Absolutely brutal chart - the highest volume day since listing in ~2012, big fat red candles hasn't even managed a dead cat bounce yet at ~ -60%, seems even the most opportunistic of traders are staying clear. This volume and price action certainly suggest the worst scenario is in play.
KLL had a similar drop and price action mid last year however the circumstances were quite different - that was a "simple" matter of raising funds as a one off "oversight", a comprehensive review and new strategy of checks and balances being formulated, a board reshuffle and slowly earning back S/H trust. Given the timing was in the early phases of construction where changes to plant design could easily be integrated, there were great odds of success and I bought that dip.
Comparing it to SO4 now, having already had multiple capex blowouts and broken promises of fully funded fresh in investors minds, it being too late in construction phase to simply modify the design in a quick or cost effective manner, a dangerous mix of overconfident and underhanded CEO who to replace at this stage in the game is a gamble in itself, there looms serious doubts on the ability to raise funds let alone not break current covenants, perhaps at risk of losing the offtake, and serious doubts about future profitability considering the current debt is not on favourable terms and can be sure this next one highly likely to cripple EPS for med perhaps even long term even if this blows over.
Having said that, the biggest issue to me are the ponds. It sounds to me like there are serious design flaws and lack of water chemistry skills on site to bring this over the line. If the harvest cells currently contain unusable salts, then how far up the pond chain is the chemistry unsuitable? If low Mg is the sole reason, perhaps they can order some bulk bags to dose the ponds and manually kick start the precipitation ... in any case expect whatever action they take on the ponds to take some months for next round of evap to do it's thing. A completely forseeable issue, they've had a couple years to be monitoring these ponds and the excuses given in the update were pathetic.
Wish holders the best, but honestly this dip is not something i'd buy.
SO4 Price at posting:
31.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
