The What’s In A Name Award

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but what if the rose turned into a daisy? Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. investors are finding out the hard way. The company’s IPO in 2017 raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors wanting to cash in on the craze for cobalt, a metal used in the lithium-ion batteries that are essential for electric cars. Just two years later, however, the company wanted to sell its cobalt assets to its largest shareholder, Pala Investments Ltd., and steer its other shareholders into nickel via a stake in Nickel 28, a new company that would hold Cobalt 27’s remaining assets, including a nickel mine in Papua New Guinea. Understandably, a few shareholders were upset, especially since Cobalt 27 is exiting the cobalt market at a time when the metal has dropped to about US$14 per pound from more than US$40 in mid-2018. The deal closed, however, and investors received $4 and one share in the new company, now called Conic Metals Corp., for each Cobalt 27 share.