Maybe a little "perspective" will help. It's easy to get caught up in minutia from time to time (but I always argue that the devil is in the details so don't get "lost" in the macro elements either).
First up a graph ... for no particular reason other than misery loves company. These 3 companies are all "pure play Ontario" spodumene explorers wannabee developers and eventually producers. They are of course CRR and then GT1 and then Canada's very own Frontier Lithium (TSXV:FL) and I own all three.
I have simply overlaid a comparison of GT1 and FL onto CRR and there are at least 2 simple takeaways.
1. CRR (32%) has performed the worst (relative to SP) of the 3 companies of the period from Jul '22. CRR is in blue, GT1 (38%) in Orange and FL (50%) in green.
2. They have very similar shape (particularly the slope)
So the present "woes" of the SP are not unique to CRR but at applicable to all of the Ontario hard rock explorers (and many more). There are some other aspects of the CRR chart that are interesting (such as the bottom red trend line of price lows) and also the Fibs, which are at 4.1 and 3.9
Enough of the tea reading and onto something more interesting such as the recent interview with Paul Armstrong on Small Caps.
Some of the things said by Alex. In his answer to
"How big is it (Mavis Lake)" the response included
"...we want to make Mavis Lake the largest hard rock lithium project in Ontario...".Thats a bold statement, not the least of which is that Frontier Lithium has long been regarded as one of the largest and highest grade deposits in Canada (and the largest in Ontario) ... I am referring to the PaK and Spark Deposits
(NI 43-101 of ~42MT at 1.5% which for a long time was NA highest grade deposit ... the recently restarted NAL mine (op by SYA/PLL) grade is ~1.01% ... so that's 50% higher).
and that's well and truly been overtaken by Patriot with the Covette (Quebec) maiden MRE of >100MT
but I'll settle for largest in Ontario... which means Alex needs to have >50Mt as the target (Frontier also expanding via the Bolt pegmatite discovery that connects the PAK and Spark deposits).
The next interesting piece said was in response to
"What is the drilling telling you have beyond the resource envelope thus far?"
which was "We've got line of sight immediately to something that is an economic project. A walk-up start project right now that leads to kind of 35MT, 40MT, 50MT - well time will tell but, I suppose our expectations have changed quite significantly. We used to be very excited about a kind of a 10m – 12m intercept and now, if we hear of 20m or 30m we're like oh, it's not that great but, ultimately it really is. So, our expectations have changed pretty quickly, and it's very exciting."Again that's pretty bold statement with a change in messaging to "Development Focused with Exploration Upside" (May'05 preso) and its repeated that's at a cost of AUD$1.02/t of MRE added ... so adding 40MT of MRE is going to cost ~AUD$40M ... keep that in mind ... anyone (else) see a red flag there as that looks like $10M per yr for drilling (and Alex did say "...
and the plan is that we will continue drilling all the way through for the 2, 3, 4 years....) ... its too slow, given what's occurring globally.
Alex then repeats
"We continue to chase this and the expectation of resource maybe being 12MT – 15MT, all of a sudden, if we have line of sight to more like 18MT, 20MT, 25MT - it's a walk-up start project straight away. Then the question is, keep growing it but how quickly can we get into production."" ... resource upgrade and releasing that to Market when it makes sense. Indicatively, we're targeting the first half of next year but we're going to make sure that the resource upgrade is something compelling."Ah ha! Well "compelling" needs to translate to minimum 25MT and half at M&I ... otherwise it gets lost in the avalanche of monster results out of Quebec.
Mavis Lake has a "natural advantage" given its 10mins from Dryden and the associated cost advantages that brings. A 25MT (say its 600KT LCE which is still "small") resource developable at low(er) cost is compelling enough, especially if that is say 30Ktpy LCE for 20 years with a clear path to doubling again in another 2 years.
So that question posed by Alex ... how quickly can we get into production .... is the key question PROVIDED you can indeed convince the capital providers you HAVE THAT CLEAR LINE OF SIGHT TO 25MT MRE. And while Alex says "Mavis Lake to Michigan" ... there is another (GT1) with exactly the same strategy claiming "world class infrastructure and direct access to raoidly expanding North American EV market" ... who have already partnered up with LGES and are on track (?) for 50-60Ktpa of LiOH by 2028. LGES bought 8% of GT1 paying an ~43% premium to 30D VWAP (28% to 90D VWAP) and they a meant to complete an OTA by end of this month.
CRR, GT1, FL ... will 3 become 2?
I think its a bit of a sprint to align with partners to implement a secure supply chain.
