WisGuy1 wrote: @exploratory While we’re all waiting for new Novo news (e.g., Karratha mineralization report, land acquisitions, corporate deals, etc.), I thought it worthy of mention that today, May 7, is what I consider to be “ES Unchained Day”. That is, this is the day his resignation as non-executive chairman of KL becomes effective.
My sense of things is that in practical terms this allows Novo to be able to operate free of non-trivial ES concerns regarding potential future claims of breach of his duties of loyalty to KL as to Novo. These could be anticipated, for example, in relation to ES in effect being on both sides of negotiations between KL and Novo as well as to alleged loss of corporate opportunities that might be shared with – and profit -- others than KL. Implicit in all this is that I believe that certain actions, developments and plans, and thus news relating to them, have necessarily been delayed.
Underlying the above, too, is IMO what to me seemed to be a strategic shift in direction within Novo. Originally, my impression as an investor was that Novo would remain a Pilbara conglomerate gold explorer and KL would be Novo’s Pilbara conglomerate gold miner (KL’s Mukush told us all as much). Somewhere along the line, that appears to have changed, as reflected in this segment from Maurice Jackson’s 2-23-2019 streetwisereports.com interview of QH:
“What does Novo Resources want to become? People who really know us know the story. They know we want to become a gold producer. Novo has tackled a very unusual style of mineralization but we want to prove that these deposits are going to make good economic mines, and we have three very promising projects, each of which has huge potential! Beatons Creek, Karratha, as well as Egina, all have extremely good potential to be very large, and hopefully very high margin, deposits.
I think if I had one comment to say, that's the path we're going to take: "Novo would like to become an established Western Australian gold producer."”
My speculation now is that this question (who will be the miner) was among the issues underlying and driving the BM/Toronto Mafia crisis, and that it was resolved by the only one really able to resolve it, namely ES, by his decision to ride with QH and Novo as a miner, if not the miner. Such a choice makes sense to me, given that (1) QH appears critical if not essential to exploration success, and (2) creation of wealth in Novo rather than in KL looks to be of greater benefit to ES personally by a wide margin. The kicker, though, is that this ES would have to resolve the conflict of interest dilemma a bit earlier in the story than he might otherwise have liked. His resignation largely accomplishes this.
So, then, what are the implications for us as investors (at least for those of us who, like me, are long term investors in Novo)? In short, I think new news will finally be forthcoming soon after May 7. Among other things we can look forward to are the long-awaited Karratha mineralization report, info on negotiations re Native Title agreements with the Ngarluma Community, progress at Egina and BC, new prospect areas, additional staking, and ventures with other corporate entities (which may or may not include KL – none of this means Novo cannot do deals with KL when it works best for both). And it is the new news that will determine the Novo stock price, and not what has come before. No one knows how it will all go, but I sure would not want to be in a short position re Novo stock with what I expect is just over the horizon.