Thursday, July 17, 2014

S&P Downgrades Rare Earth Miner Molycorp to "Are You Feeling Lucky?" (MCP)

...Words like "uranium", "rare earths", etc. seem to be magic to
 those unsuspecting who are often fleeced...
Gerald M. Loeb
The Battle for Investment Survival
Simon & Schuster, 1935

This brings back memories, Stutz Bearcats, raccoon coats and Molycorp.
I may be confusing my geologic eras here but Molycorp was a wonderful trader back in the day. There were three separate times we had triples in the little bugger, long and short, from the very first tick, July 29, 2010:
Rare Earth Metals: Molycorp IPO Very Weak (MCP) to the May 2011 top tick at $79 and change to Feb. 2012's: Molycorp Earnings: "I Could Not Be More Proud of The Molycorp Family" (MCP)
I hate it when they talk like that, it triggers alarm bells and Sister Sledge tunes....
And now this, $2.11 last down 4 cents. From StreetInsider:
(Updated - July 16, 2014 11:54 AM EDT)
Standard & Poor's Rating Services said it lowered its corporate credit rating on Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Molycorp Inc. (NYSE: MCP) to 'CCC' from 'CCC+. The outlook is negative. At the same time, we lowered our issue-level rating on the company's secured debt to 'CCC' from 'CCC+' and maintained the '3' recovery rating. We also lowered our issue-level rating on the company's unsecured debt to 'CCC-' from 'CCC' and maintained the '5' recovery rating.

The downgrade reflects our view of the company's deteriorating liquidity position.

"In our view, the company's capital structure is unsustainable, and we believe that the company's sources of liquidity may not be sufficient to cover operational and working capital needs, interest, and capital spending over the next year," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst David Kuntz....MORE
Here's a Stutz Bearcat:
In the early '20's the company was majority owned by "a young Wall Street sharpie" who decided to run what appeared to be a successful corner in the stock that ran it from around $100 to $700. He went bust in 1922:
ALLAN A. RYAN FAILS; DEBTS $32,435,477, $27,806,984 SECURED; Stutz Corner Started War Which Made Thomas Fortune Ryan's Son a Bankrupt. 
And the company followed in the middle of the Depression.