AGO (ASX) If AGO goes into administration

Originally posted by motobooger ↑

I've also got a large chunk of cash invested in Atlas so I feel your pain. I had considered it being far from high risk as it has (and still is) appeared to be a well-managed company that has previously made good strategic choices, with good growth prospects and also loyal to investors via dividend payments.

Lots of people will talk bs on here and claim they saw it all coming etc but I bet my left testicle that when AGO was valued over 2 billion dollars and the share price over 4 bucks they would have been saying buy buy buy...unfortunately these forums attract people that talk everything up or down depending on which way the wind blows.
The fact is that the iron ore price has collapsed faster and further than anyone anticipated. Had it not been for this then everything would be dandy. Hopefully we get an upward correction (as is often the case), but globally all commodities are suffering and every company and its investors will feel some pain. We should not jump to conclusions but rather wait for an announcement before we start putting in our 2 cents worth on the internet.

The WA government makes good money out of Atlas and will be hurting if 600+ jobs disappear and their large port allocation sits idle. It is in everyone's best interest for the company to stay afloat. The Chinese like buying WA mines and tend to look for longer term potential. A rail deal/port allocation exchange could reduce costs to make them more competitive. Mothballing will stop the bleeding but will only be a temporary solution to ride out the lower end of the price plunge (hopefully)... And a merger could also be favorable. We could also be looking at re-financing and/or a capital raising. I personally believe that the story of Atlas is far from finished.

In any case, know at least that there will be great effort going into solving the 2 biggest problems of debt and cash burn...problems that most other mining companies also face.

Expand

Definitely no one was predicting the rapid decline in iron ore price (as memory serves me experts were holding onto popular theory of floor price of something like US$70 as floor based on below this all Chinese supply would be uneconomic). Athough quite a few pundits over last six months have been predicting a $30 io price is where will end up.....with Roy Hill still determined to come on line and BHP and RIO not changing their supply strategy - io price will remain bearish for some time....and see downside not upside on io price. Hope they work something out so you can salvage something out of this.