RE:Another dose of reality..I'm checking in to catch up on this, somewhat perplexed to see the situation here. The timing may be right for CEO transition, but it is a disruption. When the company is making efforts to attract a candidate, a good option package is critical, so if the share price is somewhat in the dumpster it would also make an option scenario more appealing. That person would also be hoping that the company has put any and all negative news out into full view, so as not to have to announce new problems later that were pre-existing issues. The new CEO wants to show ability at dealing with the known problems that were fully disclosed at the start, so one can be judged and evaluated fairly. I see this as a low point in the life cycle, and I doubt there were any negatives left in the closet undisclosed, so this I think is as bad as the outlook going forward will ever get. Seems the market may be exaggerating to the downside.
It would have helped to have seen this grade revision sooner than this, it was planned, had to happen but they seemed to carry on for as long as possible before the news was made. They need to keep mining on the sequence, so it's usually not workable to leave the low grade and come back some other time. If a stope is mined near to the cut off grade, it may seem that costs equaled revenue, however, the cost may include debt repayment, continuing development, and various fixed costs that would have to be paid regardless. Any change in tonnage is not near as significant as a grade change since the company can likely find more tonnes with continued efforts, its just it would likely be at about the same grade.
To update my own status on this. We saw before that things never turned out to be as bad as the critics called for, however, also often seemed not to turn out as good as what the company expected, with the company scaling back projections, then still having difficulty meeting them. I found it slightly more difficult to stay enthusiastic about this, although I was not feeling negative either, more towards neutral. I drifted away from following this, due to having to deal with a house renovation running into problems, some terrible tenants. Also work (startup company) is time consuming, so I'm not following this as closely as I was before.