After the meeting there was a bit of a flurry where I bounced between JB, Dougal, GT and Dougal's dad (lovely bloke and a shareholder)
I didnt bother to write anything down, I just pumped in as many questions as i could, particularly to JB. So i will write here how i perceived the responses and remember them. There was another young gentleman with me who bundled up JB on the stand while he was packing his gear away, he was obviously a shareholder who like many of us, had done it a bit tough and we said he was on HC, but had put it away for a little bit to give himself a break because it was doing his head in lol. He bundled up JB along with me.
JB was really responsive off the camera. He was quite engaged with the shareholders and his answers were pretty thoughtful and intelligent. He hung around until the venue staff kicked the last few of us out and even hung around outside to further engage with what i believe to be a few of T20 holders. JB spent most of his time with the smaller retail holders like myself.
This gentleman and I went straight out to JB - "where do you see the share price going from here?' Well obviously JB didnt over-commit with an value, but the response was indicated that he was certain of recovery and he didnt seem overly concerned where we are at now. There was just emphasis placed on the current lithium price. There a belief from everyone that the price revival would be when the demand comes back.
For GT - I asked JB why the Tabba Tabba results were released to Morella but not released to SYA holders as a price sensitive announcement? (This is the question Louie was trying to get out on air but by this time they were terrified of having the mic go anywhere near us) Unfortunately, he got swamped by another question to my right and didnt get to answer - i dont think he ignored me, but i get the impression that he didnt receive my question entirely - he did look back as to address it or possibly even ask me to repeat the question but the person on my right jumped back in and i left it.
Moblan was all the talk - JB was frothing, Dougal was frothing - One of my questions to JB was "how do we bring Moblan to market, sooner rather than later?" I followed up with the remark that further CR is probably not only unlikely to be able to happen, but also not what us shareholders want to see - which he seemed to agree with.
He said that the relationship with the Canadian government team and Sayona was really good - He mentioned a name, i cant remember it (im fkt with remembering names) it gave me the feeling it was a director at SOQUEM or I.Q and said that they are being really helpful and enthusiastic and are really keen to assist SYA with bringing Moblan to market. The relationship sounded good and i see that having a good relationship there with the SOQUEM/I.Q team. The board and Dougal sounded really excited talking about Moblan. There was no talk about the resource, the grade - it was a non-issue. It was all about getting it into the market.
Finally, what i dont think i mentioned yesterday is Dougal did say that there is a 6-8 hour period where the "froth" in the concentrator will drop if there is no continuous crushed ore feed into the concentrator, and to bring the froth bag to the level which sees continuous flow after the froth has dropped off takes 24-48 hours. This brings us back to the crushed ore dome - By breaking the crushing and concentrating circuits into two halves, not only is that going to reduce the chances of the froth dropping off in a crushing failure (we mentioned the ball mill failure) but also give the crushed ore a chance to lie in the dome for two days or so. There is a 2 day lag for the ore in the dome - The reason for this is that the ore gets a coating of ice in the winter months (today is the first day of winter in Canada - so we will be loving that dome) The coating of ice slows the concentration circuit down. By lying in the dome for two days, it gets rid of this ice layer and increases output - some of which we already know, but at least we know there is 2 days of ore in the dome. Sylvain was the inspiration behind the suggestion, design and implementation of the dome.
JB believes the recovery rate is 62% to date. That is word for word. Its still increasing. I was happy about that. I think it was still in the 50's last time it was talked about?
I asked JB one more question. I said "is there anything you are afraid or uncertain of?" and he had a bit of a laugh. He said no, but if there is anything that he would be uncertain of, would just be the Lithium price recover and how much longer we need to ride this out - which is fair, because i think we all have no idea when that's going to stop dropping it's ass.
All in all it was a good experience and i think the team really did well to engage with the shareholders.
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