While the CR has clearly ruffled some feathers here, I'm reasonably sure that NFs overarching plan / expectation was that the SP would have been in a healthier state after numerous OT Anns (enabling less dilution), and to be fair, I would have expected the same.
As he said a couple of times at the Sydney presso, we can't trade insolvent, so a CR was a necessity to get us through to finance approval / draw down / FID. Add to this the pressing need and time line for the option on the additional 15% of the project, and well, not much choice as far as I can see - Sure they could have raised earlier, but at that point, there may have been more than a glimmer of hope that finance would have been approved with an early tranche available for Opex pre capital works - who knows.
I for one am broadly satisfied that they're doing the right thing (or at least trying to) and at the end of the day have taken us from "less than an explorer" facing a legitimate court case over ownership rights, to a soon-to-be producer with a 75% share of the worlds largest deposit of a commodity now widely reported as facing a "perpetual shortfall". Think about that, an extra 15% ownership of the worlds largest source of spod (which has just risen 5% in spot price!).
If I look at the impending news (all expected within the near term):
75% Ownership Confirmation
FEED
MSEZ
ML
FINANCE
ODFS (taking into account new spod price assumptions, optimised transport rates, tax breaks, increase in resource / LOM etc)
Then overlay the Macro (see below 5% increase in Spod - and this is just the beginning). I'm reasonably comfortable that our re-rate from these levels is inevitable.
Onwards an upwards.
Powerage