Like prepping for a colonoscopy and knowing you've got another...

Like prepping for a colonoscopy and knowing you've got another 12 hours to go...

So they tell us about the disposal of 7.2m of the 40m IG6 shares Comet had ... only 32.8m to go. Not overly impressed how this is playing out:

• on 13 March the company announced they had taken decisive action to prevent Comet from dumping the 40m IG6 shares they had that was coming out of escrow on 7 April. The second paragraph of that ASX announcement reads. "The arrangements will prevent the short to medium term potential sell down of any of the 40 millionInternational Graphite shares owned by Comet when the stock is released from ASX escrow on 7 April2024".

• on 24 April the company announced a placement and the share purchase plan, set at 12.5 cents. I'd argue that that offer was made on the implicit understanding that any the 40m IG6 shares would not be disposed of by Comet in the near to medium term. It is true that the only explicit reference to the shares held by Comet in the SPP booklet I can find is "we have tidied up the capital structure". However seeing the only capital structure needing to be tidied up was the 40m IG6 shares held by a financially desperate Comet Resources I take that statement as confirmation that in the short to medium term International Graphite had undertaken that none of the IG6 shares held by Comet would be disposed of in at least the medium term.

And yet today we find out that Comet has been allowed to dispose of 7.2m of its IG6 shares with the receivers of those IG6 shares immediately able to dump them into the market. Exactly three months after International Graphite assured their shareholders that they would prevent Comet from disposing of any of its 40m IG6 shares they announce that they have allowed Comet to dispose of 7.2m IG6 shares. And this action comes after passing the hat around to existing shareholders at 12.5 cents on the understanding that the Comet overhang had been nullified for the foreseeable period of time. As I write this the IG6 share price is 8 cents a pop, down more than a third on the SPP price. What an absolute dog act!! An out-and-out bad faith manoeuvre!

Today's announcement goes on to claim "These arrangements, and previous funding support announced from International Graphite, successfully resolvesComet’s current financial requirements". How so? To me, what it means is quite the opposite: what it underlines is that the remaining 32.8m IG6 shares owned by Comet are now totally back in play, creating a massive unstable overhang over the IG6 share price - every time the IG6 share price tries to rise there is a risk that more of the Comet overhang will be released/disposed of/ transferred/ sold down, and that will remain the case until every single IG6 share held by Comet is gone.

So; what to do? Do I persist with a management team that in a corporate sense showed they were willing to sell their little sisters off - that's us, the mum and dad investors who supported International Graphite through the recent SPP? Does my assessment that the project has potential and that their management team have the technical nous to deliver it sufficiently counter that in my eyes they have shown themselves to be bad faith actors? Mitigating my pissedoffness is that they are attempting to fix a mess created not by them but by the Comet Resources leaders. Hmmmm. I will have to sleep on it. However at the very least, as a first step to possible redemption, surely it is entirely untenable for the boss of Comet to continue as a director of International Graphite and he has no choice but to go.