Fragmentation? Better than the devastation I believe has occurred during the last 4 years ranging from heavy handed & completely unbalanced covid lockdowns ( normal people were locked up while many politicians & ultra rich people got on with life pretty much the same as always ), to mismanagement of international relationships & worse when it came to the Middle East/Eastern Europe.
On the uneven application of lockdowns an example that will always stick with me was the story of California reopening ‘bath houses’ before schools.. a very disturbing choice.
On the international relationships front we saw Iran etc strengthened while ‘our side’ was diminished with a poorly managed ( to put it very, very politely? ), retreat from Afghanistan & of course a missed opportunity to encourage Russia to stay within its borders- something that could have been achieved with a tiny deployment of Western troops in Ukraine to counter the build up of Russian troops near the border prior to the invasion, a far smaller cost in life, materiel & of course money.
Moving on from all that we can only compare results. The U.S. & global economy, at least from a Western perspective, performed much better in the 2016-2020 period than it has since. Based on that it can’t be too much to say that a return to the kind of leadership in the first period very likely will not be a bad thing for us in the commodities space.
’But what about the focus on fossil fuels instead of renewable?’ a fair minded person might ask. Good question & my answer is that while we may see less government focus on renewables that is a good thing- the most meaningful advances/shifts in commercial activity come from the consumer & industry. Not from heavy handed/poorly thought out/short sighted government subsidies etc… which very often turn out to be little more than cherry picked for the headlines while making little to zero positive real world outcomes.
In fact those subsidies often turn out to be headlines only with no real action on the ground. ‘Billions for this and that’ is so often the headline yet the money doesn’t seem to flow. That kind of ‘action’ has led to an EV industry that ran before it could walk, so to speak. We are now seeing the result- sales are falling & many consumers are going back to ICE vehicles while automakers such as VW who spoke of $90,000,000,000 for cobalt just a few years ago are now launching plans to allocate more spending for ICE development!
Toyota was right all along. Thankfully Ardea management has been proven to also have been correct in its focus on steady development of our portfolio- divesting non core assets and just staying on track with the core of the tenement portfolio.
I see a leaner more focused company today. Not to say that our focus was no good before, just that via the divestment of non core assets via the two IPOs of GRL and KAL the potential for distraction of time, energy and money was lessened.
That’s enough for today so all the best to my fellow shareholders and of course the Ardea team for this, the new financial year. Happy New Year!
N.B: I touched on the political situation because it directly affects the global economy and trade which in turn directly affects our sector and company.
ARL Price at posting:
48.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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