RE: RE: RE: Mengapur Project Richard,
There are only two possibilities with the PP. It is either good or bad for shareholders (in fiance terms it is either accretive or dilutive). Management has not made the case that selling shares well below book value and intrinsic value is beneficial for shareholders. They might have been able to do that with buying Mengapur if they said it is worth three to four tiems what we paid, but they can't with development. Development costs are different - there is no substantial discount beyond the time value of money. Thus we logically assume it is a bad deal. When management pursues a course of action that is detrimental to shareholders, there can only be two reasons - incompetence or intentional. Some on this board have assumed it was intentional and called it a scam. I still don't know. I lean toward incompetence. The desire to be bigger clouds there judgment over what is best on a per share basis.
That is not to say that management and the board is horrible. They have done a great job on Selinsing. Finding it and putting it into production. They clearly made some mistakes in financing it. I was never for Mengapur. We had one of the lowest cost mines in the world (Selinsing) and I don't want to dilute my ownership by selling shares at a low price for a lesser project (Mengapur). I would rather they used the money to buyback shares thus increasing my ownership in Selinsing. Even today if Mengapur is worth three or four times I would rather they sell it, get $100 to $125 million after tax and buyback shares, or if shares are near intrinsic value pay a dividend.
Mengapur was too big of a project for Monument and they should have passed on it or bought and flipped.