Oroco recently announced that the legal case in Mexico has been resolved and Oroco has been victorious. This is huge news for the company as it puts to end a legal battle that has been going back to over 12+ years.
Actually there were two legal updates. The first is the Amparo that OCO had filed in Mexico. The Amparo was related to getting a 2016 judgment that Aztec Copper had won. Due to this 2016 judgment, OCO was not able to get the registration of Santo Tomas to Xochipala Gold. Now that the judgment has been nullified, the Mexican registrar can move forward with the registration to XG. This is huge news as XG is an entity that doesn’t have any history w/ the legal cases involving Aztec, Fierce, of David Hermiston. So XG is a clean slate that makes it much easier for someone to come and acquire it (along w/ the ST assets).
The second case that OCO has been working on is the legal battle in Arizona to take control of Aztec Copper. Fierce Investments owns over 90% of Aztec. Fierce has been working w/ OCO to get the legals resolved (in return Fierce gets a stake in the ST+neighboring assets). Fierce/OCO had filed a claim in the Arizona courts to get its 90% shares registered to OCO and to hold a shareholder meeting. Aztec had been fighting against this, claiming that the Fierce shares had been revoked. The courts ruled that Fierce did infact own majority of Aztec and the shares were never revoked. Fierce/OCO filed a suit to get a receiver appointed, so the shareholder meeting can take place and OCO can being the rightful owners of the shares. The judge recently appointed a receiver. This legal case was initially a very critical case, incase OCO didn’t win in the Mexican courts then getting control of Aztec would allow OCO to still move forward with its plans. Now that OCO has own in the Mexican courts, this matters less. But still getting control of Aztec will mean Aztec cannot make false legal claims to slow the transfer of assets to OCO/XG.
These legal victories are huge. OCO has been fighting these legal battles for over 12 years. Finally getting these resolved mean the company can move forward onto the next steps.
The next steps are getting the registration to XG, getting funding for drilling, drilling results, and likely selling the assets.
The stock moved up with the legal updates. Although I still think OCO is stupid cheap. So how much is it worth? ClassicValueInvestors has written up what they think it is currently worth (with no drilling results) and what is should be worth after the drilling results. Clearly Oroco has a long way to go.
When I initially started building my position the company had a market cap of less than $10M. I said it then that this company could easily be worth $300M+. Well now the market cap is close to $50M and I think the assets are likely worth $500M-$1B. So it is still super cheap.