A1M: General Comments, page-732

Dash et al,

I have had a fairly deep dive into the local possibilities for M&A for AIC, and i have been looking around for a while. There are certainly plenty of explorers and failed mines and aspiring producers in the region. I'm pretty sure we would want something either close to producing or producing. There are a lot of sub 1% CU deposits in the region as well, so why would we entertain those when we have bucket loads at 2% + lovely gold credits?

So far i haven't come up with anything listed. CNB, MMA TNC and other small listed co's in the region just look painful. Further afield or overseas....too hard? There are a number of chinese miners / explorers looking to sell....perhaps we could pick something up? Or get an off cut of some description from EVN / Ernst Henry? Or do we look at something at an earlier stage of development....i don't think so.

Also....realistically, AND VERY IMPORTANTLY...we are about to borrow $60 - 100m to build our new plant. And our share price is flat at best. We wouldn't want to dilute at these levels. So for me nothing is going to happen until the SP gets above 50c or so. I thought the chairman's buying last month was interesting. Previously their buying had been trying to put a floor under the price, this time the timing was different? I won't speculate.

AC on two occasions in the last quarter didn't sound super confident about 'knocking it out the park' this quarter. So i'm not expecting a great production or cost quarter just gone. This said apparently there's been a huge amount of development work done and hence the next few quarters from here should be very strong. And the gold is a lovely kicker.

With the reserve upgrade coming in the next week or two, and hopefully finance approval for the plant soon after then hopefully the SP will appreciate. We need it up so that we can consider any M&A opps that come along. Literally atm we are out of the market due to any transaction being overly dilutive.

If the SP doesn't rise, and every day we get closer to Jericho production, then you would have to think as the project gets more and more de risked we actually become the target...this seems to make sense. Or a possible 2 or 3 way merger....but with who?

If AC comes out and says finance is locked in, the Jericho link is over half way, nice reserve upgrade and we are suddenly going for a 1.4mtpa plant (30,000 cu tpa) then either the SP goes up fast or we get taken out by one of the 3 $1-6b ASX copper plays. Or possibly by EVN but i think this is unlikely although we would be very/incredibly cheap with their rising SP! (current maths on EVN buying us via scrip would be stunning for them!).

And lastly. A shame the CFO has resigned. I have spoken with him a few times. Lovely man and i thought incredibly capable. Hopefully the new one is just as good. Looking like a strong green day tomorrow.