JM, these are my thoughts:
1. TIVAN is not commercially proven. To be commercially proven, it needs to be operating and producing the expected quantities and purities, while not requiring much maintenance and repairs, so that it brings in more money than is spent on it. This is simply not provable until it's built and running for some time. IMO, this is a major hurdle for prospective financiers.
2. Anyone who buys us for $500M would then need to find another $1B to finance it. This is a very gun-ho move. One needs to believe in the project more than TNG itself currently does in order to spend the extra $500M to acquire it and then fund it (TNG currently has the project "for free", and doesn't need to spend that extra $500M to acquire it from someone else). If you are very happy with the would-be 75c SP, then that is an indication that the buyer's sentiment would be that he is overpaying. So no such deal would result.
It would make far more sense, from the perspective of any purchaser with $500M to spend on developing a vanadium mine, to simply part fund the project with that money, and ask for a substantial stake in the project in return. This minimises their risk substantially.
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