I got a chance to read through the annual report this afternoon and yet again Liontown has provided some interesting information about the way management is thinking about the future.
Despite great information provided throughout the report, Page 104 has clearly stood out to me. Liontown has increased the number of subsidiary companies listed under the parent entity, being Kathleen Valley Holdings Pty Ltd, LTR BM Pty Ltd, LBM (Aust) Pty Ltd, Buldania Holdings Pty Ltd and Buldania Lithium Pty Ltd. Currently all LTR's lithium tenements are owned outright or through agreements via LRL (Aust) Pty Ltd, except for the new tenements granted at Monjebup (discussed later).
Kathleen Valley Holdings Pty Ltd / LRL (Aust) Pty LtdAs the name clearly suggests, it is almost certain that these entities will be the holding group for Kathleen Valley, with my guess that Kathleen Valley Holdings Pty Ltd will be transferred the tenement ownership and LRL (Aust) Pty Ltd will be eventually renamed to Kathleen Valley Lithium Pty Ltd and act as the parent company for the group once the other tenement titles are transferred.
Buldania Holdings Pty Ltd / Buldania Lithium Pty LtdAgain, likely that the name suggests the intention of management. Buldania Lithium Pty Ltd will be the parent entity of Buldania Holdings Pty Ltd. My guess is that LRL (Aust) Pty Ltd will at some point transfer the ownership of Buldania's tenements to this entity group. It is obvious that Buldania is not being priced to it's full potential within the Liontown Group and Liontown has form with this type of transaction as it is what happened with Minerals 260 prior to demerger. Could we see Buldania being demerged from LTR in the near future as a value accreditive play for shareholders, or is this related to a potential sale of KV? I would hope if the demerger was to happen, that there would be an agreement to process the ore through KV's plant - if that is in the best interest of shareholders.
LTR BM Pty Ltd / LBM (Aust) Pty LtdFollowing incorporation of LBM (Aust) Pty Ltd, it applied for a group of tenements which has been called the Monjebup project. It is my belief that LTR BM Pty Ltd will become the parent of this group, with LBM (Aust) Pty Ltd as subsidiary. It is also my belief that this will likely become the "everything" holding company for any of Liontown's future exploration, similar to what LRL (Aust) Pty Ltd has been over the years.
To me, this seems like an awful lot of company admin for quite little gain, a distraction you could say, if it wasn't management's belief that something other than "business as usual" was to happen. There are almost daily reports on M&A coming to the lithium industry and I believe most of the new subsidiaries are related to the potential for M&A to happen in Liontown. Management have said that they intend to take KV all the way, but Tim has also said that "everything has it's price". It seems like they're getting ready for any situation that arises. Happy to see this through to the end regardless of whatever occurs as I know management will do everything in our best interests, but I do find it difficult to see Liontown being immune to M&A in the lithium space.
@HungaruabudgieRegarding posting the top 10 institutions and mutual funds holding Liontown, I wanted to wait until August's data was complete before posting, although the data is now going to be out of date (although the nature of reporting timelines means that it is always going to be out of date). I will post it in about 2 weeks when the data is out.
(20min delay)