I am an irregular poster on this platform, and seldom post on this particular forum. However, I felt moved to post on this thread, as it feels to me that the discussion around the most recent Thomson announcement is being nudged down a certain track.
Thomson is far from my favourite listed company: there have been too many shenanigans over recent years for my liking.
However, I think holders need to be careful not to get caught up in the air of despondency that dominates this thread. I'll explain why I feel this way below.
When I read the Entitlement Offer announcement and the ensuing discussion around it, I couldn't help but get a strong feeling of deja vu. It reminded me of a curious epidsode with another small miner that I used to hold, many years ago.
Back in 2014, the Australian mining sector was moribund, and so I spent much of that year running the ruler over at least one hundred small resource stocks that looked promising in the hope of picking a future star-stock on the cheap.
In the end, there was one company in particular that caught my eye: Global Geoscience, who at the time were sitting on base and precious metal projects in Peru and Nevada.
I didn't manage to get the funds together for this investment until the start of the new year, and by then the Global Geoscience share price had hit the absolute rock-bottom, sitting at half-a-cent, or even less, when I started buying into the company.
However, much to my chagrin, in early 2016 the company suddenly and without any advanced notice announced that they were set to acquire a logistics software platform called Getswift. As part of this transaction, sophisticated investors were offered shares at a discounted share price, with the existing holders excluded.
My intention had been to invest in a promising resource stock, not a software platform. I also wasn't particularly impressed by the fact that long term holders were excluded from the placement.
As such, shortly afterwards I decided to sell off most of my shares in the company, but I decided to keep a small position just in case the new direction of the company attracted interest.
But this was not to be: the share price languished after several weeks, suggesting the management had made a bad call.
But less than two months later, there was a sudden about-turn: the management announced that they were ditching Getswift and shortly afterwards, released the news that they were set to 'acquire' a Nevada lithium project, though in reality, it was probably just one of their old tenements in the area that had been shuffled about and repackaged.
At any cost, this announcement seemed to have the desired effect, and the share price surged immediately afterwards. Lithium was a hot commodity at the time and Tesla's gigafactory was just a few hours drive from the company's lithium project, and so there was plenty of interest.
In a matter of months, the Global Geoscience was up more than ten times from its lows. Eventually, it would rise more than one-hundred fold from its record lows, though I had sold off long before it stock reached those lofty heights. The company is still listed today, however it trades under a new name, Ioneer.
Now, you might think that given the subsequent stellar performance of the company, the mood on Hotcopper would have been ebullient in the wake of the so-called acquisition of the lithium project in 2016.
But in fact, this was not so. In fact, in the days after this announcement I recall a large number of unfamiliar posters suddenly appeared on the Global Geoscience threads, many of them expressing extremely negative sentiments. I remember thinking at the time 'who are these people?'
The reason I mention this, is because I have had the same thoughts after reading the commentary on the TMZ threads over recent days. I've noticed that several of the posters expressing negative opinions over recent days have hardly ever posted on the TMZ thread before, and some have never even posted here before . To my eyes, at least a few of them of them look decidedly 'smurfy'.
Anyway, it does feel to me that there is someone playing around in the background, trying to encourage shareholders to dump stock, and possibly also trying to discourage holders from taking part in the Entitlement offer.
My personal view that it is a mistake to sell off at these levels, at least until more information comes to light.
I suspect what is going on here is something akin the aforementioned Global Geoscience 'acquisition' in 2016.
Here I am not suggesting, by the way, that TMZ is set for a surge in the manner of Global Geoscience. In fact, I think that is probably unlikely. But all the same, I can't help that feel that there is more than meets the eye to all of this.
If I was going to hazard a guess, I would suggest that Thomson have probably found something interesting in one of their tenements, and they intend to reorient the company to focus on a new commodity.
The sale of the Bygoo tin project only really makes sense in this context (either this, or sheer desperation, as others posting here have suggested already). Bear in mind, however, that Bygoo has been an anchor of this company for a decade now, and given how much time and effort has been devoted to this project, it seems strange that they would sell it off for just $600K (which begs the question: who was the buyer?).
My 'gut feeling' could be wrong, and perhaps the mood of despondency evident on these threads will prove to have some justification in the end.
However, I certainly don't think it is wise move to dump shares at the current level, at least not until shareholders get a better understanding as to what is going on here.
The TMZ share price has crashed 50% in the space of less than a week as a result of the announcement of Wednesday.
But given that the proposed entitlement offer is set at 0.002c, in many ways it surprising that the share price hasn't fallen even lower. You have to wonder: who are all the buyers, and why are they buying?
It feels to me that there is someone in the background who stands to benefit from the current negative sentiment. At this point, I can't help but feel that the wisest course of action for holders might be just to watch and wait.
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