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"It is going to dawn on them There’s a metal shortage shortly after it dawns on them they need to slash interest rates and you will see a feeding frenzy for assets

I think Jiangxi are smart enough to move before this"

Given the luxury of time (which we don't have) I guess it would be better to sell Cascabel into the feeding frenzy for assets, rather than to the canny early bird who wants to secure the asset before the frenzy kicks off.

Isn't this the constant problem for Solg management in that they have always wanted to sell, and we have always known that selling it was the number one aim. But it's a lot easier to get a high price for it in a hot frenzied market than it is trying to get a decent price from any party in a depressed commodity M&A market where there is not much competition.

And since they properly defined Alpala/Cascabel, this resource M&A frenzy keeps failing to materialize, which means they keep needing to try to hold out a bit longer and a bit longer for it. But holding out longer means they have to keep developing the asset (for quite a while under the pretense/delusion that they were going to construct it), which means more and more fundraises, which means more dilution, which leads to alternatives like royalty deals, which makes the asset less attractive to acquirors and irritates the current major shareholders, who then cause trouble etc etc...

I guess spinning it out waiting for the hot market is a double edged sword in that you hope to sell into a much better market, but you slowly paint yourself into a corner and risk delivering yourself on a plate to the majors at a bargain price and wiping out most of the other shareholders. I think the CGP team, Sangha and co realised Solg had been playing this game long enough and were in danger of hashing the whole thing up, and managed to convince Mather that enough was enough. To paraphrase Warren Irwin, let's try to get our decent chunk of dough out now so we can go and put it to work in lots of other attractive looking assets (before the next resource frenzy really kicks off).

BTW this is just a bit of a thinking out loud ramble. I'm still hoping they can pull off a blinder and extract a decent price from Jiangxi or whoever and the early bird discount won't be to steep.

The CGP shares have already been issued. They are outstanding and just being held by the Canadian subsidiary. So they aren't covered by the resolutions I don't think. Can be sold at any time. They also aren't technically treasury shares according to the Companies Act definition as they weren't bought back out of profits.

Patel family own the bidder for Shanta and are significant shareholders in Shanta. Ketan Patel is board director of both. You can see why the bid is where it is...

Hi Italian. So are you saying Solg could have sold itself for 40-50p a share back in 2017, according to what Mather told you? Sorry haven't had a chance to read all the messages today.

In hindsight that would have been good compared to where we find ourselves today... And there are now probably double the number of shares in issue at least.

I feel that the SP really does need to start moving north and soon... Back when it was 20-30p I think most of us would have felt disappointed with a takeover at 50-60p. Now that would represent a 7x return on the current SP it feels somewhat unrealistic to expect even if there were competing bids.

Sangha was not a board director of Solg so the article is inaccurate in that respect.

Agree Add, it's interesting that Mather was/is one of the leading proponents of selling Cascabel when he spent the preceding 5 years claiming Solg were going to develop it themselves and defend against takeovers. And it seems like DC was hired on the basis he was planning to build it and Mather would have been involved in that hiring process.

The article also pins DC's sacking entirely on the process around the Osisko NSR. It doesn't mention that the Osisko deal was preceded by a debacle over the failed cash box fund raise, which according to bits and pieces I've heard was something DC was pushing for and led to Ingo and Ayten's departures.

Also just for the record although I know people like to ignore this fact due to their bogeyman narrative, but BlackRock did not align themselves with BHP and NCM when Mather was forced out. Their voting history is available on the SEC website, in 2020 and 2021 they voted in favour of all resolutions apart from re-electing Brian Moller. They even voted in favour of Mather's reelection when he barely survived. Yet more lazy journalism just assuming they are lumped in with the majors and against the board at all times.

Talatum, me neither until Add mentioned it this morning.

I just think on a point of principle and in terms of good corporate governance it's not great for a UK registered company with it's main listing in London and secondary listing in Canada to hold its AGM in Australia with no remote access option. It's frustrating the vast majority of shareholders' right to attend the AGM.

If I read that right Condor announced they had instructed advisors to find a buyer for the project in Nov 2022. It's open pit and they have a BFS completed on it, fully permitted and drill ready. They have 5 non binding offers, and lots of site visits etc completed, but they still don't have a binding offer, 13 months later.

Doesn't that illustrate that Solg attempting to sell Cascabel which is only at PFS stage subject to revision, not fully permitted and is absolutely massive is a process that was never likely to be completed in 6 months. People calling for Bob Sangha's head, claiming he hasn't delivered etc should think about just how long selling these sorts of assets can take in this market.

This isn't a junior mining bull market frenzy where bids are being thrown around like confetti. DD takes time.

When Solg was exploring and regularly releasing drill results whilst claiming they would defend against a takeover, many voices on here were claiming a takeover was nailed on and Solg wouldn't exist by Christmas (every year).

Now the company has wound down exploration spending while it tries to sell itself or monetise Cascabel and there are calls on here shouting to get back to exploring!

I just don't understand it... This schizophrenic strategy of flipping back and forth between trying/hoping to sell and drilling/defending against selling cannot keep going on. It achieves nothing but constant dilution and the ever present risk of a funding failure and the wheels coming off the whole thing. Solg has too much on its plate to develop Cascabel and try to explore the rest of the licences. It needs to do one thing and do it properly, then do the next (if there is anything left in Solg after the first major monetisation event).

