It’s an interesting point Brumple. Sometimes there are too many negative emotions or associations with a company name, where a rebranding of a totally new name, or a buyout by a totally different company to move the assets forward is the better option.

For example, look at how much Rubicon became despised, and then they rebooted the company as Battle North, and new investors didn’t really associate the project with the Rubicon name, it excelled once again, and was eventually taken over for a nice premium.

More recently, look at the fall from from grace with Pure Gold, where it went from market darling as an exploration company and development company, but then failed miserably after going into production and belly flopping into the pool. Now the projects and assets were taken over by a far more competent team with West Red Lake Gold and they’ll have a much better odds of better defining the resources and moving things back towards production over the next 2 years and getting the appropriate rerating.

Same thing with Alexco, where after it shut down production in 2013, and retooled in the company over a few years, it then did phenomenally well as an explorer and developer. However, they also failed moving back into production and had a very similar unwinding like Pure Gold, until Hecla swooped in and took them over to put them out of their misery. Now that Keno Hill mine and processing center is going back into production this year and Hecla will run it correctly, infusing the initial capital needed to get escape velocity and it should be a solid contributing asset for HL.

I think the best analogy though, since Wallbridge has not tried to go into production yet, is something like Gold Standard Ventures. At one point back in 2016 – early 2017, GSV was a darling of the gold exploration space, building out a fantastic deposit in Nevada in great jurisdiction. Then Gold Standard Venture fell from early 2017 all the way until it was taken under back in mid 2022 by Eldorado Gold. At the end, existing shareholders were pissed at the value destruction, but it needed to be put out of it’s misery and have a stronger operator take it over to give it the capital and experience needed to move it forward. On that one I timed things out well getting positioned just a month or two before Eldorado took it over, scalping that takeover premium for a win, but most longer-term shareholders were obliterated, as it had fallen from the $3.70s down to the $0.50s, before the bleeding was stopped.

So….maybe some other company does need to come in and take Wallbridge over and out of their misery at this point, but of course, that will anger most of the longer-term shareholders. I’ve been in an out of Wallbridge at different periods coming in during the takeover of Balmoral. Balmoral struggled bad, and had the permitted mill, and even though they optioned out Fenelon to Wallbridge, WM had become the stronger company at one point, and then consolidated all the Balmoral land package and assets, and initially I though the new pro-forma Wallbridge would be the company that really tied everything together. Then WM spun out the nickel projects into Archer with the Inventa Capital team, and those assets have gone nowhere for either company.

However, Wallbridge does still have a very impressive defined deposit and insanely prospective land package, so I have to believe Agnico Eagle sees it as a potential boon to their Detour Lake operations from when Kirkland Lake acquired Detour Gold, and now all of that has been rolled up into Agnico Eagle. Wallbridge would be a significant add-on to their existing operations.

The only thing is, most investors (me included) were not in Wallbridge to see it get rolled up into a major, as it will lose any of the upside torque in a rerating scenario. Personally, I’d prefer to see another explorer/developer group take it over, the name would be then be changed, and then let the assets shine and the shareprice get rerated higher for 1-2 years, and THEN Agnico Eagle could come in and acquire it. However, if AEM was smart, they’d grab it now while it is down for the count, and at an truly ridiculous valuation. Again, I do hope that doesn’t happen yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

At least they’ve started changing out the internal mgmt team and board, and appear to have the intention to reboot the company now. What concerns me is if they roll back the shares, and then the stock keeps correcting, as the dilution will destroy any shareholders that have been in it for a fair bit of time. If they don’t get things dialed in soon then unfortunately Wallbridge is going to end up being another “Rubicon” “Pure Gold” “Alexco” “Gold Standard Ventures” type of story.

That’s an interesting point DT. Cory & I were actually discussing that with Erik Wetterling before our call the other day, about what their path forward could potentially be. While we normally see a 10:1 split for a consolidation in the sector it may not be enough in this case. 100+ million shares would actually be just fine for company with 4.5 million ounces of gold and so many other exploration targets on their land package and the mill. However, even the reverse split share price would not be high enough to attract most institutional money, so they may have to take it down to 50 million shares.

So… yeah, maybe it would take a 20:1 split to get the share price up high enough in WM to get more investors interested in taking a punt on the rebooted company. Also I agree with Brumple’s point above that maybe an associated name change would help, or just another company taking it out at this point. Most of the damage has already been done now unfortunately.

I got out of Wallbridge at one point a year or two back for a tax loss, then got back in and am down another 40%, so I’d welcome an escape hatch at this point, but do worry about the potential of a reverse split, followed by even more dilution and selling that would compound the issue. At this point, I’m considering selling for another loss, but was trying to see what may happen with Tony Makuch at the helm, and with Brian Penny now in as CEO. I didn’t want to exit right as they finally get the ship turned around, but I’m also worried the ship has taken on so much water, it may be a sinking ship as an investment. It’s only a tiny position for me personally, but has been an interesting saga to follow for a long time now from Balmoral, to Wallbridge, to now Wallbridge 2.0 (?).