As always Wack, you put forward thinking that has incredibly...

As always Wack, you put forward thinking that has incredibly little option to poke holes in it.

The plant
To me, the largest risk for VTX is the Gecko plant. My assumption is that the share price is punished because it's not done well at its previous home, and it's not yet set up and running (and therefore proven) at its destination. I therefore feel like we're somewhat painted with the brush of being a Developer... in the share price lull before we become operational. However, I feel that's pretty unfair when we're 4 months from having a plant chewing through high grade gold ore, and we've got the cash to get it running.

Having the Gecko team involved in the move and setup of the plant helps mitigate the odds of it underperforming.

Risk? Yes. Is it crippling? I don't feel it is, nowhere near.

The bulk sample
The next big risk comes to the stockpile that we're going to feed through first. If I have any complaint about the management here it's their slight lack in scientific approach OR their lack in communicating their scientific approach. What I mean here is that a fairer test for a bulk sample would have been 10+ random samples instead of just the 5 they used. I would also have liked to better understand how their randomised sampling technique occurred - plenty of methods are named 'random' but are in fact on the spectrum of biased somewhere.

As a result, and you've cautioned this already Wack, my confidence in the overall grade of the existing stockpile is low, but its outcome could be anywhere on the spectrum... it might not be 3.9g/t, it could be half that, it could be double that.

If this stockpile proves to be half what we expected, then the initial revenue (which will ultimately underpin the next phase of the program) may be insufficient, and therefore there's a chance that some additional capital would be required. However, at that point we will know the efficiency of the plant and will have potentially found new and higher grade ore before we get there.

Risk? Definitely. But only with respect to the existing stockpile, NOT the VTX medium and long term potential.

AISC
This is the key risk to any project going from development into production. I think previous announcements had ~$1,830/oz AISC but I'm going off memory there and might have confused elsewhere. Nevertheless, the plant has low power requirements, low water, low people, and high purity head grade. Even if the new Tomra (for which we don't yet know the cost) adds 10% to the overall costs (and that includes the costs of drilling / mining / hauling), then VTX margin / oz still comes up at around $1,500/oz AT A VERY CONSERVATIVE LEVEL, assuming a suppressed gold price (which I don't believe will happen).

Cash
Always the elephant in the room. They've run through 2 CRs and have Dedt Funding labelled as outstanding. My assumption is that this will need to be locked away in the next couple of months as it'll be required to start off the mining activities. I don't know the numbers around this
There's a potential $400k+ from options if this rides comfortably over the 15c, which is a great injection



I met the VTX team 2-3 weeks ago but didn't get long enough to talk through all I wanted, but I got an invite to go and visit them which for a 4 hour drive from Sydney is worth it based on my current and potential investment / belief here. Things I'd like to know are below, feel free to add and I'll see if I can get out there in the next fortnight

NEAR TERM

• Diamond drill, owned and operated by them, on-site soon. What's their month by month plan for its use. I know they plan to start on-surface to test currently known and barely tested opportunities, but what's the data around these opportunities and what comes next
• What's the AISC with the proposed new setup
• What's the cost of the new Tomra
• How much debt funding are we after, where are we looking, and how's this progressing

MEDIUM TERM

• How long after starting the Gecko will it take to understand the average head grade of the tails dump
• Is there a point / grade / time at which you would pivot from the tails to newly mined ore, if it isn't the grade we expect
• What level of support will Gecko provide during the ramp up phase

LONG TERM

• What happens next if we do and don't hit interesting opportunities in the new areas they're looking at next month