Daisy, AEX hasn't been a diamond for a long time. They have sold out of MLX and are now living off that cash. The MLX investment was worth more than $8m at the time of the 2008 Annual Report and yet AEX ended up managing to get the timing just right and sold out for about $2m in the June quarter.
They mentioned raising $400k in the June Qrtly but no mention of the sale of their major liquid asset.
Net assets as of June 2008 = $18.6m (inc. cash of $1.27m & MLX investment of $8.2m) 700m shares on issue NTA = .026cps
Net assets as of June 2009 = $2.8m (inc. cash of $2.1m and no MLX) 805m shares on issue
Currently 805m shares and cash balance now $1.6m
Total assets now $2.3m or about .003cps
Denny Dalton cost $6m in cash and about $3m spent on drilling for very little progress. After the 2nd round of drilling I rang Craig Willis and suggested AEX re-test some of the historical drill samples used to value Denny Dalton and calculate the supposed in-ground gold and uranium resources that AEX had paid for. He said the company had no intention to re-test the original samples as they had been signed off on by a qualified geologist so there was no need. My argument was to test a few random samples just to ensure the results were accurate rather than keep drilling and maybe throwing money at a dud project. If results were accurate then the market would have a greater level of confidence in AEX further progressing Denny Dalton, after all there was supposed to be 2moz of gold and 11kt of uranium (from memory - was about 2 years ago so my apologies if these figures aren't exact). Sold out soon after this conversation for a substantial loss.
I hope AEX actually does something positive for long term holders rather than go looking for dodgy opportunities in remote countries. They should be looking in Australia where they can still pick up some pretty good tenements for little more than the effort and application costs. Find some prospective acreage, farm out some of it and explore some for themselves and/or farm-in on someone else's land. Time to get back to basics before they throw away any more money chasing rainbows.
Just my opinion and hope you do well out of AEX. Even AEX must be good value at some price if they don't fall over.
AEX Price at posting:
5.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
