As an American investor, myself, I truly believe that if the...

As an American investor, myself, I truly believe that if the offer is a straightforward AU $3.00 per share offer, and there isn't something else going-on that we are unaware of, this is another case of American, Chinese and occasionally European firms coming in and taking the Aussie cow along with the milk. I don't understand why this is tolerated.

Personally, I don't think this valuation is anywhere near fair value. You are looking at early DSO shipments, production by next year, and delivering 500,000 mt by FY2025. By 2H of 2025, you should have sufficient bankroll to either build a major refining plant (be it Li2SO4, Li3PO4 or going all the way to LiOH, which I wouldn't recommend as a starting point) or else commence dividend payments, and then move from strength to strength. Meanwhile, increasing SC6 (OK, maybe SC5.5) production to 600K, then 700K mt per annum is already built into your plans. Growth is already there.

By the end of next year, you should be earning approximately US$1.5B in revenue (assuming SC6 price at US$3,000 per mt). I can't seem to find any reliable information on potential tantalum revenues nor anything recent on cost of production, but assuming AISC of US$1,200, that's approximately US$900M of profit with 2.2B shares outstanding, or approximately US$0.41 (AU $0.64) per share profit.

Assuming no tantalum income or refining plant, you're looking at 600,000 mt of production the following year, which, assuming all pricing numbers remain the same (obviously, they won't, but these numbers are decent starting points for ROM calculations), the ROM projection is US$1.8B in revenue and US$1.08B profit, yielding earnings of AU$0.77. The year after that, 700,000 mt of production, US$2.1B of revenue, US$1.26B of profit, and per share earnings of AU$0.89.

WHY would you want to sell THAT for AU$3.00?

By way of disclosure, I am not a shareholder, but I do own shares of PLS, CXO, SYA and A11 (mostly PLS, thankfully).

Best of luck.