It's really strange that the shorters are still expecting LTR to go down further. I think they have no idea about the lithium supply and demand sides. They still think that the lithium mining is similar to iron ore mining but it's not.
They don't understand how important the Greenbushes production cut is and what it means for the lithium supply chain. I'll explain it for them again; Greenbushes was dumping all of it's 1.4mt spod concentrate production to short term contracts and spot market in 2023 because they couldn't use the half of spod concentrate production (which was 750kt spod) to its 2 JV partners chemical plants in Kwinana (Tianqi/IGO JV) and Kemerton (Albemarle) as those plants were not ready for full production due to technical problems.
1.4mt 6% spod concentrate means at least 250kt LCE. That is 25% of whole world LCE supply. That is a huge amount. Now they will cut nearly 25% of that 250kt LCE to the world lithium market and that makes around 60kt LCE. You can see JP Morgan and other forecasters are estimating that there will be 30kt-40kt excess supply (which is very small) in the world in 2024 but they were not expecting a production cut from Greenbushes.
Also many projects are on hold or suspended due to low lithium prices. So their forecasts are all useless IMO. They should immediately make new forecasts. I'm sure they make it internally but won't publish it to public. They know well the lithium price will go up IMO. But they prefer to buy lithium stock at these cheap prices.
We will see more substantial shareholder announcements of PLS and LTR from those companies like JPM, GS, UBS, etc in next weeks IMO.
I hope Hancock has the same impression of that bad sentiment and won't make a move on LTR. Then we can go to production. Then I'm sure our stock price will be around $4 in 12 months time.
As I said before LTR has no problem. I've heard that the KV project is going very good. This plant is a state of the art. After signal tests (the electric and electronic signal checks) successfully finished now, we are starting pre-commissioning tests. That is going to make sure that the whole machinery are installed properly and there is no problem like vibration, wrong installation etc. The SAG mill is already tested and it works like charm. Then the main commissioning will start next month I think. Then the first production and fine tuning will start of course.
LTR does not need to get a huge credit IMO because we need the money only as working capital after production starts in May or June. A $150-$200m credit would be enough. That can be done in next 2 months. Then the best way to find more money would be capital raising at any suitable price at that time. It can be done in May-June again for $200-$250m. No don't need to get money from those stupid banks. I'm not afraid of being diluted. PLS has over 3b shares on issue. We can issue another 300m shares and be at 2.7b SoI. No problem.
Tide will turn back.
- The world climate is changing rapidly. Global warming is going to be worst every year and we will feel the effect more and more. That is a major problem. We will see more natural disasters like floods or very high temperatures soon.
- The world needs huge amount of lithium, not only for passenger EVs, it's for utes, panelvans, trucks, boats, even for plains. You name it.
- The hydrogen fuel-cell is dead.
- Sodium-Ion batteries are now understood that they can't be an alternative for lithium.
- The only way to go is using lithium in batteries.
- Lithium price will climb substantially soon because the demand will be much more than supply.
- The cure for low lithium prices is going to be high lithium prices because killing lithium projects will cause very high lithium prices again. Tha happened in 2019 and will happen again. That's a typical commodity cycle even though lithium is not a commodity (that makes lithium even harder to supply).
The shorters must understand all these factors and close their positions if they don't want to make big losses.
I'm waiting patiently and holding tight.
No fear of course.
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