FGJ Allow me to offer a bit different perspective as to why the sp is where it is at.
Advanced Exploration does not own the Roche Bay project outright. It ihas a partner. Roche Bay plc.
Now while shareholders in AXI have been pouring in money, RB plc has been taking it out. Their entire contribution was the original land and some 1980s exploration they did before Borealis got run out of Nunavut.
To end this relationship, at a very early stage in the exploration , AXI enetered into an agreement with RB plc..
At the point where this negotation took place, the company was still in its initial exploration stages, but they nonthe less made a quite amazing deal with and for RB plc......This buyout is a serious problem. The management at AXI knows it, and it is unfortunate that so many posters here simply wish to blow it off as a minor thing...NO ESTABLISHED INVESTMENT GROUPS WILL BECOME INVOLVED UNTIL rOCHE bAY plc is gone... And that takes tens of millions of dollars.
Which brings us to where will the money come from to take RB plc out, and what will whoever puts up the money want in return. There is a perception by many that the chinese group is simply going to toss in the money required. Their agreement with AXI has not been formalized so this thinking is a bit premature, and cooler heads dont make assumptions on this kind of issue.
The second problem is the company tends to get a bit ahead of itself on NRs, which initially cause the sp to rise up (in some cases, mysteriously before the NR!), and when things dont go as perceived, confidence wanes. The deal with the Chinese,as has been pointed out by one of the less loved posters, is not the first JV AXI has announced.. If you read their NR's and look at the subsequent performance very objectively, you will see they are not all that concerned with doing what they seem to say, though again, you will hear from many that the changes are really wise decisions.
Lastly, the company in the last year seems to have lost a bit of focus. The 2011 Roche Bay expoloratin program was reduced about 75% from the original plans announced, due to having no funds, yet at the same time the company was spending money on prospects in Alaska and South america. this is not a confidence builder at all, and spin it any way you want, it does not shine a good light on management.
The sp however, is based almost solely on the great story that has been sold. And unfortunately alot of small invetors have got burned when the stock shot up for no reason , and then subsequently crashed. As theire are no institutional players interested right now in actually writing a cheque, the sp rise will be dependent on enticing many small players into the fold, and, unless something fundamental changes, burning them in the end again.
As to the delay in funding from the joint venture, that to is a bit premature, as the terms of the joint venture have actually not been finalized yet, so the funds are , as mentioned in previous posts, still a bit away.
And the 2012 exploration season is fast approaching. So fast, in fact, that all the 2012 planning should be in place now. We will have to wait and see how much money the company actually has available for exploration, or any NRs will be nothing more than a repeat of the broken plans made in p revious years.
Tread carefully, this is very much a company in the initial exploration stages and they are still determining whether a mine is actually feasable or not. If you are a trader there is lots of profit to be made here, I think, but if you are planning to buy and hold, you might have a long wait on a very preliminary project.
Best to you