Ann: Trading Halt, page-25

I'm sceptical.

If you do a capital raise, you have to inform the market of everything you know. There are no exclusions. If the Feasibility Study was to come out, it would have to be at the same time as this trading halt - they can't start marketing to investors without releasing material information on the ASX first.

Why am I sceptical about timing of this raise:

1) If you're this close to finishing the feasibility study, you know the results. Whether you've told others is a different story (they would have messaged broad parameters), but you can't tell me that they don't have the results - yes may be they need to document it all and put it in nice presentations, and get it approved by the Board, but they all know the results (this is the loophole the lawyers will use - they haven't definitely reached a decision because it hasn't been approved by the Board - which is a fair argument but if you decide to raise capital, then I don't think so). To me, that can mean only one thing - it is not pretty and they want to raise as much as they can at what they think will be a higher price rather than wait to release and have the bad news built into the share price.

2) Financing - they must know roughly what the results are. How much debt are they raising, how much hedging are they doing, and what is the equity component required (and what is the capital component and other financials). People need to know this. Yes, again they probably don't have the agreements all negotiated and signed (loophole for lawyers to cling to) but they know what they intend to do and know the broad constraints.

3) Defensive mechanism - if you know your share price is going down, issue more shares and make any target pay a premium on cash. Good for management who want to keep their jobs but bad for shareholders, who ultimately lose out on any takeover premium as acquirers aren't stupid.

4) Market conditions - horrible time with gold price just crashing through $1,900 and share price off the last few weeks. Not opportunistic timing on market conditions!

It all points to bad news to come.