into a position of being able to do nothing but watch their 75% interest in the project effectively amount to nothing. No one could not possibly consider investing another dollar in FT and Watling ever again. Such a golden opportunity missed by AML to make some serious cash during the last 2 years when iron ore prices were sky high. As someone said yesterday "incompetence at best and fraud at worst".

One has to stare in bewilderment how a person with FT's distinguished corporate past was permitted to have a discretionary 50 million dollar approval limit without needing to discuss with the board; and in the face of the GIO transaction what a coincidence that the settlement was surprise surprise 50 million dollars no doubt hastily inked by another director at the time Coughlan who had a memory lapse, along with FT, in not advising the board on all this when the deal with GIO was first signed. Of course all history now and I sincerely hope some form of return to shareholders is achieved and these corporate "executive" brought to account.

and Watling's girlfriend is the CEO of the reborn London Mining with no prior experience at all in running any type of resources company....so the merit based appointments from FT continue and do nothing to evidence that sound management and governance principles might be permeating his thinking; quite to the contrary in fact.

And the CEO of Pan African is Alan Watling.......same faces different country

Guys I don't hold much hope for a class action as I think where AML finds itself now is a result of gross incompetence by people incapable of running a public company to high standards of governance. Relationships with SIG have soured which is a people thing, which had they been different might have seen SIG debt / equity swap say $500m for a further 25% of the project to keep things going. But instead as I wrote before SIG is in the background buying up AML debt and then asking it to repay something that they know AML cannot. Gee when you think about it the relationship must be absolutely toxic and spiteful for that to occur. Can you sue for incompetence - not really but it would be good if you could. I believe your best option is convincing the Financial Times, or similar, to investigate and write a very negative story which strongly encourages the regulatory bodies to act leading to many of these executives being banned from the LSE as acting as directors. To me the GIO transaction is just staggering as to how it was done and the whole story. How FT and Coughlan did not disclose defies belief and surely common sense says before cancelling such a contract some form of negotiated settlement is done to limit the damage...but as the press articles say the payment went out out the door so quick it would have made you spin and the board's internal investigation was inconclusive. Just what you would expect a hand picked group of directors to say. People of substance in those roles should have resigned and that would have sent a clear message way back then as to what was starting to occur.

Your last point is certainly worth stating over and over again. At a time when iron ore prices were buoyant a tremendous opportunity was present to put some real cash in the bank and strengthen the balance sheet and endure the present tough times. It does appear that the present iron ore price exceeds the indicative cash costs of the operation, but the cash margin cannot support AML's attached debt. Thus as a JV partner they cannot meet there share of project cash calls and feel that the Chinese should continue to let them have access to the Phase 2 funds which have whittled down to circa $100m. Basically AML's financial position is very weak wherease SIG's is very strong. I also find it strange that SIG has not increased their equity share in the project in a friendly way as one option of AML surviving and the project continuing....but relationships must be so strained to the point that background buy out of debts and their enforcements is the path being take.

Guys I sold out of the stock myself when I heard that Watling was rejoining the company and Calder and Perry were exiting as it seems like such a backward step at the time. Fyi it was the board of AML whom kicked Watling out first time around for misleading them on the state of operational completeness and capital expenditure. That was the well known rumour in London financial circles. Thus I sold my stock holdings then and am not surprised by what has gone down, but feel for shareholders and for the people of Sierra Leone. My gut feel on what has happened is that the SIG found out soon after buying into the project that massive fiscal capital overruns had been concealed as had the state of operational completeness as quite simply the project has never hit any type of consistent shipping rate and seems quite content to blame the weather when it can. I had a look at previous announcements over the weekend and noted that when SIG put in $1.5B for a 25% share that $500m of this was for debt repayment and $1.0B to be ring fenced for phase 2 and that the project was post that transaction fully funded. Thus 2 year later AML has $700m of debt and only $100m of the phase 2 funds remain which as we now phase 2 never occurred. So the question is where did this $1.6B of funds go to? It seems the project / AML has been bleeding cash and this has not been helped by other things such as GIO and Renaissance payments. I think the Chinese have seen red and decided that unless they step in then FT and Watling will lose everything. Personally I think the Chinese are acting for the first time in the best interest of their shareholders and of Sierra Leone and I do hope the project starts up again very soon. A market rumour that the former CFO (Perry) has been acting for the Chinese in discussions; thus the relationship with FT and AML must have really broken down. Strange how all this works.