Seemed no amount of sucking up to major holders with private...

Seemed no amount of sucking up to major holders with private briefings while keeping the general market uninformed was enough to save Luke's skin, and quite right. One assumes he also BS'd them and the brokers too much for too long about commissioning and ramp-up performance, failed to manage the critical issues of staffing and mine management (especially too late on tailings mounding rectification), signed up to a $15M Fungoni PAP rehoming and compo deal outside of STA's tactical timing control (ie worst time for cashflow) ... it's a public holiday in the west so I won;t go into all his failings. I'm only disappointed he now gets to sell all his free shares if things are worse and stay worse than he's been guiding rather than go down with the ship he run into the rocks...

And how much worse are things than he was guiding?... "Capital modification works have recently been completed to the Wet Concentration Plant (WCP) on the upstream mineral cleaning circuit of the HMC. Initial results show a significant improvement in separation efficiency and ongoing optimisation of the circuit is continuing." ... I don't remember any guidance that the WCP was in need of significant capital modifications, Luke kept saying the WCP ran at nameplate throughput and recoveries so long as the DUM feed was kept up to it. Now the 50% HMC production seems as much a WCP issue as DMU, equipment failure, mine management etc, etc, etc. So long as his family and friends got out end of August before the 30% price crash and this update I suppose... Now they plan to belatedly provide an Qtrly update early October, after the horse has bolted but better than the insultong plan to leave things until end October.

New guy joined Grand Cote 2017 after most of that operations long commissioning problems were on the mend or fixed, but experience is valuable and he has it in the min sand industry. Prior to that new was gold, base metals engineer experienced. I'm encouraged he has taken on the roll of MD and CEO after a couple of months, not just to see the back end of the last clown, but because if the ship was obviously sinking beyond repair he probably would have declined the MD poison chalice...

How bad are things really that insiders smashed the price to 12.5c since end August, and what is the true probability and timing of recovery plans now set in place are the questions? Market doesn;t like uncertainty and risk, and Luke getting booted now with updates of new WCP issues will not help the share price short tern unfortunately....

Bad luck all Mushrooms