Just to add to my earlier comments on Turaco (TCG) - my only current West African gold exposure - much of my investment thesis is based on the man who runs this company and his prior track record of getting deposits developed into operating mines (Okvau in Cambodia and Bagoé in Côte d’Ivoire), albeit with both being acquired by other companies during the mine development process (Emerald Resources bought Renaissance Minerals to get Okvau and Perseus bought Exore Resources to get Bagoé which now forms part of PRU's Sissingué Complex in northern Côte d’Ivoire on the Mali border). As well as management's track record, I also like the project's location (south eastern corner of Côte d’Ivoire alongside two hydro power stations) and the sheer scale of the gold discovered across the project (over 4 million ounces so far).

But this note is about Management and how I go about researching that. Firstly, Commsec describe TCG's CEO and MD Justin Tremain like this:

Mr Tremain is an experienced Company Director with experience across the mineral resources sector. He was previously the Managing Director of Exore Resources Ltd which was acquired by Perseus Mining Ltd via a Scheme of Arrangement during September 2020. Prior to Exore, Mr Tremain founded Renaissance Minerals Ltd (Renaissance) in June 2010 and served as its Managing Director until its takeover by Emerald Resources NL in November 2016. During that time, Mr Tremain oversaw Renaissance's growth as first mover into the frontier jurisdiction of Cambodia and defined an economic plus 1 million ounce JORC gold resource and completion of a feasibility study. Mr Tremain held the position of Executive Director at Emerald Resources NL until his role with Exore. Prior to founding Renaissance Minerals Ltd, he had over 10 years' investment banking experience in the natural resources sector.

Next, I used ChatGPT to answer a couple of questions, firstly about what projects he's been in charge of and whether those projects went on to become operating mines, or are currently being mined.

Second question/task for ChatGPT was to list all of the companies that Justin Tremain has founded and/or been in charge of or held senior positions at, such as being a CEO, company director or Chairman:

Next I search through the ones where I feel he has some serious input into their direction and execution, particularly where he was the company's founder and/or managed the company as CEO or MD.

That has mostly aligned with the ChatGPT results of my first question (shown above) except that I did find that Exore's Bagoé gold project that was bought by PRU (Perseus) was never developed into a standalone mine, but was instead used as ore feed for PRU's Sissingué Gold Mill, so Bagoé is now part of PRU's Sissingué Complex in northern Côte d’Ivoire, something that ChatGPT did not find. That is PRU's most risky asset from a location perspective because it's right on the border with Mali, however that's not Justin's problem now, as he runs Turaco whose assets are all in the bottom right corner of Côte d’Ivoire, being as far away from Mali as you can get within Côte d’Ivoire.

That research also turned up Caspin Resources (CPN) where Justin Tremain was the founder and remains their Board Chairman. CPN is interesting however in their recent quarterly report, the first thing they talk about is their Bygoo Tin Project, so although Caspin do have their Weethalle Gold Project and their Mount Squires Gold/Silver Project, that tin project that is clearly one of their main priorities at this point does muddy the waters a bit for me, so I've got Caspin (CPN) down to do some more research on, but my best guess at this point is that it won't tick enough boxes for me to get added to my speccy portfolio (where I hold my TCG shares). I did note that CPN spent less than $1 million in total in the September quarter and only around $590 K of that was on drilling and evaluation, and they have less than $5m in the bank after doing at CR in late September/early October, so not the sort of expenditure I'm looking for that is likely to yield the results that I would like to see.

TCG on the other hand is a totally different proposition with heaps of cash and doing a LOT of drilling. However, this note is just to show/underline that I do tend to look into company management track records and prior performance in terms of generating good shareholder returns in prior roles as part of my research before I commit more than $7K of my investable capital into a company. Investments of $7K and less are just small positions to keep those companies on my radar and keep me focused on them, and also give me some optionality when they do more CRs if they include ordinary shareholders in those CRs rather than just doing placements (placements being the cheapest and easiest and most common capital raises with small companies but not fair to smaller shareholders). TCG is currently a $10K position for me in real life, and a larger one here because here it represents a bunch of small speculative companies that I'm invested in. Here on Strawman.com my speccy goldies are limited to TCG and GG8, with MEK being a high risk emerging producer, but while those three are all in my RL speccy portfolio, I hold another 11 goldies in my real life speccy portfolio (14 all up, plus BLG which is not a mining company).

