I'm not sure if Unilife's debt is any different to a mining...

I'm not sure if Unilife's debt is any different to a mining company that draws down debt to commercialise a new mine. The mining company might have little or no revenue while ramping up to production and sales. I assume that company uses equity or the actual debt to pay interest until product starts shipping. Money shuffling.

Unilife doesn't have to pay down debt until 2020. They do have to pay interest in the order of $8 million or more per annum. Like the mining company above, they have to shuffle money around (the recent ATM drawdown here, or part of a milestone payment there) in Year 1 or 2 to pay interest while waiting for near term consistent revenue to occur. I guess that near term consistent revenue would be Unifill/Finesse/Nexus sales. These are in ramp up phases as we speak. One would think (hope) these contracts will service the debt on their own by June next year but probably later. In the meantime, the company will continue shuffling money around to service the debt. Its a fine balancing act because this shuffling can impact other programs within the business. If it does impact then that's when they start thinking about the next cap raise.

For what its worth, the gross revenue estimates ramp up for Unifill/Finesse/Nexus sales are:

June 2015 - $30M
June 2016 - $100M
June 2017 - $170M
etc