When rip-off junior miners pay third-party IR companies for marketing and awareness services, they don’t merely limit requirements to pumping their worthless stock to Twitter Morons. Those IR specialists there to help at “those difficult moments”, too and such is the case of Excellon Resources, with an NR on Wednesday evening that was all about breaking bad news about La Platosa. However, instead of coming clean and admitting the cruel reality, EXN and its IR bureau Adelaide Capital gave us English language of which Pulitzer winners would surely be proud.
Well, sorta. Here are some of the phrases used by EXN in its Wednesday NR:
- “…a key contributor to the local economy…”
- “We have made great progress at Platosa…”
- “…professionalizing the mining…”
- “…improving health and safety…”
- “…growing mineral resources…”
- “…aggressively drill to expand…”
- “…two years have seen an increase…”
- “We continue to explore…”
- “…refine the operation…”
- “…plans continue to evolve…”
- “…unlock value in each of our assets.”
- “…stable production at record rates…”
- “…extensive underground drilling…”
- “…successfully improved definition…”
- “…advance of mining operations and incrementally added…”
- “…significant potential for additional mineralization…”
- “…ambitious exploration plans…”
We kid you not, esteemed lector of this humble corner of cyberspace, the above is just a sample of the purple prose that EXN treated us to on Wednesday post-close. Thusly and therefore, the obvious question is begged: With so much success to report, why isn’t this company share price flying high? Hmmm… well… that may be due to the way those phrases were used to embed the only real information contained in the presser:
Over the course of 2021, cost increases impacted the operation in various areas, particularly energy (associated with increasing natural gas prices from the polar vortex of February 2021, which were subsequently sustained in part throughout 2021) and labour, the two largest cost centres. Additionally, legislative changes in Mexico further materially increased labour costs.
The Company is assessing whether maintaining a consistent production schedule beyond mid-2022 at achievable dewatering rates and with acceptable capital expenditures is possible without additional mineralization being defined in the Gap Zone or elsewhere.
And even after wading through the excess of positive adjectives and learning the cruel reality, you’ll note how it’s not the heroic EXN’s fault that things have gone so badly wrong at La Platosa. These children pretending to be adults always find something else to blame, “It wasn’t me, it was the nasty man with his nasty weather forecast and nasty polar vortex and and and that dumb stupid water and…the politicians!“. Maybe this wonderful example of junior mining NRs explains why EXN is only down 15% or so since publication, because if anyone with normal financial sense bothered to look at the fundamentals of this company that don’t stop at the crazy hot mess at Platosa, such as the objections against its Kilgore drill permit application, its lack of treasury and the trifling matter of the $21m or so it owes due to the loss and unsuccessful appeal of its Mexican court case, they’d wonder why this dog is still trading over a Loonie.
And don’t say IKN didn’t try to warn you, either. Further questions?
Clearly Platosa will be on care and maintenance very soon. I suspect plaintff who won litigation over Miguel Auza mill and mine will use the $23mm judgement against EXN to sieze the mine and mill leaving Platosa with no processing facility and this is real reason for Platosa shutdown. Will $23mm Mexican judgement cause cross default in EXN debt putting EXN into BK?
That’s a possible future. TBH the judgment number against EXN looks heavy-handed and in Mexico, litigation can be spun out indefinitely. Would the plaintiff try to seize Platosa? Yes, Miguel Auza is worth money while the mine isn’t. I highly doubt there’s much asset value there, turn off the water pumps and the thing would be worthless quickly. Perhaps above-ground scrap value (and if memory serves EXN only carries $2.4m in closure contingency).
But from any angle, Cahill should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. He crossed the point at which one maintains a “positive business outlook” and starts outright lying a long time ago.
I was surprised Cahill would critcize Mexican court calling court bad names in a press release…as an attorney he should have known better plus from personal experience i can say the courts here in Virginia are at least as bought and paid for as in Mexico so what is there to really complain about…as an attorney Cahill knows that ‘justice’ is sold to highest bidder, period. If Cahill done his due dilligence on Auza prior to purchase EXN not be in this spot.
Strong agreement.
[…] the virtues of the wondrous corprorate wordsmithery on show in our concisely entitled post “Excellon Resources (EXN.to): Clearly to be a winning success in a very big wordy impressive f…, this humble corner of cyberspace ended by noting the C$1.22 share price at that time and wondering […]