When I worked at BNN, I picked up the bad habit of running a Bloomberg search on Monday mornings to see what had been filed on SEDAR or press released after the close on Friday. You can learn all kinds of interesting things about companies that dump news on Friday night. Footnoted made the Friday Night Dump on EDGAR famous, but there isn’t an equivalent for SEDAR so I’ve always kept these notes myself.
I need content for this website, so I’ll stop using OneNote and put my notes here in the hopes that someone will flag someone else doing the same thing so I don’t have to. Hopefully the crowd spots a pattern or something useful that I missed.
Burgundy drops below 10%
It’s an open secret in the industry that value shop Burgundy Asset Management is bleeding assets and isn’t doing so well. They filed two Alternative Monthly Reports:
- They sold almost half their holdings (shares and debentures) in Gear Energy in the last month. That drops ownership to 7.9% of the outstanding shares
- Glacier Media issued shares to complete their takeover of GVIC. It appears Burgundy used the extra liquidity to sell 7.5 million shares. The last report filed on the stock was November 2019, but it’s unlikely they could have moved large blocks of stock without the takeover. Between the extra shares and the selling, Burgundy reduces its holdings to 7.3% of the outstanding shares.
In both cases, dropping below 10% should make liquidating the entire position much easier.
Lumber!
Windfall profits for Canwel Building materials in the first quarter. I’m convinced I missed the move in lumber so this doesn’t interest me.
Copper
Everything copper-related stays on the radar as long as we continue heading towards $5/pound.
Imperial Metals released results. This seems like the key piece of information considering where copper prices are heading, but I haven’t looked at Imperial closely so I could be dead wrong.
Operations Outlook
Newcrest provided metals production guidance (100%) for Red Chris mine, for the period July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 (period conforms to Newcrest June 30 annual year end), in the range of 55.1 to 66.1 million pounds copper and 45 to 55 thousand ounces gold.
The restart of Mount Polley and Huckleberry operations are being planned. The timeline of a restart will depend on securing financing and the completion of the Province wide vaccine distribution.
Press Release – Imperial Reports First Quarter 2021 Financial Results
If you believe in commodities, 2022 is the year of the good exploration stock: Some skilled speculators are going to make a lot of money picking drill bit winners. That’s why the Early Warning Report by Lotan Holdings interested me. David Lotan now owns 16.3% of Chibougamau Independent Mines. Lotan used to work for the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, he’s also the chairman of Aurion Resources and a board member of Chibougamau. He stepped in on Friday afternoon and was half the volume and it only cost him $26,700. Chibougamau is a winning lottery ticket if it actually turns its massive land bank into an Eastern Canadian copper camp.
Excelsior Mining also released results. I own a block of this and reserve the right to add so I’ll be keeping my thoughts to myself for now.
DAVIDsTEA moves closer creditor settlement
I scooped up a lot of shares last year for very cheap and added on dips.
Do your own due diligence, but I like the tea and I like positions where you can risk very little for a potential 7-8X return. I think the company settles with creditors without diluting shareholders. It should also start printing money without the cost of physical stores, and a popular subscription tea service (TaaS?).
As previously announced, the Plan of Arrangement to be submitted to creditors for approval on June 11, 2021 provides that DAVIDsTEA will distribute an aggregate amount of approximately CDN $18 million to its creditors and those of DAVIDsTEA (USA) Inc., the Company’s wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, in full and final settlement of all claims affected by the Plan of Arrangement.
Press Release
George Armoyan is still trying to screw you
Clarke Inc. book value per share increased to $12.21 in the first quarter. But there’s no way he’s going to pay that much to squeeze out the rest of his shareholders and take Clarke private. You’d have better luck fighting a Hamilton renoviction than squatting in CKI hoping Armoyan is going to pay you anything close to $12.21 a share. I also suspect George would be charging $50 a load.
Raising Money
Morguard Corporation buys back its shares regularly and is trading below its stated book value, so it was a surprise to see them file a base shelf prospectus. How does Morguard raise $600-million without diluting current shareholders? I doubt this goes anywhere.
(Update: Ostrich Investing rightly points out that I missed the obvious here: Morguard would use the prospectus to raise cheap debt, rather than issue equity. That raises some interesting questions about buying/building assets, repurchasing shares or refinancing)
RE Royalties is a different story:
RE Royalties Ltd. (the “Issuer”) intends to be qualified to file a short form prospectus under NI 44-101. The Issuer acknowledges that it must satisfy all applicable qualification criteria prior to filing a preliminary short form prospectus. This notice does not evidence the Issuer’s intent to file a short form prospectus, to enter into any particular financing or transaction or to become a reporting issuer in any jurisdiction. This notice will remain in effect until withdrawn by the Issuer.
RE Royalties filing to BC and Alberta Securities Commissions
Electricity generation isn’t a good business. Royalties on industrial equipment used for electricity generation is somehow an even worse business. This is going to consume retail capital and then blow up spectacularly. I’m open to having my mind changed if you think I am completely wrong.
Now it’s time for my favourite part. I’m still workshopping the title …
Front-running c*mstains giving themselves cheap options
I would never invest in either company, so I’m not going to waste time on them other than to do some cutting and pasting. Stock options to “promoters and advisors” on a five-year term is bad. Giving 10-year options to someone on the board and not having the backbone to name them in the news release is somehow worse. This is the sort of thing to track to make sure you never invest in anything any of these people put into the public markets going forward.
Santa Cruz Silver Mining:
announces that it has granted a total of 16,250,000 stock options to its directors, officers, employees, consultants and advisors. The stock options, which are subject to the terms and conditions of the Company’s stock option plan, have a five-year term, are exercisable at $0.47 per share and subject to certain vesting requirements.
Company news release
NervGen Pharma Corp:
announced that the Company has granted 800,000 incentive stock options to an Officer of the Company exercisable at a price of $1.51 per share for a period of 10 years and that vest equally every six months over a two-year period.
Company news release
