ALS.TO - Altius Minerals

[cwericb]

It is a strange situation when a new board member joins up and posts several times a day on one particular stock for two years and suddenly stops posting without any explanation.

 

Since he was so positive and defensive about ALS one must wonder if this is a case of “pump and dump”?

 

Even if he has soured on the stock one would think he might have had the courtesy to give some sort of explanation to his fellow board followers.

 

Linealdin ?

[Spekulatius]

It is a strange situation when a new board member joins up and posts several times a day on one particular stock for two years and suddenly stops posting without any explanation.

 

Since he was so positive and defensive about ALS one must wonder if this is a case of “pump and dump”?

 

Even if he has soured on the stock one would think he might have had the courtesy to give some sort of explanation to his fellow board followers.

 

Linealdin ?

 

You get what you pay for here  :o. Linealdin’s posts never looked like pump and dump to me. I don’t think he owes this board anything. Perhaps he is just taking a break, has changed his opinion on this stock or just moved on for other reasons.

[Gregmal]

Are people really giving this guy a hard time about not CONTINUING to post about this? Thank him for being useful, ignore him for being annoying, laugh at him for being dedicated; whatever. You're entitled to nothing.

 

Ive made money reading absolutely preposterous banter from people under the spell of stock promoters and Ive lost money following billionaires....everyone is responsible for themselves and their actions. Third parties are just pieces of the puzzle that makes the markets. Is he right?, or wrong? Is he trying to play me? Am I playing him? Is he misguided, or intentionally misleading? Is it useful, or are we being used? All in a days work....

[Liberty]

It is a strange situation when a new board member joins up and posts several times a day on one particular stock for two years and suddenly stops posting without any explanation.

 

Since he was so positive and defensive about ALS one must wonder if this is a case of “pump and dump”?

 

Even if he has soured on the stock one would think he might have had the courtesy to give some sort of explanation to his fellow board followers.

 

Linealdin ?

 

I don't think that's what it was.

[cwericb]

I was just trying to wind him up a bit hoping for a response. :)

 

I actually did very much appreciate his ALS news, just think his sudden disappearance seemed out of character. I don't believe he participated much in any other topic other than ALS. Best of luck to him.

 

 

[bizaro86]

I agree he doesn't owe us anything. I appreciated his updates a great deal, especially when they related to ALS portfolio companies which may not have come to my attention otherwise. I'm also a deeply curious person, and I'm intrigued by the whole situation. The pattern has nothing in common with a pump and dump, I don't think that fits.

[Liberty]

I was just trying to wind him up a bit hoping for a response. :)

 

I actually did very much appreciate his ALS news, just think his sudden disappearance seemed out of character. I don't believe he participated much in any other topic other than ALS. Best of luck to him.

 

He once said that 100% of his portfolio was in ALS (if I remember correctly), so that would both explain not participating in much else and the unusually intense attachment to the company.

[Liberty]

Update from Altius today:

 

Brian Dalton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Altius commented: “Including net sale proceeds, Altius’s PG portfolio of junior mining equities generated a strong performance totaling approximately 30%"

 

That's a good number. But that's also basically what they would've got the past year investing in the SP500, and now they've sold a bunch of stuff ("During the year the number of portfolio holdings was reduced from 27 to 18") because these aren't the types of holdings you can just hold on for a long time and watch compound, but rather you have to time in and out as cycles come and go and exploration gets lucky or unlucky. Hard game to play...

[Liberty]

I was thinking that this is one of the most range-bound stocks that I know of... It may look pretty flat over the past decade, but if you put the SP500 as your opportunity cost (which is pretty reasonable, since it's the easiest and most obvious thing to invest in for most), then it doesn't look quite as flat...

 

[Liberty]

I was just trying to wind him up a bit hoping for a response. :)

 

I actually did very much appreciate his ALS news, just think his sudden disappearance seemed out of character. I don't believe he participated much in any other topic other than ALS. Best of luck to him.

 

He once said that 100% of his portfolio was in ALS (if I remember correctly), so that would both explain not participating in much else and the unusually intense attachment to the company.

 

I guess he's really gone... Didn't even say goodbye

[SharperDingaan]

I was just trying to wind him up a bit hoping for a response. :)

 

I actually did very much appreciate his ALS news, just think his sudden disappearance seemed out of character. I don't believe he participated much in any other topic other than ALS. Best of luck to him.

 

He once said that 100% of his portfolio was in ALS (if I remember correctly), so that would both explain not participating in much else and the unusually intense attachment to the company.

 

I guess he's really gone... Didn't even say goodbye

 

Or maybe more of a case of the bad just driving out the good.

 

SD

 

[Liberty]

Or maybe more of a case of the bad just driving out the good.

 

SD

 

Yeah, asking questions on a discussion forum is baaaad.

 

How's your cup of coffee today? Good or bad? There's a 50% chance it's either one, right?

[Gamecock-YT]

Or maybe more of a case of the bad just driving out the good.

 

SD

 

Yeah, asking questions on a discussion forum is baaaad.

 

How's your cup of coffee today? Good or bad? There's a 50% chance it's either one, right?

 

Please. Did he bring some of the stuff on himself? Sure. But did you take pleasure on egging him on? I would bet so.

[Liberty]

Or maybe more of a case of the bad just driving out the good.

 

SD

 

Yeah, asking questions on a discussion forum is baaaad.

 

How's your cup of coffee today? Good or bad? There's a 50% chance it's either one, right?

