2021 was supposed to be quite a year: so many milestones were supposed to drive the SP up. What happened? How come we closed the year only 1 cent over our opening on Januray 2nd? I thought doing an analysis about the events that occured in 2021 could be interresting at this point.
2021 Review The first week was a great start with 3 NR published: Surface Drilling Result at Goldboro (Including 871.23 g/t Gold over 0.5 metres), Announcing drill program at Lower Seal Harbour and Expanding land package around Tilt Cove in NFLD. This start looked promising for the rest of the year! Volume was fair during the week but the SP closed down:
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Jan 4, 2021 | 0.62 | 0.60 | -1.64% | 1 496 228 | 0.606 | -1.14% | 1 919.70 | 1.81% |
The explanation for this SP drop despite the publishing of these NRs was known the next week as another NR explained that around 8M warrants at 45 cents were exercised before the expiry date on January 10th. Those warrants killed the momentum at the end of 2020 and also until the second week of February as the SP went down to the mid fifties despite a couple of good NR published: Drill resluts from Goldboro, drill results from Stog'er Tight, intersect of a VMS system at Tilt Cove (not great news, but not bad neither). Gold was in a down trend during that period. Here is the stats for the first week of February:
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Feb 1, 2021 | 0.57 | 0.56 | -1.75% | 416 801 | 0.55 | -3.51% | 1 829.40 | -1.36% |
The 4 weeks that followed were terrific and we saw the SP gaining 25 cents to reach the 80s! We got a lot of visibility during that period and also, the fantastic NR, preceded by a trading halt, anouncing the "Significant Increase to the Mineral Resources at the Goldboro Gold Project" got the things started! Do you remember the euphoria at that time? Wow, we were on a high. Nothing could stop us... gold was in a down trend, other juniors were suffering but we were not following this trend: The BEAST has been awaken and people started to realize its potential!! Those 4 weeks were the best period for volume and SP increase for 2021 (and perhaps for the last decade):
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Feb 8, 2021 | 0.57 | 0.62 | 10.71% | 1 766 822 | 0.598 | 8.73% | 1 839.40 | 0.55% |
| Feb 15, 2021 | 0.61 | 0.71 | 14.52% | 2 154 954 | 0.661 | 10.54% | 1 790.40 | -2.66% |
| Feb 22, 2021 | 0.67 | 0.77 | 8.45% | 3 006 507 | 0.804 | 21.63% | 1 793.70 | 0.18% |
| Mar 01, 2021 | 0.82 | 0.78 | 1.30% | 1 889 635 | 0.784 | -2.49% | 1 722.80 | -3.95% |
Following that, Kevin and Rob were all over the places. Participating in webinars, bragging (and rightly so) about how good a project Goldboro is. Shareholders were talking about doing some parties here and there... life was good!
And then, end of April came... THE BEAST made some diversions, covering with its shadow some issues at the Point-Rousse operations and the Argyle mine. "Some challenges" they said in the NR about the Q1 results. Well, we know damn well now the rest of it... but they were confident that they would go through them and announced a $6M Flow-Through private placement at 83 cents. Some shareholders did not understand why raising money at this moment when we could reach a buck in the coming weeks. Well, knowing now that second half of the year was not what we all expected, raising ca$h for exploration was a great move IMO.
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Apr 19, 2021 ! | 0.75 | 0.68 | -10.53% | 1 071 421 | 0.668 | -9.97% | 1 784.60 | 2.00% |
| Apr 26, 2021 ! | 0.66 | 0.66 | -2.94% | 1 006 559 | 0.662 | -0.90% | 1 772.00 | -0.71% |
| May 3, 2021 ! | 0.69 | 0.67 | 1.52% | 835 936 | 0.655 | -1.06% | 1 807.40 | 2.00% |
Then, came Q2 and the second wave of euphoria, fueled by Gold doing a come back from $1760 to $1900. People were looking for promising projects. The timing was perfect for us. We were having weekly close records every week until Winedoc had "his" $1 buck party alone on Cemetery Hill in mid-June. Was it an omen that he was there alone with no one to share this accomplishment?
