not again, page-25

re: a few questions ~ answers~acturtle Henrik,

I guess the 2 slides you have picked really get to the centre of the whole question of why and why not people should invest in junior resource stocks, and in particular MMN.

With respect to the 30% of NGG I guess there is some value there. But to be honest 30% of 50,000 pa is not really such a big deal. It really does seem to me to be only a very promising exploration/development prospect at this point in time.

The way NGG are approaching this project just typifies MMN. Your typical mining co will raise some serious money and drill the hell out of it quickly so that the appropriate size of mining project can be developed to fit the size of the deposit. Value is created by defining mineable reserves, yet this appears to be the last thing on NGG's mind. NGG are talking about a 50kozpa mine whilst the thing is still in exploration...... they are still talking about trench sampling results! Trench results should be long gone and forgotten about, they are so unreliable. Real investors would not assign any value to this project until some serious drill metres and prefeasibility assessments are completed. Dont get me wrong, it looks promising, but the sheer fact that they are only talking about a very small mine tends to suggest the upside in some way must be limited.

With respect to the MMN slide on reserves and resources, now that is a real doozy. If there is real scope for more reserves after 3 years, you have really got to ask the question why the hell have they not been drilled out by now? The slide has a second column that ASSUMES 90% of the resources are converted to reserves, and that they are only based on cost 'estimates'. Is that a good thing or bad?

It just has to be BAD. These guys have been on the ground at Texas for YONKS, and they are still making assumptions about what exists after 3 years of mining.......?? They have good feasibility study cost estimates to assess these resources. The mine is in cosntruction. I said it before, it is in the companys interest to get reserves as high as possible, it provides increased attraction for investors (particularly institutions) and from an accounting perspective allows the company to write off construction capital costs over a longer timeframe. In fact they probably could have got project finance if they had more mine life, rather than doing another placement.....

So what about about the extra 6 years of resources/reserves at Texas, is it there or not? Well the serious investor should not believe it. Its just too dodgy at this stage. I strongly suspect the extra resources are very marginal at current silver prices. But those looking for "upside", well they will believe it, or at least be prepared to speculate on it, and a rising silver price could just be the tonic to eventually prove them right.

acturtle