Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The End of An Era

The company won't be the same without Peggy around, but in spite of the turnaround in the company's fortunes in the past 7 months, that is a good thing.  There is no question in my mind that she was shown the door and that has to be a very bitter pill for Peggy.  This was her last good chance to realize her dream of presiding over a mid-tier gold company, but her history of failure that created a bad relationship with Bay Street was too much to overcome. I think the final straw was the apparent disinterest shown by the analysts and institutions after the Lamaque tours and the need for change was likely communicated to Keith Hulley by those same analysts before they would invest.  Certainly the CTO for missing the filing deadline was unforgivable, especially when it also happened last year.  The BOD probably finally realized that as long as PK was at the helm, the share price was going to be discounted, and when you are looking to grow by acquisition by using your shares as currency, that is unacceptable. 

Usually when a company issues a news release announcing the resignation of the President and CEO effective immediately, the share price takes a hit, but the market reacted positively to the news.  And if you're a shareholder, the share price is all that matters.  That's why we invest.

Personally PK has done very well.  She extracted a payment in the order of $1 million for herself and $800k for McNutt to be retained when Finsky and Scola made their investment.  She and Ross really benefited from the share price decline to 1.5 cents when they scooped up 11 million shares from a NY PP investor at 1.5 cents.  It was her mismanagement that caused a former financial backer, Wega Mining, to vindictively sell their shares and drive the price down to the single digits.  Ironically that allow PK and Ross to acquire the 11 million shares at a bargain basement price.

I had been advocating her removal for a couple of years and I and others wrote to the BOD a long time ago asking for a change.  That was in the days when PK controlled the BOD and they did nothing.  We had a blog poll over 2 years ago and 70% voted for her removal.  Yet now that she is gone, I have mixed feelings about it.  Production wrote a very good post the other day that highlighted recent accomplishments in spite of long odds.  She definitely has some very valuable talents and could have been a very good asset when evaluating and negotiating potential acquisitions.

I suspect that PK was the recipient of a good chunk of those 1.4 million options that were granted today as well in return for her leaving on good terms and being available for 12 months.
Here is today's trading summary:

10 comments:

chillby said...

Everyone has a theory, and nearly none of us will likely ever know the truth. I prefer to think that she did what she set out to do, and might not mind actually going and spending time with her kids. Life handed me the job of "Mr. Mom" years before it became fashionable. It was by far the best experience of my life. Our childrens' lives turn into adult lives so fast, and we miss them because we are so busy chasing dollars.
I don't really give a squid what Bay St. thinks about PK. I've lived through enough craziness in my life to know a veteran of the "School of Hard Knocks" when I see one- and the lady came out, not just clean, but left us something of great value. It was her hard-nosedness that kept Century alive, brought this mine back into production, put this great team together, and provided all of us with an avenue to increase our wealth. Try to think of a kind thought for people whose stories you only know one side of. All the gold in the world can't buy perspective.

Wingfong said...

Chillby

Can't say it much better. You have my vote

chillby said...

Wingfong,

Sieh sieh nii. ANd I know that isn't spelled right...

Wingfong said...

Chillby,
I do get u. If I may they are
Xie Xie Ni

chillby said...

Thanks, mate!

Wingfong said...

Chillby

You are welcome

Anonymous said...

Lost hundreds of hours (Stockhouse) and thousands of dollars (>50k) going back 4+ years as I'm sure thousands of other investors have.

Listened to many CC's and with a very strong eng. background there was at times a real sense of disconnect from reality.

I do not care about Bay St either but as the original poster put it ..sh $ (we need funds etc to sustain sh $!!!)
..sh $

Pepito said...

Yes, your right Chillby, we have assets with great value and production increasing. I was annoyed with the CTO, as I had just made my first buy not too long before, but in the big scheme of things it won't matter a lot.
I think it is interesting what it says about Finsky and Scola though, they seem to be quite hard headed, which should be a good thing for us shareholders.

Wingfong said...

Pepito
If indeed PK was asked to submit her resignation, then the only commercial power that could carry this out was F&S. Agreed they were decisive and indeed hard headed.I can accept that what went tro their minds was the share price performance.This should bode well for the co. Believe the coming CEO will be market friendly, capable and have the right temperament. If institutional investors really come in as a result, the share price should be well supported. There should be no doubt about that

chillby said...

Anonymous-

I feel your pain, though mine wasn't a gift from CMM. If Bay Street had more engineers, they'd be more grounded in reality themselves. Those guys will be with us always, grounded in corruption and ripping retail stockholders off.
It is things like this blog and the increasing difficulty of hiding skullduggery from the internet that give us some means of maybe finally bringing some balance into the marketplace.