I don’t think I’m missing the point - I think there’s a crowd mindset occurring here driven by sour grapes that’s given life to conspiracy theories about the board and their intentions.
The more I look at it the less I buy into it.
The tailings dam upgrade gets pointed to as being misuse of capital. The reality is even after the upgrade the tailings damn will still only last till mid next year, and if it hadn’t been done at the time we’d be in a situation right now where it would be getting to capacity and people would be whinging about the lack of planning.
Luckily they were organized enough to get the environmental approvals in place and get the upgrade done - and have capital available to do it. We’ve seen what happens when tailings dams don’t live up to capacity and overflow in flooding events etc. - environmental disaster, all processing stops, big $$$ plus fines. (Look at red 5 plus numerous other examples)
The shotcreter purchase gets pointed at as a waste. Guess what else stops mining in its tracks - a mine collapse - a beaconsfield scenario - plus people can die. Seems prudent to have equipment on hand that can help mitigate that, I’m assuming bought 2nd hand at a decent price.
Maldon they’ve made some mistakes - again easy in hindsight. They’ve had to rely on old data from previous mining - it’s not all going to be accurate - they’re sorting it out/figuring it out by the looks of it.
If Maldon weren’t producing then all processing would have stopppef at different points where A1 stalled. Stopping and restarting a plant also loses staff and costs $$$.
Maldon has plenty of good resource potential - in many ways it’s a more straightforward scenario than A1 - so if they figure it out it can add significantly to mine life. So probably worth persisting with in spite of set backs - but I’ll let management be the judge of that.
Financing - the ground problems caught them out - at a time when revenue was meant to get a boost from the Victory stope it instead did the opposite and stalled - leaving them in a dicey situation.
The assumption I had, and I suspect they did too, would be squadron would look for a sweetener and roll over the notes for another year (maybe replaced with a lower conversion rate etc). When that didn’t happen - and instead they faced squadron pulling the pin and we’d have been in administration with them as the secure creditor - they’ve managed to get major shareholder support.
They’re now holding expensive debt - that’s bloody unfortunate - they’re looking to get back to a good cash situation through the placement. With capital this can turn from a survival story into a genuine growth story and I’m assuming that’s what their aiming for.
If that works it’s a great outcome - a market cap orders of magnitudes higher than now is possible and everybody wins.
My view is they’re running the show, they’re closest to it - not everything they’ve done or going to do will be right - but I’m ok to leave them to it.
CTL Price at posting:
0.9¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
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