toyota buy in price, page-12

Good points niu. I would expect the 9 months is a worst case to safely avoid missing any deadlines and the TT deal and finance are obviously wound up with the secondary approvals process which we have no control over.

Re the JV detail. I think it makes more sense in the absence of anything explicitly to the contray that they buy into the project as it stands then we develop it further together. However I get the feeling that there's an element of negotiation remaining until it's all finally signed off. I understand from what RS said this evening that there is some commercial confidentiality surrounding the details of the agreement and this extends to cover aspects of which agreed NPV calculations will finally be used (what we've seen today might be more a guide). So trying to nail down details of an unsigned agreement may be not possible from our shareholder perspective just yet. I don't think there's any issue with them pulling out or anything like that as I expect they would be more than happy to have locked in their supply plans and aware there might be quite a few others in line to pick up a deal like this if given the chance. Also the relationship appears to have been a good and close working one with reagard to many aspects over the past year. But it may be that there's some ground to move both sides as we enter what has been termed the "negotiating period" in the quote below, and so a hard and fast set of rules and numbers about exactly who does what may elude us just yet. That's the feel I get anyway.

Re the capital expenditure timing during this period. I'm still trying to get my head around how much preliminary expenditure we would commit too off our own bat. I'm tempted to say not much without some movement on the licence / deal etc. Also I would expect this would need to be done through the JV entity anyway. Then again we did have the recent CAD20m bought deal financing and AUD 15m placement in which the 4 Feb announcement stated:

"The aggregate net proceeds of the Canadian offering and Australian placement will be used for detailed engineering design work, operation of the pilot plant and other project activities, production bore drilling and procurement of long lead items in relation to the construction of the Sala de Olaroz Project during the JV negotiation period with Toyota Tsusho" + listed other uses...

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20110204/pdf/41wlkxbvr727r7.pdf

So maybe we will bring some items forward? I'd prefer it was all signed, sealed, dotted and crossed but I guess the commercial reality is different. Perhaps we have to place some trust in RS and the crew to contiune making the right moves in this regard. They appear to have done fairly well so far IMO.

In any case those funds are sitting there now - as reflected in the Mar 31 cash balance (AUD42.6m). I certainly can't see any need for a further CR unless something fundamentally changes.

All just my thoughts. DYOR of course as I could have it all wrong, lol.