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Tom, well said. Now how long do you think we should wait? Seems like that's all we've been doing. September 1st?
I hear you but I do think they are endeavoring to "turn over a new leaf" in this regard and become more communicative. This time, they even PR'd their application for the DOE grant, and had it as a pinned tweet for a while too. They used the word "comprehensive" update. Let's hope it's just that, and something that can shed some real light on the business and move the SP.
We’ll find out about the DOE grant, and more, soon enough. “Management will provide a comprehensive update of the Company's halloysite clay business in the coming weeks.”
Perfect, presumably this means the deal has closed. At which point they said they'd give a "comprehensive business update".
I don’t get it. When announcing the iron oxide sale, they said that the sale will "help it avoid highly dilutive financings in the future". I guess that the fact that the deal hasn’t closed yet means they need to keep on issuing to keep the lights on. And of course as part of the deal, there is going to be another 20M shares (restricted) going to the buyer.
It seems to be flying…. er, slithering… under the radar. No one writing about it in Seeking Alpha or anywheres
As part of the iron oxide sale, we are issuing to the buyer ("BMI") 20M restricted shares. Needless to say, they will be plenty motivated to ramp up the PPS. As part of the agreement, BMI "will contribute, at no cost to AMI, business development personnel to assist the Company in expanding its halloysite business." BMI stated that this "provides BMI, as a significant shareholder of AMI, a new opportunity to help the Company take its key halloysite clay business to the next level."
Also interesting is that "AMI will provide a comprehensive business update after it closes on the sale of the Iron Oxide Assets."
Tom, that does seem to be good news. For the prospects of the company, that is. What I still don't get is what would motivate them to care about us legacy shareholders? The only thing I can think of is that Musick and others presumably own a lot of the shares themselves. Other than that, though, wouldn't it be in their own best monetary interests to just disregard us legacies and move on with their IPO like any other startup would?
Totally agree. And it's encouraging that our CEO, who let's face it has always been pretty conservative about giving any kind of forward-looking statements, now feels like he can make statements like this: "The sale of the Iron Oxide Assets is a significant step for the Company as it provides us with the capital needed to continue the pursuit of high-value revenue opportunities that exist for our halloysite clay products."
OK that's good to know. And perhaps that explains the additional 10M shares that just hit the market. Which would mean there's another 10M left to go. At least it's restricted.
That is a great find. I'm sure they'll press release it, seeing that they did when they put in the application back in April. I see that only 7 of the 120 are STTRs, like ours. The rest are SBIRs. STTRs require the prospect of patents and partnering with a university or other research institution that does at least 30% of the R&D.... in our case, we're partnering with both BYU and the federal government's famous Argonne National Labs, which conducted the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s that produced the first nuclear bombs. Pretty highfalutin.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs are highly competitive programs that encourage domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) with the potential for commercialization.
STTR differs from SBIR in three important aspects:
The small business awardee and its partnering institution are required to establish an intellectual property agreement detailing the allocation of intellectual property rights and rights to carry out follow-on research, development or commercialization activities.
STTR requires that the small business perform at least 40% of the R&D and a single partnering research institution perform at least 30% of the R&D.
The STTR program allows the Principal Investigator to be primarily employed by the partnering research institution.
One great thing is that the sale will "help it avoid highly dilutive financings in the future". I'm looking forward to taking a break from posting about those dilutions here every few weeks or so.
Interesting. Perhaps the most significant development lately is this, which they just threw out there, without a word of comment. Having a hard time figuring it out. As someone said in reply, is this good or bad? Would be great to get ourselves out from under this debt, but at what cost?
— Applied Minerals Inc. (@appliedminerals) June 2, 2022
Still more dilution: Another 13M shares just hit the market, bringing the total from 285 to 298. With the authorized at 700M, we can expect plenty more dilution to come. Bummer for all of us.
Tom, thanks for your insights as always. A number of things I hadn't considered. Much appreciated!
Rymada, where are you getting the July 11th date? Can you give a link to where to find the Argonne articles?
Nice to see them starting to make forward-looking statements, that they were always so reluctant to do before: "The high-value market for environmentally friendly coatings for metal products is large and presents a very attractive opportunity for AMI's DRAGONITE halloysite clay products. Management is pursuing additional prospects within this market segment."
For the previous order, for halloysite: "The market size for chemical foaming agents for polymers is significant and presents a very attractive growth opportunity for AMI's DRAGONITE product."
There's also this potential $1,150,000, which I take it we're still waiting to hear on:
Applied Minerals Submits Application for U.S. DOE STTR Phase II Award for Halloysite-Derived Silicon Project https://t.co/g9HSg6KW3P
— Applied Minerals Inc. (@appliedminerals) April 20, 2022
Tom, I've been reading your posts with great interest and appreciate your insights. But one thing I'm not clear on is, if they go ahead with the IPO, where would that leave us legacy shareholders? To raise money, isn't it typical for public companies like VB to simply issue more shares? I know dilution is never ideal, but how would an IPO ever be necessary unless the plan was to not relist?
I hate to sound like a broken record but there've now been another 8 million shares issued, bringing the total float to 286 million.
Meanwhile more dilution, another 9 million shares, bringing the total float up to 277 million. 700 million are authorized. Look, I'm long on this stock but I gotta say, I'm thinking of bailing out, at a huge loss.
