snowball's chance In 2005, CEC had 4 million CUM shares. Today it has 210,000 CUM shares. It has just about milked the CUM cow dry by liquidating those shares for operating cash.
In 2005 CEC had 44 million of its own shares outstanding. Today it has 63 million shares. Trading at 5 cents a share, the opportunity to raise significant cash by this method is gone.
CEC's shares are trading at 5 cents not because of NIMBYs, BANANAs, environmentalists. Not even because Rob Fleming, BC's the next Minister of Environment pledged to put Raven to a panel review, though that can't have helped.
No, CEC shares are trading at 5 cents because of market fundamentals: the company's only prospect, the Raven mine, is coal for which there is almost no market.
If the global metallurgical coal market were as screamingly hot as it was a couple of years ago, CEC still had a story to tell. At today's prices, Raven coal has no traction in the met coal market. Markets and prices for North American thermal coal are so dismal, that there isn't a snowball's chance in a coal-fired hell that anyone would invest in or lend the capital necessary to build the Raven mine. That's why CEC's share price is 5 cents.
There have been plenty of observations on this Bullboard that CEC has been trading for a long time at the value of its CUM holdings. Those shares are almost all gone.
Yet CEC needs operating cash. When the company is out of cash, and out of CUM shares, it will have hit the wall. Today's 5 cents a share is going to be looking pretty good.
I note that the upcoming AGM is also a Special Meeting. Maybe the "special" part is some sort of alchemy to turn this sow's ear into a purse.