Debacle? What rubbish. Everyone loves a bit of outrage don't...

Debacle? What rubbish. Everyone loves a bit of outrage don't they? Easy to jump to conclusions, than to work through the events and try to unpack the merits of the acquisition.

I give you credit; you recognise the deals unusual nature - yet you can't quite understand the how and the why so you take the easy road and just assume it's a worthless transaction. Yeah sure, private and sophs handed over $5m to get the deal done for a set of steak knives?

Go and find out what a company would have to do to repackage themselves from an exploration company, to a tech company on the ASX and then have a look at the acquisition again. Ask yourself why would they acquire two postage stamp size pieces of dirt, with an unusual addition of a significant kicker (steak knives as you say) being the option to exercise a licence agreement on a tech asset?
Why would Flash Metals sell the tech? Well first off they were a private company and the whole entity was acquired by MTM, they didn't just flog off one of their assets to another company - it's essentially a merger of the two.
So, why? Well perhaps the opportunity is so lucrative that they had to be acquired since they probably didn't have the means to get funding to commercialise it on their own... so unless they wanted to watch their option expire and lose everything, it was in their interest to be swallowed up by a public company who has access to a wider range of financing ie equity capital markets, who could have the means to commercialise it.
And, the public company obviously seeing the opportunity to create shareholder value, willingly agrees to the deal. Win/win.

As you can see a little bit of Critical Thinking goes a long way with MTM Critical Metals.

As for the retracted statement, pfft buying opportunity, this stuff happens, doesn't mean there's anything sinister to it. In fact, it's probably a result of their haste and urgency to get the FJH deal done because that was the opportunity that needed to be capitalised on to drive shareholder value and have a chance at turning the companies fortunes around. The rest is noise, and it all depends what you give weight to in the end. Whilst I admit that effective IR is important, it doesn't in the slightest bit change fundamentals of the company. I am only involved in this stock at sub 7c and it only came across my radar on account of the tech opportunity. I won't be the only one and it's only a matter of time before the rest of the market wakes up to it.

The opportunity is what it is, your argument is nothing but rhetoric. Whilst the fact remains that the team behind it has a history of developing successful tech AND commercialising it. The opportunity is a global one, with global implications in a space that has solid thematic relevance to the ever-burdensome ESG/green obligations of the globes largest producers/refiners/steelmakers etc. Anything that can help them to achieve sustainable and efficient supply chain management, waste reduction etc. is going to get airtime and will attract its fair share of attention.

The valuation is attractive, the tech is promising, has been proven at small but increasing scales, the scale opportunity is there, the demand for the solution is there - work it out for yourself mate.

Or just miss out like most other retail investors simply because a retracted statement gave you a 'b-b-b-b-bad feeeeeling' and you didn't have the abstract reasoning skills to understand why the acquisition was structured the way it was. .

The rest of us will remain objective and see the forest through the trees. Ciao.