resource upgrades or possible downgrades, page-9

Some good heart feeling comments in this thread from some long time olympians.

I think it is true to say that most of the long term investors in CMR have had our moments of frustration.

I have held shares in CMR for over 3 years, since they traded in the 50-70 cents territiry. If you look back over the announcements of the past five years, you will realise that it is really only the last 12-18 months that some serious work has been done. Up till then the directors, the management team and large shareholders lived off past glories - some exploration / drilling, some PR in a market hungry for resources market with rising metal prices, but no much in terms of actually expanding our resource base - in some cases they were misleading (eg. initial U jorc figures).

The past 18+ months has resulted in the development of the Oxide mine and JV with HNC:
* number of shares has gone from approx. 70M to 130M+ and growing
* U jorc figure announced - about to be downgraded
* Copper, Nickel, Lead, Silver resource base hasn't been updated sin ce late 90s - but tru promise has been shown with recent drilling results - upgrade expected this month
* 50% of non-U resouces in the NT have been given to HNC in exchange for $72M for Oxide mine and funding of Sulphide mine
* Oxide mine is 12 months late and cost has nearly doubled

So we started with 70M shares and 100% ownership and we are now at 130M shares and 50% ownership - so lets hope the resource upgrade is significant because this tell me that my share holding is only worth 27% of what it was when there were on 70M shares and we owned 100% of the mine.

Having said that, we are now in a much better position to actually realise our dream with a large player like HNC on the team to provide the funding - this is quite an achievement in itself and it is hard to put a value on it.

I was lucky enough to attend the AGM in May. I was disappointed with company responses during the meeting from the directors but I was glad I hung around to talk to some of the people that have recently joined the management team. They are an impressive bunch and each of them has many years of experience behind them - a big risk for us now is how the company keeps hold of these people in a market where highly skilled exploration, engineering and mining people command a premium.

The Annual Report was an excellent read and for Compass, a high quality statement. It is well worth reading it a few times to take it all in.

Despite the frustration many of us feel about their communication style, one thing that stands out for is just how active and busy our new management team are - there are things going on all over the place for such a small team of people. These guys appear to be making a serious attempt to blow away the past (through results) that they have inherited and drive this company to a new level - this will take time but I have confidence that we have a very good operational team on board - another thing that hasn't really been communicated all that well by the company.

I am feeling very confident that this team will continue to surprise us in a very positive way going forward.

I intend hanging on to my shares for the $10 party and then the $20 party - I hope to see you there.