Tom, thanks so much for your insights here. The thing that made my heart sink is when you point out that they've authorized 500,000,000 shares, meaning they can, as you put it, dilute us into oblivion. I've had the misfortune of investing in another one that did that exact thing, and continues to: Propanc Biopharma (PPCB). Dilute, reverse split, dilute some more, reverse split again, rinse & repeat.
Brace yourselves for the price dropping even lower than the half a penny it's at now. And soon a reverse split?
Speak of the devil, another 7 million shares have just been issued, bringing the float to 269 million.
Hmmm, I would think that there are still lots of those new shares that still need to be dumped, seeing that since March, the company has issued at least 44 million shares, including 10 million a few weeks ago, and that the daily trading volume has been so light.
PS 2,000 shares was the final number yesterday. At .0063 per share, that's a whopping $12.60 that was traded!
Up 13% today, but on only 2,000 volume so far. I believe on Friday our volume was 0. Yep a big fat zero. Just shows how much it hurts us when they dilute by tens of millions of shares, as they've done this year. Impossible to dig out of that hole without any substantial news.
Good going Tom. Thanks for the updates. Very interested to see what you find out. I had never thought about the criminal aspect of all this, but of course you're right, fraud is a crime, especially at this scale.
Another 10 million shares have just been issued, bringing the float to 262 million. We can presume they will keep on doing this. There's no way the market for this lightly traded stock can absorb these kinds of influxes without continuing to sink.
I agree, 5/1 it is. So let's say Monday. Considering that we've been delisted for a year and a half now, together with management's complete lack of responsiveness and the fact that they didn't even file for Q4, I think this date is more than reasonable. Tom, I like your game plan: contacting Schwab, state and Federal authorities, and VB’s business partners. At the same time, I will consult with my lawyer friend, who tells me that a class action would be the way to go. He thinks it would be very straightforward, pretty much a slam dunk given the egregiousness of the conduct. We would sue both the company and its principals. Yes, the lawyers get a hefty contingency fee in these kinds of action, but, seeing that there's a good likelihood that punitive damages would be assessed here (on top of being compensated for our shares), our recovery should still be pretty substantial, even after the fees.
The application is in. https://www.accesswire.com/viewarticle.aspx?id=698163
Good point about the IR firm. Perhaps something’s in the offing that we don’t know about yet. Surely they’re not being paid to simply put up tweets?
“In March 2022 the Company entered into a consulting agreement with a firm that provide investor relations services. As part of the agreement the Company issued 10,000,000 restricted shares of common stock under to the firm.
“In March 2022 the Company entered into a settlement with a contract-mining provider to settle a liability of $200,000. The contract-mining provider mined iron for the Company during part of 2021. As part of the settlement, the Company agreed to pay the contract-mining provider (i) $10,000 per month over ten (10) consecutive months beginning April 2022 and (ii) a grant of 4,444,444 restricted shares of common stock.
“In March 2022 the Company issued 20,164,153 shares of common stock upon the conversion of 75,000 shares of Series B Preferred Stock issued in August 2021.”
So, in March alone, we issued a combined 34 million shares? That’s more than the trading volume for the entire month. No way we’re ever going to get any traction if this keeps up.
"In March 2022 the Company entered into a consulting agreement with a firm that provide investor relations services. As part of the agreement the Company issued 10,000,000 restricted shares of common stock under to the firm."
That's a lot of shares, currently worth about $135K. I wonder what the restriction terms are? As you pointed out, that would obviously be an incentive for them to do their job well.
I see that the outstanding share count has increased by another 4 million, to 252 million. That would have raised only another $50K. Anyone have any insights on this? Are they continuing to dilute because they're hard up for cash? You'd think they'd want to let the share price run for a while, on the strength of their ramped up news releases and tweets.
Certification? A walk in the park. We need to show:
(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable;
(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class;
(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and
(4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.
There are other requirements (https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_23) but securities class actions like this are routinely certified.
OK good thinking, sounds like a plan. And keep in mind that all shareholders can bring suit in a single action, called a class action. All shareholders are automatically members of the class, unless you opt out of it (because you want to bring your own action for some reason, an unlikely scenario for the typical shareholder). This makes it unnecessary for each of us to have to hire lawyers, etc. A single law firm would represent all of us, in a single action. From my feelers on this, it would be easy to find a lawyer willing to represent us on a contingency fee basis in this kind of action, given the egregiousness of the conduct and the high likelihood that punitive damages would be assessed.
Penny Dip, can you tell me where you see the additional 18 million shares? Thanks in advance.
Tom, what's your feeling about how long we should wait before pursuing litigation? I was thinking April 30th. I've spoken to a lawyer friend of mine and the action is a pretty simple one to bring, seeing how cut and dried it is. And we know who the defendants are, obviously. As far as I understand it, we can bring the action in any state where any of us lives.
Appreciate this Tom, as always. Meanwhile I've found some cases that are directly on point for us, if we do choose to go down that route. Like I said, it would be a slam dunk for something as egregious as this, and the principals themselves would be on the hook here, for both compensatory and punitive damages. I'm happy to hold off for now, but, yes, we need this thing resolved soon. Thanks again for your updates and your thoughts on all this.