My speculation comes from my experience and the bias of my...

My speculation comes from my experience and the bias of my personality... which is, as everyone knows, on the conservative to pessimistic slant. Start by assuming Bruce laid all the cards on the table yesterday, which is my judgement, as eveyone knows, is on the suspicious to cynical slant.

The OS issue was a risk/concern as everyone knows. SFX did a second test pit before FID to test dozer push vs grinder/scraper style machines to test OS behaviour and saw dozer worked best. Still, they saw enough OS problems to shift the planned starter pit some distance (can't remember?) away into an area the drilling said had low OS, despite the fact it was lower THM% grade (13.6% vs ~15% original starter pit).

That tells us they rightly wanted to avoid any stye of STA commissioning/ramp issues during this critical cashflow and market reaction period. They wanted to maximise the chance of a smooth nameplate ramp, despite at the minor drop in HM grade which isn;t here nor there. Ramping up to nameplate at DFS costs and performance metrics IS the name of the game for developers.

Bruce came out and admitted that even in what they thought was lower OS, the ore is behaving like it has higher OS than what the drilling predicted. That probably means the areas with higher drill predicted OS will be even worse than the current pit with low predicted OS. That is not good, and why he chose to place the possibility of a permanent 25% drop in ore to WCP per tonne ore in pit on the table for all to consider... nobody says that lightly. They were aware of this issue 3 months ago, which is why they engaged sonic drill rig to test the mine path with better OS predictive results to try and get a handle on how and what they can identify the real OS issue ahead of time for mine planning issues.

Those results will have to then be tested against mining reality, although I presume, they would have drilled ahead of the mine path to start with to speed up this reconciliation of sonic drill results to mine performance. Once they have some confidence of how to correlate sonic OS resulst with mine perforamnce, then they will have an idea of what OS ore loss they face moving forward. The undercall of OS from AC drilling means there has to be some doubt now as to how the deeper 'non-indurated ore' actually behaves when mined. Maybe this AC undercall means some of the ore below the upper induration layer is still a bit indurated/consolidated due to age with and will present some OS mining issues? That is not a statement it will happen, just that current events say it is now some sort risk.

Without the huge ilm-zir lift in recovery to product vs DFS expectations they seen so far, SFX would have been smashed by now, especially given the unfortunate fall in commodity prices and lower TiO2 in the ZIC. The risk of 25% loss of ore per month/year means another DMU and 25% more watse/ore mined each year to make DFS production assumptions. Fortunately the plant is throwing off a lot more VHM product per tonne of ore to the wet plant than predicted, which for whatever reason (HM distribution in the ore zone or simply higher recoveries in the WPC spirals and CPU?) is a big counter positive to the OS negative.

Only time, definition of the actual mining OS situation and remedies to maximise production, continued over-recovery of HM to product or not, the commodity prices, real 2024/25 costs etc will determine how valuable TB is as a mine. All these variables are inter-related and thus it;s too early to say how it all falls lout in the wash and what remedies are required. Thus, SFX remains a risk-reward proposition over a nail-biting 3-6 months as the future situation is defined and that reality priced into the stock. I say 3 to 6 months because the time required to reconcile ongoing mining with sonic drilling results, HM recovery to product, mine grade/processing reconciliation and scoping of any remedies moving forward.

All that was basically what Bruce was saying couple days ago imo. There are problems, we are below where we should be compared top DMS, there is unexpected upside, we can't be sure where it will end up but it will take time to play out...

GLTAH