It’s funny how we’re all upbeat about the last 3 sessions going from 7.5c to 9c on good volume - a good increase.
It wasn’t that long ago I bought my last parcel at 10c, at the time I thought surely it can’t go any lower - I was wrong.
Last April we hit 17c, we had the Green Ammonia technical study announcement, followed by the Yellow Phosphorus (P4) investigation for stage 2 expansion propelling the SP to hit 17c. So back then about a 70% higher market cap than today. The GA study was not new, in Dec’22 we had the grant of cheap power for GA, in July’22 we had the MOU with Stamicarbon to do that GA study. IMO that study was always going to be compelling with our cheap power concession. The P4 introduced another use for out Phosphate, a possible JV with those strategic investors from that July’22 Placement. But like GA still a long way into the future.
What’s changed since April ?
The GA study has been released - all very positive, P4 has been taken to another level with the concept study (still waiting to see results), we’ve done the Carrinho offtake, have secured a GA site, secured part funding, site works are about to start, we’ve revised upwards our production guidance by 100% (short term), China has stopped exporting Phosphate - we’ve had significant enquiries for our product including > 200kt pa from SA. Yet even after todays 10% rise we’re 70% lower than April - 8 months ago.
How do you make sense of the above?
Back in April we had a series of good announcements, the market thrives on this - of course it has to be followed up, otherwise you end up like Lake where the market lost confidence in their execution. We’ve now had an extended period where not much has happened. We had a big boost in share price in July with the offtake, but have drifted back on no news since then.Since then we’ve had questions over financing, change of contractors, the market questioned our plan and the share price dropped even though it was on very low volume - the vast majority still had faith.
IMO after the last couple of announcements and all that has happened since April, we are in a far better position than back in April. GA & P4 was always at least 3 years into the future, our near term SP catalysts were always going to be the execution of our Phosphate project. Now it seems we could sell as much as we can produce, stage 2 capex massively reduced, opex lower and China creating a World shortage - all the ducks are lining up.
The market works in funny ways, even though the All Ords is a little higher than last April & our prospects are significantly better, it doesn’t rerate instantly but does it gradually, a bit like our drop from 17c to 7.5c. A famous quote goes along the lines that short term the market is a voting machine, long term its a set of scales.
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