RE:fall / maybeNo worries, I was initially pretty positive on the NICO mine, however have soured considerably after reading some of the documentation. I recommend reading the MD&A from the previous quarter, it does not give a huge amount of confidence on the direction and strategy of the company.
In particular they appear to have almost 15 million in secured debt coming due in the next 1-3 years. How are they going to make that payment?
Also they spent some time studying expanding the mining and concentrating operation in the NWT, but abandoned further study. They probably understand that operating the mine will be very expensive and that if you can mine the deposit more quickly you save a huge amount of fixed operating costs.
In my opinion they have spent a lot of money developing a small sampling operation at the NICO site and related Underground portal. Most of this infrastructure won't be useful when/if the deposit is developed (too small scale). I think they should have bulk sampled using a RC drill and sent the material off-site for testing purposes. They seem to have employed a sample camp strategy used by BHP at the Ekati mine, but the big difference is BHP is a giant miner with vast resources (which don't bankrupt the company if things don't pan out).
I'm not sure I see a way forward without a big drill program win. There is no way they get construction funding without a major partner to provide some cash and de-risk the investment (from the lender's perspective)
It would have been nice to have given a major player 80% of the deposit in exchange for developing and operating the mine. If you assume 20 million in net profit per year (based on a 20% share), each share would pay a dividend of amost 5 cts/year. Over 15 years you would receive 75 cents / share. The nice thing about that is Fortune becomes just a dividend company with just minimal management oversite to distribute dividend and produce the financial reports.