The recent weakness is primarily due to retail fatigue, rather than underlying project / asset weakness. I tend to agree with MY (albeit I am sure that makes me a pariah), that there will be ongoing SP weakness in the near term as the fatigue continues.
The two issues for the company are
High concentration (Top 20 own 75%, Top 100 own 90%) and there are only ~850 shareholders, so effectively "no one knows" about the company. Most in the top 100 are pretty comfortable with their current holdings (and will have bought much, much lower) so are unlikely to be the drivers of the SP.
Secondly they have taken FAR too long in getting the finance sorted. Project financing of this nature is normally done partially in advance of the D/BFS, and the D/BFS is basically the "final" approval condition and the deal gets re-jigged around the edges once the DFS full details are known. The time from the indicative / conditional approval to the formal approval (i.e from the DFS landing) should not take more than 3 months (especially with a deal with metrics this strong). We are now past 3 and (given the advice from the AGM about January being the likely close date) looking at 6 months from the DFS. That is well outside normal timeframes for deals like this and is the primary reason behind the fatigue / concern for the retailers bailing out. There is a partial excuse for the Japanese guarantee thing but they simply should've been pressing ahead regardless in the way they are claiming they are doing now from the get go.
Basically short of a takeover (which is still probably unlikely) there is no meaningful news flow now until January so unless the Lead price goes through the roof what is going to drive the SP in the near term?
Management simply need to put the finance to bed asap and then get out there and start marketing the company as the (fundamentally) strong player that it is. Until then, why would retail investors bother meaningfully jumping in?
That said, I erroneously reloaded at ~32.5 but won't grab anymore now until low 20s as I think the fatigue to Jan could be enough to get the SP down to those levels, and if it doesn't get there I still have a decent exposure as is.
I think the "suppression" argument is a little too tin foil hat, but will be happy to be proved wrong if someone steps in with a decent offer.
G1A Price at posting:
30.5¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)