Couple more will make half a dozen of us, lol ... ah, we'll look back on this and smirk wide - stockcharts.com
TA says dump it ... so watch for my 3.95 offer.
'Corner Bay Kaiser's top pick in 2000
Corner Bay Minerals Inc
BAY
Shares issued 11,541,109
2001-01-03 close $1.31
Wednesday Jan 3 2001
Street Wire
KAISER SILENT AS WINNER DROPS IN SPITE OF GOOD NEWS
by Stockwatch Business Reporter
Mexico silver explorer Corner Bay Minerals ended 2000 as John Kaiser's top
performing recommendation. Corner Bay closed out 2000 at $1.44, up from 45
cents when he recommended it in December, 1998. Corner Bay's advance from
bottom-fish range, along with a partial-sell recommendation during the year,
helped Mr. Kaiser's overall portfolio improve 10 per cent by the Dec. 29, 2000,
close.
(Buy recommendations that apply to the current portfolio began with his
Bottom-Fish Guide of Dec. 11, 1998. In 1999, Mr. Kaiser ended his long-held
practice of closing out his portfolios at the end of each year and making a new set
of 100 recommendations in December for the following year. As a result,
Stockwatch's current Kaiser portfolio reflects the letter writer's changed
approach, and stocks are bought and sold on a continuing basis starting with his
December, 1998, portfolio. A glance at the current portfolio indicates he likes to
keep his portfolio near the 100-stock level. Mr. Kaiser entered 2001 with 102
stocks -- a gain of two companies since December, 1998.)
Mr. Kaiser has recommended Corner Bay each year starting in December, 1994,
at 56 cents, and then each year at various prices -- none higher than 70 cents --
until December, 1998, at 45 cents. His sole Corner Bay recommendation for the
current period -- 45 cents in December, 1998 -- was followed by a February,
2000, recommendation to sell 25 per cent at $2.60. This sale effectively reduced
his remaining average cost price to 23 cents.
A year ago, Mr. Kaiser's portfolio leader was Birch Mountain Resources Ltd.,
which was up 579 per cent at the end of 1999. This year, however, Birch
Mountain did not perform well. The stock began 2000 at $2.65 and closed the
year at 73 cents. Ironically, Mr. Kaiser played a role in Birch Mountain's poor
performance, having followed his January, 2000, hold recommendation at $2.84
by raising questions about how the company promoted its shares. That promotion
style included a lot of hints from management that its Prairie gold model -- which
theorizes concentrations of precious metals in the limestone of Northern Alberta --
was about to yield spectacular results. He called Birch Mountain's story a
"tapestry of positive innuendo by association" that never added up to a fib, but fell
well short of candid disclosure.
Within 48 hours of Mr. Kaiser's report, the Canadian Venture Exchange halted
Birch Mountain "pending clarification of disclosure." Beginning on July 19, the
company issued a series of clarifying statements ending on Sept. 27 that related to
the theory and reality of its Prairie gold model -- which hitherto was sometimes
likened to a kind of northern Carlin trend in waiting. Mr. Kaiser's stature as a
market commentator was enhanced by the affair -- even though the stock
suffered, partially as a result of his comments. He did, however, recommend his
subscribers sell 25 per cent at $1.57 in May, shortly before launching into his
Birch Mountain commentary.
A further irony of the Birch Mountain story was that Mr. Kaiser never commented
on the company's stellar price rise during 1999. When he finally did weigh in,
however, it was clear that a seasoned market writer was at work after having
considered the matter at length.
The better-performing Corner Bay appears to have made its gains without Mr.
Kaiser's assistance. Corner Bay's shares began to emerge from bottom-fishing
levels in August, 1999, when the company's Alamo Dorado silver project in
Mexico started to yield promising results.
