Karelian Diamonds FY18 numbers: on death watch too, very bad read across for Conroy Gold

Yesterday it was the turn of AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) to show that it is one tiny little centipede step from insolvency. Today sister company, AIM-listed Karelian Diamonds (KDR) took advantage of a good day to bury bad news and followed suit – and my conclusion is the same. Indeed, for Conroy Gold there is another worry here which could bring its life to an early termination. My view is that both are stand-out sells and here is why...

Karelian Diamonds – 500k placing at 4.5p: it’s not enough – when’s the next placing? SELL.

AIM-listed Karelian Diamonds has, as I predicted HERE, HERE and HERE, announced a placing to raise £500,000 before costs. At 4.5p, that is a discount of just over 30% to last Friday’s closing mid-price. Ouch! When I first commented on the lack of cash last November, the shares were 0.375p (mid) before they were consolidated (so they were 9.375p in today’s money): I think that means it’s time for an ouzo or two over at Deputy Sheriff Towers!

Karelian – oh dear! With Beaufort gone, who will do the placing?

AIM-listed Karelian Diamonds suddenly seems to have a bit of a problem. Its broker, Beaufort Securities, is now in administration and deemed (by the FCA) to be insolvent. But Karelian has a big hole in it’s balance sheet, as explained HERE.

Karelian Diamonds – Interims: when’s the placing, and what about related party payments?

Yesterday the good professor Conroy’s elder child, AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) released its interims to last November and it needs cash. Today it is the turn of little brother, Karelian Diamonds (KDR) and the picture is no better. And as you shall see, there is an air of one insolvent partner funding the other. At least, that’s how it looks. And I wonder about the maths….

Karelian Diamonds – a lesson in reading RNSs: You've been spoofed - when’s the placing?

AIM-listed Karelian Diamonds (KDR) rather bucked the trend yesterday when it put on 10.6% on a day the markets were again sinking. We all know Karelian needs a placing urgently, to keep the lights on. So what caused the rise? Oh, hang on, there are three RNSs which were released just after 3.40pm – and they are all good 'news', except for one small detail…

Karelian – house broker “very excited”. What for - placing commission?

Prof. Richard Conroy's AIM-listed Karelian Diamond Resources (KDR) is apparently making house broker Beaufort Securities “very excited”. Obviously that is entirely because of the company’s ramptastic RNS (which saw the shares fall - why might that be?), and nothing to do with its train-wreck of a balance sheet and the bail-out refinancing it needs. No, it is not because Beaufort can see a nice commission cheque on the way.

Conroy and Karelian lifestyle companies produce results in a sea of Red Flags. 1: Karelian

AIM-listed (and no longer on Ireland’s ESM market) Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR) and Karelian Diamonds (KRL) released full year results this morning. It is a double set of Red Flags for these two lifestyle companies of Prof Richard Conroy – and despite the latter having been floated off by the former, more Red Flags come into play with related party transactions. But the biggest sin of all is treating your own shareholders as utter muppets, which is where I start.

Karelian Diamonds – like Conroy, is it placing ahoy?

AIM-listed Karelian Diamonds (KDR), like fellow AIM-listed Conroy Gold and Natural Resources (CGNR), is run by the good Professor Richard Conroy. Tom Winnifrith has exposed a pretty gruesome histoire at Conroy, but what about its little brother?

Karelian Diamonds (#KDR) - Final results, net current assets of c.€600,000 on 31 May

Karelian Diamonds (#KDR) - Rio Tinto identifies high category kimberlite minerals in samples

Karellian Diamond (#KDR) - Intercepts kimberlite in five further pits at Kuhmo

Karelian hails gem indicators find

Dublin-based Karelian Diamond Resources (KDR) is enthusing about a new kimberlite discovery in the Kuhmo area of eastern Finland. The AIM-quoted company, for long unloved by investors, has seen its shares bounce from a 12-month low of 0.85p to 1.48p before easing back to 1.27p, well below their year’s high of 3.45p and 2005’s 5p float price, following the discovery of indicator minerals, such as garnets, near its Riihivaara target in Kuhmo, part of the wider Karelian gem Craton, straddling the Russo-Finnish border.

Indicator minerals cheer Karelian

Karelian Diamond Resources (KDR) is celebrating the discovery of ‘a high concentration of indicator minerals’ at Riihivaara in eastern Finland, which the Dublin-based company claims should indicate the presence of a new kimberlitic diamond source in the Scandinavian country’s Kuhmo region. Chaired by veteran entrepreneur, medical academic and former Irish senator Professor Richard Conroy, Karelian says Riihavaara, where it has recovered the minerals in the form of G9 and G10 garnets, lies to the south-east of Seitapera, where it claims already to have outlined ‘the largest diamond-bearing kimberlite pipe to have been discovered in Finland to date’.

A fresh gleam in Karelian’s eyes

Professor Richard Conroy, the mellifluous former Irish senator who chairs Karelian Diamond Resources (KDR), must be one of a handful of company chiefs just now to welcome the presence of powerful Russian interests virtually on his doorstep. Yet the company, which he separated from his other public company with an AIM float nine years ago, is probing diamond prospects in the Finnish part of the extensive Karelian craton (a potentially diamond-bearing geological formation).