hard rock options, page-34

Key production rates are nice but unfortunately when you have to deliver product, what counts is the averag production rate during that period.

"surely even you have to agree that using daily production rates after the 24 May would be a more accurate assessment of how the plant is now performing?"

I surely do! Why not make these rates public when they are all that positive????

"While volumes delivered were below expectations, it is important to remember that grades and recovery were much higher than expected as well. Once again, perhaps if you take that into consideration as well, the results may not be as 'SEVERE' as you initially assumed."

Huh? The production rates were 65% below expectations DESPITE better than expected recovery and grades!!!!!!!!! If recovery and/or grades had been in line with their own expectations the production shortfall would have been EVEN BIGGER! I really don't understand how anybody could try to spin this sad fact in a POSITIVE way!

"All companies experience production ramp up problems and what CNQ is experiencing at the moment is nothing unusual or unique to the company and definitely not a major problem in the overall scheme of things."

So we have to simply disagree on this one. Certainly there are problems to be experienced during production ramp but these "normal" problems were very well taken into account when CNQ made its announcement that the first shipment of 20 tonnes would occur at the end of May. Obviously they did not expect anything as drastic as what happened then. You want to make me believe these problems were common ramp up issues but clearly they are not. It took them external experts (and roughly one million Dollars more than what was budgeted) to even figure out what was going wrong and how to possibly fix the situation. This means despite Leon's, Andy's and Jim's decade long experience in the industry, internal expertise was insufficient to sort it out on their own. So clearly CNQ's problems are not standard issues that could be fixed easily, quickly and cheaply.

The company itself said low production rates would persist until a complete overhaul of the front end of the plant was done.

Now costs are higher than expected and income is lower than expected. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they are probably running out of cash again. Of course I could be wrong. But then, I could be spot on, too! The share price continues to trend down and we're at 8.5 while Darryle (or who was it?) said the stock price would reach 12.5c due to the Mota-Engil news.