Member Info for JulianM

Echo,I agree that James is very keen to complete a deal but am not aware of a JV partner being in place.What evidence do you have please to support that assertion?

Another problem is that even if they agree a deal, it could take at least another 6 months after agreement for all the formalities to be completed and approved.

He tells me that, at the Symposium, he met a senior officer of the Dept of Water Affairs who will "see what he can do"re the Thorny River Water Use Licence and also that BOD and the contractor are currently investigating kimberlite targets at Marsfontein,which look attractive and if they work out, the contractor has the capacity to at least double production.

So a couple of positives there

Geng.If that's what the future holds we might as well "welcome AST with open arms" at almost any price!

I emailed him to ask if he can give us any indication of the value of the diamonds recovered, as referred to in the RNS. He said that they will be worth in excess of the value estimated in the CPR for Thorny River which was 120-220 per carat, which is of course a little vague but gives us some idea.

I also asked why the licence is taking longer than anticipated to be issued and he said that it is the associated water use licence which is taking time ,rather than the mining licence itself.

For me the sting in the tail of the 6th July RNS is the requirement to work with the Local Authorities to sign necessary contracts.This begs the question "what contracts ? " Are they standard documents which require little amendment or do they have to be prepared from scratch and are any of the Local Authorities fundamentally hostile to us to the extent that they could drag out the whole procedure? Badprophet is perhaps excessively negative but he does raise legitimate points in relation to timescale and also to the risk of a fundraise which in my own view is inevitable, as we continue to burn through reserves and the only question is "when? " It could be soon.

So far no sign our our Friday seller, hence signs of a recovery.

As to a fundraise, this always involves the bod,families and friends participating and with some income coming in at present ( and I wish we knew more about this) I would have thought that the intention is to avoid raising money.The deal with Vast would have been on the basis of Vast providing all the finance(some hope anyone knowing Vast would say) and I would expect the bod to look for a similar deal from a more reputable company.

Seller in lots of 1m shares driving the price down and in the hope the seller is not acting on adverse inside information I am topping up regularly as the sp falls

Apparent heavy selling on dividend arrival day rather than reinvestment in more shares.

You are probably right Perroverde ,although we simply do not know how much Vast will raise from the sale of the diamonds.The only information we have is that they amount to 129,000 carats but as to average size ,quality etc ,we have no information,as far as I am aware.Vast give the impression that they hope to have the proceeds of sale by the end of the month and will immediately pay of outstanding debts of £7.3 m but will there be enough left over for other ventures?

Not bust.They have about $40m and are paying a special dividend.

I suspect that the longer the production continues the less impressive the overall figures will be, in that returns will be diminishing although I assume still sufficient to be worth continuing until the move to TR can be made .

Fortunately I disposed of most of my holding in AST a few years ago but kept hold of a few ,which are now worth something like 1% of their value at the time of the other sales.The company has been a basket case for a while and it would not have taken much in the way of research for our bod to have discovered this back in December and terminated discussions. I fully agree with your views TDT.

On my part.

The delay arises because they are having no success whatsoever in identifying a suitable company for an RTO and are considering calling it a day any distributing all money held to shareholders.If only!

I managed to pick up another 200,,000 yesterday at 0,95 but the trade did not show up on the summary of trades for the day.

Of course the 14th March was the date of the RNS but the date of actual receipt could have been earlier,although I guess we will never know. I continue to be very disappointed that 2 months down the line,we are still waiting for confirmation of the arrangements ,which they should have been in a position to proceed with as soon as the funds arrived.

The moment the shares go ex div I will be selling up as I have no faith in them securing any deal which will add shareholder value.I fear that at best a deal will be announced,the shares will be suspended for a least 6 months whilst all the formalities are dealt with and if approval is given there will probably be a fundraise at a lower level than the price at suspension,whilst in the meantime the bod continue to pay themselves,thereby depleting funds.

They had 6 months before the funds arrived to be organised to make the dividend payment asap thereafter ,which is in the best interests of us all.Instead we are told that news of arrangements will be given"in due course" which suggests a long wait.Of course there is no legal commitment to keep to the 90 days,so we could be kept waiting even longer. Typical disregard for us long suffering shareholders

Interesting, Echo.can you expand at all as to exactly what he said ?

It is often contended that posts on a bulletin board rarely have any effect on share price movements but I think Master has managed to achieve this,hence the temporary move above 6p. The Master induced froth seems to have gone and we will have to await genuine news of the grant of the LP for a decent rise to occur