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Yes, it did have a few wells years ago, but those are long gone. Barnett holds a majority of hte voting shares and may still be in jail from the solicitation charge he got convited on a few years ago, plus lost most of his money in a failed real estate market.
It is possible to recover the gold at a profit with Hycroft sites?
One of the things I wondered about is how the mine never seems to be able to make a profit, no matter what is done, or why the revisions always seem to be downward. With a lot of resource companies, it is not unusual that the PV10 estimates are too high or optimistic, and when production starts the numbers are lower.
One thing that I ran across this week is a report claiming the g/ton in the mine area is less than one gram, which is terrible, even by today's standards. The typical standard I see today is that as long as there is 1 g/ton of ore the mine is a possible site. In past decades I ran across reports were the gold/ton was tens of grams and were the sites of very profitable mines; but today with all of the good mining sites 'mined out', anything at least 1g/ton is considered 'good' and minable. Of course, as gold prices go higher the better potential the mine is.
I found mention on SeekingAlpha that reference a company presentation, here:
Precious Metals Summit 2021 – Beaver Creek | September 8-11, 2021
Slide 28 shows less than one gram per ton of ore, which is 'not good'.
It seems that Hycroft should be 'mothballing' the mine and waiting for the price of gold to be higher before beginning operations, not trying to operate it at a loss like it is now.
But if these estimates are correct, it would explain how the site has all kinds of gold reserves, but never seems to be able to make a profit at mining them. The gold is not in high enough concentrations to make mining it out of the ground profitable at this price.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Surprised that CAFC 'overruled' Patent Office
That is one thing that has always bothered me about this whole process. We have a separate Patent Office, staffed by experts in various fields, plus lawyers trained in patent law and such. A person or company has an idea, the lawyers and patent office takes a look at it and everyone agrees that it is patentable and issues a patent.
Then it goes to court, and instead of trying to determine if what the defendant did does or does not infringe on the patent, they can decide 'everyone had a mistake issuing the patent' and invalidate the patent; and everyone is stuck with the results.
One thing that I have noticed from history, and this goes back to colonial times, is that a lot of times the people or company getting a patent usually earn little to nothing from it; it is only the company/person that 'does something' with the patent, whether they are the inventor or not, that profits from the subject of the patent.
I think Worlds big mistake was not 'doing something' with the patent; even something that was a poor product. It would have put them in the market place and maybe blocked everyone else out of it. It seems the inventors of the online stuff got the patent and then made the mistake of thinking companies would license the patent from them and that is how they would make their money. Instead, no one cared there was a patent and just made money off of the idea.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
WDDD looks dead unless the appeal somehow revives the patents.
While I am not surprised a court invalidated the patents, I am surprised they did it on motion in the middle of other issues in the case.
But overall, the past decade has been a disaster for patent protections. VRNG had the surprise invalidation of its patents, VHC also.
Without the patents the only thing WDDD has left are the shares in MeriMed, and that does not cover the liabilities outstanding.
I expect as time goes on, the company will stop reporting and go 'no bid'.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Are we winning yet?
I hate to say this, but patent protections seem to run in cycles and the early 2010s seem to have been the height of one cycle.
We are now coming up on a decade of 'going nowhere' plus a number of patent plays have fallen by the wayside over the years.
Louis J. Desy
The existing common is expected to not be totally wiped out
With all he strangness going on, the existing common is expected to recover some value. My problem is most of this 'expected value' is the long dated warrants with a term of 30 years. I think this is the longest dated options I have even seen.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Current valuation as of a few weeks ago was around $7.53/share
The thinking is the existing shares are worth around $7.50 or so; with the existing shares being exchanged for the following when the reorg is completed:
$1 stock (3% of new shares)
$1.53 cash
$5 in warrants (large parts of the value of the warrants is the 30 year term for them.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
The warrants, meaning the present value of them
What I mean is the warrants are being assigned a present value of $5, and most of that is because they are 30 year warrants.
Normally, I would agree with something like the Black-Sholes valuation formula but here it seems either it will be apparent within something like 10 or even 5 years if the company is going to be ok, or if the warrants will end up worthless; i.e. waiting the additional 20 years will do nothing since the company and stock will just 'wander'.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Wonder about reorg value
It looks like most of the reorg value for the existing common shares is the new warrants, like on the order of $5 per share. I think the warrants have a term of something unusual long, like 30 years and do wonder if the typical methods of valuing warrants really should be used.
The expectation is the longer the term the better chance a company has reaching the exercise price, but I would expect if a company is not showing promise within 5 or 10 years it probably is never going to get there; so giving that extra time value in assessing the present value of the warrants might have people assigning too high a value to them.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Keeping the shell alive.