 

Please. Did he bring some of the stuff on himself? Sure. But did you take pleasure on egging him on? I would bet so.

 

Who are you talking about, SD or Lin? And what egging him on? I don't know what you mean by that.

 

All I did was challenge some unchallenged claims and then discuss the answers, which is exactly what a discussion forum should be. When everybody is sitting on the same side of the boat, bad things tend to happen. It's healthy to have diverging opinions, it sharpens thinking. I'd rather that newcomers and lurkers who come to a thread get various takes and make up their minds about which makes the most sense than have everybody all singing kumbaya and saying that everything is amazing while the stock underperforms the index by 150% over a decade.

[Haasje]

There are a lot of things that underperformed this particular index over that timeframe though.

[Liberty]

There are a lot of things that underperformed this particular index over that timeframe though.

 

That's factually true. But the point of investing is to make money, no? So I'm not sure it helps to say that other things also did poorly. The index is literally the default, something you can invest is for a few 10s of bps. So you should definitely compare yourself against it, at least in part, if you're an active investor. Not over-performing it all the time is normal. Under-performing it by 150% over a decade shows that something is definitely problematic with the approach.

 

And in the case of Lin, he said that 100% of his portfolio was in this one stock, and I was trying to warn him might not be good risk control and that the stock might not be getting good enough ROIC on the whole capital base, as well as had reinvestment and terminal value challenges, to perform well going forward. I may be wrong, but it's certainly something to consider and discuss, and it wasn't much looked at in this thread.

[petec]

Under-performing it by 150% over a decade shows that something is definitely problematic with the approach.

 

 

Or that the starting valuation was very wrong.

[Liberty]

Under-performing it by 150% over a decade shows that something is definitely problematic with the approach.

 

 

Or that the starting valuation was very wrong.

 

In hindsight, obviously, it either was overpriced then, or it wasn't too badly priced if they had executed on the future value creation that was expected. Everybody was screaming how cheap it was at the time and they had compounded capital 40% CAGR since the company was created and so on. They had all these call options on potentially huge homegrown projects that had been generated at low cost, and almost no downside risk because of the huge cash pile on the balance sheet and the royalty model that capped the downside and let others spend on capex, the smartest management in the space, would create lots of value in a downturn, etc. So what happened, right? Turns out that there are benefits to the model, but it's not magic, and doesn't automatically allows them to get high ROIC on the whole capital base.

[bizaro86]

As a look back, I think while getting cheap options on things is great, the ALS price had shareholders paying significant sums for those options, especially kami. While ALS didn't pay much for that royalty position, it was certainly valued by the market.

 

I think in many ways the biggest operational mistake they made was the guys they picked to sell that rock to. If they had gone with someone less promotional/better operator Kami would probably be a mine right now, which would be huge even if they had a lower royalty.

[SharperDingaan]

Kami will eventually become a very profitable and long-lived mine, but the problem is when.  A dollar of profit 10 years from now, discounted at 20%/yr, is worth just 16c today. If you are an IRON shareholder, and expect 50% dilution through the eventual financing process; 8c in the dollar.

 

Thing is, that once construction starts; it's only around 4 years until that first dollar, and the PV of each dollar is 48c. 3x the value for just getting the mine financed, then multiples again once it starts producing. But until then - your investment is dead money.

 

Of course there are ways 'around' this, but it's not for everyone.

 

SD 

 

 

[bizaro86]

Kami will eventually become a very profitable and long-lived mine, but the problem is when.  A dollar of profit 10 years from now, discounted at 20%/yr, is worth just 16c today. If you are an IRON shareholder, and expect 50% dilution through the eventual financing process; 8c in the dollar.

 

Thing is, that once construction starts; it's only around 4 years until that first dollar, and the PV of each dollar is 48c. 3x the value for just getting the mine financed, then multiples again once it starts producing. But until then - your investment is dead money.

 

Of course there are ways 'around' this, but it's not for everyone.

 

SD

 

For sure. I just think that at the top of the last cycle the market was probably discounting a high probability of kami starting construction soon. So given that didn't happen, the price of ALS was much too high.

 

I agree Kami will eventually get built. But it is starting to look like they missed this cycle. So it could 10-20+ years...

[SharperDingaan]

Kami's development/non-development fed base-level volatility into the ALS stock price.

When the mine was 'happening' it added an additional 30-40% to ALS price volatility; that decayed as Kami's prospects changed.

 

Our own thoughts are that Kami will eventually become a feeder mine, ultimately developed by those already in the area. They best know the local risks, and as the investment in their own mines progressively pays back, the pool of potential investment capital steadily accumulates. They will also have a material voice in what happens with licence extensions.

 

We own some IRON, but it is entirely funded with house money - not our original capital.

After-tax 'opportunity cost' < 2%/yr

 

SD

 

 

[Williams406]

Anglo Pacific announcing no more thermal-coal royalty acquisitions. Another data point underscoring the impact ESG focus having on resource companies:

https://www.anglopacificgroup.com/refinement-of-portfolio-investment-strategy/

 

 

[Liberty]

Back below $10 CAD. First time since 2016.

[TwoCitiesCapital]

Back below $10 CAD. First time since 2016.

 

On that note, have been repurchasing the 25% or so that I sold in early 2019.

 

They've come a LONG way since 2016 and to get the shares for a similar price seems a little nuts.

 

Have been disappointed in the long-term performance of this thing, but swing trading the lows in 2016 and 2018 was very profitable. Hoping for similar outcomes here.