Share Price, page-504

What happens at AXQ is quite irrelevant to ALK given the amount of drilling they are doing and the results to date. POG has fallen and ALK by more than its fall. The increase in the price of copper in the last few months outweighs the fall in POG in relation to Boda as an earlier post of mine showed.

But what is puzzling me is different. On 9 November Nic Earner stated 'We believe that Boda is shaping up to be a large, tier one gold- copper porphyry project'. SP does not remotely reflect ALK's management's obvious positive view about Boda as it seems the current price does does not assign any value to Boda - current market cap is $420m.

I am also puzzled by the delay in drilling results from Boda. Drilling with one rig started in July 20 and first results were made available on 9 November of 11 holes of about 9,500m. Given the delays at the labs the results from this announcement were probably from drilling to early September. Results for another 3 holes (about 3,000m) were provided on 18 Dec and these were probably drilled up to maybe mid October or even earlier. Another drill rig commenced at Boda October 20 and the drilling campaign is expected to finish in April (there has been no indication of delays).

We are now in March, 2.5 months or 10.5 weeks since the last announcement and nothing has been reported - so we probably have drilling conducted in October/November which is 3/4 months earlier than today's date and no results - I sort of don't believe that the labs are 3-4months behind. While there may be a logical and plausible explanation it does not look good that nothing has been reported in 2.5 months especially when they reported the second set of results 5 weeks after the first.

Many shareholders become very impatient and suspicious when there is no news from a company and decide to sell. I do believe this is happening to ALK. As a results of no news many people are losing interest in Boda. They have not hit the porphyry yet so people may think it looks like it may be a dud. Short sellers are having a great time.

So what are the possible explanations - delays are much more than 8 weeks at the labs but I find it hard to believe they are double that and if they are ALK should let shareholders know. It is possible that ALK are storing up the results but that is not consistent with what I have observed in the past from ALK re Boda. Other possibilities cast doubt on the credibility of ALK management/board which is not consistent with past performance.

ALK's communication with shareholders about Boda has not been ideal and accordingly I have changed my view to hold from Buy until there is clarification from ALK re Boda. I am also nervous about what is going on re Boda.