kingofoxford, Well said, assume you are in business with...

kingofoxford,

Well said, assume you are in business with partners (which I am) and you actually have surplus funds sitting idle in a bank account ... what you would do is have a meeting / discussion and assess if these funds may be required (called upon) in the future.

If, based on current cash flow and inflows, you do not anticipate that you will require these funds for ongoing / operational costs (i.e. they are surplus funds) ... you would obviously decide to distribute these to the business partners to do with them what they will ... which is also very motivational to keep working harder!!

Standard business procedure for all partnerships, public companies (distributing to shareholders), JV's, etc.

This is a positive ... as it means that after assessing where they are at and current foreseeable cashflow wise (and they know more and better then we do where they are at today / now) ... they have determined that the funds will not be required in the foreseeable future and hence can be distributed.

A struggling company with cashflow issues would not be able to do this and would not have come to the same decision.

So this a BIG POSITIVE and reading between the lines ... is letting us know that all is fine moving forward from a cashflow / funding perspective ... and also tells us that the current "albeit small scale" mining operation is very profitable (as assessed by those that are at the coal face and in the know).

I know that I am very happy and confident with my business when I receive my "additional" profit distributions ... it's a sign that things are going well. If these stopped it would be the first sign that something was wrong.

I think the people that think that this may be a bad thing ... are obviously not in business.

Analogy: If a public company either stopped or started paying dividends (which is exactly what has happened here) ... what does this tell you about the health of the underlying business and cashflow (cashflow is indicative of profitability - ignoring capital cost drains).

GLTAH

Zippy1