Agreed Szlava. A gaslighting explanation. More plausible explanations are covering poor performance, or shareholders have been shafted and caught on.
This guy seems to think if he says 2+2=5 we should believe it, or else those who don't are peddling conspiracies.
"Why would institutional investors give us close to U$S800 million in equity if we were running out of cash?" You weren't running out of cash, you had $42M.
And if you were running out of cash, they wouldn't give it to you because of incompetence, poor budgeting, and mismanagement.
- ARU spent $15M 1 Jan to 31 March 2024.
- ARU spent $13.5M 1 April to 30 June 2024.
- Total for the prior 6 months: $28.5M
- Total remaining $42M
Does he seriously expect us to believe that on 1 July 2024 the company had $42M and yet needed to immediately cap raise for $20M so it looks attractive to get another $800M in equity.
And by the way, once the company gets the equity they wouldn't need this $20M anyway (and this is more or less admitted when he states that '
unused interim capital raise will come off the ultimate equity raise').
Not to mention the
ROI for this unnecessary cap raise was terrible! (as was the Dec 23 one - the nerve to do it again)
That is, unless you are UBS, Canaccord, or the Shorters in which case it has been FANTASTIC!
A better method to have cash than terrible and poor capital raises -
how about more prudently managing the $150M or so spent since the start of last year so you had a bit more "
financial runway" if you really thought $42M wasn't enough (not buying that explanation sorry).
CEO - if you were running out of cash as you have stated, then please revoke the CFO's 9,000,000 performance shares. His $500k salary will suffice ($10k per week).
While you are at it, renegotiate in good faith your performance shares to be priced at 34c (on top of your $690k salary - $13k per week). 34c is what it was in July last year when you started managing the company, and the share price has gone down since. No it is not related to NdPr price (as the company keeps telling us the NdPr price doesn't matter for the strategic non spot future nature of their supply) and if it was related, the share price would be going up right now. It is not (ironically because of the terrible capital raise).
Come to think of it - WHY ARE ANY PERFORMANCE BENEFITS BEING AWARDED?share price down, SOI up, CAPEX up, costs up, schedule delayed.
CEO - this destroyed our shareholder value. Twice. Once in Dec 23, and unbelievably again in July 24. Both times huge amounts given to shorters. Both times the share price looked like it was recovering when it was done. Both times a shocking ROI. We are not stupid, if you issue so many more shares, then it is harder for our shares to appreciate in value because there are more shares in the company! This is a basic understanding of Market Cap and value.
No CEO, your explanation about dilution does not cut the mustard. And just because the share price and value may appreciate in future, it doesn't take away from the fact that we won't get as much value from the appreciation. It's just plain disingenuous to suggest otherwise. No I won't be happy when I make $X when it should have been $Y. The nerve to think I should be happy about this when a lot of my risk/reward was siphoned off from me once the project was derisked because you guys wanted to scrape together a few more million with a terrible ROI after spending like drunken sailors.
CEO - you wouldn't be getting concerned emails from Shareholders if there was nothing to be concerned about.
It says more about company performance than it does the Shareholders despite your efforts to turn it around on Shareholders. Oh yeah, we are not fooled, we see this, and other attempts like now doing a telephone conference instead of a Zoom conference.
It's clear us individual Shareholders will struggle for any accountability given the CEO seems to think voting on the equity raise gives us the say vs Insitutions who already hold and can vote, and can benefit even more (and probably have benefitted).
This has been handled so poorly. They overstepped the mark by trying it on one last time. With all this, plus the management turmoil last year, it smells.
This is a great project that has had some poor management/Board decisions with dubious capital raises and budget management.
The Chairman can be removed, but really he should do the right thing and resign. A new Chairman that is well respected and connected would do well for the company at this point moving forward.
KMP performance benefits should be renegotiated. As another commenter noted, it is poor form to be getting rewarded like this when shareholders have lost value as a result of these actions.
I really hope the media pick this up.
(20min delay)