One innocuous paragraph from the Annual

......and in it is contained just about everything that I believe the board is not getting right (admittedly among the much they have gotten right)


"We have made great inroads this past financial year with effective cost management and financial discipline combined with operational and engineering excellence, to put us in the best possible position for the challenges over the next 12 months. Successfully executing our our production and exploration strategy with prudent financial management has helped us attract broader interest from the broker and investment community. We are actively engaging with capital markets and are regaining their confidence with four leading broking houses now covering Empire."

Well that's all great to hear Tony; give yourself a pay rise!

So here are my concerns with the statement

Tony; I would ask, Who has been engaging capital markets?
I am a client of Macquarie Private Wealth. I was introduced to EGO by my adviser (guessing 7 years ago). Through that adviser I was given valuable (at least I thought so) information about EGO that compelled me to "have a go". This included advice from recent road shows, tel/con's with Craig and a healthy dose of perceived expectation. I was sold the dream. We all know how that panned out but that is a different story.

The point to all this; and I have stated it before on these pages, is that I have not been able to question MPW on EGO since the Data Room was opened some 2.5 to 3 years ago. My MPW adviser was rightly put on restrictions to avoid “Chinese Whispers”. I would further add that MPW still holds EGO on a restricted advice setting. So; Tony, If you are active engaging capital markets, why has no one fronted up to Mac bank in the last 2 years to let them know the Data Room is defunct and they should take us off their restricted setting. I don’t believed you are engaging enough with Capital Markets

I am a sales person Tony: have been all my life, and in my view no one is selling this company. It is being run by engineers and accountants, they are doing a great job, but there is no one on the hustings selling the dream. I do not mean any disrespect as a Sales Person can not make Jack, but I think it’s time we acknowledged that engineers cant and shouldn’t sell.

Before the retorts shout out that we are only worth what’s in the ground, and then in the second breath tell me to wait for the drills to spin thus defeating their own argument in the same sentence, I would offer that our problems were perhaps mis management, but they are now a lack of trust in our own assets that has caused us to offer no predictions / assertions / promises.. A listed entity with no promises is just a private company wasting ASX compliance costs

How about the board start small. A profit projection for 2016 would be a nice place to start. Why don’y you organise that Tony?

Warm Regards
Viney