When two directors of LNY are also directors of BSM (both companies in which I am invested), I feel totally justified in sharing the following example as to why I am not a happy camper of either company's PR performance.
I am in the midst of trying to pressure BSM to get involved in marketing the company via social media. It is starting to show green shoots with Bass resuming activity on Twitter in the last few weeks. I have recently joined Twitter to discover that there is a wealth of information there. Bit slow on the uptake I am. However, it highlights just how slack our BoD really are, especially when it's revealed that Bass actually attended yet another conference this year but without any mention of it to its shareholders.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (the Price Reporting Agency for all things lithium, graphite, EV supply chain, etc for Bloomberg, Reuters, etc) just held a conference in the US. BSM attended and presented. Awesome.. except BSM have failed (or intentionally failed) to promote the fact.
One of Benchmark's people actually tweeted and tagged BSM on Twitter!!! BMI also put up a snippet of BSM's CFO's presentation by David Round. Here's the bit I really want to highlight: In the tweeted bit of the presentation, David, talked more about why RIck Anthon our Chairman could not be there to present, why Peter Wright our executive director could not be there to present and why our CEO could not be there to present. Here are the reasons:-
- Rick Anthon is busy working with Orocobre ("as you could imagine" says David)
- Peter Wright is very busy working for Bizzell Capital Partners ("Wrighty thoroughly enjoys his conferences in LA" says David)
- Tim McManus (BSM CEO) is on the job at least ("doing the nice winding drive from Tana to our site... so was enjoying that drive" says David)
Peter Wright at a conference in Capetown earlier this year spoke in an interview about how much he was enjoying the conference and commented on the beautiful environment and the friendliness of everyone.
For goodness sake... I don't care if our the LNY or BSM board and management enjoy themselves whilst working for our companies... good for them! I don't hate the guys (I don't care if they have a fabulous life), but what I do hate is seeing VALUABLE conference presentation time and VALUABLE interview time being wasted talking about their joyful lives whilst our investment value is being sucked down the gurglar.
Does anyone think it is smart to be announcing to the world that the Chairman of a company is too busy working with another company? Does anyone think it is smart to be announcing to the world that the Executive Director of a company is too busy working with another company? Does anyone think it is smart to be announcing to the world that the CEO of a company is enjoying his winding drive to site?
I have harped on about PERCEPTION. These guys have no idea. It is a shame because I think Peter and David both speak well but the fact that they keep bringing up the perks of working for a public company suggests that they are so conscious of that they feel guilty about it. Please.... I wish they would shut up about in public. Not a good look.
Made worse are the final statements by David about how "mining is a tough world" Give me a break. What's tough is being a SH having to hear this sh!te. I am of the belief that these guys are actually doing a great job (in the background) but are doing one bad job of conveying it in the public arena. Whilst the rest of the presentation may have been fantastic (I just don't know because the rest was not shared)... there only has to be a couple of minutes of irrelevant chatter that spoils it for our company image.
Here's the link to the recorded bit of the BSM presentation if anyone is interested:
https://twitter.com/benchmarkmin/status/1194305194214866944
(20min delay)