Member Info for Goldbug99

@carters: because the assets of the company belong to the shareholders, currently comprising over £2M cash in treasury (rapidly diminishing as they take salaries and fees), a listing worth £1M for any AIM shell and 0.5Moz valued at ~£3M, if assigning zero value to any other licences.

Nothing wrong with this, the problem is an ineffectual managenent who refuse to make progress yet continue to extract wealth from shareholders into their own pockets.

You can rest assured that the writing down of £3.5M of historic debt to directors was an absolute condition of raising the new money at 10p, and yet per the results, the graft continues. Jones, who features in zero publicity or leadership was paid €125k this year for cripe's sake! For what???

When I first started posting on this little foray into AIM the SP was 20p for 30M shares on the back of a £5M cash injection. It dropped to 2p. No point getting out of the potential for the cost of a good all-inclusive beach holiday.

What an unmitigated disaster, down to 8p on the no-news finals.

Zero mention of any JV.

My takeaways:

The geologists are apparently finally figuring this one out after 20 years of getting it wrong, but two years after the last drill stopped, they still haven't come up with a new answer. All they have done is file licence renewals to keep the show going.

The directors have, at least, finally stopped holding the company to ransom after decades of over-paying themselves. No doubt a condition of the new money.

They raised over £3M in three placings, a loan note and a warrants exercise but still haven't done anything practical.

Zero mention of any JV activity or progress, because we must assume, nobody is biting!

They still managed to pay themselves €666,000, up €200,000 from last year. The little old lady we never hear from still got her €125k, and despite saving the €200k on the nutty professor, management salaries only went down €35k to €258k. The 6 [SIX!] exploration staff took home the other ~€400k. Oh, and they bilked the shareholders of their "other" company another €240k, of which Jonesy collected a further €60k.

And again I ask!

You have just acquired a listed company in technical insolvency for £1. For three decades it was the former hobby of a nutty professor with an obsession to find leprechaun gold, now passed. He did, however, find a small low-grade deposit and has decades of amassed data and kilometers of archived core, and very serendipitously a top-notch Aussie gold geo with a glowing career record did a year of pro-bono consulting, identified the problems and showed the way forward.

It's an all-or-nothing shot to prove up her concept, and you just raised £2M as your effective IPO from new overseas investors who know a thing or two about the business. What do you do?

1. Follow her recommendations, re-log all the old core and update the resource (promised but as-yet not delivered).

2. Put the old lady who was the nutty professors' sidekick and is now running the show, and her nephew in accounts, out to pasture and fire the staff geos who have spent nearly two decades dicking around, costing £millions, drilling a hole here or there but mostly sitting drinking coffee or working on their PowerPoint skills, and hire some consultants/contractors as required.

3. Clear your board of irrelevant deadwood, especially the nutty professors' family, friends and former cronies.

4. Appoint a top notch gold expert with an international reputation, both technically and in the market, to run the show, with a generous performance-based package (options).

5. Crack on with the proof-of-concept program you were handed on a plate ASAP, because without it, it's a busted flush anyway, and get the news out quick so you can reward shareholders, attract a partner and fund its further development.

The current impasse strikes me as "many a great story has been ruined by drilling it". I for one would like to know or move on. It's either a multi-Moz high-grade deposit at $4,250/oz or it isn't.

@DS "nobody is qualified for capable... hire an experienced professional"

They spent €456,000 on salaries in 2024 of which Conroy and Jones pocketed €294,000, leaving €75,000 each for the only other staff on the list, the two geos. Plus Bird and Earls got nearly €10k in fees each.

So if none of these four geos knows how to run an exploration program, why have shareholders been paying them for over ten years? Nearly €2 million???

@carters: So are you saying there is no other show than a deal? No plan to spend funds on proof of concept and improve the negotiating position? Never use the £2M except for corporate? Was the PP just a way for some mates to get feet under the table ahead of the deal/sell-off? They never needed the cash?

Ask yourself: what would you do if CGNR relinquished the licences and you were a NewCo that acquired them and the historic data set and raised £2M in an IPO?

Don't tell me this is going to drift back below 10p again? £2M in the bank, largely debt free and $4,000/oz gold. What the hell are they playing at? I look forward to the explanation in the Annual Report in a few weeks.

