Not unusual given only 9 months of drilling all the resource is in the inferred bucket, not the Measured or Indicated bucket. Patriot was exactly the same with its maiden resource. The infill drilling will obviously tip more from Inferred to M&I, then reserves will follow that. I actually think if PEK can sort their mess and show some momentum after years of going nowhere, the shareprice will re-rate substantially, but there is no way Lindian is going back to 10 cents when you have one of the largest REE resources in the world. It's worth every bit of what it is worth now.
The other key thing here is likely low Opx cost and low Capex cost to monetize this project given good metallurgy and no radioactivity. Simple gravity seperation at this early stage with no chemicals is already yielding 60 % concentrate. I would refer you to the Euroz broker valuation analysis posted here back around mid April. This REE play is one of the few running around that still stacks up rather well on these rather low ( by recent historical standards) REE prices. I think we are around $ 66000 USD at present but go back 6 months and price was closer to $100,000 USD and lot in this space use the very bullish long run price projections of Adamas of circa $200,000 USD. In fact pretty sure from memory PEK has uses this benchmark in its pricing projections to the market.
Working off Euroz's very conservative numbers for the demo plant, when it hits full capacity at 440,000 Tonnes ore (Lindian annoucement 13/06) , they were predicting a $ 9 USD per kg margin on the Ore mined (USD $12.60 - $3.60) on prices at the time . In the below NPV analysis which I did for my own investment purposes , I have now revised the price back to current China spot price which is about $30,000 USD cheaper and added in all the various taxes & royalties Malawi charge .
Still shows a massive NPV from very small capex ($50 M ) on effectively a demo plant. Sensitivity of NPV outcome to price show on bottom right ;
Then go to
Stage 2 - 1.50 Million tonne and it looks like this ; ( note Author is also using NPV 10 % , not 8 % most mining folk are still using despite the rise of inflation over recent years)
Final Stage 3 looks like this with production out to 3.0 Mt which with the resource we now have from our MRE still implies a life of mine of 86 years even without adding anymore to it from further drilling which is most likely to take this resource to at least double its current level by the time we get to final bankable feasibility for this Stage 3;
Stage 2&3 will see some additional dilution as Malawi government will take up 10 % of the equity as required under Malawi law, but that doesn't undermine the above analysis ( doesnt effect NPV but will effect EV/share) but gives this investor the rational belief that Malawi will indeed want to fast track development here over the coming years.
If the electrification plans everyone is talking about are even only half correct, I can't see the price still hanging around $ 66,000 USD per Tonne medium term but more likely to be well in excess of $100,000 per Tonne.
The key here will be trying to develop an ex-China market and not being locked into exporting to this market as a price taker where all the market power lies with the buyers. Given geo-political trends of the last couple of years I will be very surprised if 2030 rolls around and the world is still happy to be 85 % dependent on China for all our RE needs.
So given all of the above, I remain pretty confident this is not going back to 10 cents and at the current $400 million mkt cap it is still looking quite cheap in the longer term scheme of things. There are many REE projects that wont be developed , which would justify the argument that this might go back to 10 cents or something lower, but project this wont be one of them. Like everything but in this space important caveat is it continues to be well managed, something that you might relate to as a PEK investor. Alistair for mine is one of the better CEO's running around out there in the REE space and while he is at the helm here I remain very confident this project will go all the way to production.
(20min delay)