Member Info for Highside

I wonder if moaning about the poor performance of the company is any worse than moaning about people moaning :-)

Interesting article on the Radio today about Boris and his 100% renewable pledge.
Something that was not in his manifesto, something that would be "hugely expensive and something that the voters would have to pay for" and definitely something that he has not been given remit for.

Made me think about LR and his proposed new venture ? :-)

MFM
The question is why after 5 years and £10m is the asset worth £2m (+£1.5m cash)
Its had its data room open for ever, its been rescued twice from the brink by DB and others. Its hardly a well kept secret in the Zinc world and yet there is zero interest and the company value says its pretty much worthless when you consider a major part of its value at any one time is the cash raised at the last placing.
Answer that and we might get somewhere :-) TP put a value on this of £16.9m over a year ago (but then they would as they are tasked with selling it to others in the ongoing placings) maybe they have the answer but given the apparent strength of the asset its very hard to see that Bricks is not right and the Management has totally failed the investors.
What doesnt make sense to me is why apparently DB have pretty much singlehandedly re elected LR to the BOD given the situation and the SP continued fall over the last 5 years.

"When I read the explanation that someone's so far down that they may as well just leave the remnants in I know they must have some expectation that the enterprise can still deliver, why? "

Maybe ask your mate bricks ? he was just like you not 3 months ago but the penny dropped and he realised this moved from being a serious investment to to a life style company thats engineered by LR for
LR for his own income .
I get the great ground work, the never ending drilling and data gathering and even the possible but failed JV ? but the reality that even you cant dismiss is this has been going on in various forms for 10+ years, they have raised over £15m and the SP has fallen year on year from day one and have a company worth £3m . The company has failed to make a single penny for its investors in fact it has reliably lost year on year so most of us had we not ave down would be at 99.9% loss. Now we are presented with a new strategic direction that puts a new project over a PFS on what we have ?
Wake up mate You are being lead up the garden path, dont try and take others with you.

Ha ha..hyperbol shed ?
"The forum here has returned to relying on institutions knowing something we dont". That's not correct.

Sorry but it is correct and you of all people have repeated this ever since DB bought at 12.5p, in fact you pushed it on everyone when the SP was drifting below 12.5p. Only 2 days ago you said
"The bottom line for me is that if Toral didn't have a future it would be madness for DB to have put more cash in"

MMF ,Yes it did strike me as odd a year into me being filtered for my thoughts, that Cri5p still thinks this is an open mine....but then he was also millions out on his estimate of cash raised so far as well.
Like you my focus is now elsewhere but also like you the few % i still have of my original investment here is worth so little its just a fun punt now. still its quite funny in a sad way to see all the Bulls slamming on the brakes and doing a U-turn :-) For most punters this is now bottom draw damage limitation, it would be a very brave PI that tries to catch a falling knife and buys in now.
I think there is a massive conflict of interest with the BOD wanting to progress EUZ and happy to side line to an extent Toral. Everyone here invested in Toral, not some future project as yet unknown. I dont even think Bennelong is focused on Toral. The BOD has in theory financed Toral without including the PI's although its us who have paid the price with no gain whatsoever. I honestly dont see the BOD as answerable to the PI's anymore. I now see this as a Company who's new strategic direction is to raise money with Toral as the carrot but EUZ and some other project as the money sponge.

IMHO shed the Management have given up with PI's. I think that information was available to those in the last placing that we dont get to see, why else would they have bought in or increased their holdings. Even the research notes are way out of date now. the target set by TP is £16.9m, 34.5p but since then there have been another 30m shares issued so i would guess the New target is nearer 22p ?
The forum here has returned to relying on institutions knowing something we dont with optimism based solely on "why else would they have invested" but thats the same argument used at 12.5p and then 5p.
I think DB are just keeping the dream alive or their own previous investment as it happens. Do DB see an end game or do they see damage limitation at 8p-10p ?
I think the last RNS was a catastrophe in a long line of disasters :-) because it cast doubt on Toral, pretty much killed of the PFS for the foreseeable future and brought up the subject of a new strategic direction which would have any sane PI quaking in his boots at the thought of the Tens of millions£ required to get the last strategic direction where it is. .
Rightly or wrongly the perception now is a ship without a rudder and a company trying to perpetuate its existence when really EUZ is Toral and Toral is EUZ however much LR thinks otherwise.

Shed
How nice to have civil and polite exchange of views :-)
The problem is as i see it, for all the de-risking and proving up of Toral, it falls flat if the management are unable to convert that to financial advantage. I am sure you are right that DB would not throw good money after bad however i think they could be looking too hard at the asset and not at the management.
This is from CSA global when asked why a PFS maters ?
"For owners of mineral assets, efficient and cost-effective project development is critical for achieving value. Unfortunately, too many executive teams are taking short-cuts in their development projects to conserve money and time, thereby doing precisely the opposite and exposing their shareholders to lost opportunities".

