Member Info for mrtibbles

Performance bonuses linked to meeting forecasts, hence the low-bar increases they forecast for 2018, virtually guaranteeing they will be met.

Well they certainly shouldn't be receiving any free shares now after putting in such a lousy performance!

Perhaps they should have penalty clauses in their contracts for poor performance!

Some interesting points from Rebess,

Centamin is fast becoming a share for the top directors rather than the shareholders. - It might be frustration talking but, at times, it seems to me that the rewards are all going one way, to them. - OK there's the good dividend, but there's plenty of shares you can invest in that are paying a good dividend. - I believe the majority of us are in the share for the growth prospects. - When you read through the Annual Report you will see their remuneration is quite lucrative. - The shares they hold are awarded to them free of charge. Performance bonuses linked to meeting forecasts, hence the low-bar increases they forecast for 2018, virtually guaranteeing they will be met, but forecasts that do not excite the market and therefore doing nothing for the SP. - I'll stop there I think before I depress myself. - I think might be getting frustrated. - Just to add to my depressing post, I feel any appeal from shareholders concerning buybacks or anything else for that matter will be totally ignored. - I don't think we count that much.

Some interesting points from Rebess,

Centamin is fast becoming a share for the top directors rather than the shareholders. - It might be frustration talking but, at times, it seems to me that the rewards are all going one way, to them. - OK there's the good dividend, but there's plenty of shares you can invest in that are paying a good dividend. - I believe the majority of us are in the share for the growth prospects. - When you read through the Annual Report you will see their remuneration is quite lucrative. - The shares they hold are awarded to them free of charge. Performance bonuses linked to meeting forecasts, hence the low-bar increases they forecast for 2018, virtually guaranteeing they will be met, but forecasts that do not excite the market and therefore doing nothing for the SP. - I'll stop there I think before I depress myself. - I think might be getting frustrated. - Just to add to my depressing post, I feel any appeal from shareholders concerning buybacks or anything else for that matter will be totally ignored. - I don't think we count that much.

The basics of share buy backs
Tax Benefits

When excess cash is used to repurchase company stock, instead of increasing dividend payments, shareholders have the opportunity to defer capital gains if share prices increase. Traditionally, buybacks are taxed at a capital gains tax rate, whereas dividends are subject to ordinary income tax. If the stock has been held for more than one year, the gains would be subject to a lower capital gains rate.
Excess Cash
When companies pursue buyback programs, this demonstrates to investors that the company has additional cash on hand. If a company has excess cash, then at worst the investors do not need to worry about cash flow problems. More importantly, it signals to investors that the company feels cash is better used to reimburse shareholders than reinvest alternative assets. In essence, this supports the price of the stock and provides long-term security for investors.
The Downside
While investors tend to adore buybacks, there are several disadvantages investors should be aware of. Buybacks can be a signal of the marketing topping out; many companies will repurchase stocks to artificially boost share prices. Typically, executive compensations are tied to earnings metrics, and if earnings cannot be increased, buybacks can superficially boost earnings. Also, when buybacks are announced, any share price increase will typically benefit short-term investors rather than investors seeking long-term value. This creates a false signal to the market that earnings are improving due to organic growth and ultimately ends up hurting value.
The Bottom Line
Generally speaking, redistributing wealth has been viewed positively by investors. This can come in the form of dividends, retained earnings, and the popular buyback strategy. In terms of finance, buybacks can boost shareholder value and share prices while also creating a tax advantageous opportunity for investors. While buybacks are important to financial stability, a company’s fundamentals and historical track record are more important to long-term value creation.

The Basics of Buybacks
In recent history, leading companies have adopted a regular buyback strategy to return all excess cash to shareholders. By definition, stock repurchasing allows companies to reinvest in themselves by reducing the number of outstanding shares on the market. Typically, buybacks are carried out on the open market, similarly to how investors purchase stocks. While there has been a clear shift in wealth distribution of dividends to stock repurchasing, this doesn’t mean a company cannot pursue both.
Apple investors have grown to prefer buybacks since they have the choice of whether or not to partake in the repurchase program. By not participating in a share buyback, investors can defer taxes and turn their shares into future gains. From a financial perspective, buybacks benefit investors by improving shareholder value, increasing share prices, and creating tax beneficial opportunities.
Improved Shareholder Value
There are many ways profitable companies can measure the success of its stocks. However the most common measurement is earnings per share (EPS). Earnings per share are typically viewed as the single most important variable in determining share prices. It is the portion of a company’s profit allocated to each outstanding share of common stock.
When companies pursue share buyback, they will essentially reduce the assets on their balance sheets and increase their return on assets. Likewise, by reducing the number of outstanding shares and maintaining the same level of profitability, EPS will increase. For shareholders who do not sell their shares, they now have a higher percent of ownership of the company’s shares and a higher price per share. Those who do choose to sell have done so at a price they were willing to sell at.
Boost in Share Prices
When the economy is faltering, share prices can plummet as a result of weaker than expected earnings amongst other factors. In this event, a company will pursue a buyback program since it believes that company shares are undervalued.
Companies will choose to repurchase shares and then resell them in the open market once the price increase to accurately reflect the value of the company. When earnings per share increases, the market will perceive this positively and share prices will increase after buybacks are announced. This often comes down to simple supply and demand. When there is a less available supply of shares, then an upward demand will boost share prices.

