You have to realise it was a large opportunity cost as well to the other party (seller for royalties, etc) of these tenements who have signed this agreement in good faith and never withdrawn. They could've sold it to another party which might've put these tenements into production by now, earning cashflow without as much paperwork and months-long goalpost-moving back and forth responses between ASX and the company that is needed to be satisfied apparently for a public company like WFE on the ASX. Having the deposit there was fair and justified in my view as is probably standard for such agreements.
Judging by the most recent announcement, the other parts of the deal less the tenements, all signed separately have always been "on" so there is no reason to believe the deal would be off, lest WFE or the other Joint Venture partner withdraws from the JV production agreement. It would seem to make sense for management to withdraw from the exploration tenements agreement if they are truly confident there are now much better deals available for tenements/resources to be entered into. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense at all to lose hold of what has been secured.
Wouldn't be prudent to jump into more conclusions at this stage until we hear back more in regards to the potential debt/cornerstone investment, funding and the production offtakes I would think. Might be the Europeans. Might be the Chinese. Might be the Tesla gigafactory in Shanghai which has recently been accelerated yet again. Who knows.
Other than that, I'm really curious how far management has gotten to divesting the Hamersley Iron Ore resource tenements. Must be worth hefty millions now at least, which would come in handy to fund production expansion plans if it were to happen.
