...."People have quoted from transcripts over the last week or so and commented how it seemed like Teck was preparing the market for their aquisition of us, but reading the transcripts without wanting the transcript to support a preconceived idea - I didn't see it saying what the commenters did (talk of iron, aquiring producing mines, saying that 'jrs with high insider ownership wanting 60-80% premiums' they would have to walk away). I didn't see them as prep for our deal, if anything it seemed there was much competing for the buyout money we seek and they wouldn't pay huge premiums."....

I see your points about the Teck presentation and Q&A talking about a lot of other stuff other expansion of its copper segment. They did mention a lot of other avenues for the cash sitting in the bank. Teck is a biggish company swiming in a pond with very much bigger companies and growth and diversification are what folks want to hear. I think iron would make a lot of sense for teck as they want to carve our a niche in that pond with large truck and shovel operations. They don't go underground and they branched into the oils sands which is all about trucks and shovels. They did mention needing to get future copper projects in line due to decreasing grades and closing mines in the near future. I think DL mentioned that about 3 times. Granted, he did hint that they needed copper a bit more urgently than Schaft would provide at the rate we are going.

My feeling is that Don L. and company need to be very, very careful in speaking on this kind of stuff as the hint of any one particular move could get them into trouble. Meanwhile they need to soften up their shareholders to the general idea of where they are headed so they demonstrate a sound business model for the future.

Its a long presentation but I thought DL's comments at about the 28:30 min mark about long term copper prices for evaluating copper was a bit of a tell. He said $3.00 copper then, seemingly quickly, he added $3.25 copper which happens to match our base case. Small, maybe nothing, but I found it interesting.

I don't have the min marks but he did mention some of the criteria for aquisitions that really fit Schaft quite well: long life, stable political jurisdiction and projects that met the mid point for cost per lb or lower. What makes this stand out for me is that prior presentations really didn't cover such topics that could be reflected back to Schaft very well at all. That makes these small mentions a bit more significant to me.

If we couple that corporate philosophy with the report of Elmer being surprised at the level of competency Teck has on the Schaft Creek topic, it starts making even more of sense. Keep in mind Galore and Teckland. The FS summary described a fuel transfer/pumping station at Bobb Quinn - Galore plans to have a concentrate loading station there too. Galore already has a lot of land in the area for its station. Cuu has a contract with the port; Galore doesn't.

Also, if Teck was really not interested in Schaft, they probably had ample time and info to have made their mind up by now. If they know that they don't want it, there would be no reason not to cut CUU lose so they can "be fair to the Juniors" and both parties get on with life.

jmho