Hi @icecreamguru, usually that would be because the good news is not as good as the market expected it to be. In this case they peaked at $0.25/share after releasing an announcement on June 8th titled "Ni-rich Ultramafic Prospects Coincident with EM Anomalies" that contained the line - "The Company now has a pipeline of prospective Julimar-style Ni-Cu-PGE prospects with drilling at the most advanced prospect, Newleyine, commencing 14 June 2021”. Of course they followed that up by a capital raising which they announced on June 11th: Successful $12 Million Placement to Accelerate Exploration and the share price has been falling since then.
On the same date, June 11th, they also announced that they'd issued 650,000 new MAN shares for "Investor relation services rendered paid for in ordinary shares." and also that they'd had 3,8750,000 options exercised at a price of 3c each. Their share price was 24c the previous trading day and closed at 22.5 cps on that day (11-June-2021).
At that point they had the following outstanding:
- MANAB : OPTION EXPIRING 14-JUL-2022 EX 3C 500,000
- MANAH : OPTION EXPIRING 14-JUL-2022 RESTRICTED 60,229,127
- MANAI : ORDINARY FULLY PAID RESTRICTED 15,700,727
- MANAJ : OPTION EXPIRING VARIOUS DATES EX VARIOUS PRICES 30,470,951 (3m of these expired on 14-July-2021)
- MANAD : OPTION EXPIRING 14-JUL-2022 EX 3C 125,000
- MANAL : OPTION EXPIRING 28-NOV-2022 EX 3C 19,000,000
- MANAK : OPTION EXPIRING 14-JUL-2022 EX 3C 125,000
- MANAN : PERFORMANCE RIGHTS 22,000,000
Total: 19,750,000 3c options (various expiry dates) + 60,229,127 restricted options + 15,700,727 restricted ordinary FP shares + 30,470,951 additional options with varying exercise prices and varying expiry dates + 22,000,000 Performance RIghts. As well as the Ordinary (unrestricted) fully paid (FP) shares.
That placement on the 11th meant they issued 60 million new shares at $0.20 per share, representing a 12.3% discount to the 15-day VWAP up to and including 8 June 2021, and being a placement, ordinary retail investors missed out, and were diluted. On June 22nd they announced that they had issued 5 million unlisted options to the firm that organised the placement in lieu of fees. Those options are exercisable at 30 cents each, and expire on 18-June-2024. On June 29th they announced that they'd issued another 6m options to the driller and the field geologist undertaking work on current drilling campaign. Same exercise price and expiry date as the other 5m options.
On July 14th: Sulphides Intersected at Newleyine [The SP dropped -7.14% or 1 cps from 14 cps to 13 cps]
On July 26th: Further Massive Sulphides Intersected at Newleyine [The SP dropped -12.77% or 1.2 cps from 9.4 cps to 8.2 cps, followed today (Tuesday 27-July-2021) by another -4.88% or 0.4 cps from 8.2 cps to 7.8 cps]
They are now at 7.8 cps (cents per share), so back around the same level as they were in late Jan/early Feb this year.
My take on all that is that there were some who must have believed the hype that Mandrake actually had a better than average chance of hitting something similar to Chalice Mining’s Julimar PGE-nickel-copper discovery which was the major factor in Chalice (CHN) going from $1/share to over $9/share in the past 12 months. CHN closed today at $6.80, so they've also been sold off in the past 8 weeks, as they're down around -25% from their $9.17 peak in early June. It seems the hype has been coming out of Chalice as well, and their Julimar discovery, and Mandrake were hyped up based on Nearology mostly, being only 30km from Julimar, and hitting similar metals with their drilling, but much lower quantities and also lower grades. Mandrake mention Julimar in almost every announcement they make, and it's a discovery that has been made by another company, Chalice Mining. You've got a double whammy now because the market is realising that what Mandrake have is likely nothing like Julimar, and at the same time the hype has been coming out of Julimar as well, which is why Chalice has a falling share price also.
And Nickel is actually flying right now, see here. Copper surged to a 5-week high yesterday also, see here. Platinum peaked in February and has actually come back down a fair bit from there, see here. With such early stage explorers however, the current price of these metals is really NOT relevant, as it would be years before they could possibly be producing any metal, if they ever get that far, and the price will not be the same then - it could be a lot higher or a lot lower.
There is also the factor that there currently appears to be a bit of rotation out of growth stocks and risk-on stocks back towards value and cyclical sectors, so speccy explorers are less in demand.
In summary, it's not the fact that they've got what looks to be positive drilling results that matters @ICG, it's more that (a) the market wanted more (much more!), and (b) the market is now less interested. Many "investors" have moved on and aren't looking at Mandrake any more.
They're not really investors though, they are speculators. There's nothing wrong with speculation, I do it myself occasionally with a small amount of my investable capital, in a couple of mining explorers and biotechs, but I don't call it investing, because these companies are not investment grade companies. They have no income other than via issuing shares and options and borrowing money if they want to go down that path, but even at these ultra-low interest rates, it's hard to borrow money when you don't really own anything of value - in the eyes of a bank or potential financier. So they exist from capital raising to capital raising, and the only people getting consistently paid are the directors and employees of the companies, not the shareholders. One in 30 or 40 may find something decent and get taken over by a larger player. One in a hundred might become a producer themselves one day without getting taken over along the way. But the vast majority eventually go broke. And that's why there's a hype cycle with these companies, because it's not usually about what they've got, it's about what they MIGHT have, and then reality hits and rationality returns and down the SP goes again. It's a good ride to be on when it's heading up, but can be rough when it's on the way back down again.