Member Info for Happyhaddock

@ theyknowitall "UFO all over again"

I suspect you meant this as a criticism but it all comes down to both "timing the market" and "time in the market" . UFO has, and still is, showing me my biggest profit even allowing for the fact it's about 65% down on its recent spike. If you buy well you can ride the uncertainty of the junior exploration sector. Best time to buy anything is when others are hating it ... a sentiment that might just fit ECR right now.

the kind of results to disappoint the "get rich quick" crowd.

For those happy to accept that exploration is a slow process with many ups and downs, well today is just one more day further down a long and twisty road.... If you believe the company is worth investing in, it surely represents better value now at about 2p than it did a short while ago at closer to 2.5p.

People invest in companies for many reasons and have their own priorities in terms of what research they deem most important in terms of making their investment decisions. I would suggest that in terms of investing in AIM listed junior explorers, analysis of balance sheets profits/losses P/E ratios etc. that may be relevant to larger turnover generating companies is vague at best, and at times opaque, for the reason there is so little info to judge. Management therefore become a more major part of any decision, both their background/skills and their commitment to a company.

I've been looking through my portfolio seeing what I can find out about each CEO/Board in terms of how their own wealth is tied up with the success of the company they manage, something many companies make difficult to assess.

Things I think should be prominently listed and easier to find are;

boards "total wages" (not just direct salaries but any other bonuses, fees and indirect payments that may get hidden under generic terms within accounts) along with the Board's share holdings/options.

Given that some companies make this clear and others do their best to bury this info I think another really useful bit of info that should be made clear in company accounts is exactly what is covered by some of the more "over-arching" terms they use by way of things grouped under general administrative costs. Hand in hand with this goes what percentage of expenditure actually goes directly in to the primary function of the company - namely exploration.

Wading through the accounts of large blue chip companies is boring but you can usually get the info you want, I have found with many of these tiny AIM listed explorers their published accounts pose more questions than they answer in terms of where money is being spent.

I'm not singling out UFO here as being good or bad, but I'm curious about the extent others look in to these matters as in several case it is a little fuzzy as to how much "skin in the game" some board members have. I suspect many private investors may have greater financial commitment in the success of some of their companies than the management.

It is said the only cause of disappointment is expectation.

It is only natural that investors in a company should have positive views and be hopeful for the future of the company, whether those hopes are grounded in reality or merely wishful thinking is a different matter and largely dependent upon timescale.

I always welcome contrarian views and have no problems with those who wish to play Devils' advocate as it is such people who stop this board becoming an echo chamber of confirmation bias. It is just sad that so often things descend towards insults or deliberate confrontation when things don't go as someone may have expected.

Rather than judging each other's motives isn't it better simply to judge the veracity of the content posted.

Is it a new fact that can be verified by external sources?
Is it merely repetition of known facts others have already posted about?
Is it a hypothesis that may be supported by known facts?
Is it merely personal opinion?
Is it idle chat?
Is it personal abuse and insults?

We must all take responsibility for our own decisions and the information we chose to act upon where much posted here serves little value in terms of shaping investment decisions. (my own posts included)

As I've stated before UFO forms the largest position in my portfolio as I hold very high hopes for it's future. It has already shown me very good profits but I don't expect to see much action from it again until the second half of 2020. I am however happy just to hold and wait because I believe history shows it can be a volatile share that can move unexpectedly without any obvious trigger.

There is no harm in idle chat and sharing/debating different opinions but let's avoid the bickering about individual motives please? Just ignore those whose comments you view as having no merit.

"...talked this thing to death and holding strong ."

- says it all!

... is like playing chess with pigeons, no matter how superior your logic and reasoning they will still strut about with their chest's puffed out as they knock over the pieces and s**t on the board.

I don't know about a quiet day before the webinar, I'm expecting several more quiet weeks after it as I'm still expecting it to be the second half of 2021 before things get exciting again in the precious metals and mineral exploration sectors.

I hope I'm wrong and that UFO does explode before then on some good news but if it doesn't I'm happy to just sit and hold my existing position - The paper profit it's already shown me is more than good enough to pay for a few years of stagnant inactivity if I have to endure that and yet I really don't think I'll have to wait that long for another decent up turn.

However for those with a minimal attention span and short term trading plans I suspect there is nothing here of interest, it's just that when this moves it can move wildly so I wouldn't know how to, or risk trying to, time a last minute entry.