The company has already gone through 3 or 4 iterations of where they do the same thing over and over and over again:
1: Get the rights to a new product or service.
2: Issue controlling convertibles and/or preferred series to insiders.
3: Hype it to the retail market.
4: Dump as many common shares as possible onto the retail muppets and only stop when the stock goes no bid at $0.0001. (The stock stop trading because no one wants to buy anymore even at $0.0001.)
5: After several months, do some financial engineering to get the stock to trade again, usually a massive reverse split which wipes out all the muppets.
6: Go back to step one and repeat.
The best part, for the insiders, is that no matter how many times they do this, people keep falling for the same routine.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
QE infinity!
Quant Easing can NEVER be over. If the Fed ever stops buying bonds and all, interest rates will go up and the value of their portfolio will drop and they will be insolvent.
BUT
The Fed can digitally print all the money it needs to keep things going!
(And will)
Louis J. Desy Jr.
DISCLOSURE: I own GOLD shares and call options.
A win? Tell that to the people diluted a 1,000 to 1.
Good Gaming is drifting back to $0.0001 and no bid, for either the 4th or 5th time in its corporate life. I don't think anyone holding on through the 1:1000 will think they are winning.
It even came out within the past few years that one of the pumpers was an ID associated with someone associated with the company.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Finally paid out liquidating dividend
They finally paid out a liquidating dividend of $152. After all this time it looks like the company finally did the right thing and paid out to shareholders.
Vulcan International Corporation Liquidation Proceeds
Even at the end, the company was still doing strange, messed up stuff.
Normal companies would use a transfer agent to handle the payouts from a liquidation but for some strange reason the company decided to do it on its own. This opened up the possibility that they would make mistakes on the payments and such.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
'Tiny' float? What about the 1:1000 split some time ago
Sure, the float is 'tiny' because they did a 1:1000 split a few years ago, wiping out smaller shareholder or reverse splitting them down to almost nothing.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Float of about 1.6 million shares
As I recall from when I use to follow the stock more; MAHI had outstanding 1.6 million shares with about 30% held by insiders, the Dotts.
I do not think that number has changed in decades and goes back to the late 1980s and maybe even earlier.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Trustee final report was posted in 2017
If I am reading the docket correctly, it looks like the Trustee final report was posted in 2017 and the trustee part over. It looks like the only things going on now are still some administrative items, which I normally would have expected would have ended around the same time as the final trustee report for a Chap 7.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
140% open short interest has to be naked shorting
With the open short interest over 100%, it has to be naked shorting and it has to be hedge funds and/or firms doing it. It can't be retail shorting it over 100%. When retail, like you and I, go to short a stock, we can't do it unless there is somewhere to borrow the shares from. By definition, with the open short interest over 100% there should be no where that there would be shares available to borrow to do the short trade with; so any shorting going on currently has to be a naked short.
Anyone short the stock should simply close out the trade and see about re establishing the trade later when the stock is not so messed up.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Looks like it finished in 2017?
It looks like the case ended in 2017.
One thing that is not clear, is why didn't the shares stop trading at that time. In a Chap 11 case, the shares stop trading, sometimes in the middle of the day, once the reorg plan is confirmed and the time to appeal has passed.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
BB Liquidating Inc. (10-14997)
Initial liquidating dividend paid
I heard an initial liquidating dividend of about $152 was paid out, and there is an expected residual of about $8 to be paid at some point.
There was also word over at odd ball stocks that for some reason the company was paying the payments on their own instead of going through a transfer agent, like anyone else in the world would do.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
New financing was announced,
so people think the company is 'saved'.
Of course, it does not matter since the old debt holders are taking over.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
No symbol change?
Does anyone know why the symbol is still HTZ and not changed to a five character one ending in a Q?
Louis J. Desy Jr.
I am here, just bought in today
I found this stock through a stock screener yesterday. I was surprised at the low P/E ratio. While last year's earnings look mostly helped by a currency conversion, this years look like they are the base without any adjustments.
I estimated the P/E is less than 4, and it is selling for below book.
I am not sure why since I have seen a number of stocks with nothing but some mining rights and their assets are all expenditures on exploration going up by like x5 or even x10 this year; while this company with earnings and cash seems to be going no where.
I was surprised to find it with a stock screener since with the run up in gold and silver every time you start to look through the list you find out that the earnings are not that solid and the reason the company trades so far down is because it is a money pit.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
I am here, just bought in today
I found this stock through a stock screener yesterday. I was surprised at the low P/E ratio. While last year's earnings look mostly helped by a currency conversion, this years look like they are the base without any adjustments.
