Ann: Strategic Review Update, page-387

@Phantom77 With respect, there are multiple ways CXO could survive. The most sensible one is to properly implement plans to mine the high grade resource that exists at Grants and BP33 and do it with a sensible cost structure. Core's just got somewhere between a bit and a lot of work to complete that successful implementation and also a problem from the way it did the write-down's and write-off's in the HY.

The conventional way of doing big write-down's is to consider and implement them at year end. This means the company engages with its auditors about the potential for a big write-down. The company gains the Auditors agreement to the proposed write-down or write-off. The accounts are closed and then released to the market. The company is then into a new financial year with less assets creating legacy costs and depending on the write-down, possibly provisions to offset future costs. Somewhere during that new financial year the company may even do a strategy review that identifies previously hidden value. If this hidden value had been known information to the auditor the write-down may not have been agreed as appropriate (because value in the assets still existed). The share price responds well to the new strategy and projected high future profits. Sometimes the timeframe between the write-down and the "new/improved strategy" can be quite short.

Core stuffed up this well trodden path by doing the write-down at the half year. To preserve the write-down's Core needs to not just convince Auditors that its sensible, but maintain that the write-downs/provisions is sensible for another six months until the annual report is finalised. If you are going to do a large write-down, its pretty stupid to do it and then need to reverse the write-down's over the 2nd six months of the financial year. If a company were to do that, they might as well have avoided the write-down in the first place by showing auditors a strategy exists that justifies the assets existing values. Companies with bigger problems than Core's avoided large half-year asset write-down's.

This creates a bit of a bind for Core if it were to start releasing good news before the June accounts are finalised. Could the delay of the BP33 be because it shows a favourable result inconsistent with one or more of the write-downs/provisions taken into the half year accounts?