There's alot happeningLong time Laurion Long. I'd love to say that I'm a significant shareholder but, relatively, I'm not. What I own is big for me, everything I've got is in LME and every 2 weeks I add more.
That said, I was brought into LME by someone who is very much a big shareholder and have been following along in this forum for years on the sidelines. Thank you for the discussions and entertainment. Seeing people on both sides of this stock makes sense, that's a market.
There's a few things I think I know about LME that I'd like to discuss/share:
- It's worth more than 33 cents, right now. I've seen the $50 guesses and $4 guesses and you're both right, directionally. There used to be a chance that this stock was worth a few pennies. Then Cynthia and team started drilling holes in it. If you think that this would continue for 7 years if nothing significant was found you don't know who Cynthia is. Add a pinch of DRA, a dash of Mira Geosciences etc... and you've got a clear declaration that there are PROVEN minerals on the Ishkoday. ie, the floor on this stock is significantly higher than it is today. Probably $1.00 or more to the FLOOR, from here.
- Speaking of Cynthia, there couldn't be a better CEO guiding this project. Look who she's worked with/for, look at the world class partners that are ACTIVELY engaged with LME right now, look at the players each of those partners have deployed against LME (particularly Vikram from DRA) and you've got an all star team of credible, reknown scientists who know where to find metals and minerals in rocks. What you do NOT get is a team that has any real idea how to communicate with shareholders. This isn't a terminal problem, if we have to choose between an A++ operator and an A++ salesman I'll take the operator to helm LME. Objectively, there hasn't been a shareholder centric communication from LME in almost 3 years. The press releases are written for engineers and geologists (acquirors?) and the reason we don't understand them is because we don't have the 11 degrees that Cynthia has that enables her to write them. At the same time, Cynthia is appropriately frugal and would rather save her cash to turn the drills and avoid financing than hire a PR company to promote LME. Having been close to that type of buisness professionally, I think promoters are salivating over LME, she just doesn't let any of them touch her baby. Pros and Cons to that approach but it doesn't matter what view we have of it because that's consistently her strategy and she is the only voter.
- HOWEVER, don't mistake that communication vaccuum of almost 1000 days with a lack of information/progress. We know that all of these partners are on site and we know that DRA is in the mineral sorting business and we know that Vikram doesn't have any options (typically offerred as compensation to DRA partners) so everyone that has their hands on LME is doing so to be their partner. You don't do that if you're DRA for 3 months on spec, on site if you don't agree you're sitting on a gold mine, literally. I'd love to see a communication plan that tells us all that it's going to be okay with details on mineralization estimates etc.... but if you believe Roger we'll never, ever see such a thing.
- HOWEVER, the fact that all of these partners are still doing what they do here, the fact that drills have been turing for 6 years, the fact that there is a library of cores that have (presumably) been reassessed by DRA and eveyrone involved is still right there on the Ishkoday, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are MILLIONS of ounces of gold there that their special little data room has listed as PROVEN. Does that move the mythical 10,000,000 inferrred deposit up or down? Dunno, but a quick search of gold exploration projects in North America will tell you that if every square inch of currently unexplored space on the Ishkoday has nothing in it in terms of minerals, this is already a >3,000,000 ounce gold property and that would make it one of the biggest mines on the continent.
- NOW, what are the odds that the remaining unexplored parts of the Ishkoday have zero ounces of metals/minerals? Zero. Absolutely zero. EVERY hole they've drilled has logged hits. EVERY HOLE. You'll have seen LME state that many times before. Not a single piece of published evidence suggests that this property is less flush with minerals than Cynthia indicated in writing when she proposed at day 1 that this property has >10,000,000 of gold in it. I don't think that has changed a single bit, not by one ounce. If anything it's improved. This is the reason you will NEVER see a 43-101 from LME. She knows the property better than the process that creates that document ever could and I'll take Cynthia's opinion after half a century in this business over an industry document any day of the week.
