Colossus Mired in Uncertainty After Key Meetings Cancelled

Colossus Minerals (TSX:CSI), the gold junior attempting to advance its Serra Pelada project in Brazil, was plunged into more uncertainty Monday when the company announced the cancellation of two key meetings that would have decided the outcome of a recently announced financing deal. 
The proposal from gold-linked noteholders and Sandstorm Gold (TSX:SSL), revealed by Colossus on January 2nd, would have offered Colossus the ability to carry on business past December 31, “with a view to its potential sale or future recapitalization.”
The deal needed to be discussed by the noteholders and shareholders, since Colossus warned that it would mean “massive dilution” to the point where shareholders would hold a paltry 1.7 percent of total shares outstanding.
But on January 6, Colossus said in a short statement those meetings would be cancelled: “Colossus Minerals Inc. announced today that the special meeting of holders of the Company’s outstanding gold-linked notes called for January 10, 2014 has been cancelled. The special meeting of shareholders of the Company that was called for January 20, 2014 has also been cancelled.”
Reaction from the market was swift, with Colossus stock dropping 15.3 percent on the TSX on a volume of 7.3 million shares traded.
However on Tuesday, Colossus inched up half a cent, or around 9 percent, before dropping back to where it started the day, to close at $.055.
Gold Investing News did not receive a response from the company seeking clarification on the cancelled meetings, but an entry on Stockhouse, supposedly authored by Ann Wilkinson, Colossus’ VP Investor Relations (Gold Investing News cannot confirm the veracity of this statement since it did not come directly from Wilkinson) explained that the proposals received from the noteholders and Sandstorm were “… considerably different from the proposals management put to the noteholders as set forth in the noteholder circular that we posted on the home page of the website. Accordingly, there is no point in holding the January 10, 2014 meeting of noteholders if we know, based on the discussions surrounding their proposals, that noteholders are moving in a different direction.”
The apparent collapse of the financing arrangement is just the latest in a string of bad news to beset Colossus, the most serious of which occurred last summer when the company announced problems with dewatering the mine.
The dewatering issue caused delays past the original startup target of the fourth quarter of 2013, which then led to issues with financing the project to a later production date.
A December 18 proposal from two capital funds that would have provided the company with a $21 million loan was terminated two day later, leading to the aforementioned financing deal involving gold-linked noteholders and Sandstorm Gold.
If there is a silver lining for Colossus, it is that the company has delivered on a promised resource estimate that it published on December 23.
According to the press release, Serra Pelada hosts 557,000 tonnes in the indicated category, containing 230,000 ounces of gold, 48,000 ounces of platinum and 71,000 ounces of palladium.
Analysts covering Colossus have noted that its lack of resource estimate in 2013 added to its stock price woes after the dewatering issue was made public. Soaring to a height of $9.56 just over three years ago, in the last year the company has lost 100 percent of its share value.
Now, with a resource estimate to stand on, it is evident that Colossus’ main priority is to find financing just to keep the lights on, let alone further advance its project.
A Seeking Alpha entry written on Colossus in December said it sees three scenarios playing out, none of which are good for Colossus shareholders. These include Colossus going insolvent; Colossus being taken over by another company; or Colossus accessing financing and continuing with mine development.
Investors who have pinned their hopes on Colossus will be closely watching their next move to see whether CSI becomes a comeback kid or 2014′s first victim of what has become an unforgiving financing environment for junior mining.
 
Securities Disclosure: I, Andrew Topf, hold no investment interest in any of the companies mentioned. 
Related reading: 
Colossus Minerals: What’s Going On?