Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Re 09:55, the discussion originally was about transparency & disclosure, and to what extent the requirements for UK AIM companies are the same or different for private unlisted st vincent companies. —- for sure, i can appreciate that there may be advantages for certain parties sometimes in being able to organise and conduct a business more privately/secretly, but that’s a rather different point from asserting that the transparency/disclosure issues are very similar.
… and of course, in terms of transparency, regulation, oversight and disclosures, there’s the small matter that UK AIM listed companies have to publish regular audited accounts, which would show things like director renumeration, how much is being spent on workforce, plant /premises, etc, & would verify amounts of cash sitting in different bank accounts etc, receivables, & whether the company was actually doing deals / had revenue steams etc, that made it viably trading as a going concern or not.
private unlisted st vincent registered companies don’t need to do that. (i think it’s been a long time since anyone’s seen published audited accounts from cloudtag.)
… meanwhile, on a slightly different note, but still thinking about differences between disclosure and regulatory requirements for UK AIM listed companies, vs private unlisted overseas (st vincent?) companies…
… i think it’s fairly safe to say that if a UK listed AIM company had put out an RNS stating that it had $50 million tucked away in escrow in a particular branch of CIBC — but then found for some reason that it needed to revise or correct that — then the AIM company would need to issue an explicitly corrected revised RNS, or a new RNS explaining the change in circumstances, rather than simply edit the text of the initial RNS without drawing the market’s attention to the change and without explaining why the change was needed.
For sure there’s a section on cloudtag’s website, under the ‘securities information’ heading, which lists “significant shareholders”.
…but that seems to be an update as at 08/09/20 when there were supposedly only about 942.5 million share in issue…
… that’s about three and a half years ago… ? it seems possible there may have been some changes since? (bearing in mind, for instance, that the ‘commercial update’ of 7/9/23 announced that shares in issue had increased to 999.9 million shares.)
if this was a UK listed AIM company, there would also be published information about the dates, precise quantities and actual prices paid by/for BoD share trades (& BoD share awards, warrants, etc). i don’t see that kind of info about amit’s trade /share award history on the cloudtag site, so presumably st vincent does not require such.
(happy of course to be corrected if i am overlooking such detailed & recent info on the cloudtag website.)
There are some important differences, whispering.
(including, for instance, what and when AIM-listed UK companies vs private listed st vincent companies need to disclose to their shareholders and the wider market about company financials and significant shareholdings, including BoD share purchases and share sales.)
Re 13:07, issue is not whether or not whispering thinks such changes ‘should’ or shouldn’t be notified for transparency.
it’s whether or not such notifications/disclosures are or aren’t **legally required by the st vincent jurisdiction** (if that is still where cloudtag is registered) for this unlisted, private, overseas company.
(happy to read any relevant specific requirements anyone can cite from st vincent regulatory bodies.)
my own understanding is that the reporting & disclosure requirements for that kind of company are very different from those mandated for a public company still trading on UK’s AIM market.
Re 09:19, it has been quite a while since an updated figure was given on cloudtag’s website for amit’s personal holding - so it would be interesting to know what the company believes the current figure to be.
so far as i am aware, there would be nothing to stop the company from purchasing shares from one shareholder, if it wished, and then selling those shares on to another investor (i.e. without having to issue new shares).
also, although the company has previously announced it would not register share transactions between third parties, so far as i am aware there would be nothing to prevent the company from changing or suspending that policy, and so far as i am aware there be no obligation to report any such change to shareholders.
Whispering 16:01: “Certainly no-one’s offering, other than suggestions of a potential mental health issue.”
whispering claims to have been following this chat board for 7-8 years, but professes not to have read other possible explanations for amit’s motivation to keep putting out such upbeat updates [… begging the question of whether such optimism is well founded or not … ], in the continuing absence of actual payouts.
that seems disingenuous at best, since whispering must surely have seen plenty of previous postings on this board, from various folks, speculating that those “progressive” updates may have assisted amit to sell yet more shares to pis. i wonder why he pretends otherwise.
re whispering’s 18:40, even if the ‘book’ is indeed closed, and cloudtag is being scrupulously careful not to sell new shares over and above that supposed issue ceiling, whispering seems to be ignoring the possibility that amit might still make plenty of money from selling shares to pis from his own existing stake, even if no new shares get printed by the company itself.