- The OSC..... follow the bread crumbs. There was a quick shutdown of the website and a quick shutdown of Roger (literally sent adrift). Why would that have happened? Objectively if you read some of the stuff Roger was publishing it not only toes the line from a regulatory perspective it really did step over it. Sometimes maybe by alot. So a regulator takes a scheduled look at a small cap public company (totally normal) and doesn't like a few things it sees. Okay, so they get cleaned up. Since then there has been zero communication with shareholders of any kind and if you look at the website any mention of the thought of the idea that LME will one day be sold has been wholly removed. Seriously, read the whole site. It looks to a new prospective share buyer that they are signing up to own an open pit gold mine sometime in the next 30 years. Clearly not the case for our 70 year old CEO but you'd never know that was the exit strategy by reading the website or any currently accessible corporate communication. Don't believe me? Show me where any recent public LME communication even hints at the idea of acquisition. The last tenth of a second on a video on LinkedIn doesn't count. I had to pause that a dozen times to see it briefly. Does that make anyone think that Cynthia isn't trying to sell this company 7 days a week? It shouldn't becuase that's exactly what she's doing but the route she took post wrist slapping was to shut down communcations entirely when it comes to acquisition/disposition/transaction etc... A bit extreme maybe, but undeniably effective.
- Insiders haven't sold a share. Not one. Remember this stock lost 80% of its value from peak to trough. Not one Insider divested a nickel. Per Cynthia's tagline, this company is owned 80% by people in this category. The point here is that her confidence in that group is absolute. Why create a big shareholder communication strategy when that group has been outrageiously steadfast at all times, and she can likely text every member of that group in under a day to check in. Add to that 80% the group here that will never, ever sell a share and you're looking at 90% ownership that is long only at all times. The point? The reason the stock doesn't trade much is because there aren't alot of shares available for sale. This is basically a private placement now that is reported daily in the public market. It didn't take much to drop this stock aggressively, it sure won't take much to jump it up again.
- The idea that anyone at LME, especially Cynthia, wants to intentionally/artificially keep the price low is nonsense. Forget about the ability to get capital in a stock issue, a higher price would simply take a bunch of headaches off of Cynthia's desk from people like us and let her get on with her project. She'd love that! The only thing keeping this stock price down is that there are not enough buyers. Won't take much news to change that.
- BIGGEST CONCERN is the Board. Not a peep has been heard from this team and remember this was a team brought together intentionally to access capital markets. How are they doing? Any success? Has LME met a suitor via this team? Multiple suitors? the only news from this squad is the sale of shares by Ierfino around Christmas last year. Are they good at their work? What work are they doing? How are they being paid? This is a huge communication gap for LME in my view. The board is a mystery.
Bottom line, based on what I think I think about the PROVEN deposit, there is a valuation FLOOR on LME of $1.50 - $2.00. If Cynthia punched out today, the info in that data room will tell a buyer that they know for a FACT that they'll pull 3,000,000 ounces of gold out of the Ishkoday. Add that their thousands of kilometers of drill holes say there's gold everywhere and Cynthia's inferred 10,000,000 ounces doesn't look very inferred anymore. Add in the omnipresence of partners that are platinum in quality that deomonstrate by their attendance that this project is the real deal and the deposit on the Ishkoday REALLY stops looking inferred.
If you can find another 10,000,000 gold deposit next to a highway, next to a power grid, managed entirely by a Hall of Fame geologist and 50 kms from a processing plant I'd like to know about it, please. LME really is one of a kind and it's an insane comedy that it's a 33 cent stock. This company should trade at $1.50 right now and the only reason it doesn't is that shareholder communications is too low on the CEOs list of tasks. (keep in mind she does pretty much every job on the project herself so it's understandable, but still sucks).
There was a post ages ago by a user that suggested you contact everyone you know and tell them about LME. I couldn't agree more. One day, without warning, we'll all get a notification that the time to be able to buy shares in LME is over and depending on how committed you got before that date you'll be some type of rich. Why wouldn't you bring your besties along for that ride?