This was posted by Marmot at that time Centamin was £1.51 per share
What A Share Buyback Program Can Do

Have a look at Kirkland Lake Gold £ a similarly-sized single-mine producer with a very small divi, much less reserves BUT an active share buyback program... on a typical day its trading volume is 100 times that of Centamin & it's market cap is a billion higher. If anybody is going to the shareholder's meeting this would be a good example to cite!

https://web.tmxmoney.com/pricehistory.php?qm_symbol=KL

https://web.tmxmoney.com/pricehistory.php?qm_symbol=CEE

Weakness today, it's been weak ever since that lack lustre uninspiring jumbled muffled and unexciting pile of techno waffle that was released and spouted out in the conference call on the 25th Feb 2019!
The Investor Relations department have gone dumb and Buchanon the PR Company have remained silent whist the grade problems at Sukari continue!
Weakness today, it's been weak for nearly 12 months and the management are quite happily paying out huge divi's to the ETF holding CFD positions instead of bolstering the share price with a buy back that would benefit all ordinary retail investors!

You are entitled to a rant, certainly many of us on here often have good rants!
Is it any wonder really,at very best some of the professional management have either been complacent and/or asleep on he job, that is bad enough!
But one has to ask itf the share holders purposely not kept informed about to impending low grade problems by those who may have been more interested in promoting the big divi policy and pushing up the share price before filling their saddle bags and galloping of into the sunset?
Share holders have lost faith in the integrity of the management and the market is taking full advantage by spanking the share price!

But can we belove them, in 2018 they claimed that production output would be much better in Q4?

In fact things got worse and now it seems even though they have two LHDR there are problems accessing the underground workings due to only having one entrance, management must have been aware of this for a long time and they should have made improvements, yet another failure to mitigate production risk!

Nothing from Josef since his return ?

Hi Zippo,
As a long term holder of over a decade in Centamin I would advise you to do some more research on the problems of 2018 at Sukari and how the company intends to overcome them in 2019 before making your investment decision.

Thank you Dasut, your just the of investor we need in our group!

Thank you Cowichan, i was hoping that you would have some idea's on how to get this set up.
I don;t have the geology or mining knowledge that you and some of our fellow investors do, but I am willing and able to do whatever I can to take this forward.
It is time that we retail investors were treated with respect and taken seriously by the company.

Very important points Cowiichan that should be answered!

Very important points Cowiichan that should be answered!

Just sent to Centamin pr & IR

Like many retail investors I am sick and tired of my questions being ignored by Centamin, I appreciate that individuals may be complying with an internal company dictate, however this does not help reassure retail investors that all is well with the company.

In view of the attached report highlighting the problems at Sukari I thought that Centamin may have been keen to reassure investors that appropriate measures and changes had been implemented to cope with them...

The last phone in presentation did nothing to reassure private investors, too much techno waffle to analysts who asked some pretty pointless questions (5 year output projection indeed!) and a not enough straight explanation from the management of what has been put in place to restore previous production output.

No clear explanation regarding the progress on getting through the lower transitional ore grades or if this is going to be an ongoing problem for the foreseeable future as suggested in the report.

No update Law 32 or the court case which if resolved would have a positive effect on the share price.

Whatever it was that impressed the analysts on their most recent visit to Sukari it certainly wasn't evident in the results released on the 25th Feb 2019.

Kind Regards

Centamin in Jersey and Egypt were sent full copies of this report as soon as it was released and as yet I ahve never received any reply or acknowledgement,

A revisit of a company which was the subject of the first valuation which I distributed publicly, at the time published on Seeking Alpha and which was rated by them as Top Idea.

Centamin is admirably compared to its peers by actually returning decent cash to its shareholders. There are other precious metal producers which declare dividends as well, but these are often followed by large share placements that exceed the dividends declared in previous years. Overall the precious metals industry is a bottomless pit for equity funding. Not Centamin. Even so, it has still not paid back the equity funding raised to fund the construction of its Sukari mine, nine years after production start up. Let this be a warning not to take the pay-back periods in feasibility study too seriously.

At the end of 2015 I flagged the company as past its prime. A number of very favourable factors were coming to an end within the following years and the share price did not seem to reflect that. It earned the report the title Get Out While the Going is Good.

