Hepburn hasn't been held accountable? No, Greg hasn't been held accountable. Our "acting-CEO" is "just doing what shareholders wanted", according to him.
James is also to blame for this. His responsibility to the shareholders that appointed him after the 249D process was to oversee the transition of the company from the lackluster explorer to top tier developer, with a major priority being to recruit a high calibre MD. He has instead let this slip by leaving this task in the hands of Greg who is not experienced for the role (no prior mine development experience or successful track record in negotiations). Greg is also incentivised to keep his $1,500/day + gst + expenses gravy train rolling in.
If the rumours from those who say they have heard it from the horses mouth are true, then BGS has been swamped with offers, e.g. extremely lucrative JV terms with the likes of that company that rhymes with battle, and full TO options at >4x the current share price, and these opportunities have been squandered due to incompetence or worse. For some reason, the BoD did not feel that it was necessary to advise the shareholders (read: owners) of this company of these offers.
I am extremely disappointed to say the least.
In saying all that, the fundamentals are still intact. Goulamina is the best unmined and uncontracted lithium project in the world. The resource will ultimately end up in the 100's of Mt's, it is high grade, high quality with low deleterious elements, lowest cost of other unmined projects, and the numbers will only improve in the BFS. BGS also currently trades much cheaper on all metrics compared to all of the other lithium explorers & developers out there so provides incredible value.
But going forward, James needs to pull his finger out and bring in a stellar MD yesterday, and relegate Greg to an in-country relations manager role or similar.
Hepburn has put BGS in contact with the 3 institutions named in a previous post above. I find it perplexing that Greg would make borderline negative comments about Hepburn to a shareholder and feel that the lack of institutional investment in BGS aside from Gas & L1 Capital is due to Greg steering the ship. Hepburn can put us in front of all of the institutions in the world, but if they don't have confidence in the captain, they aren't going to buy.
Anand is a top addition to the company, if anyone can pull off a deal, it's him. Deals are still being made in the sector and battery-grade lithium product prices are still on the rise, so I am confident that we will see action on this front within the next 3 months. With high quality BOA's, debt financing will be a breeze.
What I want to see are solid off-takes and a new managing director to turn BGS around like Ken did for PLS, and we need them sooner rather than later.
I encourage shareholders to put the pressure on Greg and James to get this done.
