Member Info for SharketMare

I didn't submit this question in advance, but given I think this will be an exercise in smoke and mirrors and deliver very little of substance, I'd be keen to ask: are we unlikely to see the outcome of the strategic review announced before you've finished negotiating the two agreements with the Ecuadorian govt (IPA and exploitation)?

That should tell us whether the strategic review was legitimate (and would be able to be announced w/o the above agreements), or, as others have suggested on here, it was a smokescreen to find a buyer for SOLG / Cascabel.

Needalife, why do you hate Mather so much? And why do you continue to hold an investment in a company where he holds considerable influence if you think he's so useless?

The SP is back where it was when the company came out and all but confirmed a placing is on the way. We had a nice bounce off the back off the Rio news, but the market is not in a good place for explorers and as such the placing is not going to be pretty. Going to be interesting seeing how SD justifies it at the next town hall.

My two cents:

- Parties in the data room like what they see - who wouldn't. It's a massive deposit with a great mix of metals

- However, the current plan requires a not inconsiderable outlay upfront

- On top of this, the political situation in Ecuador is shaky

- And SOLG is renegotiating the IPA with the current gov't which will include a write down on the exploration capital to be spent at Cascabel before end '23 (there is no way we are going to hit the agreed figure, when I last tried to calculate the outstanding amount was approx. USD$145m)

- SOLG is also negotiating the exploitation agreement so that construction can start

- SOLG needs to find a site for tailings (thank you for this insight Shippy)

I imagine that the feedback from the interested parties was something along these lines (some of which has been all but confirmed by Shippy and DG1's conversations with Scott):

1) produce a plan that reduces the upfront capital before payback

2) find a site for the tailings

3) get the two agreements with the Ecuadorian gov't over the line

At which point - political situation permitting - SOLG becomes very, very buyable. The above will take a few more months.

OR Scott is attempting to do what his predecessors Mather and Cazzubbo failed to and flush out a bid from one of the majors able to take this on as-is. galapagos' post yesterday mentioned that producing a plan with lower capex and earlier payback opens up Alpala to smaller players - is that something that majors are willing to risk?

" I mentioned the link between low SP’s, AIM Shares and how juniors can disappear more often than make successes on AIM, but you chose to ignore that or didn’t understand it."

I think those reading the full thread will be clear on who understands what here. Enjoy your evening.

I believe they call that playing the man not the ball Fort. Why do you care whether I'm invested or not? This BB is for discussion of the company which by and large I stick to. I've been transparent about my position and the reasons why. I hope to buy back in later this year.

Ace - a fair point on the use of language. I've said my piece here.

I'll be attending the next townhall with SD, which I imagine might be a little feistier than usual.

Atb.

I guess my first thought reading Shippy's first post was: if Scott is pivoting to a Plan B of sorts, can we infer that the parties who have been privy to the data room to date have said that they're not willing to put forward an offer that SOLG's major shareholders would consider? I imagine the truth to be a combination of this combined with the political situation.

I also share DM's concerns - in what form will this new plan be delivered to the market? Will we see PFS 3?

Good post galapagos, too.

FWIW I think we will see a fundraise alongside consolidation here prior to listing on the ASX. This will:

1. Allow IIs to build a decent position either through participating in the fundraise or buying stock in the open market at a higher SP (and not causing as much of a price spike)

2. Help SD achieve his goal of rebalancing the share register in favour of IIs

If the SP is lower (post consolidation, for argument's sake we opt for 10 to 1 and the SP is 65p, assuming a raise at 6.5p), it benefits IIs as it means the entry point is more attractive (than say 80p), and it benefits SD as IIs might be inclined to purchase more of the stock than they might have done at say 8/80p, leading to a greater re-weighting of the register - more shares in sticky II hands. This is the point that Trading4Good was making!

Redirons, if you can present to me a reason as to why IIs don't invest in companies "where the SP might be low" I'm all ears. You seem to believe that a low SP = greater risk (based upon your repeated references to DD committees), which is unsubstantiated. I wonder whether you understand the relationship between share price, shares in issue and market cap, and do not for a second believe that you sat on the board for a FS company for 45 years, I'm sorry.

There is an argument to be made about IIs not wanting to take positions in companies that have a large number of shares in issue, as ours currently does, because it becomes difficult to do so without causing spikes in the share price at the volume. But that isn't the point you are making.

As for me being rude an obnoxious - all I've done is call you out for trying to hound another poster away from this BB after they posted something useful and informative. You seem to spend the majority of your time on here accusing people of being "mischievous" or insincere when they post something that doesn't chime with your own narrative. It's bully like behaviour and not on!

You clearly have no idea how these institutions work.

