Lesson Learned I no longer have San Gold Stock. I sold out right after the last Annual Meeting when I found out that Mr. Pirney had not purchased stock and would not commit to doing so. Some of the new Directors also did not own any stock.
The real problem with San Gold is management decided to use the shareholders as an ATM machine (share dilution) to finance the purchase of more places to dig holes. They did this several times, with a resulting fall in SP.
They took their eye off the ball of meeting or exceeding production forecasts. They missed several times, down went the stock.
Even the largest gold miners are are shutting down capex projects to concentrate on production, because the money is just not there for financing. Time after time, miners that purchase other projects that will only produce sometime in the future, have seen their SP fall.
San Gold is probably worth more than today's SP, but it could languish until someone comes along with the financing to finish digging more holes and bring the reserves into production.
Here is the lesson learned. DO NOT INVEST IN A JUNIOR MINER IF THE SENIOR MANAGEMENT DOES NOT OWN SIGNIFICANT STOCK IN THE COMPANY.
Many years ago, I was told never to invest in a Canadian junior minor. The industry veteren told me that they are in only in the business to be in business. The management and board members always make money, anf the CEO usually has a golden parachute. Even if Mr. Pirney decided to depart, he will do just fine. Mr. Wynn will lose a great deal of money on his stock, but he will also do just fine, he made millions from the royalties paid by San Gold to his holding company. The real losers are those that hung on to the stock, waiting for a large company to take them out at a huge premium.
I do have empathy for Mr. Ginn who did have a large number of SG shares as well as all the investors who saw San Gold as a local company, doing well, and held on as the stock fell. They should have looked at this investment as they did any other, the management did.
God luck to you all.
P.S. I remember when this board had some real good debate about San Gold. It has been reduced to bad grammer, blaming everyone else but the management for the decline of the company.