I strongly believe that without a PFS (as a bare minimum) the asset cant really be costed or valued and i dont believe any potential buyer could have done effective DD without one. The fact that the PFS is not funded in this last cash call means there will have to be another and there is no guarantee that will be used to fund it either. This is why i wonder if Toral is a goer, i dont question the asset, i question the managements commitment to it going forward especially if another project comes forward before they have proved they can handle the one they have...and lets call a spade a spade, as an " investment" so far it been a disaster.
Would you want to see a single penny spent on anything other than progressing Toral with the BOD track record so far ?

For several years i have criticized the BOD method of throwing out " Hints" on social media and leaving the Bulls to pick up these hints and run with them on the forums. I have always said that if its worth reporting its worth an RNS so its fact and on the record.
Bricks, you once said to me , why would i be invested in a company where i had no faith in the management. Have you changed your mind ?
Mailgirl
There are two possibilities for wanting to buy another project, either Toral has failed for whatever the reason that caused the deal to fall through ? To small, the mets, unreasonable demands from the BOD to complete its sale or something else. Or its still a goer and they want to keep EUZ alive so need another project to validate EUZ when Toral is sold. We shouldn't have to wonder which it is. My gut feeling is they wouldn't be carrying out a costs review and contemplating remuneration cuts if Toral was anywhere near to being sold off . I cant see that they would side-line the PFS in favour of a new project either if Toral needed a final shove to get it over the line.?
The Truth is we dont know and that has been the problem here for 5 years, we are invested but have no idea of the plan, if there is a plan, the end game or where the exit point is. Worse still is the waters get muddier as time goes on.
I have always said this is not an investment and i have been proved right as time has gone on, financially its been a massive failure for everyone except the BOD. its a punt, a gamble and sorry to say the odds are staking up against it now because of the managements unwillingness to come straight with the punters. Everything about the future of Toral and EUZ is pure speculation. Does LR really expect people to put new money on that ?

I think i get what you are saying but surely they couldn't then give a figure of how many people/institutions voted ie:16 if they just didn't bother to count all the votes ?
Or am i missing something ?

MM
In reality bringing in someone in to stabilise the SP is complete nonsense and ranks with the Grown up company and the No more dilutive funding nonsense.
If you bring in someone with a 42% discount guess what ?...... You set a new level for the SP down 42%
The current holders lose 42%
The company has to dilute by an extra 42% or
The company raises 42% less
And the buyer wipes out his own discount.
Who the hell wants a stabilised SP at below 5p ? and if he means to stop the drop ? well thats going well.....
Sorry but this company is taking shareholders for fools and its got to stop.
LR bought DB in to stabilise his own position on the board. Look at the voting figures. Coincidence that the only +votes for all the resolutions happen to add up to DB's holding ? including LR's own re-election to the BOD ?

I expect Bennelong and DB are wondering why they paid 5p now :-)
Seriously though they drove the price down so you have to laugh if it bites them.

Bennelong might hold the answer but in the real world their stake is very small , almost petty cash to an investment house with funds in excess of a billion AUD. The value they could bring IMHO would be to put someone on the BOD to represent the investors, something that has been painfully missing so far. They have the experience to grow companies, again something that has been woefully missing, i haven't looked but i am sure EUZ has shrunk over the years, if you raise £10m and end up with Co. valued at £3.5m ( with £1.5m of that cash) thats pretty poor.
From a personal perspective i think growing the company will be very expensive, a long term strategy with benefits years away and not in the interest of the current holders invested in Toral. I would go all out to get a PFS which confirms the value of the asset to the markets as i see that as the missing piece of the puzzle.
Unfortunately thats not going to happen now.

Yes absolutely , I reinvented myself as Highside because Bobby Beal was filtered by the rampers here so the board had become very disjointed , its just not possible to have a discussion when half the board cant see what the other half are saying. As for investing, Yes i fell for the hype at about 12p and again at about 9p and threw some good money after bad because the key for me and the BOD at the time was always the PFS and they said its major parts were fully funded 12 months ago so as the year moved on it seemed very likely we would progress the PFS especially when they started talking value events and alternative non dilutionary funding..
Of course there was no value event, no non dilutionary funding and now the PFS is no longer funded apparently..
As far as i was concerned i had lost my cash a while ago however i did put some new cash into this as i say on the promises of above and i expect i have lost that as well now.
Never mind. millions of people lose 100% every week on the lottery and on line gaming and the horses :-), BOD's never lose, :-)
One thing i can guarantee though. Someone will latch on to this soon like an undiscovered money tree and ramp the hell out of it :-) and the cycle will start all over again . I wouldn't even be surprised to see this go sub 1p and consolidate to become a grown up company :-)
ATB

