Can't disagree mate, but having worked in government for a fair while, I can absolutely say that things like an election will slow things down, especially where decisions require more than one department to have input. It only takes one of those stakeholders to be involved or slowed (either through actual or perceived work (i.e. an excuse to do not much) by the election process for it to have an effect on the overall process.....so we will know the validity of the claim by management within a month or so after the election.
Regarding the claim of being misled by management - they have an interest in protecting the company. The psychology of the human psyche is not great at dealing with bad news, rational thought rarely prevails (look at COVID-19) and the Stockmarket is as savage a place as any, so I have seen over time that if management believes they have some news that could be construed as bad, then they simply don't release anything it. I'm not defending this by the way, just stating my observations - I have definitely told them my thoughts on the poor communications strategy. It is worth noting as well that managements behaviour has not changed the entire time that I have been invested. The lack of communication we see now has been consistently bad across my investment period, despite this though, they have been, and continue to kick project goals - this is why I am still here. I cannot argue with the results even if I don't necessarily agree with some elements of their operating strategy. I suspect that, as others have stated, the numbers for Carlton did not come up to expectation, and they want to make the numbers look more impressive first. Let's remember that we are looking for finance and it is entirely possible that financiers have said something like "we won't fund anything under a NPV of 250m", and if something like this is the case, there would be absolutely no point releasing a DFS that doesn't achieve the goal of getting the project off the ground. Perhaps they learned from the first DFS - they waited to release it, it was delayed and delayed, and when it was released, it wasn't impressive enough and it changed nothing. Maybe they are going to get it to a stage where it makes an impact first.
Let me be clear that I am not defending management, but I understand some of the environment they are operating in, and if you look at past performance (irrespective of communication) then things have been getting done. Obviously make your own call on whether you hang around or not, but the reality is that in my view there is very little risk to being patient for now as we are cashed up - this should provide about 6 months of breathing room. The lithium industry will be in high demand soon enough, and we know there won't be enough discovered to go around, so I figure as long as they keep the project progressing then investors in CXO are bound to do well, either because we are in production, or because we get taken over.
Oh, I saw a post the other day about Biggin's history. From memory, he owned a couple of exploration companies. He started CXO, which bought (through share issue) the land owned by his exploration companies which formed the fundamentals for what CXO is today, so I guess it his life's work? - happy for anyone to refute this, I did some research a while back on his shareholdings in the company and from memory it linked back to his exploration companies, I just cant find the research at the minute,
