RE:RE:Hmmmmm ... Titan Minerals Halted in AustraliaMight be getting down to my last chances to take another kick at Titan, so here goes.
Re: Titan asks for another halt on the ASX. Why?
- It is possible they will pull there offer,and never be heard of again. It would not be to save face, those bxstards have zero concern about such niceties. More later on my theories , which I hope will come to me shortly.
-They will improve the offer. Say 100 shares of Titan for one of Core. Or a thousand. I don't think this would help and would just make it more obvious that Titan shares are worthless. My thinking is that the only offer improvement that might stand a hope would be an all cash offer of at least 50 cents a share. $84 million dollar cash offer. This still very possibility wouldn't do it, as others have shown that ,for example, the Zhoajin previous offer would have quickly got Core to a buck a share, and probably 2 a little later, and more possible a little more later. Given that they couldn't come up with $20 m when the merger with Core looked quite possible, $84 m now seems unlikely.
- That they somehow get enough shares to do some kind of takeover. I think a big part of them trying that, and it does seem they were, was getting Vertex's debt and converting it at 18 cents. Would have given them close to 20 million shares. With the BOD4 on board, maybe they could have got to 50%. But when the TSX nicked it, that made 50% much harder to attain, but maybe as importantly, meant that the regulators are now taking a serious look at this whole Core/Titan thing. I could see that if they tried something, Mr. Piggott , who is totally in on everything the board is doing, would blow all the whistles that he has available. I could see that a big, bad, terrible for the shareholder deal attempt could lead to the removal of the board by the regulators, and some sort of dissolution of Core. I just can't see how any of the insiders with shares would see how any of this would be good for them. It would be very, very messy.
So we are a little light on answers here, even speculative ones.
I have always thought that Titan doesn't have any ordinary shareholders. And we make fun that they are all sophisticated , but I would say they are all somehow inside.
Now I can see how Mundo, the first Titan, got ordinary people to buy their shares. 2006 was a heady time for mining and gold. ( In 2008, Kinross paid $1.2 billion US for Fruta del Norte (in 2014 they sold it for $240 m)) . And then with Minera, which was the next name, that came out after Mundo lost everything, they wrote a great story, all lies, and again stole peoples money. Suckers keep getting born. But when Titan was formed in late 2017, try as they might, they couldn't write much of a story, because for a long time they literally had nothing ,except the listing, and then when they 'acquired' the Vista Mill, anyone with even a tiny amount of smarts would realize they still had nothing. And in late 2017 , people were no longer falling in love with small speculative gold mining companies, especially ones without any properties, with a terrible record, etc. We can make jokes about the intelligence, or lack thereof, of Aussies but I am certain that on average an Aus. investor is as 'smart' as I am, and I bought Dynasty at over $4 initially, and then hung on as Dynasty went into a multi year decline (kind of like the decline they dug at Zaruma!), so shows how smart I am. But it only took me a very quick look at Titan, when the merger thingy came out, to see that it was totally a scam, with a manipulated share price; and the deeper we looked the worse it got. And now I would say that if anyone that might have bought some Titan shares, who would have to be quite abit lower on the scale than I am, would by now realize that Titan is not getting Core, and even if it did , the dilution would be horrendous and that their shares would be worth much less than now. They would have to be running for the exits. And there is no way Titan would have the cash to keep supporting a share price of 16 cents, if there were any number of ordinary shareholders who would be wisely now bailing.
So we aren't getting any answers here, but what I think is that the Titan boys talked some folks with money into bankrolling them, with the goal of taking over Core. My thinking is that the Titan principals : Carr, Marsland, etc. don't have the kind of money needed, and have a history of never using their own money. These folk , who put all the money in, $23 m so far it looks like, must be getting anxious. You gotta wonder what kind of guarantees they were given. The loan to buy Core shares is coming due on Dec. 18, and for sure the Titan principals wont be coughing up for that, so if they can't get their backers to, and the loan is called, that would seem to mean the end of Titan (I think that if the Core shares that they acquired with the loan ,which are collateral, aren't worth the loan amount, then the Vista Mill is the also on the line).
Now it might look like the folk who put the $23 m in aren't very high on the smart scale, but if they were say promised half of Titan/Core post merger, and I think we all agree that Core is worth at least $200 m , then that would seem like a good deal for them.
Anyway, I have said enough for now. Can't quite guess what they might be up to. Maybe find out soon enough.