A little unfair because they are stylised and different scales, but so far as I followed the story these four figures describe the unfolding reality of much more complex shaped veins and lodes than was originally predicted by the geos. Top is 2019 MRE, middle 2021 MRE and last two this week. In detail on the last section, there is no trying to hide the complexity and patchy distribution of mineralisation.
The thick 'apron' zone was supposed to be more massive (larger and evenly distributed) with flat lying ore horizons recovered by room and pillar (RAP) mining technique better suited to this style of thick flat lodes. The 2022 mine update swapped RAP out for long-hole stoping, well suited to the vertical veins under the Apron zone. Good luck, long hole is potentially cheaper extraction, but not when lodes are skinny, flat, folded and patchy... diving and potentially mining blind between drive levels.
Long hole works well for steep, thinner, well behaved lodes (ie typical shear hosted quartz gold lode in many WA goldfield deposits) but again you want continuity along strike for efficient stope ore to drive ratios. After recognising the steep hydrothermal footwall veins (purple) broke up into many more smaller, discontinuous lodes than they thought (reason for last years mine plan downgrade), how well will those stopes hang together and reconcile recovery/dilution to plan?
Kudos for sharing this detail with the market, though not sure it helps anybody's confidence, but at least they are being open about stuff.
Now consider the 12 month cashflow plan Mar-to-Mar'24 below. Start with $20M including $16M of the reserve facility credit line, add the $19M CR this week, and after 12 months they plan to be $10M ahead on an 100% consolidated basis. $10M is only 3.75% of the $267M expenditure planned for the 12 months... so many individual variables or assumptions can be out far enough to change $10M, especially when they don;t even know yet how the orebody or mining techniques will pan out. This was already a high risk orebody, becoming higher risk as they discover how complex it is, with the added risk of little contingency cash buffer against any number of cost or revenue assumption slippages...
GLTAH, indeed.
(20min delay)