@carters: agreed! I fail to see how you can (legally) disclose future strategy, plans and use of funds to incoming corporate shareholders and yet conceal the same from existing PIs.

@DS: "First thing they should do is hire a geologist to lead the company"

So what exactly are the other 5 geologists on the payroll (plus granny Maureen and Cathal from Accounts) doing?

Is there even a plan here besides hurry up and wait?

5 months ago: Proceeds... to be used to support ongoing work at its Clontibret deposit. The work on the Clontibret resource includes re-logging of drill core from the deposit and the construction of a more robust 3D geological model.

8 months ago: The Company is progressing with the construction of the 3D geological model and pXRF analysis is continuing on Clontibret drill core

12 months ago: Funds will be used to progress... structural analysis and other work on mineralisation controls in Clontibret.

And yet, despite now owning around 30% of the enlarged capital, we have no TR1s and only two names, Matthieson and Schmidt, who seem to be Canadian (Hayward Securities Toronto ON and Dalis Investments, Kelowna BC).

If management don't catch and ride this wave soon 🏄🏼‍♀️, they need to pass the baton to someone who will!

Well the 10p floor seems to be holding but they had better come out and announce a plan pretty soon (where's the promised long overdue re-logging and resource updates?), because if they have been taking to the new shareholders, as they undoubtedly have, they need to talk to all.

"further geological work on the Company's assets in Ireland, to continue with its activities in securing material asset-level investment, and for general working capital purposes" just won't cut it.

DS: "won't take long to burn through £1.7M"

US investors tend not to be very forgiving of poor management, and can be highly litigious. I imagine the latest investment comes with a few strings, spending targets and KPIs.

Failure to deliver, and more importantly, to not deliver on undertakings given, which wouldn't break ice on AIM's poorly regulated market, could well result in lawsuits for misrepresentation in the US.

Don't forget that the CEO is American and married to the largest shareholder!

Expect to see some noses being held to grindstones moving forward.

Finally! £2M would be even better, the dilution a small price to pay to get serious PIs on board who will demand performance and results.

@DS: "fundraise is scheduled to close on or around 22 September 2025"

They had better announce it by tomorrow and it had better be fully subscribed then.

At least then we can expect some progress. US investors, with 30/85 of the equity, won't tolerate the procrastination we've become used to. They will expect delivery.

@Carters: Bob's analysis is spot on, let's hope his money comes with conditions, because if the "team" still blows this with £1.5M they demonstrate their continued incompetence, and if they get it right, it begs the question why they couldn't do it 4 years ago with £3.25 of CGNR (outside the JV) funds, when the SP was 35p and only 30M shares were out. It would be a very different company today if they had, so they have a lot to answer for.

@Carters: "Why on earth would you spend $5 million drilling holes here there and everywhere but not test for gold at depth at Clontibret."

I couldn't agree more, but it's spilt milk at this stage, yet it doesn't bode well for future performance. Why didn't the 5 senior geos with 1st hand project experience put their foot down? Don't tell me they were sitting in Dublin/Toronto/Melbourne whilst a bunch of unfamiliar Turks were running the show on the ground.

I worked out earlier they paid over $1,000 per meter drilled. That's over 5× the industry average. We were also told McNulty/Murrels were embedded in the project team. The same team that's now going to have to do the job properly with 1/3 the budget.

Carters: "I think you suggested it would be at 5p Goldbug": TBF they did park £3M of directors debt first and brought in a US influencer who sparked a wave of buying, so some credit on getting it at 10p, albeit mostly subscription/private, not retail/brokered? That said, the decline seem to have set back in without (JV) news to support it.

Carters/DS: Equally surprising that the senior partner, with FIVE geos on payroll, two in senior management and three directors, including a Barrick exec., a Professor in Economic Geology with the Curraghinalt discovery to his credit, and a seasoned Canadian explorer, had ZERO input into program objectives or management. If Conroy had used just a fraction of the £2.25M they raised independently on the back of the JV plus their £1M cash signing bonus, they could have done all this years ago.

So going from 55M to 70M shares, 30% dilution. Up to 10 notifiable holdings. The TR1s should make interesting reading.