Experience. I've been involved in markets for well over 40 years. When I ran the email group for Pilbara Minerals, I was contacted by fund managers all the time. They were like scared rabbits, no different to the retail punters large and small, always craving for more information.
I've also been the director of a private company that had to raise funds from shareholders in the past.
My experience is that people are the same everywhere, when it comes to investing dollars into a company, whether in charge of many millions or a few thousands, emotions effect people, so does leading by example. Junior explorers are different than an ASX200 company, but even managements of ASX200 companies where the company is their baby, like Gerry Harvey, or Andrew Forrest DO lead by example in cap raises.
Scott's message yesterday, about 'we thought the cap raise was a bad deal', means it was a bad deal for not just retail, but anyone, institution included, that took up the deal at 13c. I don't think he realises he insulted people that put money into the company, $16.5M in total into the company since 'discovery'. He never should have stated anything about expecting the raise to be poor, as some type of explanation for him failing to take up his rights.
If they expected the raise to be poor, or a bad deal, then why didn't they pull the raise?
Cancelling the retail raise altogether would have given the market far more confidence that funds from 'other' sources were more likely. People also seem to be forgetting that after each of the last 4- 0r 5 raises Scott has talked about getting further funding from 'other' sources. Each time though he came back with a near desperate raise from sophs and instos. Why wouldn't instos dump on the first good exit?? Shouldn't the instos expect the same going forward??
@Glish, one of the reasons I'm invested here and did put more money, $30k to be precise, into the cap raise, is because the people of Southern Africa need this to succeed for the benefit of people there.
You are not seeing the picture from an investors point of view. Scott yesterday told people they were silly for investing in the company at 13c, which instos and sophs did a couple of months ago, while Scott and the directors are smart by not taking up the cap raise.
Junior explorers either thrive or die by their ability to raise funds, mostly from existing investors. Having a MD tell people they were silly to invest at whatever price, is one of the poorest communications I've ever seen from management of a junior explorer, all in trying to justify why directors didn't take up a single share of their 'rights'.
Remember they all know a lot more about what we have, or don't have, compared to anyone else and could have bought up plenty, but chose not to... That's what 'the market' sees, and our SP is appropriately down because of it...
