Ann: Rincon Lithium Project Update, page-445

"The current situation is a combination of market forces and missed targets which to be fair are not mutually exclusive but the recent course of action is prudent management."

You're being very kind to the company, and given your position here and your connections to management, I understand why. However, we must acknowledge that market forces affect all players, and only a couple of other players are in the same situation as AGY.

AGY isn't a passive entity; its current situation is a result of management's unpreparedness and unresponsiveness to these market forces. This situation could have been avoided in many ways, such as raising funds at higher levels when the market was hot, following a more conventional route (such as producing a feasibility study) to attract more conventional funding sources, or meeting the market to secure an offtake or strategic funding, instead of continually waiting for the "best deal", up to the point that the market turned and offers dried up. JZ overplayed his hand, plain and simple.

While the decision to enter care and maintenance can be seen as prudent, JZ didn't have much of a choice. The alternatives were to either destroy shareholder value with continuous capital raises or run the company into the ground and hand it over to administrators within 6-12 months. Opting for care and maintenance doesn't make him prudent; it just shows he has the minimum competence to run an ASX-listed company and recognised the inevitable.

Unfortunately, his prudence in this decision is just the culmination of years of poor decision-making that have destroyed shareholder value.