Hi all,
I attended the AGM and also had a chat with Nigel himself. Here's a brief summary of some important points from the meeting.
1)
RESOLUTIONS - I personally voted against every single resolution and if you look at my previous posts, you'll know that I have been very critical of the board however after today's meeting, I'm feeling very confident that the company is heading in the right direction. The most substantial "against" vote was regarding the re-election of the Huayou board member and I know for a fact, that this will send a very strong message to Huayou that the shareholders need them to be more involved.
2)
Huayou involvement - Some shareholders have been frustrated with Huayou, because they believe they haven't helped out when funding was required. It is important to note that if you look at Huayou's share price, they have also been SMASHED during the past year. So they are also very much in the same boat as AVZ. At the moment, they are in a spot of bother with their own company, so obviously AVZ will not be their number one priority regarding additional funding. They have their own business to run, however, given the fact that Huayou is already heavily involved in the DRC with other projects, the company is VERY CONFIDENT that Huayou WILL exercise their options and provide AVZ with an additional $18 million approx, given the fact that they are ALREADY HEAVILY invested with AVZ as their "lithium prince".
3)
Huayou conflict of interest - Some shareholders have been concerned that there could be a conflict of interest with Huayou listening in to offers that are presented to AVZ by other parties and could try to de-rail negotiations. Nigel and the rest of the board said clearly that Huayou will not be involved when negotiations are happening with other parties so there's
absolutely no chance of conflict of interest.
3)
Shareprice DECIMATION - The board made it very clear that the reason our SP has tanked so much is very much due to the overall lithium sector shitting the bed in 2018. It's important to remember that we are a mining JUNIOR. So when the lithium wave took off in 2017, we were riding the top of the wave, but when the lithium sector tanked in 2018, the JUNIORS were all HEAVILY AFFECTED. This has been highlighted well by Dr Manhattan previously. So nothing out of the ordinary. We are actually holding up well around the 8c mark and as we all know, with the recent positive developments regarding lithium sentiment, we all know that another big wave for lithium is coming, and rest assured, AVZ will again ride the top of that wave, in 2019.
4)
Offers / MOUs - it was mentioned by Nigel that AIRGUIDE are in china as we speak, involved in discussions for AVZ, so they couldn't be there at the meeting today. Nigel himself will be travelling to China AGAIN, emphasis on the "AGAIN", even though he was just there recently. Very interesting. Regarding funding, there have been multiple offers presented to AVZ but Nigel has simply rejected them because in his words they were "ridiculous" so these offers were not "worthy" of being presented to the shareholders. I'm very glad to see that Nigel and the board are prepared to put their foot down and not give-in to these lowball offers. However, Nigel is very confident that the next round of funding will be secured through some sort of Off-take arrangement at a very "appropriate" price. Yes there is an undisclosed MOU, as has been revealed previously on twitter by a certain someone. The reason this was UNDISCLOSED is to respect the "privacy" of the interested party. Discussions are ONGOING with ALL the MOUs and all interested parties
5)
Government involvement - Nigel and the other two board members kept repeating the fact that the GOVERNOR is veerrrrryy keen on this project going forward, so they are actively in discussions with the government regarding the tax concession and they are very confident that they can get the tax concessions and the GOVERNOR himself has expressed that the roadwork will be accelerated for AVZ. The DRC politicians have realised the true monster that AVZ is and they know that when it unlocks its potential, it will be massive for them too.
I had a personal chat with Nigel and am feeling very confident about this. Way more confident than I was yesterday. You know its a good investment when you have to try really hard to find any major negatives.
(20min delay)