Buybacks have been occuring, but since revenue is minimal the buybacks are insignificant relative to the shares PQ et al. are handing out to themselves. As far as whether a buyout will occur before significant share buybacks, I sure hope so. Any significant buyback based on 15% of revenue obviously has to wait for significant revenue- and that ain't happening soon. Probably a year, maybe more, before the flotation and leach systems are in place. Even then, the waste ore grades, while higher than many company's primary deposits, are not high enough at only 50-100 tpd to generate huge revenue (remember it took 2 years to generate that pile containing maybe $7M that needs to be reprocessed through the flotation and leach systems). It's possible that some of the ore removed to create the safety and drilling rooms will be higher grade (though I doubt the safety room would be carved out of good ore), so they may have some higher grade ore to process- and it may be that the present mill setup will process higher grade ore more efficiently. But real mining of significant amounts of high grade ore to generate significant revenue is a ways away.

A buyout, however, could happen any time after drill results come out, especially if they are spectacular. The sp would first have to react to the drill results for a reasonable buyout, because no major is going to offer $1 for a two cent stock. Even a 50% markup is improbable. They'd be better off buying up stock on the market, then making an offer for the rest. What I'd like to see is a good run when the drill results come out, then a bidding war starting at a much higher sp...