@VinceS2 "That was quick, something serious happened here, for sure!"... opposite I reckon. Luke got the ass in a weekend coup imo, release for ASX written up and approved over weekend for first thing this morning, hardly any effort to update Jozsef Patarica Leadership title to include MD and remove Luke's. Probably conversations by the board behind Luke's back second half of Sep imo, given the disastrous failure to improve production (we guess) and major holders and brokers expressing their displeasure and lost confidence in the lying incompetence on display.
The more interesting question is... was JP's appointment in July a move by the board to bring in an experienced CEO with an eye on transition to MD if both parties were satisfied with each other? Luke should have been a dead man walking anyway imo given the litany of management failures, disastrous Sep Qtr was a last nail in the coffin. Fair enough... rarely seen any operation go so quickly from “The ramp-up of the world-scale Coburn mine and production facilities is progressing well with regular shipments of HMC product and steady cashflow generated through the quarter, putting Strandline on track to publish FY24 production guidance later this quarter' (27 Apr 23), to actually going backwards from 60% nameplate Mar Qtr over next 6 months and bleeding out cash like a stuck pig!
History will become clearer in 2 weeks time when the market is given a Sep Qtr update, after the board have held calls and meetings with all the important shareholders and brokers first. The share price sold off from the end of August after the monthly report figures were shared with the important shareholders and brokers obviously, but my spider senses are tingling whether the bad Sep Qtr has already been priced in now by insiders and today's 'shock' news things are so bad MD got assed. Price only bounced once over the Sep unofficial downgrade, immediately after shorts bought back 1.8M shares at 12.5c support (big green candle). Otherwise, it was just going down.
I get the selling today, a lot of holders will just have to stop losses after losing faith and dropping almost 50% again from the recent CR. Funds will have rules to stop out even if they believe the new guy can turn things around, it's not their money to gamble with. There is every reason to sell and stop losses, but no good news or hardly any reason to double down and buy into an ugly trend. Yet there has been strong buying support today imo, although the price was always going to fall. Half way through the day and highest volume since CR re-listing, a lot of that was bids jumping into the ask early on... and on a WA public holiday when West Perth is Down South or at Rotto.
My guess is, board organised the official meeting to oust Luke Saturday, then rang around larger holders and brokers with an explanation of the why's and wherefores of Monday's pending release. One assumes the story sold was "confident JP is the right man and has the mine improving moving forwards despite Sep Qtr's ongoing problems". Otherwise, everyone is wanting to stop out and there are no buyers to sell into. Sep may well be the beginning of genuine operational improvement, the price bottom may be close or even in, but a lot depends on how many large holders want/need to stop out and the selling pressure that brings over the next couple of weeks. If big volumes want out, pushing the price down is only way to attract sufficient buyers. Nothing's more certain than the big boys won;t be waiting around for the Oct market release to find out how things really stand...
Still got enough shares myself to be feeling serious pain unfortunately (great one for telling others to do as I say, not as I do
). Might have to get off my lazy ass and dig deeper to see whether the situation is an opportunity or just more crisis...
GLTAH
(20min delay)