You're spot on on the sunk capital. The two key things are,...

You're spot on on the sunk capital. The two key things are, cashflow management and quality of the project.
Bloom Lake iron ore project was a high cost project, its previous owner didn't survive due to the commodity cycle. Then Champion Iron Ore was lucky enough to have bought the project at the bottom of the cycle, and their share price has gone up over 3,000% since the acquisition of the "stressed iron ore project".

GLN has a high quality brine project, as far as I concerned, it didn't manage cashflow well. The positive side is GLN currently does not have any debt, so it's unlikely to lose the project.

CXO was way hyped in the past, Ganfeng exited at $1.04, for a high cost hard rock miner, it has to wait for spodumene concentrate price to bounce significantly. CXO is more likely AGO or BCI, imo.