Good News & Bad News, page-44936

Your position, which I will assume is honestly-held, is a bit short sighted.

Dale Henderson and the rest of the BOD learned the lesson of Chinese "involvement" in iron ore prices, when just about every producer but four or five paid "the iron price." The lesson every mining manager and executive took from the IO pricing collapse and subsequent shake-out of producers was that if you're a low cost producer and your commodity price(s) are low, extend your capacity (whether by vulture M&A or organic expansion) and drive production costs even lower while watching your higher cost competetion visit C&M or administration.

P680 and P1000 were designed specifically to take advantage of our 2021-2022 windfalls and extend capacity for the next upturn. They have so far executed both plans to perfection, on time and budget, so why would they halt now, and ruin everything they have been disciplined enough to execute?

When the SC6 price pendulum swings back in favor of producers, and it WILL, PLS will be almost uniquely positioned (along with Greenbushes) to take maximum advantage of that upturn. Please also note that the Feasibility Study for P2000 isn't even due until December Quarter 2025, and with an approporiate timeframe for an FID, assuming the FS says go forward, and then $1.2B worth of construction, they don't anticipate first production for P2000, even if everything goes smoothly, until 2028 (see Page 11 of the P2000 PFS Outcomes Presentation - link below).

https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ann-p2000-pfs-outcomes-presentation.8061129/

So far, PLS management (DH, and KB before him) have done almost everything correctly, timed almost everything correctly, and have been ahead of the curve while executing their plans to near perfection. They acquired Altura at just the right time, they became major producers at just the right time, they were able to capitalize on the last major price upswing, paying dividends early in their production life and still banking more than $3B, they transitioned into downstream production with the POSCO JV at the right time, and now they've gotten their plant expansion plans spot-on. We'll see if P2000 goes forward and when (if it does), and I'll wager that if/when they make an FID call, it will be the right call.

Decreasing production is not a team sport. It's forced upon the higher cost producers (like CXO, which I had the bad sense to invest what was fortunately only a small amount of money in) and the explorers and developers that can no longer get financing due to the low cost of SC6. Just like every mining commodity cycle, eventually, the price will go up, the PLSs of the industry will bank a fortune, and then production will skyrocket again, prices will eventually drop again, and the entire cycle will repeat itself, but we'll all be that much wealthier.

Best regards,