The undiscovered Potash Country,The undiscovered Potash Country
By Potashpro July 17th, 2008
When people think of Potash Mining and Exploration, they usually think Canada – Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and to a lesser extent, the Canadian East Coast. Those who are a little more studious will point to Russia, Belarus, Israel, China and Africa. Yet, there is one country almost all Potash investors seemingly take for granted. This is a country who is very powerful in the Potash arena. They are a major consumer, and a significant producer of Potash and Potash related minerals, yet they haven’t been given much attention, if any at all by both the Potash investment community and the analysts they follow. This omission is so unbelievable, it can only be compared to drafting a football team without actually picking up a quarterback. Of course, the Country I’m referring to is the United States of America. America the beautiful is not only a major consumer of Potash for its conglomerate owned Agricultural business, but a significant historical producer of the mineral itself. Much in the same way people seem to have forgotten the role Texas Oil plays in the grand scheme of things, American Potash as an investment has been overlooked entirely, even though Mosaic group has significant production out of the US, and Intrepid Potash – the nations biggest Potash producer derives all of its massive revenues from US operations. Hmmm….
So I got to thinking, “I’m invested in these great Canadian Potash exploration plays because there is production there, there’s proven resources, and the government isn’t going to march their army in and take it from under my nose. The exact same thing could be said down in the good ole’ US of A. How do I take advantage of the boom down there?”. The answer seemed simple, buy some solid US Potash explorers and profit. Not so fast! I poured hours and hours of research in this, including:
- finding who’s playing down there
- investigating the Management teams (and Board of Directors) and their past successes/failures, checking out their exploration guys to see if they had ANY EXPERIENCE looking for the stuff and finding it
- checking out what properties they said they had, and verifying their claims with the Bureau of Lands Management
To my astonishment, there were next to no Junior Companies down there. The ones I found had Management teams and Board of Directors groups with very questionable pasts (by questionable meaning they have been or are under investigation by Securities regulators), had horrible exploration targets, none had anyone working for their company who even had any Potash experience, and one in particular had blatantly lied about acquiring Exploration Permits which supposedly had been granted (I verified with the BLM down in the States, and they informed me that its public record, and they have made applications with nothing being granted as of yet. The only companies with permits are Mosaic Company and Intrepid Potash). That company apparently has more people working in Investor relations than any technical expertise. Wow, nothing but promo pump and dumps!
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The undiscovered Potash Company
I was about to give up when I came across a relatively obscure piece of information, tucked way down in an obscure press release put out on an even more obscure day of a tiny little uranium explorer who was purchasing 50% of a private Potash explorer, “yay….” I thought. Another pump and dump scam moving to ride the coattails of the Potash boom. Being that I had nothing better to do, I decided to investigate them, if for nothing else, but for entertainment purposes only. Here’s what I found:
- Nothing.
- No website
- No public records
- No references
- No clue from investor relations (they don’t even employ one, LOL!)
- Nada, just the obscure press release. I didn’t even get a spam-mail on them and I signed up on their website!
How strange that a tiny company who’s trying to make a fast buck on Potash could be so bad at promoting their stock up. “These guys are either the lousiest promoters on the Vulture exchange, or they really have something.” I said to myself, laughing almost uncontrollably at this point. So, I considered the investigation closed, and put them in with the rest of the group.
I was having my coffee one morning, reading my e-mails when *blip*, into my inbox came a message from that tiny little uranium company. “At last!”, I thought. “My spam has arrived!”.
As I opened it, I realized that it wasn’t spam – in fact it was a press release the company had put out as an update to shareholders on the potash company they bought half of. Here’s what it said in a nutshell:
- They are in the four corners states with properties close to the Producers in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
- The one project in New Mexico they have has had over 200 historical gamma logs on it, which they have acquired as well. It’s close to Mosaic’s producing property
- The Utah properties are highly prospective on the anticline’s and are close to Intrepid Potash’s producing properties
- Their head geologist has been involved in Potash since 1964, has won Special Achievement awards from the US Dept. of the interior for finding large Potash deposits which are now mines, and has consulted to the largest Potash companies in the world across 9 countries.
- Their Landman who is responsible for negotiating the acquisition of properties was the President of the US Landsman’s association.
“Wow!”, I thought. Apparently others thought so too, as the company shot through the roof, albeit on pretty light volume. As with any little company who experiences a parabolic rise, it quickly sank back down to lower levels (although still much higher than its year average). The funny thing I noticed is the volume. It was lower the whole time than an average day on the other Juniors (Like RAY or PON). And, they still didn’t have a website on this Potash company. And, they still didn’t hire any Investor Relations people. And, they didn’t send out the e-mail spam to “hook” the masses in. And, they didn’t explain anything more than what they were obligated to disclose under securities regulations. “What a strange, strange bunch…”, I thought to myself.
Fast forward to today, and recapping their last couple of press releases:
They announced their board of directors. Very interesting as it included:
A former Canadian federal politician who was the former Canadian minister of International Trade.
A successful mining guy who’s found and developed some of the worlds largest mines.
A Texan politician who served as a Chairman to Ronald Regan, George Bush, and recently George W. Bush
“It’s great to have such powerful politicians on board”, I thought, “but what the heck do they have to do with exploring for Potash!?!?!”. Suddenly, the light turned on in my head. In the good ole’ US of A you need as much political support as you can get if you plan on doing ANY MINING. If you are certain that you’ve got what will be a mine, you better make sure you’ve done your lobby with the right politicians, and you better make sure that you’ve got their people on your side as well. You’re also going to want to set up trade deals with the biggest buyers of your products, namely China and India, so it would help immensely if you had an ex-politician to pave that road for you. And finally, I thought again “why no promotion? Why no website? Why no Investor Relations?”. I guess when you have a level of confidence in what it is that you have, you don’t need to market it Perhaps success is a foregone conclusion (besides, Investor Relations is the primary product of most Vulture exchange companies in business to mine your wallet – not commodities). “Brilliant!”. I’ll go out on a limb and predict right now that when we look back 12 months from now, our of all the Junior Potash explorers I’ve bought, this one will stand out as the biggest winner amongst the winners.
In conclusion, I’ve discovered this tiny and obscure little Uranium company is the ONLY real Junior Potash explorer in the United States. The name of the Company is Intercontinental Potash Corp., and they can only be purchased on the TSX-V exchange under Trigon Uranium Corp., or TEL.V - https://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/data/stock?id=TEL-X&pi_sponsor=