In terms of my research, and why I chose to invest in these sort of companies, the research and boxes I want to tick can be split up into two buckets, being project related and company related.

So project related would include the project's location, the commodities, the grades, the scale (volume of ounces found so far in the case of gold), the amount of ground they hold, their cash position, how much they're spending per quarter on drilling and evaluation, and the ratio of that to G&A spend, etc. Surrounding infrastructure or lack of, would also fall in this bucket. So does their projected timeline to production and what point they are in that timeline, i.e. early exploration, pre-SS (scoping study), PFS, FS, FID, build-phase, commissioning and ramp-up, or steady state production. Generally, once they achieve steady state production, they are not so speculative, although still high risk if they're a single mine producer, and/or if their commodity faces some serious headwinds.

Company related stuff includes the track records of senior management, who their substantial shareholders are (smart money on the register?), insider ownership (skin in the game; shareholder alignment), the size of the company, whether I regard them as being cheap, fair value or expensive, my view of the macro outlook for the industry or specific commodities they are looking to mine in the future, etc. Company stuff also includes their cash balance relative to their monthly cash burn, their history of CRs, and whether they have achieved what they said they would do so far, i.e. can I trust the company's management?

Both are important, because good companies with bad projects are usually bad investments, and good projects owned by badly run companies can also be wealth destroying.

Both of those scenarios can turn around of course; a badly run company can have a management change or have their Board rolled and replaced, and a well run company with a bad project can always acquire a better project (and maybe sell off their bad project or farm it out to someone else), but hope isn't a good basis for investment, so I tend to deal with things as they stand now rather than basing investment decisions on possible future changes that might or might not occur.

I also do take M&A likelihood (in my view) into account - so for instance if I look at Antipa Minerals (AZY, which I do hold in my RL speccy PF) and the land that they hold, I don't see much chance of Antipa NOT being taken over by Greatland (GGP) - i.e. it is unlikely in my view that Antipa's tenements don't end up as part of GGP at some point in the future (see below image for why):

AZY's tenements are all of the orange bits, with the yellow bits being additional tenements they've applied for, whereas Greatland's (GGP's) 100%-owned tenements are the purple bits and the light blue bits are tenements that are subject to a JV between Greatland and Rio Tinto. Greatland bought the Telfer gold mine and mill in December (2024) off Newmont after Newmont had acquired Telfer's previous owner, Newcrest, (Newmont acquired Newcrest to get Cadia in NSW mostly, not Telfer in WA which is an old mill that needed a lot of capital spent on it, so Telfer was always going to be divested by Newmont - and Greatland were in the box seat and took advantage of that) and GGP also bought Newmont's 70% share of Havieron (a large undeveloped gold project shown in the bottom right corner of that map above) at the same time, giving Greatland 100% of both Telfer and Havieron - Greatland had previously owned 30% of Havieron which is why they were in the box seat to do that deal with Newmont.

Point being that AZY (Antipa) own more land around Greatland's Telfer mine and mill and Greatland's Havieron project than Greatland do. And Antipa own tenements that are BETWEEN Telfer and Havieron, as shown above, AND Antipa have been finding good gold at their 100%-owned Minyari Dome project, about 40km north of Telfer.

Which is to say that in SOME situations, M&A is more likely than in others. I don't know if Minyari Dome is good enough to justify a new mill build, but I definitely know that Greatland (GGP), whose market cap is now over $5 Billion (with a "B") would dearly like to own the tenements that Antipa (AZY) own, so M&A is likely in AZY's future. Not guaranteed, but more likely than not, in my opinion, just based on the land that AZY control in relation to the land that Greatland control. Antipa's market cap is just under $360 million, so it's a doable acquisition for a $5B+ company like Greatland.

While avoiding losing money is important across all investing, there are many more ways to lose money in smaller more speculative companies, especially those that don't have any revenue yet, which is most of them. So while I agree that the betting on horses analogy is OK with regard to investing in speculative companies, studying the form guide is important with both, otherwise you're removing any skill and relying purely on luck, like a lottery ticket.

With speccy companies, you need skill AND luck, because you can do all the work and make the smartest decisions you can, and still watch the company blow up because of something you could not have reasonably foreseen, or because you did not attribute enough weight to an identified risk, but without the skill part - meaning research mostly - it's just becomes a dice roll, and I don't like those odds.