I've never met NB or Co. in person so cannot really comment as...

I've never met NB or Co. in person so cannot really comment as to what their thought processes are, however I have met many people that have held positions of authority and have wished to continue progressing their company regardless of monetary motives. For many years I worked with Westpac and was able to hear Gail Kelly speak on many occasions. An extremely intelligent and wealthy person with an annual salary of $10M, she could easily have retired yet she continued in the capacity of CEO to drive the business. My point is that there are many motives that drive people and some would rather have purpose to their lives than live a nice and easy life. All speculation but just wanted to highlight that.

In any case. I found a couple interesting articles during my down time. The first, although not directly related to PLS, does show that given the current downturn in coal / IO etc. Rio Tinto is looking to expand their book into Africa. The main point I wanted to highlight is that although the big boys have had a rough time of it, they are forward looking and will acquire assets that they believe provide good value. There is no suggestion that they will look at entering the lithium market, however you can cannot reject the assumption that they may have spoken on this matter given the current multi-year boom underway.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...ortunities-in-africa/articleshow/50901544.cms

The next article is interesting as it may provide us with an opportunity to increase our own portfolio of projects. Rio Tinto are looking to share data on exploration in an attempt to clearly increase income over time. They are willing to share said exploration data with juniors with the objective of eventually entering into agreements.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/rio-tinto-scales-up-its-big-data-ambitions-414737

"...with mineral prices under pressure, McIntosh indicated the miner was keen to strike up partnerships with some of the “more than 700 junior explorers in Australia” to spread the risk of new projects rather than go it alone..."

Interestingly enough, in the second article it again mentions that the main reasoning behind this is to reduce risk as well as derive a new form of income through partnerships. Moving forward, given that Rio Tinto is clearly thinking differently to how they have in the past (ie. sharing data and joint ventures etc) it will be interesting to see if their desire to earn new forms of income could see an equity stake in PLS. The funds then in turn used to develop Pilgangoora. I understand that to date the idea was for the funding to be derived from debt, however, an entertaining thought never the less.