money magazine article out, page-21

Welcome back Find8,

I attended my first AGM by CTO last month and it was quite an experience I have to say. A free lunch, a 10 minute presentation, the Chairman limiting each sharholder to one question and an irate shareholder dishing it to ML in question time nonetheless (he could have been MickyD). ML remained blissful throughout.

My news (mainly from informal discussions with Garry Foorde), isn't quite as depressing as your findings.
Here are a few of my recollections. Overall I think they've been able to do diddly squat in the past year with no money or power while working with old obsolete equipment. Now the drilling and development can start in earnest:

1) They are currently producing from only three stopes and will produce about 5,000 oz in the Dec quarter. Lack of progress had been due to the operational limitations and not their modelling and interpretation of the geology.

2) In February they will have 5 stopes prepared, meaning production of 12,000 oz in the June quarter (50k pa rate).

3) In July they will have 8 stopes prepared. Each stoping area or "pod" produces at 10,000 oz annual rate and provides 3-6 months of ore.

4) They will produce about 25,000 oz FY09 and 50,000 oz calender year 2009.

5) They now have 5 drill rigs increasing the indicated resources around the mining areas. My interpretation of ML's speech is to expect a reserve upgrade to 500,000 oz by end of 2008. Garry said they will always have 12-18 months of indicated resources defined ahead of mining it. Most of the current 330k oz reserves are under the city, not at Warrior.

6) ML told me they have and will continue spending $25m annually on capital development (new mining fleet is in place to reach 100k oz pa but they now need to pay consultants etc to open up the mining areas).

Take all of the above with a heaped barrow-load of salt. The best that can be said in my view is CTO is expanding production at a time when global production is falling and the gold price rising. Funding appears to be secured and hey, shareprice is higher despite the October crash.

Cheers,
Rowingboat.