Member Info for rcgl2

Yes they were all chummy chummy back in the day when Maxit was working with Solg to raise financing and Bob Sangha, Greg Chamandy of CGP and Warren Irwin were all subscribing the shares. Before they all fell out...

https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/full?dockey=1323-13000992-5USH95APF4OAM0HIIBKV3FTOSJ

s303 of the companies act 2006, as amended... if you really want to know, but they hold enough at c.7% which is why they are able to call the meeting.

Mate, Warren Irwin's twitter name is bigdude6669... I think that tells you all you need to know about his professionalism.

Not that he's trying to compensate for anything of course...

The guy clearly has a massive chip on his shoulder. Just look at the pictures of him that come up if you search his name. You can tell a mile off. Also his CV which is all over his websites is hardly that stellar... VP and Director at Deutsche Bank Canada. The wolf of wall streeet, he is not.

Fair play to him, I'm sure he's made more money than I can ever dream of making, but money doesn't stop you being a grade A tool.

Tiger - I'm not ****ging you off, your opinion is as valid as the next man's even if it isn't the same. But I am interested to know, as you think NM has done a poor job, what would you have preferred him to do differently?

My guess would be firstly, leave CGP alone and don't stir up the hornets nest. Let them dangle with their 15% of Alpala and a huge upcoming Capex liability, which they either meet and mine construction progresses, or they don't and they get taken out for $3.5m or whatever? I'm sure that's not a bad choice in lots of people's eyes?

But secondly, you don't think he should have excluded NCM and BHP from the last equity raise? Why not? How does allowing majors to increase their stakes even further at a fairly low SP help the rest of us? Would it ultimately lead to a higher final takeover price? To my mind making them work a bit harder for the prize is a good thing no? As I said in a previous post, why just roll over and offer yourself up to the majors? Why not play hard to get? Also giving them a bit of a kick in the backside isn't necessarily a bad thing if it moves their mentality (and egos) from calm and patient to annoyed and angry. No one makes their best decisions when they are angry and emotionally driven, which in their case would mean ultimately paying over the odds for SOLG to prove a point.

Thirdly you don't think he should have arranged the FNV deal? Again, isn't this a good warning shot to the majors? Demonstrating that SOLG isn't solely reliant on them coming in with another large equity financing (and diluting us PIs) in order to move Alpala forwards to construction? Doesn't it also make the majors realise that they can't just dictate this all their own way, and if they want to do that then they need to pay up and take control. Having a large part of the funding locked in when combined with a good positive PFS will surely just increase the value of the asset won't it? It's like getting planning permission for your plot of land, it increases the value to a potential purchaser...

Interested to hear how you would prefer he had handled it all.

L2analyst - if they are trying to hold back the tide then they are a **** and destined to fail.

Morning all, firstly thank you to everyone who posts reasoned and informative views on here. Lesson for me on this one is don't jump in too hastily. Here's my thoughts.

Generally don't invest in many individual stocks, but as I already have plenty of UK exposure through index and active funds, thought this could be a little high risk/high reward play on our recovery/recovery attempts, to add a little extra juice to my portfolio. Watched the share price flatline around 82-84p for a couple of months and predicted that the Govt response to the crisis would be to spend big on infrastructure (correctly, as it turns out). Also was encouraged by the turnaround efforts, new management, potential KL sale etc. And naively thought that after the Carillion collapse caused so much negative publicity for the govt, that they would never in a million years let Kier go under. Even more so in the teeth of an unprecedented crisis, with Kier a major player on the flagship HS2 and with Boris's desire to rid ourselves of state-aid rules and be allowed to support national champions. Also thought that with the last RI being such an unmitigated disaster and already tanking the SP down to these levels, there was a pretty good margin of safety here...

Literally the day I decided to dip in and invest the SP took off into the 90s. Major lesson here - don't snatch at your investments based on short term price moves... Invested my first tranche and was pleased to see the SP hit 100p. At that point my FOMO took over and I piled in my second tranche on the first pullback down into the mid 80s. So basically I managed to average 90p entry point on a stock that traded at 82 for about 10 weeks, nipped up to 100 for a day and then slid back down to the current 68p. Should have been more patient!!