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| May 31, 2021 | 0.75 | 0.80 | 6.67% | 836 033 | 0.788 | 10.06% | 1 889.80 | -0.10% |
| June 7, 2021 | 0.82 | 0.92 | 15.00% | 875 209 | 0.856 | 8.63% | 1 889.20 | -0.03% |
| June 14, 2021 | 0.91 | 1.00 | 8.70% | 928 865 | 0.917 | 7.13% | 1 828.60 | -3.21% |
| June 21, 2021 | 1.02 | 0.96 | -4.00% | 2 420 648 | 0.972 | 6.00% | 1 782.60 | -2.52% |
Then, the PEA was published on June 23rd and we thought "wow, what a perfect timing!". We had the momentum, $2 was now the target and it was tough to see what could stop this trend! Well, the PEA did not impress the market at all. Or so we thought. But unfortunately, the operational challenges at Argyle were confirmed to be harder than expected because the deposit was not properly modeled. Q2 results was a disaster and we got no favorable news to counter-balance those bad results. Our "damn soooo good" management lost some credibility. All this nice built-up momentum was compromised. Point-Rousse operations, which was marketed as an asset comparing to other pure exploration plays in the junior sectors was now a burden instead. The SP dropped. There was also 28 to 30 cents warrants expiring in September and October putting a lot of pressure and dragging down the SP to the mid-sixties level during fall. And Gold was going back to $1760, not helping at all. Some TA gap was then filled:
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Sept 20, 2021 | 0.68 | 0.70 | -1.41% | 464 981 | 0.665 | -7.77% | 1 760.50 | -0.96% |
| Sept 27, 2021 | 0.70 | 0.68 | -2.86% | 552 720 | 0.667 | 0.30% | 1 745.20 | -0.87% |
| Oct 4, 2021 | 0.68 | 0.62 | -8.82% | 195 532 | 0.643 | -3.60% | 1 760.60 | 0.88% |
| Oct 11, 2021 | 0.62 | 0.65 | 4.84% | 401 698 | 0.643 | 0.00% | 1 776.50 | 0.90% |
Q3 brought also bad results from Point-Rousse but mamangement tried hard to insuflate some hope that the issues are now behind us, announcing a production record for 2022. Market was not impressed at all as credibility is pretty low: "We will believe it when we see it" market is saying. Then a loooong silence followed: they were working on the DFS. It was quite a boring period with lots of buying opportunities. Myself and others benefit from it, supporting the SP. And then, just before the DFS publishing, we saw Jonathan Fitzgerald dumping shares on the market to finance some cheap options. They were expiring, justifying the move, but unfortunately the timing was just not good as this fueled the tax loss selling, bringing the SP back as low as 50 cents! Once again, we thought that the DFS publishing, which was another important milestone, would end this downfall but alas, it was not enough to fight it. The only interview Kevin did on Adelaide was a failure with nobody online when the market needed to be stunt. The SP closed the year 1 cent above its opening while gold closed about $80-$100 below from its opening.
| Date | Open | Close | Yield | Volume ** | VWAP*** | VAWP Var. | WAGP**** | WAGP Var. |
| Dec 6, 2021 | 0.70 | 0.61 | -12.86% | 1 007 420 | 0.643 | -10.20% | 1 779.90 | -0.35% |
| Dec 13, 2021 | 0.63 | 0.55 | -9.84% | 1 672 892 | 0.579 | -9.95% | 1 787.40 | 0.42% |
| Dec 20, 2021 | 0.58 | 0.63 | 14.55% | 587 398 | 0.599 | 3.45% | 1 797.00 | 0.54% |
| Dec 27, 2021 | 0.63 | 0.63 | 0.00% | 230 746 | 0.624 | 4.17% | 1 800.00 | 0.17% |
All in all, 2021 was a consolidating year for ANX and gold. We can certainly be disappointed about how everything paned out, getting only 1 cent with all the good milestones we accomplished, but we are now 1 year closer to production for Goldboro and operational issues at Argyle are supposed to be over. Anew RE for Point-Rousse says that Stog'er Tight will be the next mine with its 60K ounces in the M+I category.
Below are the good and the bad for 2021 and how I assess amangement about them.
Good
- Everything that came out of Goldboro: RE, PEA and DFS: A+
- Results from Stog'er Tight: B+
- Presence in webinars at the beginning of the year promoting the new RE: B+
- Flow-Through Financing: A
- Managing the cheap warrants/options: B
Bad
- Argyle mess: D
- DFS Promotion: E
I give a global note of C+, considering that dealing with all the pressure coming from the cheap warrants and options, plus the insider selling to finance them, was a big momentum killer. The failure about the DFS promotion was the big downer for me.
2022 Outlook
Promising events will be reached in 2022. 2021 did not see Gold reach back $2000, but a lot of TA gurus think that we will have a new record for gold this year. If that happens, management has a second chance to promote and hopefully, they will improve their approach in that regard. They will not have an other chance IMO. I will no longer accept the "it's a soft market" excuse and the "from 3 to 5 years from now" liners. It's supposed to be "2 to 4 years" now and we will no longer be in a soft market. And even if we still are, it's not an excuse as we should be at $200M market cap right now, not $110M. It's up to management to find ways to shine bright over the other companies and attract people to joinn the train. They need to get some fighters used to battle in the streets.
People and shorters that sold during the tax loss period will need to buy back so we could see some pressure being released on the SP in a couple of weeks. Also, some events are/could be expected:
- "Good" Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 results from Argyle (with a record year)
- Drilling results from Tilt Cove
- Exploration Around Dolliver Mountain
- Announcement of a financial partnership?
- M&A activities (us buying out or being bought out)?
Reaching back a buck should be easy, hoping that the new shareholders that came in at around 60-70 cents are here for the long haul. Cheap warrants and options are behind us. If this is being promoted as it should, the BEAST will no longer be a hidden gem. If operations from Argyle are on track, I cannot see any bad news on what we can manage ourselves. If there are bad news, they will come from the macro side (Covid, Gold, Stock Market) but for now, I'm pretty confident on that side too as the gold sector has been put aside for too long and we should get back some supporters in 2022 with the inflation and all.
2022 should be a good year gold and ANX and a pop could happen. We will open the year with a pretty damn good buying opportunity and it will last until we reach the fair price of $1.50. Hopefully, Kevin et Rob will play their cards well and we can beat this target ans see the $2 which will bring us around the $400M market cap.
GLTA
Legend for the stats tables:
| ** Volume on the TSX only |
| *** Volume Weighted Average Price |
| **** Weekly Averaged Gold Price in $US |