Exactly .

http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=95247

why are they not paying royalty on their captive quartz mines – if they are, where is it reflecting ?

Looking at pokarna’s precarious financials over the years, I am wondering how they got the money to buy these – they have been in debt and hardly have had cash. who are these supplier mines – why did they choose pokarna ? why can’t they themselves forward integrate and do this

The toughest is to get a quartz mine – not process it – sort of similar to cellular spectrum. once you got the spectrum, equipment and all else only make a marginal difference.

for any mineral, getting access is the biggest moat – not processing it. AFAIK, this brettton stone etals is good marketing spiel but the real question is how do they get such low cost quartz and if they had all of this before, how did things change only in 2014

Plus one to above post – Looking for AGM updates held today. Kindly provide. Thanks.

Found some red flags

• company raised FCCB pre 2009 and then invested into debentures of pokarna engineered stone which owns the quartz mines. Since it’s a subsidiary I cant locate the schedules of its fixed assets. pokarna engineered stone was incorporated in 2001 and it’s not clear to me how it became a subsidiary of pokarna in 2009.

pokarna raised money in 2009 through FCCBs and invested as debentures into its subsidiary. I can’t find detials of the mines owned/leased by them – how much they paid, royalty share with government etc. what are the terms, can these be fished out dry, what about pollution control/environmental clearances.

It seems unbelievable that quartz being a mineral would have no “externalities” to be shared with the government (especially as its exported for the benefit of a private party) much like telecom spectrum.

At this point, I have no answers either way – anyone in the know, if you can help. the biggest moat in mining business is acquiring a low cost mine itself – similar to acquiring inexpensive spectrum in telecom. The rest of it is riff -raff – for eg., it does not matter what towers you use ericsson or nokia and similarly so, bretton stone or otherwise. Those are the axes to make the trees fall – I am interested in how they got the forest – especially a national resource.

And to round it out, check this article out :most of these names would be familiar – these were companies that raised FCCB’s and defaulted and were not known for their governance. how can things change so quickly – operating a quarry requires environmental clearance etc. and why borrow FCCB and invest into a subsidiary that makes mines. Why not borrow under the subsidiary itself directly ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any one attended AGM meeting today ? Any Updates ?