I agree with your summary, CJ. I have no problem with this. Both...

I agree with your summary, CJ. I have no problem with this. Both these parties were willing to lend the company funds at a time when they were desperately needed. These were commercial transactions on terms highly favourable to the company and thus shareholders. Now they have to be repaid. How do you achieve that?

Obviously, the company could, at a stretch, repay the loans out of existing cash resources, but that would put uneccesary stress on those resources, which can be more effectively deployed elsewhere for the benefit of shareholders.

Instead of asserting their rights to repayment in cash in full satisfaction of the loan agreements, both parties are willing to take shares in lieu. Can't imagine why they would do that, unless they believed the shares as an instrument of debt satisfaction, and the associated risk, were acceptable.

Likewise, Andrew Doyle, who has willingly agreed to increase the amount of funds he is prepared to put into the company. As an experienced risk managment specialist, I cannot imagine he would even contemplate this, let alone do it, if he did not view it as acceptable, or indeed favourable.

Metal Storm is still walking a tight rope. At this stage of the game, it could still go either way. It is not even a question of dilution. We have gone beyond dilution. It is simply a question of success or failure.

The only thing standing between that success or failure is having sufficient funds to achieve the critical milestones that will allow the company to commercialise the MAUL/3GL technology. In order for this to happen, management must do everything they can to preserve available funds and deploy them as effectively as possible in order to maximise the opportunity for a successful outcome. This is what they have done with these transactions.

I would rather focus on the positive things the company is doing to achieve success, than the alternative, which in reality is no alternative at all.

In this respect, Henry Kissinger got it right when he said, "The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously."