RE:What are these guys doing? .12 cents? Pathetic In the absence of anything from the company, we are left guessing and my guess is that Kobada is on continued care and maintenance until the mess with the Malian military junta is cleared up.
We received a very positive, upbeat and well received Shareholders Year-End Letter from AGG near the end of December, then as (no) luck would have it, the military junta went off the rails literally a week or so later, indicating that their promise of a free and fair election in February (i.e. now) was going to be delayed for 5 years, which sent ECOWAS and the EU (especially France) ballistic, resulting in hard lockdown sanctions being imposed on Mali by ECOWAS and economic sanctions being imposed on Mali recently by the EU.
This one feels different than others past, with the military junta cozying up to Russian mercenaries and the war of words with France, France’s Ambassador to Mali being expelled last week, etc.
But it’s probably all political posturing. There are no doubt negotiations going on in the background between the military junta and ECOWAS., as to when exactly free and fair elections will ultimately be held (probably years) , and the Malians by nature are gentle, passive and peace loving people (as opposed to, say, the Guineans and Congolese, who by contrast are more aggressive and spirited).
All to say my guess is the that Annual Shareholder Letter gets tucked away in a drawer for now or forms a part of Callow’s bio book he’s writing about his life, and it’s care and maintenance for now, - AGG is fully cashed up (which PP was not a share "sale” (there was no salesmanship required at 14 cents a unit), rather it was an order-taking exercise with the institutional investors who took it down at that valuation (and we’ll need to watch those animal spirited folks carefully), but a very fortunate order-taking exercise in hindsight, as AGG has some runway to live another day.
Hindsight is 20/20 and with Callow (who is very talented, but comes with some blindspots) now very close to 3 years at the helm of AGG, that 2016 mining plan (which Callow takes almost every opportunity in interviews to denigrate – thereby violating a cardinal rule of never, ever if it can be avoided, cr-pping in one’s own nest – it adds nothing and can be harmful) with a capex of $50MM USD is looking mighty sweet – it was certainly not the aircraft carrier Callow designed, envisioned himself piloting and obviously left ounces in the ground, but it would have gotten AGG into profitable production on a Robex size scale, and when you look at the amount of capital AGG has raised over the last 6 years, a small Australian designed (and the Australians “get” Kobada’s geology, just look at where the institutional shareholders are coming from) modular gravity, plant would have been built with profitable production and probably allowed the aircraft carrier Callow designed to ultimately be built for the upside ounces in Gosso, Kobada Est, etc that Callow now trumpets as existing, but for those who have taken the time to study Kobada over an extended period, already knew existed years before Callow was even a glimmer in the eye of AGG.