I find it curious that if you were to randomly replace the name of any particular junior explorer with another on the various chat boards here on LSE how similar all the conversations would be and how easily one could be passed off as discussing a different company entirely.

It seems to be an industry wide standard at the moment to be waiting on info, and in the periods of silence question company boards/CEOs motives . Or alternatively question what they might possibly have to say to fill up silences in lieu of actually having the info people want to hear.

Investing in junior explorers requires an acceptance of a high degree of risk and a recognition that share prices tend to make big erratic moves interspersed with long periods of not much happening. So ask yourselves how much of what we are dealing with now is specific to UFO and how much is just a more generic reflection of the current status of the sector as a whole.

Intrinsically I think we all know that UFO has a lot of good projects on the go so offers a lot of potential for the future. All the chat here is just a means of filling the silence and controlling a degree of nervous impatience until the sector catches up on itself and deals with it's many administrative delays.

As we all know, in the absence of more info we are just speculating about the boards actions and motives but I think AG1989 has summed up the most valuable points.

This is a mineral exploration company ... you have to be comfortable with a high degree of risk and a turbulent share price if you are seeking the huge gains that can come from actually making a major discovery and taking it into production.

Regardless of what may have gone before either in previous years or previous days we are where are.

We have huge amount of money in the bank for such a modest sized company. So we can say for certain that we can afford to do a lot of exploration on the sites we can say without a doubt that we already own.

That alone puts us ahead of many other junior explorers even before any others surprises our CEO or board may throw our way in the future.

OMI is another significant holding in my own portfolio, much greater than ECR in fact having massively multi-bagged from my initial buy in.

Though, as has been said, OMI has been going nowhere of late due to the general industry wide delays and drop in sentiment for precious metals as people expect a recovery post covid.. However at these low share prices I am eying it as a potential top-up as the long term potential still looks superb.

@ trickytrees it's not simply a matter of how far behind, firstly it's a matter of whether the geology is there, it would have to be going some to be as good as GGP even though it looks as though e may have a decent find.

Then it's a question of how quickly we can prove up the resource assuming it is there and if the "we" grows to include partners with deeper pockets.

I hope the future proves me wrong in terms of mkt cap but I'd treat ECR as a separate thing and not try to compare it to GGP

"Wow, a lot of discussion last night...I thought it was the weekend again."

Very true and since then nothing has changed, and even that is a fact that some will view as good and some will view as bad.

We live in an age where we all want everything now and where some cope better than others when they don't get what they want immediately. We need to step back and consider what we have a right to, what we'd merely like and perhaps most importantly what it is possible to provide.

I think we'd all like more detailed communication from the company regarding the placement, even if that is merely an acknowledgement from the CEO that he can't yet provide detailed reasons for why the placement was held now and at the price it was.

We can all speculate about what may be going on behind the scenes but without any facts it remains speculation. This prompts the question about what facts CB himself has access to, and what if anything he is legally permitted to comment upon at the moment. Again we don't know this so have ended up speculating about what we are speculating about.

If you trust CB's abilities and long term vision for ECR then you'll attribute positive reasons to the placement and current lack of communication. If you don't trust the CEO then I suppose you need to question if ECR is a company you wish to hold shares in; something a few here are seemingly doing. So whilst I am in the former camp having bought a few more shares on the dip I'll respect those in the later.

Things will become clearer in time and until they do we can only comment upon each others guesses.

entirely plausible that an extra drill and team may be a reason for the placement but it prompts the question that as CB had already mentioned that possibility a while ago, what changed behind the scenes in the last two or three weeks to make it a more urgent priority?

I'm more inclined towards the license application being the factor that changed, though as these were first applied for a while ago I'd guess that nay cost associated with these had been already allowed for. Unless its increased confidence that we've got the licenses that has prompted the need for more money to then move them forward.

All speculation but potentially interesting times ahead.

JTB - no need to apologise for anything.

Like you I had kind of noted and moved on from the licensing issues but again like yourself I am coming around to the idea that those license applications are actually the linch-pin around which everything else hinges.

After all if you were a major player in the mining industry wanting put a huge sum of money into what has the potential to be a major discovery you'd want to know you were buying in to all of it. Not that you paying to discover the real find was next door.

My gut feeling is that the recent placement came about as a direct consequence of something changing within the progress of those license applications, and that the need for more money is more likely to be a positive sign than negative one

@Glittertip - I suppose my primary point was to highlight that the recent placement need not have been anything planned months ago as many have suggested when accusing the CEO of misleading them. More that a sense of possible timescales involved would enable us to look back at recent events and speculate about what might have changed in the last days/weeks to prompt a new placement.