I estimated the P/E is less than 4, and it is selling for below book.
I am not sure why since I have seen a number of stocks with nothing but some mining rights and their assets are all expenditures on exploration going up by like x5 or even x10 this year; while this company with earnings and cash seems to be going no where.
I was surprised to find it with a stock screener since with the run up in gold and silver every time you start to look through the list you find out that the earnings are not that solid and the reason the company trades so far down is because it is a money pit.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Real Small float? It use to be 2 million shares
Remember way back when, pre 1:1000 reverse split, when the shares had only 2 billion shares authorized, and then they did the reverse 1:1000 reverse split, making it 2 million shares? Then they started issue shares and people were like, "Yea, but they are held by insiders and won't get sold, etc, etc, etc.. Also the stock traded for around $0.10 or so?
Now there are 53 million shares, existing shareholders have been diluted down to almost nothing, and the stock trade for around $0.005; so everyone is looking at losses of 95% or more.
Next up, NO BID at $0.0001. It will be the 3rd or 4th time the insiders have done it with this company so it is just more of the same playbook.
BUT there may be one thing different this time, a shareholder derivative lawsuit. I bought some shares a while ago, so I would have standing to file a lawsuit and do full discovery; then we can see where all of the money got spent, and who said what and what kind of deals were made, and track down everything that the insiders did with shareholder money, and even go back several years and go through all of that.
The best part will be taking depositions on the officers and insiders and getting them on the record to explain what they have done over the years to successive waves of shareholders.
I know I am going to look forward to it!
Louis J. Desy Jr.
CHKAQ - value verses trading
At the end of the whole Chap 11 process, CHKAQ will go to zero; the shares will be delisted and stop trading the moment the time period ends to file an appeal on the approved reorganization plan. The various levels of debt will recover some amounts, the difference preferred shares will all probably recover nothing since the not all of the debt is going to recover 100%.
BUT until that happens, the common shares will probably have wild swings as other people, and Robinhood trades, pile into the stock and trade it like it is going to have some value in the end.
One of the things keeping the share price up is the 1:200 reverse split the company did a little while ago. Outstanding shares is not only around 9 million or so, but in the end all of these shares will be worthless when the plan is confirmed and the shares stopped trading.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Anyone here?
I bought some because I like how it is based in Canada and pays a monthly dividend.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Owning gold by Swiss National Bank
I took a look because it was one of the reason I would buy. They do have about 30 billion at current exchange rates.
Swiss National Bank gold holdings
Shows gold holding at 5.7% of holdings
One thing that I did find as an easy way to get CHF, was paypal allows one to hold other currencies in their paypal account. It is not ideal since in a hyperinflation scenario of USD the government could enact capital controls and order that US accounts holding anything else but USD be forced converted into USD. Buying through paypal is easier than going to the bank and buying CHF currency. In my area there are only few currencies on hand at the local banks, Euros, CAD, CHF and maybe British pounds, but I can understand since I do not thing that is much demand for the actual currency since not many people travel to those areas from my area.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Anyone here?
I was looking for a way to get exposure to CHF in case of (when?) there is hyperinflation of the USD. I do hold some CAD but do not like that the Canada government debt to GDP ratio is around 100%. New Zealand is better at around 20% but seems to be ramping up spending. While Switzerland debt to GDP is higher than New Zealand at around 40% they are running budget surpluses, which I like.
I also like that the share price is not sky high like some over companies or exposure to Switzerland. The Swiss National Bank is trading for around $5,200 and only yields something like 0.30%, not even one percent.
One thing that does concern me is that small amount of assets under management, something like only ten million or so. Not sure if that is right or if there is some other problem.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Anyone here?
I was taking a look at this. Interesting in that a person can buy shares in a central bank but the dividend seems very low. I do wish the dividend was higher and that it paid out at least quarterly.
One thing I do like is that they hold a lot of gold.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
The Fed - No reserve requirement anymore
One thing that is only just coming out, is that the Federal Reserve reduced reserve requirements to zero effective March 26, 2020.
Federal Reserve - Reserve Requirements
Yes, probably MUDSU
I don't remember the exact details, but MUDSU was the units that got originally issued; one share of common plus one warrant. MUDS is the common share by itself, MUDSW is the warrant trading on its own.
It seems that when 'detached' the MUDS common traded around $10 or $10.50 and the warrant around $1, which makes sense if the MUDSU is trading around $11 to $11.50.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
At the moment I am not sure but will look later
The simple truth is that there are all kinds of strange things that are going on with the pricing of the common shares and warrants.
