Management may be seeing whether longer growing cycles are...

Management may be seeing whether longer growing cycles are commercially sensible; if the next auction sees bigger average Pearl sizes and correspondingly higher prices then the following auction could also be deferred. Personally I think that is good policy. Returning to growing sustainably larger pearls ensures the company takes full advantage of the current boom, and is less vulnerable to any future downturn. I believe shorter growing cycles were introduced to reduce costs when the company had debt to repay. Now we have substantial cash reserves, we can manage future cycles in demand/prices without recourse to such policies.