I don’t think there’s a once sized fits all answer to this. Some...

I don’t think there’s a once sized fits all answer to this. Some companies are happy to get in early and take on more risk, others would want to wait for the project to be further derisked before getting in. Larger companies generally fall into the later category imo.

A DFS does derisk a project greatly - firstly through engineering studies on flowsheet design (ensuring plant is tweak to deal with levels/types of impurities and maximise recoveries). But more importantly it does all the necessary environment studies (ESIA) which allow for a mining licence to be granted and all the red tape is removed etc and the main game can commence - this I think is important for a suitor especially if they are a major and don’t have experience operating in Africa.

The other element of derisking involved classifying resource under JORC and moving it up the confidence levels and into a mining reserve through the DFS. As John has mentioned previously most majors would only look at a copper project that has a resource >1mt Cu.

I don’t think we’ll see a TO attempt until the DFS is mostly complete (around late Feb 2019). A suitor imo would approach the company prior to completion of DFS and do due diligence on that work and get in before any large dilution occurs to fund T3 (as they would fund through their balance sheet).

Hopefully we’ve drilled out >120mt of resource before anyone comes knocking.