I don't think anyone is disputing the facts, and there's not really much to dispute in the first place. We are where we are, we've just raised $10M @ 8c to sophs, we're on the verge of a maiden MRE for Tchaga and there's ongoing drilling and a a fair bit of groundwork going on behind the scenes at the other prospects. Of course no-one is happy with the current s/p or cap raise price, and most of us would be underwater on our initial investment, but the company is now nicely set-up for the next 15-18 months.
My opinion on any new acquisition is that it would be unlikely at this stage. With Tchaga being the main focus of drilling and a upcoming maiden MRE, a new acquisition is essentially saying that Mako sees limited future growth potential at Tchaga and that the high-grade zones are pretty well closed off in all directions. This is not the case, as there are trends and soil anomalies that haven't even been drill tested yet. Another $2-3M needs to be invested at Tchaga, and probably $3-5M at Gogbala to drill that prospect to Indicated and Inferred status. The anomaly at Gogbala is 4km long, and to define a Resource to Indicated category generally requires 40 x 40m drill spacing. That's a LOT of drilling required over 4km, granted much of it will be drilled at wider spacing than this, but once high-grade zones begin to be defined, the drill spacing needs to tighten up to give you the required definition.
So there's $8M in drilling just there, which isn't even allowing for the work planned for the new Kohorgo lease, admin costs, travel expenses etc. etc. It's a solid exploration budget, but illustrates that a lot of capital needs to be expended to bring a project to even a pre-development phase. That's part of the risk of exploration, you never really know if your gamble will pay off until you've already injected the capital into the ground. To de-risk this part of the cycle, a company needs to acquire projects that already have had significant capital invested in them in the form of drilling, MRE's and even economic scoping studies, but you need to pay a higher price for these projects.
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