Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Copper price continues to fly .... over $4 per lb now, yet the market clearly does not believe that current management have the ability to deliver on Leigh Creek. PEPR allegedly lodged , noise from Mining dept allegedly positive , so just need funding sorted and we have a second income stream and share price is al least half of what it should be , and potentially much more... but still no interest. BOD v happy to just keep drawing salary so appear to be in no rush, PW tweets multiple times most days but usually about MUST or GILD ..... what is going on here? AGM coming up in June , and at least one director must retire and be re-elected. Is it not AB turn this year, as Jeff Harrison was last year? Maybe people should start to think about a change at the top if no progress pretty soon? Projects ( LC and Redmoor) are both great projects but lack of delivery and lack of urgency is appalling. JP is paid well over £100k base salary plus substantial bonus. For that price we should expect full time commitment , and substantial urgency, and if we don’t get it , we should have someone else take over ....
For all those who don’t believe in coincidences...... RNS today for Mustang shows that Richard Corsie has declared a large stake in MUST. This is presumably the same Richard Corsie who bought 7% of SML in early 2015 , only to dump it in late 2015... so who is he connected to ? PW /AB /or is it just another fishy coincidence, and what exactly is going on?
Here's another one for you all ....
Joshua Wellisch is the Executive Director and a key shareholder in New Age Exploration - and as such was surely a key part of the decision made by NAE to sell their half of the Redmoor project.
Our board, on taking full control of Redmoor, turned round and awarded a contract to NRG Capital for strategic and financial advice (RNS of 24/08).
One of the directors of NRG Capital is none other than a certain Joshua Wellisch.
Pretty extraordinary really to have your equal partner in a project run for the exit, and then to employ him back as a consultant to advise you on how to run the business.Maybe it isn't him personally giving the advice but at the very least it doesn't feel right does it?
In the last 6 months the price of Copper has risen from $2.3 per lb to$3.1 per lb - an increase of 35%. This must have improved the economics of LC so much that surely anyone could raise the finance to get the project moving forwards. Does our BOD have sufficient skills and connections to advance it is surely the key question. (Alternatively , if they are saying its hard to get finance for a deal at $3.1 per lb now , then despite the assurances from 6 months ago , they presumably had NO chance of doing a JV deal. If they are not able to move it forwards with a strong wind behind them, is it time to try a different tack with different people in charge?
2019. JP $491k. AB $154k. PW. $136k. JH. $54k. TOTAL $835k. End of year share price. 0.68p. 2018. JP. $466k. AB $227k. PW $178k. JH. $56k. TOTAL. $927k. End of year share price. 1.30p. 2017. JP $429k. AB $105k. PW $78k. JH. n/a. TOTAL. $612k. End of year share price. 2.12. 2016. JP. $176k. AB. $67k. PW $24k. JH n/a. TOTAL. $267k . End of year share price 0.42p. Between 2016 and 2017 the share price went up sharply and us shareholders were v happy so didnt object when the compensation pool rose from $267k to $927k in 2 years . The principal beneficiary of this rise was JP . The rise was approved by PW and AB , but they also benefited hugely (AB from 67k to 227k , PW from 24k to 178k) so they were hardly going to object to it either were they ! Since then its all gone South apart from the pay - share price down , profits down , share stakes diluted etc , but the BOD continue to pay themselves as if everything was going fine. There is some mention of pay cuts since 10/2019 of 25% , but dont worry for them - they just adjust the bonus to make up the difference - JP had his best ever year in 2019 despite our pain caused by his ineptitude.....We urgently need to inject some objectivity and neutrality into the pay issue - if it continues to be an excercise in mutual back scratching this must surely fail as an experiment....
Unbelievable behaviour by BOD ......
JP has been paid v nearly a million dollars in 2 years for achieving and doing v little - how on earth his performance qualifies for a bonus is beyond baffling. Who decideds the bonus then ? Of course thats AB and PW - it nothing less than a cosy little cartel of mutual back scratching and wallet lining...Non profitable v small AIM listed companies should NOt be paying their part time CEO almost $1mm in two years ( no doubt JP will claim he is full time , but does anyone really believe that - we dont even have an office for him to go to full time) - utterly ridiculous and we must be getting into territory where it is time to get rid of both JP and AB.....
Please excuse me for what may be a silly question, but where can i see the information regarding bonuses etc? Doesn’t seem to have been covered by RNS and i cant see it anywhere? Many thanks
"The Board has been mindful of the change in expected cash flow and has been putting into place strategies to provide for continuity of progress on the Company's key projects."
Lets hope the main strategy they have been putting in place is to reduce their own remuneration. To have paid almost $1mm in compensation for 3 directors who are essentially part time at a time of reduced cash flow is egregious beyond belief in my opinion. Plenty to be optimistic about in the future , as long as the BOD stop treating this company like a piggy bank.
Its astonishing to think that it was only in May that the BOD announced in an RNS that Redmoor had an npv of $94mm on its own. We now have a mkt cap of just $15mm! Maybe the BOD should just seek a buyer for Redmoor and hand the cash back to the shareholders - would be over 5p a share , and still own Cobre and LC..... could do worse (and at the moment they are doing worse.) And they should definitely reduce their absurd remuneration - no one has properly explained why the remueration of the BOD rose from$612k in 2017 to $927k in 2018 - also reported back in May . This is an absurd level, especially given the amount of options issued as well....
City Financial. Just yesterday filed notice of intention to appoint administrator, and strongly rumoured to have been the seller of the 20mm shares today , which is believed to be their entire holding. To be fair, given they sold at 1.5 they must have been a forced seller, cos that is a huge discount to he 1.85 that was trading just before they sold. Just means that some skilful and lucky folks have picked up v cheap shares in todays hiatus, and on Monday we can go back to where we were in my view
The problem that we have here is that whilst the board continue to do an outstanding job of delivering on the operational front in all projects, they have not succeeded in uncovering new shareholders. I imagine pretty much everyone on this board is already invested, and many are short term punters anyway (which is entirely their right) . So literally every time there is some good (and often great) news released, people are queuing up to release their shares. the only solution to this is to get out and preach the story to new ( and preferably longer term institutional) shareholders- which is surely what S P Angel should be doing on our behalf. Any old nomad can raise money by selling a rights issue at a discounted price to a bunch of spivs. We need someone with a proper client base who listens to their broker when they recommend a stock backed up by solid research. Is S P Angel the right company for that ?
Bit harsh MK , especially as its the festive season! Why would you expect someone to pay 1.35p for shares when they are perfectly entitled to buy at 1.0p via options? Give JP a break... at least hes putting his hard earned money into the shares - great vote of confidence in my view. happy Xmas to all!
Are you saying that your colleague bought 119,522 shares at 1.245 and sold them at 1.2663 DGR? If so , I calculate they made a gross profit of £24 , and then they paid commission twice . I’ld be surprised if they made a net profit of more than a fiver ....never cease being amazed by some people’s investing/trading strategies...