UK 15:41 Sunday, 25 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
I start back in 2014 with this article from the BBC suggesting that P:rofessor Richard Conroy was sitting on an £11 billion gold mine on the border between Eire and God’s chosen lands of Ulster. Ten years have passed and there is still no sign of work beginning on that mine. In fact it is worse than that. I remember attending a City lunch where the Prof pushed the same yarn and that must have been twenty five years ago. Anyone who still believes in this myth, especially after a jv partner walked earlier this year, really is delusional.
At 3.46pm yesterday afternoon – more-or-less no-one-is-watching o’clock – AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) released an “Update on Joint Venture” RNS. Hmm….an intra-day release, never a good sign – and the news was bad.
The good Professor Conroy and his team at AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) must be feeling very pleased with themselves this morning, as the company announced a decent-sized fundraise to bring in £1.87 million in cash (before expenses) and a debt-for-equity swap regarding outstanding director fees and other debts to wipe out £379,000 of monies due. So does this finally cure Conroy’s long-running illness of technical insolvency, as highlighted by the Auditor in November’s FY accounts to May?
AIM-listed Anglo Asian Mining (AAZ) has walked on its proposal with fellow AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) to form a joint venture with Conroy’s gold assets in Ireland. Not such a disaster for Anglo Asian, but there is a question over who pushed who and when. Meanwhile, it seems that Anglo has been replaced by Turkish outfit Demir Export AS.
Like its AIM-listed little sibling Karelian Diamonds (KDR), fellow AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) has had six months to release its FY numbers and waited until no-one-is-watching o’clock on deadline day to admit the grizzly truth. But luckily once again ShareProphets was indeed watching.
Good news this morning for AIM-listed jam- (or, rather, gold) tomorrow explorer Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) as it has raised a fairly decent amount of cash - £800,000 – at 25p. Heck, if this goes on for much longer the company will no longer be technically insolvent! It might not be already, although I wouldn’t be too sure. So are the shares now a buy?...
Sometimes something comes out of left field and takes you by surprise. This morning, AIM-listed Conroy Gold & Natural Resources (CGNR) announced a proposed joint venture with fellow AIM-listed Anglo Asian Mining (AAZ) aimed at bringing Conroy’s Irish gold assets to production. Anglo Asian is a serious player, so this deal is a great achievement for Conroy – even if, as things stand, it remains heavily technically insolvent.
Roll up, roll up – buy now, pay whenever you like! AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) seems to be behaving more like a cheap furniture shop, rather than a serious company when it comes to raising money. On Thursday afternoon it updated on the placing way back in February, under which (unbeknown to the market) most of the cash it said it had raised didn’t arrive. Updates last month detailed some cash which finally dribbled in and on Thursday we learnt that another £50,000 had arrived. Good news……just £100,000 to go out of a £302,500 fundraise.
Back on 2 April, AIM-listed jam-next-century gold play (apparently) Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) finally got around to fessing up that its much celebrated fundraise six weeks previously has seen a shortfall in that £188,000 of the £302,500 supposedly raised (ie well over half) had not arrived. The whole episode stank of AIM Rules breaches and a letter duly landed on Oxymoron-in-chief Marcus Stuttard’s desk. We were told a further update would follow as soon as possible and in classic Red Flags at Night fashion, yesterday at 4.51pm on a Friday evening – no-one-is-watching o’clock – the update duly arrived. Now if all the money had arrived, I reckon we would have found out at a more normal time like 7am……
On 18 February 2020 AIM-listed lifestyle company Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) announced a successful placing to raise £250,000 and that it had undertaken a subscription to raise a further £52,500 all at 12p per share. Yesterday, more than six weeks later, the company ‘fessed up that a total of £188,000 was still outstanding. It seems to me that the “successful placing” was anything but at time of announcement, given that the cash was yet to arrive, and that the company had not “undertaken” a subscription to the extent originally advised for the same reason. “Undertaking” maybe, but not “undertaken”.
Of course there is insolvency as far as the law is concerned, and insolvent in that there isn’t enough cash to pay the bills but AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) had not the cash to pay its bills, but still goes on. The interims to last November 30 show that it clocked up a pre-tax loss of EUR 278,000 and had negative net current assets of a stonking MINUS EUR 3.7 million!
I had been wondering what was going on at AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR). At the turn of the year the shares were languishing at just over 5p and raced ahead to around 15p until last Wednesday when the shares staring slipping. Of course there is no insider dealing – this is AIM after all – and surprise surprise this morning we learn of a placing and subscription to raise a poxy amount of cash to feed the electricity meter.
Why would a company which claims to have had a year….of highly encouraging progress sneak out its results at approaching quarter past five in the evening – no-one-is-watching o’clock? Let us turn to the auditor’s report for AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) in its Annual Report for the year to May 2019 – in particular the Going Concern section. Here we are told:
With its sister company, Karelian Diamonds (KDR) having published interims a couple of weeks back showing balance sheet in all sorts of trouble, this morning Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) took its turn – where we find the same problem, and some class comedy from the good it’s the way I tell ‘em Professor.
