WHITE MOUNTAIN TITANIUM CORP
20 story beats from 2010 to 2017
The story so far
The events that changed the company's story, in plain English, each written against everything known about the company at the time. The dot shows whether it was good, bad or neutral for shareholders.
shares on issue market cap (log scale)
201796.1m shares
- 6 Feb
WHITE MOUNTAIN TITANIUM CORP deregistered its securities, ending its obligation to file reports with the SEC.
listing compliance notice
96.1m sh
201696.1m shares · US$4.8m market cap
- 17 Nov
Formalised Sloop as interim chief executive on $6,000 a month, with clauses acknowledging that he also runs the Nexo entities the company borrows from and has assigned its desalination rights to, and requiring him to offer White Mountain any desalination opportunity first. Eleven weeks later the company deregistered its shares and stopped filing with the SEC.
director officer appointment
96.1m shUS$4.8m - 27 Sept
Andrew Sloop, Nexo's man and already chairman, took over as chief executive from Michael Kurtanjek, who had run the company since 2006, and the chief financial officer's contract was served notice purely to cut overheads. With no permit, no partner and no money, White Mountain was being reduced to a shell around a Chilean resource.
director officer appointment
96.1m shUS$8.7m - 20 June
Terminated the management contract of Kin Wong's company, backdated to February, four months after he had ceased to be chief executive -- and could only promise his $31,500 termination payment out of money it hoped to recover from a Chinese investment manager. The company was reduced to paying off its former chief executive from a receivable.
director officer appointment
96.1m shUS$9.6m - 7 Apr
Nexo took the chair within three weeks: Andrew Sloop replaced Kin Wong, Bobby Cooper resigned after a month as a director, Kevin Stulp replaced him, founding director Howard Crosby's investor-relations contract was cancelled retroactively, and the annual meeting was postponed. The founding group was being cleared out.
director officer appointment
96.1m shUS$12.5m - 22 Mar
A rescue financing entirely on the lender's terms: Nexo WMTM Holdings lent $2 million at 7%, convertible into a newly created Series A preferred priced at $0.12 -- under a third of what Kin Wong's group had paid two years earlier -- with warrants over 8,333,333 shares at $0.30, control over how the money was spent, the right to install its own chairman, the removal of the chairman's casting vote from the bylaws, and, through an affiliate, the development rights to the desalination plant Cerro Blanco cannot be built without. 19,000,100 preferred shares were authorised.
director officer appointment
96.1m shUS$8.7m
201595.7m shares · US$33.5m market cap
- 6 Aug
Closed out the Grand Agriculture second tranche -- 4,625,000 more units at $0.40 raising $1.85 million from seven investors -- and issued Kin Wong's vehicle 6,000,000 bonus warrants at $0.55 for nothing. The filing also conceded that these sales had gone unreported until they passed 5% of the share count.
capital raising announcement
95.7m shUS$33.5m
201485.8m shares · US$30.9m market cap
- 3 Oct
Cash was tight enough that management agreed to defer part of their own pay until the Cerro Blanco environmental permit came through -- Kurtanjek gave up $5,000 of his $20,000 monthly fee -- while new service agreements were signed with companies owned by chief executive Kin Wong and director Wei Lu. By this point almost every officer was paid through his own private company.
director officer appointment
85.8m shUS$30.9m - 5 Aug
Kin Wong, by now chairman and chief executive, had his own investment vehicle's commitment raised by up to a further $5 million, abstaining from the board vote. The company closed its Vancouver office, replaced chief financial officer Lan Shangguan with Eric Gan on $11,000 a month, and completed its transformation into a Chile-and-Hong-Kong operation.
director officer appointment
79.6m shUS$30.2m - 16 Apr
Million Cheer Investment took the first $2 million of the second tranche at $0.40 a unit under Kin Wong's memorandum, alongside an update on the environmental study the rest of the money was waiting on.
capital raising announcement
74.6m shUS$32.1m
201368.1m shares · US$21.8m market cap
- 9 Dec
Signed a binding memorandum with Grand Agriculture Investment, a Hong Kong company controlled by shareholder Kin Wong, for up to $10 million: $2 million at $0.35 a unit at once and $8 million at $0.40 once the Cerro Blanco environmental study was done -- plus three of seven board seats for the investor group. Control was being sold along with the stock, at half the price of the March round.
security holder rights change
68.1m shUS$21.8m - 8 July
Behre Dolbear's updated resource estimate for Cerro Blanco put 111.5 million tonnes into the measured and indicated categories at 1.73% titanium dioxide, with 68.6 million tonnes inferred at 1.37%, from just three of the nine prospects identified so far -- over 10 million tonnes more rutile than the 2008 report and a threefold increase in the confident categories. The geology was never White Mountain's problem.
resource reserve update
68.1m shUS$42.9m - 15 Mar
Raised $3.01 million at $0.70 a unit from 28 South American investors placed by a Peruvian broker -- half the price of six months before, and only 4.3 million of the 14.3 million units the offering had been launched for.
capital raising announcement
68.1m shUS$52.4m
201262.0m shares · US$97.9m market cap
- 20 Aug
The Korean consortium missed the extended deadline and never signed the loan agreement, so White Mountain terminated the letter of intent. The $60 million that would have carried Cerro Blanco to production never arrived, and the company went back to selling stock a million dollars at a time -- at steadily falling prices.
material agreement termination
62.0m shUS$97.9m - 9 July
Rescheduled the Korean consortium's three instalments into one $10 million payment due by 17 August at their request, and made the arrangement non-exclusive -- giving away the exclusivity in exchange for a delay, eight days after the first $2 million was due.
material agreement
60.9m shUS$90.2m - 29 June
Signed a letter of intent with Hyundai Welding and Korea Resources Corporation that would have sold 30% of the Chilean subsidiary for $60 million, with $10 million of it binding and payable in three instalments by the end of August. It was by some distance the most valuable proposal ever put in front of White Mountain shareholders.
material agreement
59.1m shUS$87.4m - 10 May
Raised $2.61 million from 48 investors at $1.70 a unit -- more than double the price of the December 2010 round and the highest price White Mountain ever sold stock at. Every subsequent raise was cheaper.
capital raising announcement
59.1m shUS$106m
201149.8m shares · US$52.3m market cap
- 29 Mar
Rubicon exercised its last 4,250,000 warrants at $0.50, paying $2.13 million and closing out the 2005 financing entirely -- the largest single cash receipt in White Mountain's history to that point.
capital raising announcement
49.8m shUS$52.3m - 18 Jan
Adopted a poison pill triggered at 15% ownership, letting every holder but the bidder buy stock worth twice what they paid for it. A pre-revenue explorer with one Chilean asset putting takeover defences in place suggests the board expected an approach; none ever came, and the plan outlived the company's SEC registration.
bylaws amendment
49.8m shUS$48.3m
2010
- 16 Sept
Paid 4,000,000 shares for a sublicence over Chinuka's electrolytic process for turning titanium concentrate into titanium metal, committing to spend $5 million on it over five years, pay $200,000 a year in minimum royalties from year six and be in commercial production by year ten. The conflict is stated in the filing: President Kurtanjek, Chairman Flower and director Crosby all hold interests in Chinuka, and two of them sit on the licensor's board, so the company bought technology from its own management with a single independent director negotiating for it.
material agreement