Normally, the warrants should trade for less than common shares, but here, Hycroft common usually traded for less than the warrants; no idea why.
The conversion of shares was handled some what 'strange'. Usually, at the end of one trading day a person's brokerage account would have placeholder and then the converted shares appear prior to the next trading day under the new symbol OR the pre conversion shares would be noted in the account with a 'D' in the fifth position to signify that there was some kind of change going to take place. Here the shares just changed in the middle of the trading day.
Why now? No idea. Maybe it was supposed to covert earlier and it was the broker that was slow on making the change, but I can't tell.
Right now HYMC is trading around $10.50, which is up $0.50. MUDS was issued at around $10 plus a warrant to buy more shares at $11.50, so the stock has basically gone no where even though it now has operations to start making money. MUDSW warrants even seem 'strange' in that they are limited to $18 because of a call option on them.
I am going to take more of a look later and see if I can figure anything out. I am glad that they company finally 'got something going' as long as they make it so everyone has a chance to get in on the deal at some point. I also look forward to the first quarter of somewhat normal operations so everyone can see how things on an ongoing operating basis is.
On a long term basis, the price of gold is going to go up as more and more money is spent; so as long as the company does not 'go nuts' buying other properties' it should make money. (Also, as long as they don't make bad hedges and lock themselves in a low prices for gold.)
Louis J. Desy Jr.
HYCT just changed into HYMC
I was surprised to find in the middle of the day some HYCT looks like it converted into HYMC.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Gold mining stock presentation from years ago
I forgot where, but there was industry analyst that made a presentation around 2012 or so, I think; and he showed how net of financing that gold mining stocks were an overall loser. i.e. The profits from mining gold were less than the financing made so overall investors were worse off for investing in gold mining. His point was a call for companies to stop over paying for mining rights and to start delivering real profits to investors or else there was not going to be any financing for mining.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Dilution with gold mining stocks
It seems within recent decades to be a constant problem; mining companies that simply never deliver any real profits and need constant financing to keep going. In the 1800s, people became vastly wealthly from mining rights. Today, in 2020 the best mining companies pay a dividend of like 1% and everyone else keeps issuing more and more shares and slowly proceeding towards limited production. Same thing goes in shale oil prospects; all kinds of financing until the price of oil drops and they companies all go bust.
It is rather incredible trying to figure out what or where to invest saved money that will grow and how these companies seem to keep getting more and more new financing every year to keep going.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
I do wonder about West kirkland; at least Corvus gold is producing
I do wonder what is going on at West Kirkland. We have have an unexpected run up to $1,700 per oz, and nothing going on towards getting anything into production. Meanwhile, while corvus seems to be overvalued, at least they are in production.
Both can be a hedge against hyperinflation through their gold reserves but the problem with companies like West Kirkland is that they may burn through all their funds until that happens and/or need to get reorganized and wipe out existing shareholders that have been waiting a long time. Meanwhile Corvus is producing and will be around no matter how long it takes.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Financials audited? Yes
The filing, on page F-22, does say the financials are audited by Plante & Moran, PLLC of Denver, Colorado.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
424B filing on merger - has Hycroft financial statements
SEC 424B filing - JOINT PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS FOR SPECIAL MEETING OF MUDRICK CAPITAL ACQUISITION CORPORATION AND SPECIAL MEETING OF HYCROFT MINING CORPORATION
This filing contains the balance sheet and income statement for 2018 and 2019 for Hycroft mining on pages F22 and F24.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
True - at least mining
At least corvus is mining. I have no idea what West Kirkland is waiting for.
Louis J. Desy Jr.
Price quoted - I tried to exercise at $8.40
I tried to get my broker to do the exercise for around $8.40 per warrant; but was told since the warrants were out of the money that I was not allowed to exercise one. I told them that I did not care but apparently there is some rule that you can't exercise the warrants if they are out of the money. (I assume it is related to wanting to keep the number of shareholders below 300 so as to not trigger SEC reporting requirements.)
I was trying to exercise a warrant to get a share of common stock, and then move it to the Direct Registration System. Then I would be a shareholder of record, register online with the company, they would see that I was a shareholder of record, and then be able to get a copy of the financial statements and see what the company looked like.
While that would still be helpful, at least we have some valuation as to HYCT shares of around $1.12 per share, but no details as to how that valuation is being arrived at.
I did note there are MUDS warrants (MUDSW) that have an exercise price of $11.50 per share, good for five years, but can be called if the price of the common goes about $18 per share for a number of trading days.
Louis J. Desy Jr.