I suppose i am lucky Pete as i had pretty much kissed my cash goodbye a while ago, thats ok, win some lose some but i still have a morbid curiosity about this and like any good soap opera i tune in to see what's going to happen next out of habit..
What i do see , again, like any good soap are the same lines, plots and stories repeating every few years ;-).
The forums are usually lead by a small group who ramp 24/7, they alienate the LTH's who usually just pack up and go, they rope in a few who fall for the nonsense with talk of millions or billons in the ground (where it usually stays) then after a while, quietly disappear to make way for the next batch who pick up the dropped baton and do the same. The company now seems to be at the same stage as it was 6 years ago with an unfinished PFS and an asset they cant cash in on and looking for a new play. we have heard how Toral is not Moonlight, its in the EU, people need Zinc bla, bla but the end result is frighteningly similar.
The only people making money on these speculative stocks are the BOD's, people like Reed, Bird and Tooth and a dozen others who move round the same circle of companies, most sit on several boards, have several jobs and play the punters, the same names crop up time and time again. Occasionally they hit a winner but its usually a price rise driven by speculation on the tip sheets and the concerted efforts of a few hard core "influencers" on Social media rather than anything great achieved by the companies themselves. In future all RNS releases should be followed by the EastEnders doof doof dramatic drum :-)

I think you are doing well Bricks
I am 86.6% down. At least you have decided to get out before you reach my level. Will it be possible to shift your holding on the JSE ?
You are doing the right thing, start the new year with EUZ well behind you.

It does seem more and more as i eluded to the other day that we are invested in a BOD here and not the asset. A revelation to me after 30 years in this game. I have always believed that if an asset is good enough then if a BOD was so bad that it couldn't return on that asset they would be kicked out and someone else would.
We have either been sold a Dud or the BOD are hopeless....or both.
My thinking is the asset is not what its been made out to be. Why else would they need to discount it 40% just to raise at a price thats 85% down on the last Broker valuation.
We had the broker valuation saying 35p and the BOD placing at 5p ?
The BOD have now pretty much said they dont know what else to do by not going for a full PFS, looking for a new asset and holding a placing with no real purpose other than keeping the lights on for another 12 months and taking 6 figure salaries.

On the flip side i am not too bothered, this happens on the AIM more often than not with speculative companies and its why most of us regard the AIM as a punt while keeping our pensions and major investments well away from it. It will be sad to sell up after 10 years here but exciting to look at new possibilities and opportunities to get the money working again
GLA for 2022

I have half a joke...i just need a punch line :-)

What do the BOD at EUZ and the English ashes team have in common ?

Well i have learned something this year :-)
In the past i always said its the Asset you invest in, managements come and go.
I was wrong. what we have seen here is an apparently excellent asset that you would have thought could have sold itself in a market thats seen Zinc prices rocket but...
Poor basic management, poor communication, the same details repeated and nothing much new to say, Placings at rock bottom prices that contradict how good the asset is said to be. Incentive schemes that didn't incentivise, remuneration that goes up and up as the SP goes down and down. Vague wishy washy statements that say nothing really, lets face it , half of us still cant be 100% sure even what currency the Accounts are even in :-)
We tried to look past this knowing that we had the major parts of the PFS financed and that would be the key to unlocking the value in the asset, make the big guys sit up and pay attention, but now the PFS is not financed despite a £1.4m raise, A new strategic direction is introduced but what, we dont know and neither does the BOD apparently. Even the three big Bulls on the Forum have either turned bear of just lost interest.
Now we sit and wait for the next inevitable placing , hoping that Bennelong's accountants and DD work are better than DB's :-)
Lets just pray they dont diversify away from Toral or that raise will not be in 12 months as LR said ,it will be less that 6 months IMHO.
The only way anyone will have a happy Christmas here apart from LR is to forget this now until the new year.

.................................2030 :-)

I want to agree Bricks but i just dont see it. the SP is not only driven by individual trades but by trends over time so it possible that a drop today has been brewing for some time on historic trades. There are too many factors we dont know like how much stock they are holding, sells or buys on the books waiting and so on.
TBH i dont think the MM's need to manipulate the price of a minnow like this, management are more likely to manipulate the price as they did with a 40% discount placing.

The SP has been falling for months. The company scuppered its own SP by 40%+ with the placing so its just falling as before but from a lower rate.
If you are trading at 9p and you then value yourself at 5p in a placing its pretty obvious that the SP will drop to 5p. so bennelong and DB will not be surprised as its their purchases that set the new level.
It will continue to drift down now until the company comes clean over its plans to diversify away from Toral and comes up with concrete plans for funding. We have been fed a line over Toral for years but quite frankly the lack of interest from PI's and corporates tells another story when even they valued this at 5p and only then if the company took a new strategic direction.
Don't worry though, as shed said, DB would not have bought at 12.5p without doing due diligence and their own research :-)