Hi William,
I think Morag answered your question well regarding dilution from HDG financing and it's impact on the market. At this point there shouldn't be any impact.
However, now that we are scraping bottom, maybe it's time to be candid and lay out the cards. What's killed this stock has been 1. lack of news and 2. over supply of stock. The supply of stock came from financings completed over 18 months ago and I'll be specific: Nov.3, 1997 - 600,000 shares, Dec. 15th 1997 - 450,000 shares, Dec. 15th, 1997 - 3,213,200 shares and Jan. 1998 - 1,000,000 shares. That's a lot of stock but there was an 18 month hold period attached to it. Consequently, this stock started to become free for trading in May of this year with the majority free for trading in June. The figures are from Sedar.
Surprisingly, and despite heavy trading in June, MLSM withstood the onslaught and in fact rallied at one point. The reason again was simple - people were looking forward to an aggressive exploration and drilling program thought to be getting underway. Unfortunately, and for whatever reasons we care to speculate, the operators chose to be secretive and withhold information. After announcing that a program would commence last May, we heard nothing except for a minor news release in early July, until last week's mediocre and inconclusive results. I don't know if the operators wanted to sink the stock but they couldn't have done it better if they tried.
So now we are in the swamps with some cheap stock around. Wish I could see who's picking it up but I can't. As Morag has also posted, looks like drilling is also about to resume and the signs now point to a big campaign. They have a lot of catching up to do. My hunch is we are soon going to see some trading volume followed by drilling announcements and a return to positive market momentum.
Regards,
Bob |
