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Anaconda Must Watch Video on June 20Bob Moriarty On March 19th Anaconda announced an offer to buy all of the shares of Maritime Resources at a 44% premium. For a myriad of reasons it’s a brilliant offer and a great deal for Maritime Resources investors. Anaconda has a one-hour video scheduled for June 20th and if you are either a Maritime Resources shareholder or an Anaconda shareholder, you want to make the time to view it. I happen to be familiar with Richmont Mines that owned both the Hammerdown deposit and the Nugget Pond Mill. I knew them back in 2001. Richmont operated the Nugget Pond mill until 2004 with ore from Hammerdown with an average mill head grade of 15.83 g/t gold. They showed an impressive 97.1% recovery through the mill. In a masterpiece of bad timing Richmont shut down the mill just before gold began to rocket higher in 2004. Richmont moved on to other projects and sold the Nugget Pond mill to Crew Gold who operated the mill until 2009 when they sold the facility to Rambler Resources for $3.5 million. Maritime completed the purchase of what they call the Green Bay Gold property in early 2012 from Commander Resources. It includes both Hammerdown and another smaller project they call Orion. Since 2012 they have operated in a mode that I call “Hobby Mining.” They raise some money, spend it, issue more shares, raise some money, spend it, issue more shares. While without a doubt the Hammerdown/Orion deposits are economic, it seems to have escaped management that to make money mining gold, you not only need a mine with economic ore, you need a mill. Rambler owns the former Richmont mill and is processing their own ore. If Maritime wants to use that mill at Nugget Pond, Rambler has them by the proverbial short and curlies. I glanced through the latest Maritime financial report and a couple of things popped out. (1) They don’t have much money on hand (2) they seem to be spending about $1.4 million a year on people including a remarkable $165,147 just for one quarter for investor relations and promotion. How on earth does a tiny company spend that kind of money on promotion and have so little to show for it? You can hire all the hookers in Toronto at PDAC for half that and (3) in the past twelve months they have increased the shares outstanding by 45%. At that rate it won’t take long to blow out your share structure. Maritime put out a self-serving and misleading response to the Anaconda offer on March 31st. Interestingly enough they even referred to a piece I wrote about Anaconda in December. They said, “On December 19, 2017 Anaconda “sponsored” an opinion piece on www.321gold.com.” Alas, no one sponsors pieces on 321gold. I make it clear that when someone signs up for advertising via banners, they are not buying promotion. I also make it clear that I am always looking for red meat to deliver to my readers. I happen to love Anaconda and all the progress they have made. If Maritime believes the price of Anaconda is temporary in nature, they should find someone who can read a stock chart. I brought needed attention to the shares, the price doubled and has corrected since the short December/January bounce just like every other resource stock has. If Maritime thinks they can figure out the value of what share prices should be, they might want to take a look at their own share price. It took Maritime over four months to close the financing announced in December. No one was rushing to belly up to the bar until Anaconda made their offer. The share price of the company is going up now in anticipation of a successful bid from Anaconda after a year of being about as exciting to watch as paint drying. The Maritime response to Anaconda is about one thing and only one thing. That is management keeping their overpaid jobs. They have done nothing for six years except add ounces to a resource that needs mining, not counting. If they think some white knight is going to come in and bail out their foolishness, I can assure them it isn’t going to happen. Yes, the Anaconda offer is opportunistic but this is supposed to be the mining business, not a hobby. If you can buy cheap assets from companies who don’t have a clue as to how to advance them, you have an obligation to your shareholders to do so. This is so simple that I can’t believe Maritime investors won’t get it. They are far better off with Anaconda shares with professional management than with a couple of guys only concerned with keeping their paychecks flowing until the shareholders wake up. Anaconda is an advertiser but has not sponsored this article, indeed they don’t even know I have it in progress. I have bought Anaconda shares in the open market. The merger between Maritime and Anaconda makes a ton of sense for investors in both companies. Do your own due diligence and do watch the video on the 20th. If you have sense and want dollars you will favor the takeover. Anaconda Mining ### Bob Moriarty 321gold Ltd |
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