Those who did follow my advice must have regretted it as the share price did actually excellently. It was a combination of a rising gold price and, I suspect, the market not recognising the serious impact of soon having to share half the net free cash with its Egyptian partner. In addition I am of the opinion that the company has kept its strip ratio unsustainably low to compensate for dropping open pit grades.

This review raises another possibility for the dropping grades, which is a resource model that is flawed in overestimating grade and/or assuming better mining selectivity than is actually possible. In particular 2018 has seen much lower grades and lower strip ratios than planned. It could mean that more waste is categorised as ore compared to original plan.

This valuation has explored two possible open pit reserve cases, both of which results is valuations well below the current Enterprise Value. Should the open pit grade problems prove structural, the over valuation is even more pronounced.

Hence the title: Get Out While the Going is Good - Again

It will be interesting to see with what Centamin comes back. Personally I am of the opinion that they arte stumped themselves. They consistently overestimate the grade in their forecasts and guidances. It points to an erroneous block model and/or inability to properly categorise ore and waste. That is why the grade is dropping so much. I have been kind in my analysis. I could also have used 0.55 g/t and 2.13 strip ratio compared to origibnally planned for 2018 in their 5-year plan. That would have meant cutting the reserve grade by half and the planned strip ratio by half. You can imagine what that would do to their profit margins for open pit mining.

Kees Dek

Quite So Rebess,
He really ought to be demonstrating his confidence and belief in the company!

Part 2
So as Cowichan suggests please put you questions to Centamin and keep copies including any replies you may receive.
http://www.centamin.com/investors/ir-contacts
Please copy in each
Investor Relations Alexandra Carse
Email: alexandra.carse@centamin.je
Financial Public Relations Advisor: Buchanan
Bobby Morse
Email: centamin@buchanan.uk.com

Perhaps we should set up a Twitter group and or a Centamin investor’s group email address which members could copy these emails to for future reference if need be?
This would enable us to present our case as on mass with far more impact should we wish as private investors group to approach the appropriate regulator on any matter or make contact the other large institutional inventors or funds to make our views known to them before any AGM’s
It is greet to see that that recently some new members have popped over from their usual forums, I do hope if they pop back or they visit other forums that they encourage others to also email Centamin and keep us informed if they get any answers to their questions.

Thank you Cowichan for suggesting this,
Some of on here who I also know off the board are already aware of the subject matter of some of the emails I have sent to Centamin over several years.
I made contact with the newly appointed Head of Investor Relations and made them aware of the inaccurate contact details on the company website and also that a number of retail investor had never received any acknowledgment or replies to their emails, I was assured that these short comings would be addressed.
The number of emails I have sent over several years covering the concerns and queries of my fellow investors both on and off this forum must run into hundreds and I have kept copies of most of them, including any replies
Centamin Jersey Office and its PR Company Buchanon have my contact details and are aware that I am a long term holder and a member of a group of retail investors each with quite considerable individual holding.
Several years back I found the service and customer care given to me as a retail investor by Buchanon to be generally informative and helpful.
However over the last two years or so the replies or answers to my questions are almost nonexistent, despite Andrew Pardey promising me on a conference call that this would be addressed in the near future.
Goldgnome is quite right in his opinion of the I.R. service given by Centamin to private investors, in fact after the past two years and after my recent experiences I think he is over generous in his appraisal of the service and the way we are regarded by the company.
It seems despite what Centamin claim to the contrary retail/private inventors are just taken for granted and in the main their questions and queries are ignored.
The conference call phone ins offer are stage managed towards the few analysts who call in but offer no easily understood information or reassurance to retail investors and from what happened to the share price after the last one they certainly don’t excite the market.
I appreciate that some will say that if we dissatisfied then we should just sell up and move on, that attitude may be acceptable for short term traders, but certainly not for long term investors who have remained firm their investment and support of Centamin throughout some very trying times.
Like most others I have been very grateful to LSE for facilitating us on this forum which has become one of the best if not the best place for information, help and support regarding investing in Centamin.
However it seems that whilst we do what we can to help one another within the constraints of this forum and vent our frustrations about the situation at Centamin we are easily ignored because off this forum we are just regarded as individual retail investors.
So as Cowichan suggests please put you questions to Centamin and keep copies including any replies you may receive.
http://www.centamin.com/investors/ir-contacts
Please copy in each
Investor Relations Alexandra Carse
Email: alexandra.

Whatever the analyst were shown obviously impressed them, but then the report released on the 25th Feb had quite the opposite effect and started the share price fall, I think this was made worse by Andrew Pardeys lack lustre boring phone in presentation which was in the main confusing, did not address investors concerns nor inspire any real confidence for the near future.