Sorry I wasn't clear. My phrase "delusional 'go it alone'...

Sorry I wasn't clear. My phrase "delusional 'go it alone' expectations" should have included share price in it. Of course ESS can go it alone, I just have misgivings around the high capex in WA, modest mine life, and reality of junior developers riding the Lassonde Curve down into heavy funding dilution territory.

Take an NPV of $350M for arguments sake. Even after successfully ramped into commercial production the company will probably trade at say 75% of that value, depending on exploration growth potential etc. Without real growth upside investors will not pay 100c in the dollar value, but look elsewhere for undervalued stocks or growth opportunities. That gives a market cap of $262M plus equity capex contribution, less int, fees, corp costs etc.

If capex is $300M, ESS has to contribute say $120M on 60:40 debt to equity ratio, plus extra for prepaid int, fees, corp etc ahead of plant wiping it's own face. ASX MC might be $350 at build completion and successful ramp (262+120- $32M frictional costs). Nobody is paying 75% of NPV at FID, the build might go badly, costs may blow out, ramp up and plant under-performance issues etc. So the market might pay 50% NPV at FID after $120M equity has been raised. MC of ~$260M at FID.

To get to FID, ESS takes say 2 years for PFS followed by DFS followed by successful off-take and finance deals (record time). How many shares are issued to get past DFS and then to raise $120M equity for development is the question? A lot right, especially as the lower the share price falls, the more shares are issued... Say it costs $20M to for PFS and DFS over two years, another 57M shares issued at average of 35c if this TO fails and market is left wondering why TLEA walked away.

Closer to FID and Lassonde has done his work relentlessly pushing the share price down through CR's and the fear of that final $120M CR for development. Everyone wants to get set near the end for FID at the share price bottom and then ride it up into production. The brokers love it, they will help push the price down and force the BOD to roll over and issue truckload of shares cheaply because for a go-it-alone junior there isn't much choice if no JV or TO white knight appears. $120M is another 340M shares issued at 35c, though it could be cheaper by then. ESS will have gone from 270M SOI, to 327M after $20M for PFS, DFS over 2 years, then roughly double that to 750M SOI after the $120M CR for FID.

Circling back to the MC at FID of $260M (50% of NPV plus $120M equity cont) divided by 750M shares on issue gives us a share price of 35c... That's just a coincidence as I wrote these numbers down (yes, the SS might be doctored bla bla). The SOI would be different if CR's a done at different prices, but the logic of how developing juniors share prices spin in the mud is real. Hopefully there is a lithium boom and the share price spikes so dilution is lower etc, but it can go the other way also. Maybe prices stay high enough we can DSO enough ore to reduce quantum of CR and dilution, or not. It's just usually a depressing and painful journey of shareholder value destruction with broker clients cleaning up at the end...

Some posters seem to have delusional ideas of how high ESS share price will get to if we have to develop on our own. Same thing with how much TLEA or MIN might pay. MIN has synergies of Mt Marion but TLEA dont, so every dollar TLEA pay ESS holders is the equivalent of an extra dollar of capex, which reduces Dome Nth's NPV for TLEA etc. MIN can pay the most and still make good returns, but they have to get pushed to more than the minimum they can get away with. Unfortunately (as the ESS BOD demonstrably agrees) telling MIN or TLEA to stick their 60c or 70c offer where the sun don;t shine, "we'll do better going it alone' looks delusional imo. Unless exploration success doubles or trebles the mining resource, but that is exploration speculation and not worth a lot at this point in time.