Once again we guess. And the guesses range from "it's all over" to "the Con Note has been paid". The Con Note just so happened to have matured yesterday, so the guessers can't be blamed for guessing. With any other of my companies I would have expected an announcement, but not with CTL. While they espouse the Team approach, shareholders can't be in the team, perhaps not even spectators, just providers of capital. Obviously either guess would be price sensitive so ringing the company wouldn't be of any use. One wonders then how the word is "the Con Note has been paid", notwithstanding "it's all over" remains a possibility.
My take is this: For the quarter (all figures supplied in the quarterly), expected costs $7.5 million, throughput 180,000 t/a /4Q = 45,000/Q x 4.5g/t using an average of 3.5g/t for the west stope at union hill (which has a higher concentration than the east of 3g/t), and 5.5 g/t at A1 (the reserve has 6.2g/t so I'm conservative) = 202,000g/31g/oz =6,500 oz Au. If sold at $1650 ave/oz (we do have some hedging, but again being conservative): $6500 x $1650 = $10,725,000. (I've assumed 50:50 supply from Union Hill:A1 but I'm just guessing. If the feed proportions were in the quarterly I couldn't see them.) So a quarterly profit of $2.75 million is possible. Now we've had 6 weeks of the quarter, that's enough for some progress along the way, and enough for an announcement.
So we have two reasons for an announcement. 1. The Corporate side. What happened to the Con. Note. If it was paid, why the silence? Surely it was organised before 4pm EST, therefore with time to announce, and if so, should have been. And perhaps dropping the idea of a rights issue which was only a maybe, with suspension possibly till that date..which could be 3 months (see the suspension notice). If this reads as a mess it's because it is.
2. Activities report. It's apparent we've been hanging on by the skin of our teeth, so knowing some of the milestones in the quarterly are being achieved/adhered to, would simply relieve the doubts which shareholders justifiably have. I won't say it would create positive investor relations, because that's long gone, but it might mean we don't get more of our teeth extracted, which when where hanging on by the skin of them, might save us from a fall to a yet further away bottom.
In summary, Corporate: Finance: has the market been informed of the Con. Note? Answer: No.
Activities: Things are precarious, are we on track with the quarterly forward projections? Answer: keep hanging on with those teeth.
Finally, a rights issue to provide working capital would alarm me. I'm running out of teeth, and if they say they can run the next quarter on $7.5 million, I'd like them to stick to it. The rights issue would signal the intention of over running.
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