5 Aug 2013material agreement● Neutral
Started funding the Blue Tap water-disposal deal before it was signed, lending up to C$300,000 through a convertible debenture in two instalments while the definitive agreement was still being negotiated.
Announcements, explained
Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
12 July 2013material agreement● Neutral
Hired consultant Alexander Koretsky at $8,333 a month, payable in cash or in shares already registered for immediate resale - roughly $100,000 a year of advisory cost that the company could settle without spending any money.
9 July 2013capital raising announcement▼ Bad
Settled a land bill in stock: unable to pay the C$100,000 due on the Valleyview permits in January, the company had turned C$80,000 of it into a note, and the vendor Golden Virtue Resources now converted the balance into 954,461 shares at 8.25 cents. Two years after selling stock at $5.25, the company was issuing it at a sixtieth of that price to cover a routine option payment.
14 June 2013material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Agreed to buy at least 51% of Blue Tap Resources for a $450,000 investment in its mothballed waste-water disposal site at Morinville, Alberta - 17 freehold leases with two gas wells and a disposal well - starting with a $300,000 bridge loan to restart the facility. This is where the company stopped being a lithium explorer and became an oilfield water-disposal business.
29 Mar 2013material agreement● Neutral
Put its finance chief on a contract too: Bryan Kleinlein, chief financial officer since May 2012, was re-engaged through his firm International Compass for six months at $12,000 a month, again payable in stock if cash was short. Both of the company's senior officers were now paid on terms that assumed there might be no cash.
25 Feb 2013material agreement▼ BadMajor
Signed a third convertible lender within a fortnight, JDF Capital, for a secured note of $672,000 face against $600,000 cash, of which only $150,000 was funded up front, plus 3.6 million warrants at $0.185. Three lenders in nine months, each advancing money in small tranches - the profile of a borrower nobody wanted much exposure to.
15 Feb 2013material agreement▼ BadMajor
Brought in a second convertible lender, JMJ Financial, for a note of up to $1.1 million face against $1 million of cash - but only $100,000 was actually advanced at closing, the rest drawable only if both sides agreed. Warrants came at $0.185, another step down from the $0.20 Hagen had just been repriced to.
29 Oct 2012capital raising announcement● NeutralMajor
Chief executive Alexander Walsh exchanged 20 million of his common shares for 20 million new Series A preferred shares that convert back one-for-one after a year and carry no other rights. Nothing changed economically for him, but 20 million shares came off the common count at exactly the moment a lender was converting debt into stock at a floating discount.
10 Oct 2012material agreement▲ GoodMajor
Replaced the whole tangle of Glottech agreements with a licence and sales agency contract straight from the Irish patent owner, GD Glottech International, paid for with 2 million shares. It made the company exclusive Canadian sales agent for the ultrasound machines in non-petrochemical mining, and put the Glottech-USA litigation risk behind it.
18 Sept 2012material agreement▼ BadMajor
Repriced both convertible debentures in favour of the lender, named here for the first time as Hagen Investments: the warrants and the conversion floor were cut from $0.45 to $0.20, with the 65%-of-the-twenty-day-low discount left in place. Less than four months after closing, the company was already renegotiating downward.
17 Sept 2012listing compliance notice▼ Bad
Lithium Exploration Group, Inc. withdrew a registration statement, abandoning the offering it covered.
5 Sept 2012material agreement▼ BadMajor
Paid $150,000 to contract directly with GD Glottech-International in Ireland, the owner of the ultrasound patents, because its counterparty Glottech-USA was facing litigation and might not be able to honour the licence. The company's central asset turned out to rest on a chain of agreements it did not control.
2 Aug 2012auditor change● Neutral
Changed auditors for the third time since 2009, though benignly this time: Child, Van Wagoner & Bradshaw stopped auditing public companies and its successor firm Anderson Bradshaw took over the same work.
18 May 2012capital raising announcement▼ BadMajor
Closed the $1.5 million debenture on worse terms than announced: the warrant price was cut from $0.69 to $0.45 and, critically, conversion became the lower of $0.45 or 65% of the lowest share price in the previous twenty trading days. That floating discount means the cheaper the stock gets the more shares the lender receives - the mechanism that drove the relentless dilution of the following four years.
3 Apr 2012material agreement▼ BadMajor
Agreed a second convertible debenture, $1.68 million face for $1.5 million cash after a $180,000 upfront discount, interest-free but convertible at $0.45 a share with 3.3 million warrants attached. The conversion price had almost halved from the $0.83 of nine months earlier - each round of funding was being priced off a lower share price than the last.
