Successful projects are expected to be announced in late 2013.
No mention of program being broadly in line with original timeline.
The patch up job within the department is complete. In order to avoid any rumour and gossip activity the government now simply states that successful applicants will be notified towards the end of the year, to keep it vague, whereas before we had a set date. Why such a change towards a blurry announcement date?
Submission of the RFP was announced on the 20th of March and 3 months were anticipated to come to a conclusive decision in regards to final applicants being sent offer letters for funding.
The process then got delayed for 2 months, giving government 5 month to ponder the application with which government was vastly already familiar as officials visited sites of applicants end of last year.
What takes so long? Or does it take so long?
Now with the final notification being pushed out to end of 2013, one would simply have no idea when offer letters might be send, when we will be notified of the actual funding numbers.
The whole program has descended into absolute secrecy after the glitch on the 14th of August.
In my opinion, the program was shifted 3 months down the track to allow negotiations to continue in peace, away from market speculation, hence my strong suspicion that we are in negotiations with government now which has provided the umbrella of undisturbed secrecy.
Logically, after recent events, it was the only way to guarantee a lack of indirect confirmation after the leak on the 14th.
We were broadly in line with timelines on the 13th, then within one day we are 3 months out and delayed...go figure.
Final notification by end of the year, probably meaning Nov. If we still expect 3 months for negotiations to take place, the offer letter to be sent out now to meet the timeline of end of Nov to be the latest date of public announcement. A full 3 months late.
To give government officials and companies enough time to finalise negotiations for the final funding amounts for each company one would have to assume that offer HAD to be sent out now.
I therefore believe that the glitch on the DPI website was an unintended indirect confirmation from the government that who has up to now not publicly announced a rejection for their application will have received the letter, as long as they are bound by ASX rules, which so far ONLY includes ECT.
ECT management is the only company with direct ASX exposure and disclosure requirement and publicly stated that they will update immediately if a negative outcome has been confirmed.
Now, in this context, when one visits the latest announcement from company, one finds no remarks stating the cognition of management towards the stress and strains shareholders were submitted to within the last few days.
This is not in line with recent remarks by management which showed clearly an understanding towards shareholders for delays and funding waiting periods.
As I see it, management stuck to the minimum of information necessary as they are in negotiations and do not want this endangered by saying anything besides the ALDP latest party line.
...the company awaits the outcome of the ALDP for technologies that otherwise could not proceed.
Little hint there towards recent rumours.
ESI Price at posting:
0.7¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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