monday

Well, I've been thinking through whether the action on Friday could be news related. A couple of bits of news that it is impossible / unlikely to be are:

1) Finance. There is no way that debt funding has been arranged at this stage. These sorts of negotiations with banks take at the very least 3 months and even if there was a bank very bullish on the outlook for zinc (unlikely IMO) it would be foolish to expect that the bank finance is going to be in place before the end of July.
2) Mumbwa. Just cannot see the drill results being analysed and coming up with the goods in such a short period (even with the assays being rushed through a friendly lab).
3) Improving zinc sentiment. Well, truth be told if someone has run out and snapped up a few million shares because of the issues in China then they have balls the size of my head ... remember the NPV of the project of 56 Million is based upon a zinc price of USD 2,600 per tonne and we are still a fair way away from this.

POssibilities in my opinion are:

1) Offtake agreements. Whilst not especially exciting news it would reduce some of the perceived risk of this play if offtakes with the other two smelters are finalised and signed off on (from memory this was meant to be done by the end of this month;
2) Decline commencement. Again, due to occur this month and there is every possibility that this has started, however the volume in my opinion is much too strong to be based solely on the possibility that AIM have started the deal bit of the mine development.
3) Deep Drilling results from Perkoa. I guess this raises the possibilty of a resource increase and these results are due fairly soon.
4) NS legal action has been scuttled - unlikley but not out of the realms of possibility.
5) VTEM results - hardly going to set the world on fire with regards to Perkoa ... will just give possible additional zones for the company to target.

My personal opinion is that a major player has decided to buy up some shares and that there are a number of punters who have stayed on the sidelines watching the shareprice and decided to pile in after the initial jump above 9c. I don't think that there is any news in the winds (however one certainly hopes so). Still a very long way to go until this ship is on course.