I think the reason they have so many shares on issue, apart from...

I think the reason they have so many shares on issue, apart from the recent share give away, is that they started with a low grade heap leach project and discovered a high grade UG mine in the processes of scoping out the original heap leach mine design.

They basically found two mines but not at the same time and both needed funding to get to a fundable development stage. They really had little choice but to drill M1 to the current depth as 4.5 years would have been the minimum reserve life to get funding in this country for that project. That's a fact no matter how much you think the company could have just started mining M1 without sufficient reserves defined. No one is going to fund a project based on reserves fewer than 4.5 years in BF and if you did find someone they would want to practically take the lot for the privilege.

There was basically three broad sets of share issues, one to drill and do feasibilty on the original low grade resource at M5, a second round of raising to drill M1 and incorporate that discovery into an overall mine plan and a third raising to fund the mine. It is just a sad consequence of the timing of the discoveries and the fact the project has taken quite a long time to build from the ground up, ie from the time it was orginally pegged in 2006??

If you can't understand my argument for why we should keep drilling I can't state it anymore clearly than I've done. There is a dam lot of value below the current reserve at M1 which just won't be accounted for if a takeover comes and we don't have the beginnings of a resource proved up on it. We are talking about 2.5 years of high grade UG production that we won't get paid for in a TO situation, let alone what might exist below our deep hole. We recently raised more money than we apparently needed (unless expanding the DFS chews into surplus funds) so why not spend that money to defend the value we strongly suspect is in the ground.

If Richard seriously believes we are in the radar of bigger companies for a potential TO he should keep the drills spinning to protect the untapped, undefined and high grade ore he knows is in the ground below the current reserve at M1, at least to prove up the 8 years of mine life or he better have some other plan to defend this value when an offer is lobbed on us. Esh