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23/12/22
14:10
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Originally posted by paulgf:
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Good analysis 2Ic and whilst its correct from a technical pespective the problem with your detailed analysis on DSO vs building a plant is it ignores the likely extra dilution that will come to shareholders if we try and go the plant route. Debt funding is likely to be very very limited leaving most of the capex to be covered from equity funding and hence likely significant dilution of existing shareholders to allow another equity source ( likely to be an offtaker) in the door. What your arguing for with comparing cost of shipping waste relative to building a plant is what I call a form of optimisation. Yer your technically right but its the sort of thing companies who have the luxury of a cashflow or good funding sources can and should do but I would argue we are not in the situation. There is also extra financial risk to go the plant building route especially in the high inflation period we are in now. Then there is also the not insignificant fact you have to build and get the plant going without any hiccups ( so time and cost risk) and quickly while spodumene prices remain high. How confident are we they can do this ? Most people in just about every business in the Commonwealth at present cant find labour, much less good labour. The 72.5 % yield you mentioned was something Altura never reached , nowhere even close to that level. A seasoned operator like PLS achieves this sort of yield but can we ? So for mine your sums don't allow for any poor project management (time and cost blowouts) and or just lack of operational expertise to then run the plant. With a LOM of 7-8 years they are better in my view to stick to the DSO route as its a much lower technical and financial risk to market. If they can find another deposit nearby that they can meaningfully up the resource and hence the likely life of the plant to well beyond 10 years , then yes that tips the scales to building your own plant. But we are not there yet. For mine the current share weakness is in large part being driven by poor and somewhat indecisive communication to the market around this flip flop approach to exactly what are they doing ? DSO or BOO a plant. Our current CEO needs to learn cashflow drives everything in this world and those with it can be picky about their choices, those without not so much and his priority should be to get this to cashflow positive first which the DSO approach clearly does. The market is almost telling them to go the DSO approach but they seem slow to get the message.
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A few shipments of DSO plus perhaps some pre-payments from our offtake partner should be enough to fund the plant. I see little need to issue more shares. Perhaps just a small raise to give some equity to our offtake partner and kick start the limited DSO operation. We have at least 5 years of exploration time before we run out of feed stock for the plant. Unlikely that we can’t find something in that time, especially given how much free cash we’ll have to throw at drill rigs. If our existing tenements prove barren we can always acquire others nearby. Worst case scenario, we run out of reserves and either sell the plant or use it to process ore on a contract basis for one of our many neighbours. Either way, building a plant represents a good long term investment.