Wild speculation/fantasy: one of the parties in the data room wants to acquire more shares in the market or perhaps some of the CGP shares from Solg. They have seen the additional Porvenir results and are of the opinion that they are MNPI. They are concerned about committing an offence under MAR if they buy whilst in possession of that information, so requested Solg to publicly release it to alleviate their concern. Perhaps Solg hadn't released it to date as they didn't judge it to be material, but that's a subjective judgement for each party to make.

In the absence of any clear narrative from the company I guess we may as well invent our own to keep us amused!

Not really sure what the takeaway of this RNS is meant to be. They've done a little more drilling since the MRE1 and they plan to do some more... and they needed to release this update because they have the extra assay results and don't want to sit on them? Why now? I'm probably missing something here.

Fort I find your logic very confusing sometimes. Mather, Caldwell, Maxit, the former CGP shareholders are all holding tens or hundreds millions of shares each. They are extremely incentivized to get the shareprice much higher than it is today, most likely by selling the company or Cascabel. You seem to think that their master plan is in fact the opposite, to keep trashing the share price ever lower so they can "issue shares to their buddies at low prices". Or grant themselves "free shares" (in fact they are usually options, which will never vest in the money if the SP keeps going down, which would render the whole exercise pointless, but you seem to ignore that as it doesn't suit your narrative).

How would issuing shares to their buddies at ever lower prices be in anyone's interest? The price will keep going down, they are diluting themselves and the rest of us on existing holdings so the final exit price will also be ever lower, and quite frankly it's just a bizarre idea that anyone holding millions of shares in a company want the price to keep going down.

Even if it were their actual intention to keep letting their mates load up at bargain prices, the only way that achieves a favourable outcome for those mates is if the company gets taken out or otherwise gets the SP up to a much higher price than it is now... and trashing the SP today to issue millions more shares is just diminishing the chances of that ever happening.

And finally, if the directors who are all aligned with us or are acting on behalf of the shareholders who want to see a high takeout price are voted off, who is going to replace them? There are other major shareholders who are diametrically opposed to our interests in the form of BHP, Newmont and Jiangxi, and they will surely jump at the chance to stick their own directors on the board and then what will the strategy be? It will be massive dilution and a creeping takeunder by the majors. BHP literally already said this. In response to the FNV NSR deal they said they wanted to see the project developed by equity finance, which means massive equity issuance funded by themselves so they take more and more of the company until they have majority control. It doesn't matter whether pre-emption rights apply or not, none of the other major or minor shareholders have the financial means and/or appetite to keep putting more and more millions in to maintain their holdings. BHP, Newmont and Jiangxi do. Solg will then end up developing Cascabel, as a mere wrapper for a BHP/Jiangxi joint venture and we will all be squeezed out for single pennies at best.

Bozi 09.46 - spot on.

Most of these articles are written by junior hacks who just seem to do a bit of cursory online research, grab a couple of quotes and stick it all into their piece. I guarantee every one of us who follows Solg and this forum will know way more about Solg than the authors of the majority of these sorts of articles.

If you want my two p it's just referring to Solgold, but is poorly phrased. Clearly Solg is investing into the Cascabel project as they have mandatory spending (investment) commitments they have to meet as part of the development phase. And Solg inked the preliminary agreement earlier this year. The "also" I take to mean in addition to whatever agreements have been signed re Warintza and the preliminary agreement reached in July 2023 re Mirador which is specifically mentioned above.

If Jiangxi had signed an agreement with Ecuador to fund Cascabel I really don't think this obscure 7 paragraph article is how investors would be finding out for the first time...

Good post Bozi.

The 157m Cornerstone shares are already issued. So placing them to a third party won't dilute anyone will it, shares outstanding will remain the same.

Hi Eloro, yes I thought it must be that but then the item above is "Acquisition of property, plant and equipment" on which they only spent $120k. So I'm assuming land acquisition for pipeline etc would be included in that. Hence I'm confused what the $6m exploration and evaluation assets spend is on.

Hi fort, cash outflows approx $9.5m, of which approx $3.2m from operating activities and approx $6m on "Acquisition and addition of exploration and evaluation assets". Which on the one hand sounds like 2/3 of the quarterly cash spend was one off costs rather than general burn... But on the other, what are these exploration and evaluation assets?

ESG isn't just about environmental issues... Solg could have done with a bit more focus on the G (governance) considering they were defrauded out of several million dollars and managed to lose a CFO after one month, amongst other things...

Add, really interesting thanks for sharing.

Darren, good post, some clear thinking there. Hope it's good for better than 30p but who knows...

Slug, "Why? What were they thinking?" I'm guessing because they were thinking that BHP or NCM were the most likely buyers and they still needed to raise money from institutional Investors, and whether we like it or not ESG is now extremely important to western companies and investors. You pretty much have to tick all those boxes or you won't pass their screening.... Now they think that Chinese companies are the most likely buyers and I assume they don't care so much about ESG, therefore Solg has much less need for local employees. Also they aren't drilling anywhere, so they don't need all the local geo workers to deal with all the cores, samples etc.