The board of AZX should be put on notice from shareholders in my view. The aggressive takeover defense they did made the market lose interest during the biggest gold move I have seen for years and they are losing ground daily relative to their peers. I know of no other share with nearly 3moz in real resources in australia trading at this market cap and the response from the management has been frankly, more about covering their jobs and egos and less about shareholder wealth.
A deal should have been done, and egos put aside. What we have right now is a board who are wedged on their own ego and their refusal to do the right thing and put the thing together. If a hostile takeover is not the right path, then find a way out of the quandry and get it done pronto as the market has lost patience with this. In a bear market the tolerance for ego vanishes and sooner or later we will see the institional shareholders of AZX put a gun to the boards head and tell them to get this done.
The obstacles of tax treatment, capital gains rollover relief, operatorship etc can all be dealt with and obviously its the right thing to do to put this together - so get on with it is my message.
After stating that they would not raise money at less than 73c and an exploration commitment for a big drilling campaign the AZX board either has to break their word and raise at a lower price or get the deal with GGG done.
In a bear market funds become scarce, and with the sort of exploration plans they have for Bullabulling they need to get moving on getting access to that capital.
I note that of the $7m in working capital a chunk of that is GGG shares, which they could sell or work out a deal with GGG to buy them, and the remaining cash is not enough to fund the next six months exploration program. So we have to see a resolution reasonably soon.
To compare AZX/GGG with say RRL before they went into production is sobering - similar sized resource in same belt, one with management the brokers cheerlead the whole time, the other with a corporate hassle and uncertain future. AZX need to fix this.
AZX Price at posting:
42.4¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held