Firstly it is rubbish that metal prices are suffering. These are the comparisons of Feb 2021 with Oct 7th 2022 in that order: Gold, 2355/2673, Copper 10,700/11,743, Zinc 3,630/4,797, Lead 2,730/ 3,193. So anyone who can pretend metal prices have adversely affected the company is delusional. Since Clifford took over we have experienced great metal prices at levels that should have guaranteed a high level of profitability. This can not be offered as one of the excuses for the recent poor performance.
Secondly, we've been told repeatedly Federation could be funded from within. So with that being a 'major' in setting the company into future profitability, that should have been the primary focus. Alas we spent over $30 million on exploration in 2022 while next year that is projected to be $15 million. The $30 million was way above other years and points to excess. A more directed focus on perhaps some extensional drilling at Dragues and some infill to better delineate Federation, along with some extensional there, would have protected our cash reserves and contributed in a focus way to the development of these two mines. We have $46 million in available cash, and had we saved say $15 million of the exploration budget from last year, we'd have over $60 million to be put immediately to the Federation development. You can't spend the $60 million all at once so some reasonable results in Q1 and Q2 2023 may have ensured we continued the development of Federation through to production without the need for additional funding. Once again we haven't planned for success, but rather in not adequately safeguarding the cash required to develop Federation, we have in effect planned for failure. I am aware feed for Peak will need also to be addressed but again suggest the timeliness of this, while being important, is secondary to Federation which holds close to $3 billion of ore.
Long term shareholders of AMI have been severely mistreated by this Board and the CEO since the crazy notion of buying Dragues entered their heads. They took it on themselves without shareholder approval and have now wiped around 100 million off its value. I have no reason to believe anything different will happen with any attempt to raise funding this time around, ie shareholders will get a bad deal. The Board has wiped $400 million off our market cap in 2 years. How could anyone have confidence in them?
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