Due to my employer's compliance policies I have a minimum 30 day holding period so couldn't even consider quickly cutting my loses, so now I'm here at 69p I may as well hang on and hope. Annoyed that this has gone from "high risk but quietly confident", to "deep underwater and just hope and pray". The trading update with increased debt and talk of another RI literally couldn't have come at a worse time, especially hot on the heels of the Govt's big infrastructure announcement.

Another key point I should have borne in mind... Govt won't want a repeat of the Carillion episode, but that doesn't mean that Kier won't get bailed out and remain fully functional, at the expense of a total wipeout of the equity. As far as Joe Public is concerned, if the company still exists and they keep seeing Kier digging up their local high street, all is well. They don't know or care about equity holders. And govt only needs to save face with the general public.

Thanks iceberg

Iceberg that's interesting information. Who in BlackRock did you contact, investor relations team or do you have a personal contact? Surprised they gave such a firm answer rather than just a bland "can't comment on individual investments" type fob off...

Any bankrupt company that the Robinhood crowd get wind of, any random stock that Davey Day Trader mentions, any biotech or pharma stock that announces that they gave their covid vaccine to a rat and it didn't die on the spot, and virtually all the gold miners and explorers in the world seem to be exploding on the slightest news...

And here is SOLG, sitting on literally mountains of gold, silver and copper, banging up against 23p all day long while PMs are going bananas. It's not near, around or just above 23, its getting slammed at 23 isn't it?

If it's someone trying to sell their own large stake at 23p then that would be insane, their own sell order is literally keeping the price lower than it should be... so must be MMs or someone else deliberately trying to sit on it? How can it not be.

But NM owns approx 90 million shares doesn't he, and that's just his own direct holdings. Share price at 50p or share price at £1 is difference of £45m for his stake. I don't see why he wouldn't be incentivised to do everything possible to maximise the share price. He's not like Philip Green, just dividending a fortune out of the company to himself and his wife then leaving it as a worthless insolvent shell. Every penny on the SOLG SP is worth about £900,000 to him no?

What do you make of the June and July corporate presentations? They don't just mention the Franco Nevada funding, subject to DD/site visit. They dedicate two whole slides to FNV and its expertise, track record etc. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but seems like they 100% expected the FNV deal to have been signed very quickly given how much emphasis they laid on in the presentations. Would be weird if there was a September update where they had just quietly removed all mention of FNV.

It's not a potential trap though is it... because virtually all the people contributing on here are investors, not traders. We bought at levels we thought would yield good long term returns once one of two things happens, namely a takeover offer arrives at a substantial premium to the current price, or SOLG doesn't get taken over and actually starts building a mine at Alpala and keeps progressing the other promising prospects it has up its sleeve. Some people here have been holding for years, and many are already well in profit if they invested when it was in single digits.

Your charts are telling you it's going to rain heavily next week. So what? I bought a raincoat last year for a reasonable price, and I'm not going on holiday til 15 October. What the weather does this week or next isn't much of an issue for me.

If the material information is non-public and has been withheld from Cornerstone shareholders, then how would Cornerstone even know that Solg had such information in the first place?

And as Quadi said, surely it would be irresponsible and possibly market abuse to release bits of information piecemeal before all the results have been obtained, checked, verified and the PFS fully completed and signed off? What if they decided to release some amazing information which sent the share price rocketing up, only for that information to be massively watered down in the final PFS after everything had been checked and confirmed.

Good point Miagi... Do you think the other majors will want to get involved in a bidding war against two other majors who are already invested and therefore have a lot of incentive to keep bidding up to secure the prize? Will Barrick etc realistically think they can win the fight against BHP? I hope they do of course, because a 3 or 4 way bidding war between majors is exactly what we want to see to get the final price up into the £1+ range isn't it.

Hi Quady, I totally agree this may never actually come to a vote, there is lots more to happen between now and any potential EGM if it ever gets called. However, I just felt that the things Phat mentioned (people from SOLG said they need PI support to fend off the attack, they will need everyone's support) suggests that the SOLG management themselves are not so sure that this would be a slam dunk for them if it actually came to a vote.

