Just to reiterate, I'm not against further expansion and...

Just to reiterate, I'm not against further expansion and certainly not saying that they shouldn't target other favorable acquisitions. I think you've misinterpreted my comment. When I said "unless they target another acquisition" I was more so calling out that acquisition costs for new mines should be assessed separately to operational cashflows which is tricky to do in these quarterly cashflows, hence my reference to them being useless. To clarify, I believe the market needs to see that both current mines are able to operate profitably and with positive cashflows, until such time they're unproven and the NPV attached to each mine will therefore be subject to a larger risk adjustment. I believe that risk adjusted value is still higher than the current share price is showing but it's not going to come close to the full NPV previously talked about. I'm not suggesting operating cashflows in the coming quarter or even 2 have to be positive but they need to show that MC and Saloro are making money.
Your 2 quotes above are, at least partly, in reference to expanding existing capacity at each of the mines, not acquiring new mines and where that funding will come from. There may be some operational expense related to expansion from personnel costs/overhead, but the actual investments into equipment will fall into cashflows from investments, not operations and shouldn't greatly affect operational cashflows.
I still have great faith in management that MC and Saloro will become profitable mines, but I believe proving that they are and will be into the future is what will bring attention to EQR more broadly and allow risk adjustments to reduce, valuation to be increased and the share price to follow suit.