Ann: ABR Defers Phase 1A of Fort Cady Mine to enhance US Listing, page-159

Hi folks, a bit late, but some initial thoughts from me for what they are worth. All of this is my opinion. Will post more later.

For those who were on ABR early, it's a tough pill to swallow given the consistency of ABR's performance, but we have it a lot easier than new holders, who would rightly be really pissed off to see their holding evaporate so quickly.

Negatives
The bottom line for me is we were expecting a rosy newsflow to follow on from the Advisory Board's appointment and the lead up to a US-listing, but instead we were given a reality check. The new board has shown us what a successful listing in the US actually means. So the timeline has been pushed back to fatten the hen before the show.

The market reaction harsh, but what else would you expect? The short-term game plan has changed, and it changed just months away from planned first production. We were all focused on phase 1a completion and first production. That was the next catalyst.

Now there is no longer a timeline to first production, or at least a lack of clarity on it.

The focus has u-turned from securing an imminent US-listing to having to address a number of new issues that came from the advisory board review in order to make a US listing actually happen.

The terms of the deal with the advisory board still feel expensive, they are earning a lot of money for telling us what we don't like hearing.

We've lost the CEO prior to this announcement, which raises questions around his departure, and therefore the original plan that we all bought into.

We now have an unknown amount of time to wait for an unknown new development direction that will lead to an unknown production schedule.

What needs clarification, we need to know:
When will first production realistically commence, i.e. what kind of deferral are we looking at?
When will there be a new DFS that presents the revised numbers and timeframes?
What is the value proposition for a US dual listing now in light of the latest developments?
What is the intention of the terms of the US Advisory board SP remuneration targets beyond the 12 month agreement given the SP is now half of the first SP target of $3?

On the positive side, we now have a few things we didn't have prior to this announcement.

* A clear intent to focus on the main game early - I think the announcement suggests they are comfortable delaying relatively small EBITDA in the early phases to bring forward the significant EBITDA from latter phases by pursuing a more aggressive financing strategy (see point 7 page 2 of ANN).

* Increasing resource size with further exploration and drilling. Company has been silent on this. It doesn't matter how big your project is, the markets look forwards, any upside potential carries value.

* Attracting 'green' investment mandates from day 1 of US listing - the announcement picks up global decarbonisation as a focus area for its borate products, which I think will widen/maximise investor appeal and insto mandates.

There's a lot of analysis on numbers that can give context to this new strategy, I'll post this later. But I'll conclude with this.

Management has done well. Let's not kid ourselves that this was a company languishing at a $70m MC ~20c just 18 months ago. It's $570m at $1.51 today, with $60m in the bank. It reached a high of $960m MC at $2.54. The promise was to increase shareholder value with minimal dilution. They delivered on this promise. The strategy was to get to production early and scale into later stages using earnings over dilution, play the long game. Management were on track to deliver this.

We have received a constructive audit, not an adverse finding. The new advisory board hasn't invalidated ABR's strategy, they have simply highlighted that to put a realistic value proposition to US markets, ABR needs to deliver serious value earlier, and to do that there needs to some changes. It was the elephant in the room. I see huge upside in this recognition.