No doubt this will bring forth some haters, but a SYA/PLL merger makes too much sense not to happen imo. For the record, I no longer holder PLL (but hold SYA). I do like PLL as a company, and am hoping to re-enter soon.
As can be seen by the recent Livent/AKE merger, for which the industry consensus was that Livent got the better deal. However, AKE still saw significant share price uplift, despite the apparent 'inferior' value deal. Ultimately having both greater scale, and access to the US markets, is beneficial for emerging lithium companies. A SYA/PLL merger would tick both boxes.
SYA have:
- emerging Tier 1 asset in Moblan, albeit faces a steep funding curve to get this into production
- strong cashflow from their 75% ownership in NAL, albeit the cashflow goes into SYQ's pockets (and distributed after that)
- operational control over NAL
- very strong long-term development pipeline
SYA lacks:
- funding to aggressively develop its pipeline including downstream refining (don't underestimate how expensive this will be)
- the PLL offtake results in compromised incentives for SYA to spend significant capex increasing production (when PLL will get half of this increase @ $900/tonne).
PLL have:
- fantastic cashflow from the PLL offtake and their 25% ownership in NAL
- shorter-term exposure to lithium hydroxide through it's Tennessee plant (which has AU$200m of US government grant funding)
- a higher risk, but very attractive project in Ghana
PLL lacks:
- Tier 1 asset it has control over
- long-term development pipeline (its Carolina project is in the middle of a political tug of war and the Ghanian project naturally has geopolitical risks.
A combined company would have increased scale, completely aligned NAL incentives (the Life of Mine offtake is irrelevant for the merged company), access to both a very encouraging long-term development pipeline + the funding to develop this, future downstream refining exposure in both USA and Canada, international development portfolio - the list goes on.
(20min delay)