I guessed there would be a positive reaction of a couple of pips or so, not that I thought that's what it should do, but I thought enough of it would be fooled to have a positive response. The market isn't entirely stupid, how about that?
The smart money knows that if this progress (and it is progress, credit while it's due) is all they can come up with, it's highly likely they're now stuck where they are for a long while yet. If it took 18 months to approximately double the production rate (and it's not even that good... actually, I'll explain in the next paragraph), and they take another year to double it again (and that's arguably optimistic), this is not something you want to be holding. It most certainly does not mean the CR can be avoided and it does not make AGY attractive for a partnership or offtake deal. They partially opened up one of the carriages survivors are trapped in, but it's still a train wreck.
People are acting like production has just gone from 40T per year to 250T per year. That's not the case, or at least, it doesn't at all represent the production rate. The actual production rate hasn't improved to anything like that ratio, and you can only fudge those figures by ignoring all down time in the recent days while including it over the previous year. The main progress is that they've managed to achieve progress more consistently rather than more rapidly while it is taking place. It's definitely progress, yep, but it's a bad system which is operating consistently rather than a system which is now operating 6x more efficiently during the hours of operation. Keep in mind that they first trialled continuous production a long time ago, that part isn't new. What's new is mostly that they can sustain it for longer, but it's still a heavily cashflow negative operation.
It's definitely progress worth being happy about, but no one is doing themselves any favours by pretending it's better than what it is, which is a common game around here, which leads to disappointment and the type of frustration you are expressing here.
The wording of this announcement suggests to me that the CR will be the next announcement. This announcement was so flowery and desperate to hype. There were so many meaningless phrases without substance, even more than usual. If they planned to have another announcement before the CR I'd expect them to make this one more understated and leading up to expectations, with the next one being the celebratory 'Oh, wow, we increased the production rate as well as consistency! Happy days!' before the CR. But this is AGY, who knows? I'm sure they were hoping for more of a rally on this announcement than they got.
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