SFMI has backers who will continue to finance them as long as it takes- which won't be long now.
Please... who is paying for it.
As far as doing a share buyback while using shares to fund, remember that most of the shares used for funding will be restricted for a year. So in essence, they are taking free trading shares off the market and converting them to restricted. That's a positive.
And that shouldn't be a concern for very long. At a burn rate of $12M a year, that's about 12 dore bars. It took them a little over a month to produce that using the smaller smelter, so if they can produce a bar a month, they will already be break even. And that's with the smaller smelter. Wonder why they are building a bigger smelter? Maybe because the present one won't be able to keep up with production, much less deal with the year and a half backlog of concentrate. And especially so as the grades increase as they use the on site lab to select higher grade ore, and more than double the mill capacity. I don't think that they'll be using shares for funding much longer.