Yes, thanks, ricky, my mistake, the second tranche of DRE shares that Black Cat subscribed for on 28 March was still waiting approval from Dreadnought shareholders when the quarterly was released. But in early May that approval was obtained so now Black Cat has 100m DRE shares it paid $0.01 each for and about 83.3m DRE shares it paid $0.012 each for. Which means they up about 10% on the investment at close of business last Friday.
More to the governance point though is why is Black Cat investing its cash in another company at the same time that it itself is raising cash to ramp up two new projects (effectively, Black Cat raised $1m cash to invest into Dreadnought)? I can perhaps understand why Dreadnought might have felt the need to raise in early February and again in late March / early April - but why would Black Cat be at the front of that queue given its transitional position? And why make a corporate level investment and not a project level one: Dreadnought promotes its interest in a number of minerals at several locations, not just gold at Star of Mangaroon, so given Black Cat's sole interest in Dreadnought should be the mineable gold at SoM why would it not earn its way specifically into SoM by way of a joint venture arrangement, rather than pay cash upfront for the Dreadnought board and management to spend the proceeds however they see fit? I just don't see what was in it for Black Cat shareholders given the timing.
Anyway, the way I am banging on about Dreadnought you'd think I am negative about Black Cat. But, overall, I'm not. I credit them with being in the vanguard of the growing movement to reinvigorate tired assets with some duct tape and WD-40 - the rising gold price helped their cause - and they have removed the particular risk of restarting projects by not having all their eggs in the one basket. I thought the tolling deal at East Kal showed great intent to tap into the raging gold price and the pick-up of the Lakewood mill was perfect opportunism. I wish them luck with making a go of the narrow veins at Paulsens and look on with keen interest what they can make of Mt Clement and Coyote. I just think their dealings with Dreadnought benefit Dreadnought's shareholders far more than they do Black Cat's shareholders.
But enough of that.
As an aside, I see that by Northern Star acquiring De Grey it has taken over an option to buy Kalamazoo's Ashburton project for $33m, with a decision due by August. Seeing Northern Star originally sold Ashburton to Kalamazoo - possibly about the same time NST sold Paulsens to Black Cat (?) - I'm guessing Northern Star won't exercise that option. And seeing Kalamazoo are saying their focus now is on gold and antimony in Victoria, maybe Paul Chapman and Gareth Solly could work their magic there. Dr Google is saying it is about 200 km - by road - from Paulsens to Paraburdoo and Ashburton is south east of Paraburdoo so maybe too far to haul from Ashburton to Paulsens? In any case Black Cat has a couple of de-assembled mills handy now that they bought the Lakewood mill. Ashburton is showing as having about 1.4m ounces MRE resources, including 250koz at 3.4 g/t, though De Grey seems to have had some success in its recent drilling campaign at Ashburton.
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