Dividends???
They're burning cash. We will most likely see a CR this year, and if not they're going to have to do something else to raise funds.
Even in absolute best case scenario a dividend is not on the cards for quite a few years, and in any remotely likely scenario, even in wildly optimistic projections you wouldn't expect any dividend until literally next decade.
If we're being honest, which let's face it most holders here struggle with, production is not at all likely in the next few months and we have no signs yet of any improvement at all since the issues first popped up in the early stages of commissioning. They struggled to deal with the filtration issue for some time, eventually gave up and brought in external expert consultants, and we've now seen that those efforts were unsuccessful. So, what is there to suggest that we should expect production to improve in the near future? Given AGY's history, I'm inclined to think there are likely other problems in addition to filtration we're not being told about.
On the permits, we're now literally years into being told that they're going to come (ie the company is 'targetting' their arrival, a complete joke of a use of terminology in itself) by the end of the current or following quarter. When something happens every quarter for years on end, it's most likely that it will occur in the current quarter too.
Dividends aren't going to come in until the 10,000TPA plant is churning out product at a high rate, and even then, only if AGY isn't going to expand any further; if they do expand beyond 12,000TPA, which they tell us they plan to, they'll not only be using any income to fund the further developments, but will also need to seen external funds, so you'll probably be seeing yet another CR for that expansion. So, an earlier dividend would be a bad thing for shareholders. Sure, it's nice to get a dividend, but it's not as good as an increase in share price much larger than that dividend.
Back in reality land where dividends won't be seen until next decade if ever, no net revenue exists, money is needed to keep the lights on in the office, the gym serviced, the bakery feeding pastries to the staff, the Christmas parties, the admin costs so they can send emails to the environment departments and tell shareholders that progress is imminent, oh, and that whole 'trying to get a lithium plant working' which the company has literally never done before including in the pilot plant years ago, you know, that plant which was supposed to demonstrate that their method worked and they knew how to do it but it never produced at more than a tiny fraction of nameplate before they gave up, mothballed it and then years later showed that they couldn't do any better with the commercial plant.
...in short, don't expect dividends, expect a CR.
And, with this recent rally, caused by people buying up for their super this week as it was the last opportunity to do so and shorters being forced to close out (both of which stop being so relevant next week), and the rise in lithium price (which doesn't actually help the cashflow situation since AGY isn't selling anything so it doesn't help keep the lights on or sugar-rolled hot jam doughnuts being cooked in the bakery), it's likely that management will take advantage of the situation and run a CR soon rather than wait until the market is disappointed by no production or tangible progress, and then doing a CR when they're desperate and have no choice.
And before more people again say "wHY aRE YoU hOlDinG iF yoU'Re sO NegATiVe?", not that it's relevant but last year I had hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of AGY, I have since dumped most and just hold a few (less than $10k worth), but have my disclosure as 'held' because I technically am still holding even if it's just a small fraction of what I previously held. It's actually still a decent trading stock, I've done okay trading it recently and did well trading it previously, and I wish I'd never bothered trying to hold it long term.
The bulls keep saying 'tick tock', and sure, the permit probably will eventually come, production may eventually be achieved, but you might be looking at disappointment on permits and productions and a capital raising first. As for a strategic partner, they lied about having a done deal even back when the whole situation looked very positive, so it's doubtful we can expect anything there in a hurry.
We literally know the AGY team hit a wall getting the plant running, they couldn't get it done by themselves so they brought in external help, and we now see that the external experts couldn't fix it, do it's back to the AGY team who we know couldn't fix it. Why are we so optimistic about production getting anywhere? I hope you enjoy watching your clock and listening to the tick tock, because it seems we'll be doing it for a long while yet, and of course, we know which direction the market sends the price when this happens.
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