LP & Plough, the management of this company could have taken far more advantage of shareholders than they did. Plenty of Directors of other companies did. Management have been very restrained with grants of share options to both themselves and employees. Your primary point seems to be that because they didn't sign a bauxite offtake agreement, they can't sell anything. This is ludicrous. No small player in Australia managed to do this successfully in the last decade. They were acting in shareholders interests by NOT signing an offtake agreement that could screw shareholders. Would you prefer to be a Metro Mining shareholder? Be my guest.
Bauxite has been an oversupplied market for many years. Compare that to rare earths, which are in heavy demand, and aluminium fluoride, where China cut imports to Australia by 50% last year and smelters had to scramble for supply and no doubt pay a premium. There is no comparison between bauxite and these 2 new markets.
Plough, I am also in this for Alcore. The rare earths were only discovered a year ago, long after I was invested. But I have no issue with spending some cash to define the resource, given how hot and strategically important the rare earth market is, and given that that the resource is almost certainly ionic. Once the resource is defines, they always have the option of floating it off. A $2m investment in drilling could pay off many times over.
ABX Price at posting:
13.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
