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Morocco Gold RevisitedBob Moriarty I wrote a piece about Maya Gold last December with the price of the stock at $.47. It was a positive piece and I participated in a private placement at $.40. With all of the other MYA shareholders I watched in horror as management simply avoided saying anything for a six month period as the stock plummeted to a new low of $.18. The carnage was entirely self-inflicted. For most of the last ten years there was a long list of mutual funds and hedge funds prepared to step up to the plate for every private placement offered by anyone controlling any sheep pasture anywhere in the world. A lot of companies and projects with absolutely no potential got funded. For years you could do no wrong in investing in resource stocks, they only went one direction. Up. Those days ended in 2008 as every stock that could be sold did get sold. Since then it's been a far harsher world and some management teams are only now getting the word. Maya management simply dropped the ball for most of the last year and they cost their shareholders millions of dollars. I visited Morocco and saw Maya Gold again just a few days ago. The first thing I did was make it 100% clear that poor management inflicted all of the damage to shareholders over the last 8 months. I used the word furious because I was and am. They announced a 7500-meter drill program last October. They released the results of two holes in November and then went totally silent. What did they think was going to happen to the shares with no news? I was a buyer of Maya at $.18 but I'm still pretty mad about the communication. They have a historical resource (non 43-101) of about 366,000 ounces of surface gold in what they call the T-Zone but are focused on development of what they call the AZ-Zone. The AZ-Zone is a series of narrow but very high-grade gold veins. I've spent several days on the project and I know there is a lot of gold there. The last six months was a disaster from a communication and technical point of view. They were drilling for home run targets and their local drillers just weren't up to the task. MYA came up with a new drilling contractor but when the results didn't meet expectations on the bulk tonnage target, they simply went silent. And the shareholders got sheared. The company has made a major management change that I think is going to be very good for them. On Jun 17th they announced the appointment of Mr. Noureddine Mokaddem to the board. I had lunch with him in December and met with him again a few days ago. He's easily the best mining guy in Morocco. He is already moving the company aggressively forward with the intention of doing small-scale mining on the high-grade veins they have so far identified. That's a brilliant move on their part and he is very good. It is a measure of how far they have to go that they have yet to post the last six press releases on their website. I really like the company and I own a fair number of shares but their communication sucks and needs a lot of work right now. The company has an option on 70% of the Amizmiz gold-silver property in Morocco for $3.8 million in exploration over four years and payments of $1.25 million in cash and shares. Maya Gold is a lottery ticket. Even with the latest PP that we are taking part in, they will have less that 35 million shares outstanding for a market cap of well less than $10 million. They have the gold, it's high-grade and easily minable but they need to focus on communication right now. It's near criminal for communications to fall to the level of the last six months. Maya is an advertiser. I participated in a PP in December, I've bought shares in the open market and I'm participating in the latest PP. Their latest addition to the management team is brilliant but communication needs to improve soon. We are biased and you are responsible for your own due diligence.
Maya Gold & Silver ### Bob Moriarty 321gold Ltd |
