Applied Minerals, Inc. (OTCMKTS:AMNL) Gets a Volume Spike
It’s been a while since we last wrote about Applied Minerals, Inc. (OTCMKTS:AMNL) and there’s a very good reason for this – nothing significant has happened to the stock.
As you can see from the three-year chart, the ticker did make some jumps, but a more consistent run in the right direction has been nothing but a distant dream. Apart from a few spikes such as the one witnessed yesterday (when nearly $640 thousand worth of shares changed hands), volumes have been pretty disappointing as well.
The stock performance isn’t the only turbulent thing about AMNL. Back in 2009, the former management team became the subject of an investigation regarding numerous stock transactions which, apparently, violated the SEC’s rules and regulations.
The people who headed the company when the aforementioned transactions occurred were promptly removed from their positions and the matter was settled, but even with the new management team in place, AMNL‘s progress is tectonically slow. The 2013 10-K, for example, shows that four and a half months ago, the company had:
- $8.6 million in cash
- $9.1 million in current assets
- $2 million in current liabilities
- yearly revenues of just $54 thousand
- a yearly net loss of around $13 million
- a $62 million accumulated deficit
There are some positive things like the substantial cash reserves and the fact that the liabilities have been kept in check, but there’s no getting away from the fact that a company with less than $55 thousand in revenues (which, by the way, represents a 67% decrease year over year) is not quite ready to exit the exploration stage.
This, in turn, brings us on to another interesting piece of information found in the report. According to Page 51 of the document, AMNL‘s current CEO, Mr. Andre Zeitoun’s compensation for 2013 (including the bonus) totaled $1 million. Considering the results he achieved, this might be considered to be a bit too much by some people.
Of course, the 10-K also tells us that AMNL made quite a lot of progress last year which should result in more decent figures in the future financial statements. Even so, jumping to early conclusions might prove costly. Doing a lot of due diligence and considering all the risks carefully is, as always, absolutely essential.
There were some other OTC tickers that registered an interesting session yesterday. In fact, AMNL‘s performance was pretty similar to the one displayed by HC2 Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:HCHC). Like AMNL, HCHC experienced a sudden volume surge and it too managed to move up, but only just. Definitive Mattress Company f/k/a Crescent Hill Capital Corp (OTCMKTS:DRMC), on the other hand, crashed horrifically. In just six and a half hours of trading, it managed to shift more than $930 thousand worth of shares while the market cap shrunk by as much as 61%.
