reply to ekiwi

Heh. If anybody was wondering about those multiple duplicate posts, the hotcopper site seems to experience comms problems from time to time. Probably due to scheduled maintenance.

Anyway,

> If the announcement is 'a few' weeks away why do
> you bother putting out a pre-announcement? To
> reassure stockholders? Nah. A couple of weeks

Reassuring stock holders may be exactly why an update is necessary. If you were 'a few' weeks away from finalising lucrative deals there's no reason to jepoardise negotiations by losing market confidence in your business and credibility. The share price should be upheld during these crucial times.

> wouldn't make much difference, esp. to those who've
> been waiting years. But if the deal in some way

Maybe no difference to investors who accumulated at 1.00. But a different story for potential new investors, including institutions and partners. Time is money to them.

> involves the new partner buying equity in SLX and
> you need to protect the shareprice, maybe that's
> exactly what you do.

Protecting the share price would be an issue during hostile takeovers. Unless for example it is management's agenda to accept a one-off sale of their technology instead of taking the licensing & royalties path.

If an institutional placement is offered then a price in favour of the buyer would accerlate negotiations too.

> This morning it looked like going under $3 so maybe?!
>
> Another possibility that occured to me (although I
> think SLX management are far too professional for
> this) is maybe you're negotiating with an interested
> party and you're trying to reach a favorable
> agreement on price. What to do? Maybe announce
> publically you've got 2 interested parties and a deal is
> close? Hmmm.

SLX need partners. I don't think it's wise of them to play games at this stage.

> Even accepting the announcement at face value. The
> fact that they made one, kind of suggests that the
> work that still needs to be done in selecting a
> preferred partner and then signing agreements,
> means a few weeks could be as many as six.

Yeah. This company seems to be held hostage to a lot of delays and the market is wary. Who knows how many further delays there could be. But this is SLX's 2nd take on commercialisation since the USEC fiasco and this time they have several potential partners instead of 1 which would increase the likelihood of success.