RE: Proxy Fight14 Jun 2025 12:20
No, not wholly, Seis, of course .... but if you were in their position would you be? It is human nature to try to disguise mistakes and to try to put a shine on things. You can at least try to polish a t**d. Business requires delivery as well as optimism and a quite large slice of good luck. We tend to forget the head winds that have blown in the last few years in an environment, like Zambia, which was new to JLP only 6 years ago. We have been through a painful learning phase, during which there have been external factors that have impacted progress, some of which may have been anticipated and some which couldn't, COVID for example. But even those that might have been, for example power issues due to lack of rainfall, would have required capital to try to ameliorate which we simply didn't have. What was the choice: raise more through equity issue or hope that the rain falls. With hindsight the answer still isn't obvious as to issue equity to cover in advance what is only a possibility, a drought, is quite difficult to justify at a time when production is not producing cash. So you cross fingers and hope and deal with the fall out if it occurs. Similarly, in a new environment, delays in permitting are to be expected but for how long? There has certainly been over-optimism in terms of forecasts, probably as a result of the success in South Africa, that have then bitten Leon on the arris when the above events occurred. And as time has gone on a realisation that the economics of tailings processing just don't compare to ROM when cost pressures mount leading to the pivot to transitional ores which we CAN process far more effectively to be profitable than others. But no one ever achieved anything in business by being pessimistic and can't-do and his optimism is both Leon's strength and weakness. He has over-promised when the fundamentals were not in place on which those promises relied but his optimism has kept the show on the road, no mean feat. You may say I am just making excuses for the troubles of the past, and to a degree I am. With personal experience of setting up an operation in a new international environment I can empathise. But I choose to look at the last few years as JLP getting to grips with and learning the hard lessons of a new country, a new set of processes to process a new metal, new regulations, government relationships and politics all whilst capital was constrained .... and coming out of the other end now far wiser and with the experience necessary to capitalise upon. Therefore, I remain optimistic that we will shortly deliver the copper numbers to justify a much higher share price and that freeing up capital from the overall low margin and politically charged South African operation and environment to turbo-charge growth in Zambia is the right thing to do. As for the price, I await the circular to understand the rationale to make a judgement.
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