Threat 1: On-market buying

A director buying stock on the market is a fantastic sign that they believe in the long-term prospects of the company and are willing to align their fortunes with those of shareholders. For Tivan, the new executive chairman, Grant Wilson, has been making significant purchases on the market since his appointment to the role and the ongoing strategy reset. This includes:

This is in addition to the $25k Grant committed in the recent placement (subject to customary shareholder approval). In aggregate, since he became executive chairman of Tivan, he has committed $309,511 in additional share purchases, or 123.8% of his annual $250k salary from the company.

This is a huge vote of support from management and also tells us a few additional things:

Threat 2: Accountability

Communicating good and bad news is equally valuable for a listed company. After all, shareholders deserve to know the true state of the company and whether the rationale behind their investment still holds true.

Tivan has done a sound job in owning up to their current state and holding themselves accountable. Following the entrance of the new management team, the company seems to have conducted regular reviews of their corporate activities and scored themselves. Even better, this scoreboard was released to shareholders, showing the changes over time.

As we can see, the company has been honest about what is going well (government, media, etc.) and what requires more work (offtake, vanadium pathway, etc.). It's important to acknowledge that the company could just as easily have focused on the positives and hidden the negatives to create a false sense of success. Yet, in communicating transparently, investors are better informed and can more tangibly trust that there aren't any hidden risks at Tivan.

Threat 3: Equal capital raise access

This is always an important thing to look out for as it says a lot about how management values shareholders. Many companies fail to effectively engage shareholders and then ignore them at key corporate events - capital raises - in favor of external investors. This creates additional dilution for shareholders, larger costs for the company, and often hurts the aftermarket if the incoming investors are only interested in short-term share price arbitrage.

Although Tivan has only conducted 1 capital raise under the new board, they've done a great job at rationalizing the program. The capital raise was structured as a $5m placement and a $2.5m SPP at a small 1.4% discount to the last close.

Why this is great:

Although one example is not enough to create a pattern, it's same to say that Tivan has focused well on existing shareholders across communication, engagement and now capital raising. There is a reasonable expectation that shareholders will be well considered in any future capital raise events.

My concluding thoughts

Tivan is no doubt a rare Triple Threat. It's got a motivated management team that seems to have the right connections and right approach towards shareholders. This goes a long way to show how they are likely to treat shareholders going forward, which cannot be under-indexed as mine development is a multi-year journey that requires full alignment throughout.
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Yet we must pay attention to the new leadership team execution capabilities as great communication only works when it amplifies tangible progress on the project level. A good index for this is whether the team is able to progress the 3 areas of relative weakness on the corporate scorecard in the next 6-12 months.