As for the speculative part I'll stress it is just that. I don't know anything you guys don't and can't put forward anything that hasn't been mentioned here before. However I'll paste below one meaningful comment from my e-mail exchange.

"If your company has surplus cash but still took the investment it might be that it's a strategic partner who wont' work with them without skin in the game. Or it might be that they are positioning themselves for a bigger transaction like an acquisition. Or as the two often go hand in hand it may well be a bit of both."

Until we get a definitive statement from ECR none of us will know anything for sure, but if I were a betting man (and what else is buying AIM stocks in junior explorers?) then I'd say all the speculation about a JV at Creswick, recent talk of the status of license applications for surrounding land and the placement are all part of the same story and that some sort of deal is being brokered that we'll hear about once every part has fallen into place.

There has been quite some heated debate and anger expressed here about the recent placement. Many feel cheated and lied to claiming that ECR must have known about and been planning this placement for weeks if not months. I was more sceptical about such timings but said I knew just the person to ask about such matters.

I'll not bore you with the details of all we discussed, but for those interested here is a very brief synopsis of what I learnt:-

Firstly my contact said they could only comment upon their own experiences anything I wanted to infer from their answers was down to me; so for reference their background was as head of special projects, mergers and acquisitions at a modest company. Over the last few years they helped grow this many times over to become a FTSE100 company. As a consequence they ended up with additional roles serving on the boards of various other companies and more recently also ended up as a partner and treasurer routinely managing billions of pounds.

In terms of how long a placement takes to put together the answer is somewhat of a "how long is a piece of string?" type of question and will in part be unique to each company based upon their own Memorandum and Articles of Association. A likely key factor determining the complexity of the process is how much you are trying to raise in terms of the company's existing market cap and share base. Another is the number and type of investors this money is to be raised from.

However to cut to the chase, a large raise involving many investors seems to border on the complexity of sorting an IPO and is a process most would want at least 3months for.

At the other extreme I am told that a small private placement with a known partner where there is little new to discuss could be rushed through in a just a couple of days if everyone shared the same sense of urgency.

Other comments made to me about possible reasons why an apparently well funded company might spring a surprise placement on investors were quite enlightening if purely speculative... but each gave me hope for the potential future of ECR.

I'm assuming that when you own your own drill and team the biggest cost of continuing drilling one site is simply the "opportunity cost" of having to wait to start drilling the next.

With our own basic lab the' will know what is in each hole even if we haven't had official confirmation back from outside analysis, so as others have said the logical conclusion is that they like what they are finding and see value in getting more data, otherwise they would simply take the drill elsewhere.

We can but guess.

@ AG1989 In terms of how quickly a Placing can be put together I've posted about this before and much depends upon which direction the placing is being driven.

If you have to go out and promote to attract investors it can take much longer than if they are banging at your door each repeatedly offering money under different terms/conditions. A good broker should ensure there are always offers of more money on the table for you, the question is always under what terms. If a company approaches it's broker to say this is what we want and these are the terms under which we are willing to work it may limit a brokers opportunities to go out and find suitable investors.

I can't say how quickly the paper work can be rushed through once a group of willing parties are all brought together, but I would have thought days rather than weeks if there is a real need and benefit to getting things sorted so quickly...

I do however happen to know the treasurer of a FTSE100 company so I'll ask a few questions and see what I can find out... they must have minions capable of answering such questions.

@jtb - I agree that hearing the word "WILL" in terms of a media interview about a JV would have made me sit up, if for no other reason than it may have breached some legal rule about how news is formally announced and a savvy CEO is unlikely to have slipped up like that.

However without wishing to digress off on a tangent or be seen to doubt your recollections, there have been many psychological experiments showing how easily people build false memories by reinforcing the prominence of what may have initially been misheard or mis-interpreted.

Nevertheless should anyone discover an interview in which CB does actually state we "WILL" complete a JV I'd love to hear it.

Well we know our CEO isn't one to mess about, he means business and does the business as shown by his previous track record.

I suspect there is enough wriggle room in what he actually said about Creswick to have "technically" said nothing that he could be accountable for in the terms of the law, yet if taken at face value the impression is that the deal may already in the bag and is simply a matter of dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" which is probably why others here were expressing such confidence.