Let's say Mr Analyst at an imaginary hedge fund researches GGP when the share price is ~8p. They present the bull case and tell their superiors that the share is undervalued / has good long term prospects. Does their investment case become stronger or weaker when the share price falls to 6.5p? Does the risk profile of the share and the investment change in a negative way simply because the price has fallen 1.5p?

We know that there are Aussie funds interested in investing in GGP. We knew that when the SP was as much as 50% higher than it is today. Are you really trying to tell me that these funds are now LESS likely to invest in the company because of some aversion to what you call a "tiny one" (in ref to the share price) or because the price isn't more "robust". Give me a break.

Redirons, over two posts you manage to claim that IIs don't like to invest in "minnows" but that the ASX listing will help catalyse a recovery in the share price. Who do you think will be buying over in Aus?

IIs invest in companies where they think they can make them money over the long term. Of course they are going to prefer a lower entry price because they will make more profit.

And Shaun Day is going to prefer a share register that has a higher % of IIs vs retail than we currently have because IIs invest for the long term and can be called on for more cash when it is needed.

I'm all ears for the case that supports an 80p share price, a 10 bagger from here. How do you envisage that playing out?

As for your last paragraph, christ, how rude and obnoxious do you have to be in response to what was a pretty rational post!

Needalife - DG1 has been posting on these boards for many years. He is active on other platforms under his real name and as such is highly credible. Unlike some, he doesn't feel the need to hide behind a veil of anonymity and spend their retirement trolling a BB of "sad sad desperate people". Makes you wonder who really is the sad act on here?

DM, I would recommend reading the "My chat with Scott today" thread where DG1 kindly shared insights from a call he had with Caldwell. The strategic review is "open ended" but open to change - there is no end date. Discussions with interested parties in the data room have slowed down due to political unrest.

You'll have to go right back to the start for the useful info as the thread was hijacked by the resident trolls.

Fort, I stand by SOLG not publishing anything material until late Q3/early Q4, and I'm sure you'll be one of the first to pull me up on that should we hear anything that causes a substantial re-rate sooner. I'm not quite in the same camp as orthern in terms of outlook on the company as a whole - I'm still giving management a bit more slack as they've been setback by things outside of their control. Though the absence of a real plan B is a concern.

The reality is, SOLG doing very, very little to drive shareholder value at the moment, and that's why over the short term I'm looking at options elsewhere.

Bozi, the situation hasn't been helped by a total lack of actual news to discuss from the company. Very little has been done or will be done in the short term here to drive value, at least until the company finally decides which of its exploration targets it wishes to drill. Until then it's a case of waiting for the permitting (deadline we were given was by end of this year), hoping that the politics calms down, and that at long last the hand of a major is forced.

I imagine the LSE mods/admins are too busy trying to fix this increasingly cr*p website to ban people like Ray and Needalife.

Rcgl2, nice to see your name back on here amongst the detritus. I find it baffling that the posters you mention haven't yet been banned from the boards altogether.

Penny for your thoughts on the current state of play with SOLG?

Add, this is total speculation, but I think mgmt thought - based upon discussions with various parties - that they'd be able to put an offer for Cascabel/the company to shareholders in the first half of this year. This would conclude the 'strategic review' and allow the board to update on how whatever remained of SOLG would be financed (let's say Cascabel was sold, other tenements spun off into NewCo, £XX returned to shareholders as a special divi and £XX used to fund exploration for NewCo). Political issues and maybe the global macro picture have meant the interested parties have not put anything on the table, which has meant we've had to pivot (i.e. we're looking at ways of mining as Cascabel that with lower capex) while things calm down. Gives us time to sort permitting which no doubt any prospective buyer will be happy for us to do rather than themselves from scratch.

I'm not sure why Copperpot said October - think he knows someone connected to the company - but I don't disagree with the ballpark timelines.

Hi Fort, me too - net-net I have made money from SOLG over the years. Maybe 2-3k max. I'd be miffed to miss "the big one". I bought more ALL, looking to trade the DFS news due this month.

Add, fully agree with your last point. I think the company has found itself between a rock and a hard place following the political unrest.

At the moment it seems like the Plan B is to conserve cash, negotiate the requisite agreements with the government, and rework existing data at Cascabel to help market it to prospective buyers.

Plan A was laid out by Bob Sangha in the AFR, who may well have overplayed his hand with the whole "fast and smart" messaging.

I can see why people want a webinar/call with the company, and it really is quite poor that the most insightful piece of comms we get from the company is provided second hand by a retail investor kind enough to onward share. But I don't really see what more they can say at this point. I don't expect much to happen until late Q3/early Q4.