Reply form Mr Ian Levy for request for clarification Mar 11.

The following exerpts summarise Ian Levy's reply to my email asking why no announcements, and what's cooking right now.

“…now is the wrong time to say too many things publicly due to negotiations. We risk being gazumped after doing all the market development work over the last 9 to 10 months. We can't give our competitors a precise report on our marketing work - we've lost 3 contracts since mid December to competitors, very late in the deals.”

“…This will not go on much longer - we are at "deal or no deal" stages in the two sets of negotiations when the next meetings occur very shortly. There could be 2 more meetings in each negotiation after that, with a final meeting involving the lawyers drafting the deal contract details.”

“We are still selling small tonnages of bauxite to two non-aluminium customers as we announced in the December Quarterly - immaterial amounts so far, like we announced in the December Quarterly, but encouraging and profitable none-the-less … ABx has worked for over a year to convince certain cement plants to switch from existing sources of alumina and iron in their cement feed to bauxite that supplies both ingredients with additional benefits in kiln performance. This market development has taken a lot of R&D by ABx and potential customers and detailed test batches to prove that our bauxite produces perfect cement for these applications.”

“…we are de-risking our business by looking at larger sales into our non-aluminium related markets, like fertiliser and cement which are very strong markets today. When the aluminium-related demand picks up, we'll be ready to ship bauxite to those customers too.”

“I too have had a painful investment experience with my $1.25 million personal investment in ABx. I need this to succeed as much as anyone.”

Can we please keep this thread for discussing the merits of investing/divesting in the stock. Please keep it civil and topical and leave bragging about historically perfectly timed tops and bottoms to another "How good am I" thread.