I attended the AGM on Wednesday. By my count there were 15-20 in the audience. I'd say half mums and dad investors like me and the other half in suits/corporate types who seemed to know each other etc. Paul's opening comment for his presentation was it was an improvement on last year where there was only 1 non company related person in the audience, which got a bit of a laugh.
Anyway, in regards to the resolutions there were a couple of questions regarding the ability to raise 10% capital from audience members. The chairmans main thrust in response was that raising capital is a very challenging exercise, things can change in a matter of days and its not practical to have to wait 6-8 weeks to get shareholder approval. Also that just about every other company does it.
When it came time to vote on the resolution to approve the recent capital raise no-one asked a single question and it was essentially just voted through. At some stage Paul had briefly touched on this issue (either in relation to the questioning initially around resolution 1 or later in his presentation - I can't recall which) that they needed to act quickly and raise additional capital due to the unforeseen circumstances with the reduced mining grade and that they were also in a very capital investment intensive time. And that was essentially all that was said about it during the entire course of the AGM. Nothing about how they decided on the price of 20c etc. etc.
Pauls presentation post the voting was simply representing information already in the public domain and is available to view. Seems they were a bit miffed about the length of time taken in getting the approvals in place for underground mining at Wagtails. He also briefly touched on the issue with the reduced grades early in the year by rattling of a few technical terms about stoping, etc that lost me. Otherwise the most interest from everyone seemed to be in the ore sorter. A few questions on how it exactly works (lasers and xrays to identify ore to discard and compressed gas sends it out of the mix) and a quick youtube clip showing it in action. It seems the ore sorter wont truly begin to earn its value until they have greater volumes of ore to put through it and I assume that wont be until Wagtail starts contributing.
Otherwise based on a couple of other audience questions at the end and my own brief discussion with a board member afterwards in my opinion don't expect dividends anytime soon. They are focussed on growth and I'd say that will involve alot more exploration, drilling, aquiring more tenements etc. all based around them being the only plant in the region. One person raised the proposition that if they really thought there was alot more gold in the region would they not consider joint venturing with another player and then really commiting money to the project(s). That seemed to be met with a polite response by the board members that essentially implied that wasn't going to happen.
Thats my recollection. To be honest it was a bit more engaging them some of the other rubber stamping exercises other AGM's turn out to be and the board seemed receptive to hear from and talk to the punters like me. I'm not from a mining background so it can get a bit jargonistic once they start talking about mining techniques etc for me.
(20min delay)