Until December, 1998, the letter writer liked Corner Bay chiefly as a bet on
silver's potential, but beginning in March, 1999 (at 50 cents), increasingly
promising results from Alamo Dorado made Corner Bay a play on a specific
project. In August, 1999, with the shares trending up at 94 cents, Mr. Kaiser
calculated that Alamo Dorado was shaping up to be a 50-million-ounce silver
deposit with a rock value of $10 to $12 per tonne. At the same time, Deutsche
Bank Securities analyst George Albino recommended Corner Bay at $1.10 for
much the same reason -- a recommendation repeated in November at $2.63.
In between was an October, 1999, recommendation by Art Ettlinger and Doug
Leishman of Yorkton Securities at $1.77. They calculated that the Alamo Dorado
resource was equivalent to more than one million ounces of gold and had the
potential to increase in size. The pair followed that with another recommendation
in December, 1999, at $2.75. In April, 2000, Wendell Zerb of Pacific
International recommended it at $2.40, and again in July, 2000, at $2.83. Joining
Mr. Zerb with a July recommendation was Graeme Currie of Canaccord Capital
at $2.85; a month earlier, Mr. Albino recommended it, for a third time, at $2.99.
While the brokerages were placing their money on Corner Bay and helping to
focus attention on the company's promising activities, Mr. Kaiser was also busy
covering the stock and dissecting developments at Alamo Dorado for the benefit
of his subscribers. The stock peaked at $3.25 intraday in June, 2000, shortly after
results were issued. At the same time, Mr. Kaiser assured investors at $2.90 that
the results were close to expectations and, further, they eliminated the biggest risk
factor in the economics of the deposit. He added that the price of silver was not
co-operating, having slipped below $5 an ounce, where it remains.
Mr. Kaiser has not commented on Corner Bay's affairs since his June report, even
though investors and subscribers alike may be interested to know why the
company's shares have slipped from June's $3 levels to their current station in the
mid-$1 range. Mr. Kaiser was not available to comment on the latest
developments or why the stock has sagged. One possibility for Corner Bay's
wobbly shares is investor fatigue -- a phenomenon Mr. Kaiser has warned about.
Last month Corner Bay Minerals closed a public offering of 3,666,667 units at
$1.50 per unit for gross proceeds of $5.5-million. Canaccord handled the sale.
The offering follows a favourable prefeasibility report from Mintec Inc. of Tucson,
Ariz., in September that confirmed Alamo Dorado was an economic open-pit
heap-leach deposit.
The company that received more attention from Mr. Kaiser's than any other
during 2000 was Meteor Technologies Inc., whose relatively volatile share price
closed the year at $1. Its 52-week trading range is 13 cents and $3.50. Mr.
Kaiser has recommended Meteor only two times since December, 1998 -- in
June, 1999, at 15 cents, and in December, 2000, when the price slipped to 95
cents, triggering a second buy recommendation. In a Dec. 6 Bottom-Fish Tracker,
the letter writer expressed renewed confidence in this company after a Dec. 5
agreement by the 49.7-per-cent minority shareholders of subsidiary ThoughtShare
Communications to exercise their put option for 31.4 million Meteor shares.
Mr. Kaiser has been extraordinarily upbeat about Meteor since June, 1999, when
he embraced the former "Alberta-diamond-play dumpster stock" realigned as a
technology company. ThoughtShare's product is a bookmarking tool that the letter
writer says will "revolutionize the way we use the Internet," adding that it offered
"unlimited upside potential" if the ThoughtShare project evolves as expected.
ThoughtShare evolved as Mr. Kaiser covered the company's developments,
including the signing of chief executive Jim Miller, a co-founder of QLT Inc. Mr.
Kaiser maintained his enthusiasm for the project, to the point that his reports
became hugely detailed analyses on the product, its potential and why the price
moved in one direction or another. In June, 2000, his passion for ThoughtShare's
software prompted him to exclaim, "This product is going to blow the competition
away!"
That may or may not be true, but for now he has a worthy successor to his Corner
Bay winner.
(c) Copyright 2001 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com |
