Bruce, I'd like to apologize to you for my posts and re-tract my wager offer.
I spent yesterday afternoon and this morning at the Naxos' plant in Death Valley Junction. Management expects the stock to trade on this coming Monday. They are also anticipating the release of news quite soon. They have somehow convinced the NASD to allow trading of the companies stock on the BB. Some big hitter is going to bank-roll the trading and use an established market maker to register the trades. I would expect this unnamed person probably went to management and bought a bunch of stock at a good price. The company believes the stock price will hold up well. Re-starts have not traditionally done well, but this one could certainly be the exception. I would expect the spreads would be VERY large until trading has calmed down. There will undoubtedly be a lot of sellers on the open but there may be a lot of buyers as well. I'll be watching this with great interest, tho my holdings are small.
The assembled group had 2 company PR people, one fund manager, one money manager, one broker, one analyst and 2 other stock holders with large positions in the stock. Gregory John gave the group an indoctrination talk on how the new system works and then fielded questions. There was a long discussion on water usage, rights, pollution discussion, upcoming trading in the stock etc.
The group then went to a large building that contains the laboratory and an adjoining room with lab - type equipt. We saw a leaching operation of two pounds of their dirt with an alkaline solution being drawn thru the dirt and a filter medium, by vacuum. Next we observed the new plating system in operation in a glass tank of about 15 gallons, and several smaller glass beakers. We witnessed a gold colored plating going onto titanium plates hanging in a yellowish liquid. Next, we saw heated beakers of acids stripping the plating off of other titanium plates. One of the workers had a small vial with a gold colored prill that had come from this new system. He told us that he had tested the prill with different chemicals until he had ascertained that it could be only gold. We then saw an atomic absorption machine in operation.
We also got a look at the larger production sized equiptment for leaching etc. in the same building. This company has a great deal of money tied up in heavy earth moving equiptment, dump trucks, graders etc. Absolutely no reason to think that they are perpetrating a scam on stock holders. Scamsters spend the money on themselves -- not employees and equipment.
My impression of the plating situation: Impossible to quantify at this time. They have been experimenting with it for about 3 weeks or less. Their deposition rates appear to be very slow at this time. They plan to turn the research over to some chemists or plating people before long. I have some electro-chemistry in my back ground and can assure you it's more art than science. I believe that these people are working hard to solve their problems and that counts big with me. They are not quitters. Would I buy or sell the stock at present??? I would watch the trading patterns for clues as to what to do over the next week.
C L |