24 Jan 2012material agreement termination▼ BadMajor
Dropped the Salta brine option in Argentina barely a year after signing it, blaming the geology, the cost of the option payments and political unrest, and said it would concentrate on the Valleyview permits in Alberta. Two of the company's three original projects - British Columbia and now Argentina - were gone inside eighteen months.
13 Jan 2012material agreement● Neutral
Locked in insider pay: a two-year employment deal for chief executive Alexander Walsh at $120,000 a year, explicitly payable in stock whenever cash was short, plus 150,000 shares a year each to directors Brandon Colker and Jonathan Jazwinski as consultants. The cash-or-stock clause tells you what management already expected of the balance sheet.
21 Nov 2011material agreement● NeutralMajor
Deepened the Glottech relationship into an exclusive licence for the Swan Hills area of Alberta plus non-exclusive distribution rights across Canada, in return for royalties on any revenue. Note the quiet change of purpose: the machine is now described as treating lithium-bearing brine produced by oil and gas wells, the beginning of the company's drift from lithium mining into oilfield water services.
13 July 2011asset acquisition disposition▲ GoodMajor
Filed the full disclosure package declaring itself no longer a shell company, on the strength of the Valleyview lithium permits in Alberta, the Salta brine option in Argentina and the Glottech ultrasound licence. On paper the transformation from the propertyless Mariposa of 2009 was complete, though none of the three assets had yet produced anything.
13 July 2011capital raising announcement● Neutral
The second half of the June convertible debenture arrived: $500,000 on the same 12% terms, convertible at $0.83, with a further 602,410 warrants at $0.913.
1 July 2011capital raising announcement▼ BadMajor
Switched from selling shares to borrowing: a single investor agreed to buy $1.5 million of convertible debentures at 12% interest, with the first $1 million funded, convertible into stock at $0.83 a share plus warrants at $0.913. The company had sold shares at $5.25 six weeks earlier, so the lender was effectively promised stock at a sixth of that price - the first link in a chain of convertible notes that ran for the rest of the company's life.
29 June 2011capital raising announcement▼ Bad
Paid an investor-relations provider with 300,000 shares rather than cash - the start of a long habit of settling bills in stock.
20 May 2011capital raising announcement▼ Bad
Closed out the British Columbia claims for good: the Beeston option was terminated in March 2011 and Beeston's claims against the company - unpaid maintenance fees and the loss of four of the eight claims - were settled for C$54,624 and 200,000 shares. The 2009 project ended with the company having done no exploration and having lost half the ground.
19 May 2011material agreement● Neutral
Chief executive Alexander Walsh pledged 10 million of his own restricted shares to the company through August 2011 as collateral to help it strike financing deals - a sign the company had little else lenders would accept.
12 May 2011capital raising announcement▲ Good
Raised $1 million from a single offshore investor at $5.25 a share - more than five times the $1.00 it charged four months earlier, and the peak valuation of the company's life.
12 May 2011capital raising announcement▼ BadMajor
Issued 2 million shares to sole officer and director Alexander Walsh for services, plus 450,000 each to incoming directors Jonathan Jazwinski and Brandon Colker vesting over three years. At the $5.25 the company had just sold stock for, Walsh's block alone was worth about ten times all the cash raised to date.
4 May 2011material agreement● NeutralMajor
Agreed to buy and license a first unit of Glottech-USA's patented ultrasound water-treatment machine for the Alberta lithium project, for US$800,000 paid in stages, with Canadian exclusivity promised if five units were bought within a year. This equipment deal, not the lithium ground, became the company's main story for the next five years.
2 Feb 2011capital raising announcement▲ Good
Raised $250,000 by selling 250,000 shares at $1.00 each to two offshore investors - the first money in under the new lithium story, and the highest share price the company would ever sell stock at.
What it means for a shareholder
250,000 new shares at $1.00 to raise about $250,000. Shares on issue before the raise aren't in the record, so the dilution can't be worked out.
Create a free account to see this worked out for your own holding.
1 Feb 2011material agreement● NeutralMajor
Added a second lithium address weeks after the first: an option from Salta Water to earn up to 100% of the Salta Agua brine claims in Argentina, with 60% earned through staged cash payments and share issues over five years. A second early-stage option, still with no exploration completed on the first.
10 Jan 2011asset acquisition disposition▲ GoodMajor
The pivot that gave the company its name: took over, by assignment from Lithium Exploration VIII, an option on 100% of five lithium-prospective permits covering about 46,000 hectares in Alberta, in exchange for $500,000 of staged payments through to January 2014 plus royalties to First Lithium and the original vendor. British Columbia gold claims out, Alberta lithium in.