It's been quite a while since I have been on Stockhouse, but I do stay in touch with a few shareholders by email, etc. I have continued to follow the company thru its many iterations (Golden Peaks, Reliance, now Resource Capital Gold) and have continued to try to stay in touch with management, regardless of which group has been running the show.
Here are a couple of informatoin points that those who follow here, might be of interest:
- it was recently suggested to me that some think the company may be preparing to file for bankruptcy:
- I have reached out to management and have been assured this is NOT the case
- there have been reports of Jack Cartmel (current CFO and Interim CEO) being on site far more often than one would expect:
- I have been able to verify that Jack is visiting on a fairly regular 6 to 8 week cycle, but not much more than that
- in asking about some of the additional theoretical visits (that did not actually occur) it appears that those who think he is there more often are mistaking him with the GM, whose visits have coincided with a couple of the visits Jack was thought to have made but didn't.
- I have recently been asked about the involvement of Octavian Capital providing IR services:
- This apparently came as a result of an inquiry being answered by someone from Octavian.
- I am told that RCG has not retained Octavian in any form of IR capacity; however, there is connectivity between RCG and Octavian as RCG's Corporate Secretary works with Octavian and may have responded to investors, but in an RCG capacity, not an Octavian capacity.
- Given the Q3 (fiscal) financials, the company is definitely under the gun financially; as a result I have enquired about the state of production.
- The fact they are still alive suggests that it has improved.
- I was told that production has definitely improved, but not to the extent they want to see or expect - I have not been given any insight as to how much improvement.
- At the end of Q2 (fiscal) the company indicated they had produced about 3,000 oz of gold, in Q3 production dropped significantly to about 700 oz for the quarter, due to a combination of factors (weather, repairs, staffing, etc).
- It has previously been suggested that they need about 1000 oz per month, with gold around the $1250-$1275 USD range, to break even; so they certainly have a ways to go from Q2 to operational profitability.
- I do not have formal confirmation this has happened yet, but based on previous projections and expressed intentions, along with reading between the lines when I speak with management, Tangier should either be ready to come online, or it may already be there.
- The addition of Tangier would certainly help keep things afloat through the summer.
- The addition of Tangier can make a fairly substantial impact, as they would be leveraging the one mill for production from 2 mines.
- I have also probed about mergers, acquisitions, etc:
- I believe there have been some discussions with potential business partners and believe that the lack of transparency and information flow may be directly related to this process, but have NO confirmation of anything concrete being in the works. I also have had no guidance to suggest that they are involved in any specific active negotiations, but wouldn't be surprised if they are.
- rumours have been around regading both Anaconda Mining (ANX) and also Atlantic Gold Corporation (AGB) and i have not been able to validate either, but when broached with management the AGB rumor was responded to in this manner "don't think that would make much sense", whereas the Anaconda rumor was validated to the extent that the rumor at least sounded rational - but still no indication it was true.
- RCG also needs to do something about the Interim CEO status and if they are looking at some form of merger or acquisition. it would be reasonable to think that the intent is for the CEO of the other company to be retained to head the resultant entity.
Even if the production and exploration side of things has not yet lived up to what was hoped for (it appears as though that is likely the case), the complete lack of updates suggests the squelch on information is very intentional, not just the avoidance of bad news. Leaving your shareholder base swaying in the winds, with only negative sentiment to reach for, will pretty much always create exactly the type of market we have been experiencing and makes very little sense unless you have reason to want the SP at these depressed levels. I don't know what the purpose of the lid on things is, but it is pretty evident it's there. Possibly a 5 cent financing, possibly another share consolidation, I'm not sure what is going to occur, but I doubt that the information flow is simply going to change without any other form of appreciable change.
I hope this helps.
Salut - Leigh McBain