Great post and well reasoned. I note that @vmp has answered you with his views and I agree with him. Let me give you my perspective on why LTR will not take this all the way:
1. Age and Personalities - the LTR guys are explorers and miners. TG has been doing this his whole life and knows the pollies in WA and the people that matter. He knows the ropes backwards. Look at him and his board as Team A. You need a completely different team to turn this into a FMG or WES. A very different skill set and mentality. They don't have that and frankly I doubt if they want to get that. They like wearing hard hats and getting dirty. If TG was 20 years younger then maybe but he is my age, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and for every Twiggy Forrest he would have seen a thousand wannabes crash and burn in WA. Let me give you a tip, his sharing buying tells the story.
2. Money - it would take $1B to construct the mine, refinery, transportation system and do the marketing, legals, employee scale up, insurances, additional professional advice etc.
3. Time - the above will take many years. An established player will do it in half the time and lock into the lithium stream much sooner and with less chance of stuffing it up.
4. Common Sense - TG and his board have almost achieved their vision and done the hard work. If someone comes along and offers to either buy KV or JV with KV for a top of the market sum, they would be mad not to. In fact they would be negligent not to try and get the best price and then put it to the other shareholders. We may reject it, but only if it was a paltry offer I would suggest. $1B minimum is what I am thinking and what I strongly suspect TG is thinking for KV. Will still have Moora and Buldania to play with and exploit anyway. Spreading too thin can kill any company. I have always thought that LTR was in the sweet spot with timing. The fact that the negative posters here went on about the low spod price only meant to me that we were at the bottom of the cycle which was about to turn up. And so it started. The massive rise of Tesla, EVs etc (all helped by Covid I might add) means that we are very quickly about to be in the sweet spot to see the best price. The best time to sell is always just before the peak and TG knows this better than anyone.
5. Unknowns - There are unknowns which could stop us in our tracks, such as: war, global recession, accelerated climate disasters, new technology in batteries (solid state) that could make our form of spod less desirable, competitors, another pandemic and so on. As you are in your 20s I suspect you have confidence that the human race can ride it out, so did I in my 20s. Now I am in my 60s and I still have that similar confidence except that I don't want to rely on others to do it, I want to be in a position of control and I am not if LTR goes down the take it to market path itself. Too many unknowns. It is better to get the best price and then invest in the new owner or JV partner or invest more in LTR for Moora and Buldania. I was in KDR and did very well. I could have put all my profit at that time into WES, the new owner of KDR, and I would have done very well if I had as WES is way up both in SP and with dividends, but I decided to roll the dice again with LTR because I knew that Australia had another KDR left in it and that LTR with TG and his board would learn from the mistakes made by others before them and maximise the value of KV, which most likely will be by a full sale or at least a JV IMO.
This is why I believe, like VMP and @anatol, that KV will be sold or the subject of a JV. Either would be very profitable for us all. However never say never and the updated PFS might confirm that my view is the best or perhaps show that there is another path as you suggested. We must all read it thoroughly. Just remember that lithium should be treated as a chemical not as a commodity. it is much more difficult to get right than nickel. I would be much happier if they decided to exploit Moora themselves.
Cheers and it was great to see a fresh contribution on this.
LTR Price at posting:
22.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)