One would hope that a persons CV would put the best interpretation on their credentials.
I don't have an axe to grind, as I am invested here, but sometimes there is value in contrary thinking - it stops group think.
So, to the topic of viewing CV's from a critical perspective....
Chairman DR. Advertising a stellar career with Pacific Dunlop is not much of a credential to my way of thinking, when one looks at their inept management over decades. Being at Amcor before they fully globalised and dropped most of their Australian assets is not much of an advertisement either to my way of thinking. Their share price stagnated for years.
Peter's praises are sung loudly by some from the MAG hymn sheet - yes, he led an exploration team for close to 10 years which found Kaiser.
Boda,was found after he left.
He got his first CEO role at Sky - which is a company much like MAG. Exploration companies have limited capital, and are trying to build an economic resource. They are not able to hire top shelf management, so they hire people with a track record in their area of current focus (exploration in this case), often hoping that the CEO can span multiple roles (insight into exploration, along with some management experience, insight to finance).
Six months in Sky and he jumped ship to MAG.
What I am saying is that the top shelf evidence is not there yet (at least to my way of thinking).I offer just a few points of evidence that might call their top shelf management credentials into question –
· They were going to offload the East Lachlan tenements and buy some stuff in WA (demerge East Lachlan initially to a wholly owned subsidiary called Modeling Resources, according to announcement on 07/06 2019)
· But then, announcing that Investors were reassessing the value of the East Lachlan (not themselves as management, but some Investors) decided not demerge the assets to a company called AGC – YesAGC, according to the announcement on October 11 2019. Reading this surprised me, as it seems AGC has been in the game for well over a year, and much of the demerging work would likely have been done a year ago.
· In the process of their refocus, they incurred $60,000 in contract break fees, and gave 1 million MAG shares to the West Australian companies they had contracted with.
· They drilled deep diamond at Lady Ilse, after telling the market that it was a “much larger scale opportunity than Boda” being 1.8km x 1 km in dimension (announcement March 16, 2020) and thought the results indicated that they were "proximal" to a porphyry target. - then followed up with a number of much shallower holes, which seemed slightly odd to me.
· Lady Ilse was still by their own statement the highest priority target in their June 1 2020 announcement, which made the drilling at Boda North that occurred in July look like they were trying to win some sort of race to discovery, rather than a sober analysis of the best targets for their limited funds.
· According to the latest announcement, most geographically dispersed targets will now get an immediate drill hole, while further drilling at Lady Ilse (which still seems to be their most advanced target) is now going to be after these holes. Maybe that will allow further refinement of their next drilling program, but it caused me a raised eyebrow, looking more like a scatter gun than refining their cross hairs on finding the monster that they say is Lady Ilse.
· The aftermarket results announcement of Lady Ilse on the last day of trading before Christmas will make impartial observers view management with caution, and downgrade their opinion of their transparency – in my opinion of course.
As these company events were unfolding, we had the benefit of a constant supply of Greenbull positivity – one notable thread he started was “MAG – On The Cusp of a Major Discovery”, back in April last year. The good folk of Hotcopper eyeballed the thread some 357,000 times, and contributed some 1500 times before it reached it’s use by date. Some juicy posts in there with Lady Ilse being bigger than Boda, MAG having the best management in town, and much other positivity.
I await the rebuttals to these thoughts, and may learn from them, as I have on prior occasions.
Yes, they floated AGC, and I guess that few exploration companies do that, so maybe that is evidence of great management.
Time will tell, and we all live in hope. (Yes, I also have hope, but that does not mean I uncritically accept much of the hype on this thread).
