Update on Company website, page-3

What most SFX shareholders are experiencing right now is perfectly natural given the share price and lack of news from the Company.

It also tends to be a self fulfilling downward spiral when shareholders (in the absence of any formal updates) look to the share price for guidance..
the price weakens
they assume the worse
they sell
the price weakens further
they assume even worse
they sell more.... and so on it goes.

After more than 25 years in this caper I'd usually be the first to highlight that no news is usually bad news when it comes to ASX listed companies.

However I do not consider that to be the case with Sheffield Resources at this juncture.

Most punters on these forums have been exposed to the traditional West Perth resources 'spec' model whereby directors leak information in order to generate interest in the stock, hoping to 'ramp' the price just prior to placing the securities into trading halt and announcing a capital raising.

What most are failing to comprehend is that Sheffield has moved beyond these antics and is now immersed in a process that is far more significant.

This is not UBS's 'first rodeo' so to speak. They would be very aware that the benefit to SFX shareholder's of any sudden jump in the share price would be far outweighed by the jeopardy the optics of such price action would have on the process. More specifically the negative impact it would have on those groups presently engaged in the negotiation process. It would be a major blow to good faith.

I would suggest that the board of Sheffield are under very clear instruction by UBS not to disclose any information regarding the process to any outsiders.

And as the directors make up a significant portion of the top 10 shareholders (Archer, McQuitty, Burbury and potentially MacFadzean via his performance rights) they would not want to get this far into the marathon only to trip on their shoelaces in the last 100 metres. With so much at stake at this late stage of the game they understand that it is in the interests of all Shareholders to remain silent until the initial process is completed.

I say initial process because I believe the completion of the formal JV negotiations will be just the beginning of the main game.

As 2ic has rightly pointed out - this market is ripe for corporate activity in this sector. We recently saw Rio Tinto make a long awaited investment decision on Zulti South, we witnessed Tronox and Cristal go to extreme lengths to ensure the merger transaction was approved by the US Federal Trade Commission. All of this activity highlights that industry participants are now in consensus about the looming supply deficit. An asset such as Thunderbird will not remain undeveloped for long.

I was always of the view that the initial stage of the formal sale/JV process would take between 4 to 6 months. On this basis I would not expect any updates by the Company until late May/early June. Therefore I do not consider the process to be overdue or behind schedule at all.

We will be looking back at these sub $0.60 prices in a few months, kicking ourselves that we allowed uninformed nervous shareholders and/or corporate players to influence our decisions on what fundamentally we knew to be a high conviction buy.