Wonder what happened to RabbitTrap? He was there and he used to give some good reports on the AGMs.I will have a go.
Overall it is not an uplifting meeting. The Chairman and MD did not even make a presentation.
After a brief hello from the Chairman, Colin made a short presentation on the state of play. Nothing new, you can read all that in previous announcements. The ZIRP conversion is a 4-stage process, we are struggling to complete Stage 1. Without a financial partner, there is no way APG can attempt stages 2-4. Stage 1 has patent pending and expected to be granted in 3-6 months.
Questions were raised about why APG had not been able to finalise any deal in the past 20 or so years. Colin said he cannot comment on history as he was not there. Funny Terry and MT did not chip in and it is quite clear that they have no excuse. The same old stories that BHP changed their mineral sands strategy and Kronos in financial trouble etc. Also the usual explanation that large companies have lots of red tape and we just can't cut through them.
Mike Smith made a short presentation about the gold digging. The same story that we had no funds to drill more holes and a reasonable partner/jv is hard to find.
The remuneration report was voted down so they get the first strike.
No question was asked about cash balance discrepancies and no questions to the auditor.
Colin was re-elected with only 50k shares voted against. He was popular. He has a strong presence and spoke well.
Nick and Terry confirmed The partly paid shares are expired and cannot be paid up any more. As it is expensive to cancel the shares, they just left them sitting there. They said they will have it cleaned up soon.
Nick defended the non-receipt of cash for the share placement saying people do not want to pay after the share price tanked. No mention whether the shares will be forfeited or the money is still coming. I won't hold my breath. Apparently the sophisticated investors source of funding has dried up.
Terry announced that MT will be retiring next Jan/Feb if no deal can be finalised by then. MT does not sound too hopeful (that is my opinion talking to him afterwards).
At the end of the day, my feeling is that without a deal with a partner to finance and fully develop the process to stage 4, there is really not much hope for APG. The only comfort is that Colin is working hard to make those deals with Bluescope, some China and South African steel mills.
Hopefully RabbitTrap will post a more complete report later on.
