After reading some of Mr. Hoover's previous posts I now understand why Mr. Marshal has such a high regard for the man. The post below is one of Mr. Hoover's best. Cheers, Fluffy The Cat

"Sorry, I forgot that only members can read the boards on TCC now.

There was a lot of fightiing going on over on TCC, mostly based on some misunderstandings.

The imminent part simply refers to that we're nearly into the second quarter, and the company has said that the PEA should be early in the quarter.

Here's my post from TCC:

...and, IMHO, it will put to rest all of this bickering, unless Dennis can find a way to misunderstand that report as well.

Aubrey is an extremely ethical man. 43-101 says that he can't talk numbers about his project, whether they're costs of production, costs to process to a saleable form, cash price for delivery to end-user, whatever....unless the numbers are generated by an independent qualified expert, who reports them in compliance with 43-101. He didn't answer the question about revenue/tonne because he isn't allowed to. I'm sure he has some numbers that he'd love to talk about, though.

I'm going on the record right now to predict, that with no further drilling, the resources defined in the PEA will be substantially larger than the resources reported already, even though they'll be calculated by the same firm.

Because RPA applied a Whittle Optimization on the deposit, a substantial amount of known mineralization was excluded from the resources reported. Whittle uses economic assumptions, and if the assumptions change, the resource changes as well.

1. assumption $8500/tonne. I think that's low. If the value/tonne reported in the PEA is higher, the economics improve, and the resource will expand.
2. assumption $1000/tonne for milling the ore. I think that's at least twice what it will actually cost to float to concentrate, and apply a caustic roast. If the PEA costs are lower than the earlier estimate, the resource will expand.
3. assumption 80% recovery. That's ridiculously low. There's no way they're going to lose 20% of the graphite to the waste pile or tailings. If the PEA recovery is higher, the resource will expand.
4. assumption, the open pit concept. There's no way anyone will ever build a pit of that size to mine the ore, especially with the barren sill cross-cutting both pipes. They may, perhaps, open a pit down to that level, but the transition to underground bulk mining methods will certainly occur no lower in the system than the level of that sill. There is a higher up-front CAPEX for underground mining, but e.g. block-caving operating costs are actually comparable to pit mining costs, because you don't move even a small fraction of the amount of waste rock. With a more efficient method, or any method that is underground, even later in mine life, all of the known mineralization becomes ore. The resource will increase.

I don't recall the name of the company, but ZEN hired a British marketing research firm, at a cost of six figures, if I recall that detail correctly, to determine the value of ZEN's graphite in the open market. With that sort of independent report, ZEN can talk numbers. RPA can use those numbers in their economic modeling of the deposit.

Last fall, when ZEN was putting out some of the laboratory characterization information, the market yawned. We here, at TCC, got the significance of the information, but so what? I think that ZEN learned from that, and the PEA will drop a bomb on the market. I think that all the questions, all the doubt, will be put to rest. All wrapped up, in one package, with a bow on it.

Aubrey cannot be taken out by a hostile bid. He holds five million shares, but he's not concerned about the share price. He's playing for the end game. Speculating on why we're not at a market cap of $450 million right now is a mugg's game. Gotta watch for those muggs, eh?"

Lar

P.