With a huge % of shares locked up by long term investors who as...

With a huge % of shares locked up by long term investors who as mentioned above, won't be selling anytime soon, retail really could move the needle here. Retail has moved the needle on far larger MC companies with more SOI and less locked up.

If funds are not allowed in yet due to their mandate, appealing to retail might not be such a bad idea. Perhaps there are some more people who want to become LT shareholders, making the supply even tighter. I think management should explore this avenue because if HC is any indication, barely any people know this exists.

As for the capex raising, he's partially right that it is a sword of damocles but it's also not as much of a worry as that either. It is correctly noted above that we now have a huge incentive for the Japanese to help us with debt finance. If the project stacks up economically there's close to zero chance they won't exercise their option to help us. It's one phone call to their internal banks to get an extra 15% worth billions. By the time they would have the chance to exercise that, they'll know if they want to proceed. If they do, the incentive structure pretty much assures the outcome.

So the real question then becomes how do the results of the DFS go. Do we maintain our superb numbers with low AISC? Does the nickel price recover? If everything lines up with that, a number of funds would have conditions de-risked for them (we already have an ETF confirmed to be churning and buying shares right now) which would support a much higher SP and therefore MC.

There won't be any capital raising to keep the lights on until after FID, so that's a complete non issue.

The real question is what we raise that 30% equity component at. I don't consider the debt an issue anymore with our partners, if they want to go ahead with this.

But do the math yourself on if we raised the 30% equity at today's prices, at a 100m MC. We still get market beating returns. Can anyone honestly sit here and argue that funds will be sitting on the sidelines close to that date, knowing that there's a very high chance this goes ahead (after DFS work done) and won't be looking to get market beating returns as their downside and potential upside far greater?

When you do the math you realise our real bearish situation is not the debt or raising for capex a few years from now. It affects our profit yes, but the risk is this project going ahead to nameplate. If that's happening, we're winning in some capacity.