CGP only own about 7% of the shares... if they are already thinking that victory in a vote would come down to PI support, then doesn't that suggest they must think several of the other major shareholders would vote against the current board?

And I agree we don't know that NCM would support it, but the general feeling here is that their MO is to try to squeeze potential acquisitions very hard to get them for well under value, they have already very publicly criticised NM and the management over their recent funding and they desperately wanted the next stage funded by more equity (i.e. more equity bought by them)... That to me suggests they would be more than happy to see the back of NM.

For those of us who think that NM is doing a decent job, who want the current board to stay and who are not impressed by CGP's rather desperate and bitter attempt to upset the apple cart at what is possibly the most decisive 6 months in the SOLG story... the fact they feel they need to rely on PI support to fend off the attack doesn't sound great does it?

As already pointed out, many PIs don't even vote their shares and I'm not convinced the majority are as thoughtful or considered as the people who post on this board. I would have hoped that the current board would already know they had enough support to win this vote from major shareholders, i.e. combined NM and associates, BHP (due to agreement terms), some of the other asset managers. Does the fact they are reliant on PI support suggest quite a few institutional holders apart from CGP and NCM will also vote to remove them?

Realistically what will happen if the board are ousted? Who will appoint a new board? Presumably the major shareholders so it will be largely packed with directors who are patsies for the majors? And a new CEO and management team that will be compliant to the wishes of BHP and NCM. Isn't the only outcome if that happens that the new manangement will do everything in their power to serve SOLG up to the majors on a silver platter with a bow on it? BHP and NCM combine forces to buy out SOLG for 30p a share and run it as a massive JV between the two of them... the new BoD having recommended the sale after they concluded that it was the best way to get Alpala built and producing asap (after pulling the plug on FN funding)? Or am I missing something?

Hi Earthling, yes I agree, the big boys always get the best deal but that is unfortunately the world we now live in. Ideally, a small explorer with an incredible asset could raise the necessary finance to develop it and take it to production, develop their other assets and eventually become a major producer in their own right. Even the majors were startups once! And PIs like us would have the opportunity to buy into such a small company and ride it all the way until one day it was trading at £10 a share. But we don't live in that world. The reality is that he major global players in most industries now have such entrenched size and scale that they just buy up any smaller rivals. The humble PIs will never see SOLG get to £10 a share, but if we are going to get bought out at some price based on the current share price, then every penny counts doesn't it. I'd rather get swallowed up for 45p than 40p if that's what's going to happen. And I'd much rather it was 80p than 40p. If NM has at least tried to mount enough defences to push the takeover price up by a few pennies then great. I don't see that letting the majors just build their stakes up a bit at 21p would have done that. We all know this will probably get taken out soon, but if someone wants it lets work them for every last penny.

Yes but the CEO has a duty to act in the best interests of the company and all of its shareholders, not just a few large shareholders who want to buy the company for the lowest price possible. NM has stated many times (and again in the interview) that SOLG is valued at less than the value of Alpala alone, excluding all the other great prospects. BHP bought in at about 40p previously, and clearly are interested in buying SOLG outright. Why should the CEO just allow them to increase their stake even more at around 20p? He would basically be rolling over and letting them line themselves up to get full control of SOLG at an average price way below what he honestly thinks the company and its assets are worth.

I don't think BHP would have expected NM to act in any other way than to try to achieve the highest price possible for an eventual takeover, that's what any seller of any asset would do. Buying 13% of the company doesn't give any major the automatic right to have a crack at the rest of it on the cheap.

Hi All - as this is my first ever post on these boards I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who regularly posts a lot of very valuable insight and analysis here. Obviously some major debates about how to achieve full value on this one and it's very useful to hear arguments on both sides of each contentious issue.

Regarding the UK thresholds for shareholders requesting an EGM, the relevant law is s303 of the Companies Act 2006 and the threshold is now 5%, reduced a few years ago from 10% I think.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/303#commentary-c20622871