Ann: Release of Audited Financial Statements, page-3

I hadn't seen this before my posting on the other thread (been a busy day at work).

TBH this announcement is complete BS. IMO the reason why they have delayed filing their accounts is nothing to do with Covid (and I'll go into that later) and more to do with financing. With the amount of unknowns around the incoming financiers, my understanding (and I work in finance in an industry that isn't mining) is that auditors would be unwilling with the level of debt and the negative CA balance to sign off the accounts as a Going Concern. There is no way that TER would have wanted that to be released, it would have created a lot of noise and unsettled a lot of holders and potentially the new lenders even further. This is consistent with the recent announcement of the recent funding agreement with the current lenders (I'll bet that this is stated in the accounts when they are released, they wouldn't need to be if they were signing them off as a Going Concern and it was all related to Covid).

Onto the Covid bit. This is their statements:

A number of events brought about by COVID since lodgement of the Preliminary Report
have impacted the completion of the audit process, particularly in South Africa where
COVID impacts remain severe and unpredictable:
I. Executive Chairman (Mr Craig Ransley) contracted COVID and was away from
work for considerable time; -
II. Chief Financial Officer (Ms Celeste van Tonder) contracted COVID and was
away from work for considerable time and in self-isolation for 14 days;
III. in addition to Celeste, a number of our other South African head office
management contracted COVID, meaning they were unable to work for
varying periods and in self-isolation for 14 days;
IV. the Finance and Commercial Manager at one of our major operations in South
Africa contracted COVID and tragically passed away. As well as requiring new
personnel to fill his role this resulted in self-isolation for 14 days of a number of
personnel from this mine site and our South African head office;
V. Managing Director (Mr Daniel McCarthy) was en route back to Australia from
South Africa over part of the period. International travel disruptions and
quarantine rules meant it took Mr McCarthy 28 days to return home.



Whilst the above are reasons (particularly if they were partically sick from Covid, and point 4 is tragic that anyone in our staff has died), do they not have the ability to use Zoom like everyone else? The only communication we have had with our auditors at work (including completing the audit earlier this year) has been remote. Everyone else has to complete their audits and release audited results on a remote basis, so why do they think self isolation means they cannot work and communicate over Zoom or something similar?