price rise easy to explain ... , page-5

Being a person with professional knowledge of the mining industry, I agree with most of your comments and observations. However, I am very cautious about the following:

1) Burraga can only be interesting as a mining property of it displays low grade (like 0.5 to 1% Cu, 0.2-0.5 g/t Au) over intervals of more than 100 m in drill core.... and not just in 1 hole. 3-5 m at 2% Cu means very little since today commercial Cu-Au mining is based on large tonnages (like 10's millions) but relatively low grade mineralization. Visible Cu here and there is interesting, but needs lots and lots further evaluation before it has a commercial value. We need to see like a $3 mi drilling campaign on the property to get a decent indication of any commercial value.

2) Vital Metals has descent grades, but the location of the mineralization is relatively remote and they have no pre-existing infrastructure to draw upon. I think Vital Metals relies a fair bit on the fact they they floated recently, so their share value is high in comparison to RAU. RAU has interesting ground and has done some good sampling. Even with a few drill holes, you can't infer that they have a deposit. You need to get into pre-feasibility (like $2-3 mi) before you can get a reasonable indication if you have an orebody there.

3) Mt Carbine is a potential company maker. Here it is a matter of funding (other $3 mi or so), to make sure that the ore is there and be mined at a profit. To restart the mine, it would easily cost $30-40 mi.

4) The gold properties still need much more drilling than done so far in order to upgrade resources to reserves. Then you need the infrastructure there. There were previous small mining operations, but it needs to be assessed how much it would cost to refurbish and upgrade what is there. My guess is that you will be looking at another $20-30 mi before you can produce the first gold.

5) The LZN story is legal and fraught with lots of uncertainties, in my view. I am sure RAU have very good reasons to believe that they can win the legal battle. The LZN deal created big financial problems to RAU as the depressed share price in the first half of the year showed. I would put no dollar value to this litigation.

The speed of the surge in SP there must be a new, strong investor behind them. Roger Tan is the obvious guess. I am sure the placement with him under very favourable conditions (4.5c or so) must have contained some undisclosed conditions (eg top up heavily with on-market transactions).

Will RAU be the next PDN, FMG, etc? The answer lies very much in the field of corporate strategy. FMG is worth $10 bi or so without any cashflow yet. Twiggy has been able to stitch together many deals to generate huge funds to build a big infrastructure in the Pilbara. Maybe John Kelly can do the same, even at a smaller scale.

I just sit on my holdings and wait for the story to unfold. I just hope that there will be no share consolidation in the next 12 months or so.