"The way I see it, they would only go into a trading halt for...

"The way I see it, they would only go into a trading halt for equity funding if they thought or knew the outcome was going to be positive"

I expect you are correct. If they know the outcome, some might wonder why they wouldn't just announce immediately however they need to stop trading as soon as they know the outcome and until it's announced. Someone needs to prepare the announcement. Then it needs to be distributed to board members for any input or modifications and then redistributed again for board approval. If any board members are overseas, this can take more than a day due to different time zones. Lindsay recently arrived in Angola.
No doubt Lindsay is in Angola to get all three preconditions moving towards completion. It looks like the first box is already ticked and now that Lindsay is there, we just might see the other two boxes ticked much quicker than some expect.
I believe it's looking good for first sales next year as planned and more news could be coming over the coming week or two - if not just days. I'm hoping to see a big sp appreciation on this news and in anticipation of more news.
What I really like is the 9 months to first production once construction starts. Many projects take 2-3 years to construct after locking in full funding and the sp can drift for at least the first half of that time as some investors don't want to wait 2-3 years for production. A4n hit $1.17 on funding news and 3.5 months later it has drifted back to around 80c. I think they have at least two years to completion on a much larger, much more complex project. The sp might drift around for another year and then start to rise again 6-12 months ahead of completion. Hard to know.
However if MNB is strongly rerated into the first stage of construction, with only 8 months to commissioning and 9 months to production, there would not be much time for the sp to drift during construction and not long for investors to just wait for first production and cash flow, or to buy ahead of commissioning and production. The sp might just continue to trend up from here to production.
To help that uptrend during construction, we might have updates on the South African export MOU, news from other large farms, progress on the green ammonia, etc.
Our project NPV (after tax) is A$400mill at current TSP prices and that's not factoring in the A$53mill of capex savings effect on NPV or exports. Big upside potential from here over a relatively short period of time.