Ann: Operations Update, page-13

What exactly are my thoughs?  

That mgmt are guilty of promising too soon, and now paying a hard price for under-delivery.  They (and it would appear their promoters on social media) hyped up the story to soon, and where now the politics of Botswana is playing out more fully in the public glare.  Whilst the politics drama is not directly the fault of Gilby and team, they could or should have been more circumspect to reality in their host country.  

As for the specifics you mention, there are 409m shares in issue, the current drill campaign will account for most of the cash on hand, the Govt have been nowhere near as accommodative as Tlou mgmt have claimed in news releases, the strong partners don’t seem to have added to company progress in any substantive way that I can tell, and if the current 100mw RFP gets further delays, then the next rounds of fund raising are going to be ‘interesting’.  And even if the RFP goes well and they get their 10mw award, that in itself is not an earth shattering quantum but, of greater concern should be how Long might it take them to agree a suitably constructed PPA which is acceptable to the lenders who will bankroll the project?  

I am not saying it will happen this way, but it is not unreasonable to project we could be sitting here in 12 months with 10mw award, PPA terms still not agreed, only a few wells drilled and producing data, 500+m shares in issue and mgmt finally publicly acknowledging that the Bots authorities are taking the piss .... 

That would be a far cry from all the endless positivity of the past 3 years .... and would result in a rather chastened group of extremely disappointed retail shareholders.   As you say, TIA so better to be cautious than stupidly bullish....