Could be Vod, could very well be - and I'm not a CPA but since PLL "recognized revenue" (as it was shipped) but the price had some variability, they did the right thing and accrued a charge (since basis of accounts is accrual accounting - GAAP) over that cash for $7.8M. ... no secret there as it was known to apply ... it may well be more than.
Overall the accrual and the amount is irrelevant for my way of looking at it.
What is important (I think) is to keep the right amount of liquidity at hand for the company to conduct its business in 2024. So its interesting to me that PLL chose to sell off ~50% of its A11 shares for about what we paid for them (purchased ~10% for ~$16M). Something has changed (well clear price of spodumene has changed) that has changed KP's PoV. Clearly shifted to "less risk"
From the Sep Bloor interview .. the bolding is mine
(JC) Keith I want to move on and discuss your balance sheet and also your funding strategy. You have a lot going on - all of which is going to require a lot of capital. How much cash do you currently have on hand and how will you allocate that cash in the coming year?
(KP) The answer to the second question is carefully. We have we have about US$95M of cash in the balance sheet. We also own about US$85M in stock in Sayona and Atlantic. Those aren't really held for sale. It's not our plan to sell them but if we needed money, we could.Those shareholder interests are unrelated to our JV interests and our offtake arrangements and from a capital perspective over the next year, we expect to generate operating cash flow through our NAL offtake agreement. We have a gross margin of 50% at these prices. That's helpful. Most of the money we need to spend- would expect to spend say in Ghana, in Tennessee, and Carolina is already spent on the engineering. The DFS is done in Ghana. Most of the remaining spend there will wait for a permit which is a year away plus or minus ..."
So ... "if we needed money, we could". OK then we seem to need extra money .... but not for Ghana, nor TLP, nor CLP. Well that only leaves 1 other project (PLL expecting a large cash call from NAL perhaps?).
IMO its possible with the rout in lithium prices that the SYQ JV is not "washing its own face" from cash generated from sales of NAL SC. It has sizeable CapEx (going on the CR preso from SYA last year). So if SYQ is short on cash it can only come from one source at this time (IMO ... that wont they on debt in the JV and CFO appears insufficient) - the equity partners. So if the assumption was $7.5M was the originally expected and its now say $15M that might explain it (also means SYA tips in US$45M ... ). This 10Q from PLL may give the answer (in the liquidity needs going forward). Of course it might just be KP being risk averse (?) and wanting a stronger balance sheet for PLL loan applications/
It looks like KP favors keeping SYA stock (a producer) over A11 stock (a developer) to tap for "fast money".
(20min delay)