The future
I see you’ve appointed a new China manager, I imagine you rang hisreferences, did you?
[Laughs] I did. I engaged a group in China called Carrington Day, whoare an exceptionally professional outfit up there run by some Australian guysthat I know, to do the search for me and I can assure you it was thorough andit was in-depth and I’m happy. We needed obviously to stabilise the business upthere, it was pretty unstable given the events and the removal of some prettysenior people, so we needed to do that which we’ve done and we’re still doingbusiness in China and it’s not forecasted at the levels it was, but I’m happyto say that we have about 15 projects up there as we speak which is good. I’mhappy to build that back slowly and realistically.
I don’t whether you can answer this question, but do you get a sensefrom the contact you’re getting from shareholders of whether there’s an excessof supply of stock?
[Laughs]
I mean, do you geta feeling that a lot of people are going to be bailing out when you come backonto the ASX or is there going to be a bit of demand for stock?
Yeah, it’s a hard question. I think you’ve touched on probably there,the biggest frustration is not being listed, is clearly frustratingshareholders and I certainly understand why, there’s nothing worse than havingan asset that you can’t deal the way you want to, if you like. But no, I don’t,and I do think there’ll be some that say they don’t like what’s happened andthey’ll obviously make a decision based on that. There’ll be others that’llsay, “No, we think you’ve cleared this up and we think you’re cheap at a priceand we’ll be in, we see the future…” And obviously, as much as I’m trying todeal with the issues that we’ve uncovered, I am trying to create a future thatsays this company can deliver and will deliver and that’s what the strategy’sabout.
I can’t answer it, obviously, but I can tell you that the frustrationsare largely around shareholders today that feel that we need to be relisted sothey can actually make a decision. I think that’s their biggest frustration.But there’s a lot saying – the 4C this quarter wasn’t fantastic, but it wasbetter than previous ones and I think that signalled that things are startingto turnaround positively for the business from a couple of pretty bad oneswhere we were leaking a fair bit of cash to sort all this stuff out…
You’re still leaking operating cash, do you have a sense of when you’llgo cash positive?
Well, we talked about 2021, given the projects that we know abouthappening that we would turn a small profit for this year, P&L profit.We’re still comfortable with that given that things are slowed a bit, there’sno doubt with COVID, projects just don’t happen at the speed that they would’vehappened before and our shareholders will know, it’s not a quick processanyway, from identifying a lake to actually treating that lake can take some time.But it has even slowed up even more due to just physical access to lakes,travelling around to get lakes treated, etcetera, etcetera… But that’s what wesaid at the AGM and at this point, as I see the projects get closer tocontracts, we’re still comfortable with that position.
(20min delay)