RE: Ititholder649 -> Would you care to answer?Holy smokes; with all due respect, you must be wearing one very rosey set of glasses if that's the best response you could come up with to TT's criticism. Without speculating as to any posters motives (quite pointless on here, no?) most of what trashy has said is spot on the mark, imho....I made many similar criticism's on here a year or so ago...there are only a handfull of posters on here over the years and some may remember that...
To dislcose my motives for this post: I have none other than having a Friday afternoon plans rained out and being bored enough to post here again...I bought a small position in this company oh...must have been seven years ago now...traded it lightly (((remember the glory days when it traded between 70 cents and 1.30???))...made a modest gain and let the rest ride all these years...sold what I had left several weeks ago, which arguably should have been done long ago, but as I said it was purely speculative money remaining invested and not much of it....anyway...
James Gogan, formerly of Empire (he's now retired): don't know him really, although through aquantainceship with a family member I did enjoy his hospitality at dinner and a few overnight stays at his lovely home several years back. Is he a smart and sucessful businessman...no doubt...but, with all due respect to him, he headed Empire Group...the vast majority of its undertaking being a 70% stake in Sobey's...Empire is also in theatres, insurance, commercial real estate, etc...but to my knowledge, has never been involved in an industrial mineral market segment...
It is common place for NS companies to seek high profile local board members and there are not many in NS with as high a profile as Mr. Gogan....but what relevance does his long career at Empire/Sobey's have to BBS and industrial mineral exploration, development or distribution???....especially in its infancy stages...and a VP of Pepsi???...hmm...maybe the plan was to sell whatever they got out of the ground down there in 5 pound bags next to the soda and potato chips at your local grocery store....besides, big name Board members without significant ownership positions do drive small companies to success....their front line managers do...
What were they doing during the housing boom???...building the plant you say??...well ok, but did you not forget to mention they were also bungling the permitting process causing dleays and additional costs, rotating management or failing to fill key positions at all; changing the purported focus and value of the business from Kaolin to swimming pool fill, etc. crap they're doing now and finding out to their apparent surprise in the first subsequent reporting period that they faced severe transportation cost issues and couldnt sell anything....gee, no kidding....you'd think that such costs might have been business cased before pursuing that strategy...
Could this company make it big someday...sure...perhaps so...but if you factor in the share depreciation from any entry point over the last number of years and the opportunity cost of holding it for any significant period to date....its got one heluva long way to go before it makes any long term shareholders any real money...and you can bet their positions will get diluted in the interim just to keep the thing alive...the other prospect talked about on here months ago (i.e. taking the company private conspiracy theory) is also possible...but if you are a proverbial "bagholder"...me thinks you will be after that happens too unless you're in on that deal
Best of luck to those of you who have obviously felt more pain from this stock than I...hopefully it doesn't cost you more than you could afford to lose.
I will agree with you on the Sleeman's though....cheers.