What I still have yet to see is a comprehensive valuation...

What I still have yet to see is a comprehensive valuation analysis by the shorts. Thus far the model only exists conceptually:

1) Quintis Forced to book a write down to biological assets/misses earnings from lack of actual sales

-How much of a write down? Why should they be forced to write down the asset? Is there a horticulturist, sandalwood farmer and/or forestry expert from Kimberly valley willing to claim the numbers are too aggressive? From what I can see, Santanol believes in the same methods. Has anyone from Santanol stepped forward and claimed they're ready to claim that improvements in outputs through years of research and development are probably off? From what I can see, there is no qualitative difference between what Santanol says versus Quintis. For sales, I suppose it's possible the quarter could miss but that may already be priced into the shares at this point. In the medium to long term it's difficult to not see inventories turnover given demand.

2) Convenants are breached, forcing early repayments of debt that cannot be met.

- Since the above triggers this, same questions apply. Only this time no one actually has come forward and explained what's in the covenants. How much is enough to trigger this, and why is it highly likely this will happen?

3) With loss of faith from capital markets there is no bailout or capital raisings to meet/renegotiate terms with creditors: Quintis forced into bankruptcy.

- In order to happen quickly it seems logical that substantial evidence of mis-leading would need to come forward such as actual fraud and/or a photo of barren orchards etc. At this stage Quintis owns enough of the underlying assets to be taken seriously by banks/institutions - several of whom show indications of interest/faith in the future prospects of this asset.

To date, it seems as though we're all meant to follow the logic simply by mentally halving Quintis-owned biological assets then subtracting net debt + deferred income tax which gives you roughly 300m minus 750m. Ouch. That equation tells us debt holders also get screwed, so therefore equity is worth zero. In this scenario investors and competitors can come in and poached the trees and processing facilities for pennies on the dollar. Pause.... Those are the mental gymnastics we're meant to follow which instills fear which is likely the intent - but most offensively - is mentally lazy.

Once you challenge the thesis you realise that there are big assumptions one has to accept.

It seems as though Quintis simply is under the intense scrutiny of the investment community which comes with the territory of being publicly listed: any short-coming, you get punished and ostracised. In recent years the Indian sandalwood trade has been dominated by criminals - no one better understands the distribution networks and end-user markets better than they do in places like China and India. In the US, how many ex-illegal growers of marijuana have made the switch to a legal operation? I don't know, but I do feel as though there may be a fair comparison. That's debatable however....

I think perhaps it's not about consumers being ready for Sandalwood, but perhaps it's about sharemarkets not being ready for Sandalwood companies. If that's the case, going private under and a PE backer may indeed be the best move so they can just get on with business as usual.