I guess the key question right now is this: "Does Noront have the $15m to repay the loan? And if so, do they intend to repay the loan?"

Without actually knowing how much money Noront has in the bank right now, I can only presume that they either don't have $15m, or else they do have $15m but don't intend to deplete their cash reserves to pay off the loan. If that had been their intention, then why bother borrowing it last year with such a detailed long-term plan? Certainly, there hasn't been any known large cash windfall that would be more beneficially utilized for paying off the loan than it would be for development purposes.

I therefore assume that on February 25th, the loan will roll over and become termed the "Convertible Loan" rather than the current Bridge Loan.

When that happens, I don't see any significant changes. Noront cannot force the repayment of the loan by issuing 33 million shares at an ostensible value of $0.45 - only RCF can make that decision. Of course, the decision would be fairly straightforward as soon as the market SP rises significantly about 45 cents per share (taking into account many other considerations such as liquidity, tax treatments, insider status, etc.).

What is more interesting is what has been left unsaid. What happens to the loan on December 31st, 2015? It appears that no provisions have been made for renewal, and only that the loan matures and must be repaid on that date. Since Noront does not have the option of forcing the shares, then Noront must have had some sort of plan to have that amount of cash on hand at that point. This date is prior to production, therefore, they cannot assume production revenues to cover this.

The provider of the loan (RCF) would not have made the loan without some certainty that the loan could be repaid. At the moment, it appears that there is no obvious source of funding to repay the loan. So why would a large and savvy entity such as RCF provide a loan without any assumption that the borrower would have funds to repay the loan on the specific maturity date? Simple: RCF does not expect Noront to re-pay the loan at that date. They expect to recoup their loan through a share conversion, not through Noront providing cash.

I think we can assume with what approaches 100% certainty that Noront will be issuing 33.33m shares in December of 2015 to satisfy their obligation to RCF. I also suspect that this will be a significant windfall for RCF. Note that at that time, RCF will have exceeded the 20% ownership threshold (if they haven't in the meantime through a slow build-up of interest shares - I tried to do the math quickly in my head and I believe they will be very close to 20% near the end of 2015 if they keep accumulating shares as interest payments, based on the 18% holding as of that press release last year).