The Money of Mine podcast lads have just ripped out an interview...

The Money of Mine podcast lads have just ripped out an interview with the one and only Joe low blow Lowry. It was actually recorded on Wednesday night but released today. I don't always follow Joe's line of arguments in that I think he tends to make a bold statement and then walk it back straight away so I end up not knowing exactly where he stands on a bunch of stuff. He did make it clear that lithium should not be treated as a commodity but rather as a chemical (as in Allkem), that the average 2023 lithium price will end up higher than the average 2022 price and that there are very few competent lithium miners (he named Gengfeng, Albemarle and MinRes as being not good at mining). He also predicted that direct lithium extraction will eventually become a thing, maybe in 5 years, but not in regions where lithium can be successfully extracted from brine through evaporation - in other words DLE will be what you do with brine that cannot be treated by evaporation. Interesting how he thinks that lithium phosphate batteries will win out over lithium nickel batteries given they are cheaper - my comment is that sodium batteries will not challenge lithium nickel batteries but could well challenge lithium phosphate batteries - and seemed to think lithium hydroxide does not have an advantage (I'm doing this from memory not notes so correct me if I have got these points wrong).

On Allkem and Livent he did discuss them individually and as a merged entity but honestly I will have to go back and listen again to those bits. I don't give much weight to Joe's comments on Allkem given his disdain for Orocobre / Allkem that goes back at least a decade - my working theory is that the old Orocobre shunned giving him a consultancy contract at some point. He reminded us once again that he brought Toyota Tsusho into buying a chunk of Olaroz from Orocobre way back when but in line with my theory I reckon he must not have picked up the follow-up business he was expecting. As I said, that's my guess but it could be wide of the mark. I've never heard him say anything positive about Orocobre even though it started off as a two bob outfit in Brisbane that went into the high altitude deserts of South America and led the way back in re-inventing lithium extraction from brine. He was full of praise for Pilbara even though they were just digging more open cut pits in another part of WA. He pointed out that Olaroz has always produced mostly lower grade lithium and he called Mt Cattlin the second worst spodumene mining operation in WA (albeit one that is printing hundreds of millions a year in net cash flow, Joe).

Even though I have numerous frustrations and annoyances with Mr Lowry I still recommend the interview if you wish to learn something about lithium as an investment.

https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=GO7Sx_ALwEA (remove the space between "you" and "tube")

Have to give a hat tip to Matty, Trav and JD for the the work they did on this interview and with their podcasts in general.