Ann: Investor Presentation - Brisbane Mining Conference, page-178

There is strong validity to the points you have made.

Half a million on Potash - so I'm willing to give Roly the benefit of the doubt on this one. Things work a little differently in Thailand. I wouldn't say I was happy about it, and I certainly questioned Roly on it. He said he sees great potential value there, but that it wasn't considered 'core' i.e. their main focus is HPA. But if the money keeps that option open for another 5 years @ 100k a year, I'm not losing sleep over it.

There was certainly a Project Schedule reset once the Term Sheet was signed. It certainly explains the initial sell-off once these details were finally announced. Clearly Roly (and in turn the market) had the expectation that the 'deal' with Alcoa would constitute 'up-front' funding / FID, and this never eventuated. Based on the current schedule this decision has been pushed out by circa 18 months. That is indeed suboptimal. Notwithstanding, Engineering / the work is still proceeding. Those 2021 schedule gives no indication when the Demo plant would have been constructed, so it's hard to say what the actual delay to that activity is. I think Roly (and the market) under-estimated the level of "grind" that Alcoa would subject this Project to. A person from Siemens once told me "the wheels grind slowly, but they also grind finely". Potentially, Alcoa fall into the same category. It basically means that they are extremely thorough and meticulous (and that's a good thing), but this process take time. The up-side is that it appears to be a successful model to adopt. Please no one post a Siemens SP graph as a counter argument, as they have basically gone no where for the last 5 years. They are a successful multinational and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe worth US$108 billion.

DYOR.
GLTAH!