“ suggest war in 2022 had a major influence …”
? - in what way exactly ? - i don’t think bombs have been falling up there, yet ? - do you think that the war in ukraine somehow rendered the mine in russia unprofitable? - or do you think they couldn’t retain mining staff as they were all needed for the meat grinder? - or do you think sanctions prevent them from doing any mining at WK? - or is the metal ore just hiding deeper in the ground now because it’s scared now there’s a war on?
“ … potential buyers may have had some input…”
? are you are imagining that a potential buyer asked EUA to close down a [supposedly] profitable mine owned by EUA at the end of 2022, just while the potential buyer had a good long think for a couple of years (or more) whether or not to bid, but without actually making a bid or giving EUA financial compensation for two years of lost mining activity??
…. i very much doubt glencore or rio would ever agree to close down a profitable mine they owned for a couple of years + at the request of some third party who just wanted to spend a couple of years um-ing and ah-ing while they kick the tyres a bit.
Lenoman 15:00”. “It is beyond my comprehension…”
yes, perhaps so.
? take it in simple small steps, that might help? - pace Aubery 14:23: “WK … with no production expected on site in 2024, as has been the case for all of 2023.”
— so if EUA own a mine at WK that is fully operable and is indeed genuinely profitable to mine, then why did they stop mining it after 2022?
Pwlx, you think it’s “silly” to try to take into account the costs of processing, storing, marketing and distributing, when trying to consider mining economics and the profitability, or otherwise, of any given mine?? - wow.
if a mine is uneconomic, then mining it faster with ‘bigger diggers’ just loses money faster.
Pru does seem to be taking its shareholders rather too much for granted. per 06:26, it would be nice if AIA would gee them up a bit.
Pwlx, re your 10:52 …
a “big digger” presumably can indeed dig up more volume … but they are not digging up pure metal chunks, they are digging up [dirt & rock] which needs to be processed to extract metal content - & that costs money.
if the overall cost of digging up the [dirt & rock], processing it into saleable metal products, storage, distribution etc. in total costs more than EUA can ultimately sell the end product for, then digging up even more [dirt+rock] will just *increase* the size of the loss they make; they will simply end up with a really, really big waste pile (& an bigger hole to remediate), & run out of cash sooner.
(hint, there’s a reason EUA stopped mining —> it loses them money when they mine).
if the grades being dug up from a mine are just too poor to break even, then digging up more dirt with a bigger digger or even an absolutely humongously huge digger wouldn’t change that.
& it remains to be seen how much those [supposedly] one-off costs have actually made a significant & positive difference to EUA’s mining economics. …. those developments fit with EUA as a story stock, but the real numbers are MIA.
? do you actually have any public domain, independently verifiable figures to show how much the annual extraction rate has been increased, and similarly evidenced figures to show what the economics of production & sale are now? - or are you just whistling in the wind, by any chance?
Strange that the secret agent didn’t spot all those ‘anomalies’ in the 5 weeks or so that they were gearing up to pay out all that cash in nov/dec.
it was only in the very final week of that ‘licence deal’ pay-out process that another update was issued, excusing further delays by reference to the complexities of multiple investment platforms and supposed request from some shareholders to have a choice between £ vs $ payouts … but there was no mention at all of significant delays arising because the shareholding register was fubar…
? so had amit and the secret agent really gone through 5 weeks of supposedly almost completing the licence payout, without noticing any of those supposed serious problems with paper certificate registration even by the very end of that period, at xmas 2023??
… makes one wonder what on earth the secret agent was actually doing all that time.