RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Abi needed Transparency.. fbedard29 wrote: But if Abcourt would like to advance at a fast pace there will be a need to finance I think it is on wait for now until a new president is named.Then it will be the first action that the new president will have to take and announce. He will have to state his view and actions that he intends to take for the future. Either he will continue in Mr Hinse step at a slow and secure paste or he will try to impress us all by announcing that he has the objectives of risking all, to possibly increasing the value of Abcourt by 300% in a year. It will all depend on his salary and options granted to him and at what duration.
Anxiously waiting for april to see the results.
Fernand
Fernand's appraisal of what a new CEO will do is seriously over-simplistic to the level of being strawman statements about what any CEO will be able to do at the helm of Abcourt. Hey, pick these two ridiculous choices as outcomes rather than confront the problems Abcourt has, and to try to improve monetization of the assets.
Firstly, it implies Hinse's slowness is secure. If by secure it means the company is still around, well, I suppose so, though there are plenty of companies that are quick at getting things done that are secure. But if "Hinse slow" means it is secure for the investor's investment, I would suggest this is not so. The forward looking statements made about Elder long in advance of its commercial production were woefully over optimistic at best. With the Royalty issue there was motivation by Hinse either consciously or unconsciously to seriously skew those forward looking statements in order to encourage investment into Abcourt, and, of course encourage buyers of the common stock to think they are getting a bargain if they just wait for commercial production to come to fruition. I would not regard this as a secure way of managing a company. Secure would be supplying forward looking statements that approximate to the subsequent outcomes. Simply delivering on promises rather than 3 year delays and no promotional fanfare at the end of it all. Outcomes which are double the production costs and 3 years late are not really secure investments but must then be evaluated in terms of what other things could have been invested in that would have produced better returns. This is especially so since investors very often have a list of companies that they have identified as investment candidates to choose from, and then they do their due diligence and make their choices. Hinse's "secure slowness" might have simply been a function of his age. A man of his age should not have been managing. By all means be on the board as a major shareholder with a life of acquired knowledge to advise with, but he could not risk that. Elder had to get to commercial production. The royalty made that the desirable outcome. So, he stayed on as CEO into his mid 90s in order that Elder happened.
Now, it is true as Fernand has suggested in the past that other companies or people could have owned the royalty. OK, so it is feasible Abcourt could have been paying out to some other person or company and it would make no difference to Abcourt's costs. BUT, when the fate of the CEO's investment is the same as the rest of us, it would encourage more realistic appraisals of Abcourt's assets and how they should be monetized. Would Elder have been Hinse's choice if he had no royalty to reward him for his choice, and that only his share value would be a winner or loser by his choices? Would he have chosen Barvue instead?
Secondly, we should be under no false pretenses about what any new CEO can achieve. We hope, but we do not know. What we can say is that the conflict of interest will be removed from CEO evaluations and decisions because the new CEO will not own a royalty in any of Abcourt's assets. He may have stock options and he may buy more shares after appointment, but what he won't have is a royalty reward burning in his mind. The fate of his rewards for managing Abcourt Mines will be in his salary and in his shares, and so will be more closely aligned to those of the rest of the shareholders than Hinse with his royalty stream. The new CEO's other motivations will then be bound up by things like career ambition. So, one should consider that any new CEO if in their late 40s to early 50s, will have an eye on getting a job in the majors and view success at Abcourt as a stepping stone to that. If an older CEO is chosen, at best we get a guy who wants to go out on a high with a decent retirement fund from his shares and options.
As to what the new CEO can do, well, has Abcourt been managed well? Has Hinse really delivered the best that can be done? Can production costs be lowered? Can promotion and exposure of Abcourt Mines be improved to encourage inward investment and improved trading volume? Can Barvue be spun off into a new company, and inward investment be secured to bring about its commercial development? Can the mill be exploited further to improve revenue? Can properties that Abcourt may not use be sold off to others, or exploited to improve Abcourt revenue? These are issues for the new CEO that have nothing to do with strawman appraisals of what we, the shareholders, will get. The new CEO will be judged on improved company performace. If he succeeds it is certain he will be well rewarded. If he fails he probably gets the sack and we try again.