Ann: Joint Venture with Rio Tinto, page-49

Well done longtermers...took too long for me to hang on unfortunately.

Looks like a good deal to me, however I am confused by this "Importantly for Azure, the Agreement allows us to advance our own exploration efforts around Cascada, while concurrently Kennecott will activate exploration throughout Azure’s large land holding during the initial earn in phase".

The way I read it, Rio are effectively agreeing, should things pan out, to pay for the next $20-45M of exploration across the entire Promontorio Project which one would think would includes both the Cascada and Prom deposits. Presumably they are most interested in the Porphyry, however what benefit would there be to AZS shareholders to self-fund the Breccia drilling; undoubtably with the need to cap raise along the way?

Are we to infer that Rio are willing to pay AZS 5 times their exploration costs spend between now and the forming of the Joint Venture (ie after $20M spend) too; like an unsigned cheque?

I think I will wait for the market to settle and my thoughts to be absorbed before jumping back in, however either way I am glad that AZS is finally getting the recognition for their good results received to date.

Bob