There is absolutely no excuse for the company to have been held...

There is absolutely no excuse for the company to have been held back by lack of cash available, other than due to incompetent management. If they were forecasting cashflow correctly they would've raised funds long ago when costs starting blowing out and forecast cashflow was over budget as a result of technical difficulties, rework and delays. There is also such a thing as contingency which is prudent for any company doing early stage development work. I do believe management are competent with these basic ideas, so can only assume your above statement is wrong. In my opinion, the company has been held back by not having better technical expertise to more quickly identify issues and prevent or resolve them. They are plodding along, improving and progressing, but I do not accept that slow progress is due to not having funds. If funds were an issue they should've asked shareholders to provide some long ago, preferably when share price was higher than it is now.