This needs a weekend bump.
I was very interested to see the
interview with Matt of Crux Investor where he's grilling Stephen on the progress of the project. Damn he knows how to nail the difficult questions and persevere until he gets a proper answer!
Some interesting comments came out.
1. SB said that producing lithium companies are being valued at up to 20 x EBITDA at the moment:
"Excellent DFS economics reflected in Reserves-backed pre-tax IRR of 53%
and pre-tax NPV8 of A$221 million and life-of-mine EBITDA of A$561 million
from revenue of A$1.3 billion."
Unless there's a huge supply lag, I'd put that closer to 5-10 times once we're in production. I can't see us as a $10bn company, unless we get the Li Hydroxide plant going, and the Gold field is economic, in which case, yes it is possible.
2. When Matt inferred that we are more or less seen by the market as a small player, SB was quick to point out that we are targeting close to 200,000 tonnes p.a. of spodumene. Both PLS ($5.13bn MC) and Galaxy ($2.36bn MC) did NOT produce that much this year.
Ours is a very simple primarily mechanical processing operation. Very little can go wrong. There doesn't need to be any complicated floatation circuit or chemical issues. We should be able to ramp up our production to that level within a year of operating. And with an additional spend of around only $30m, we can increase that substantially again (something like a 50% increase I believe).
Sure, Galaxy and Pilbara have huge resources and the opportunity for increasing production, but they are a way off. And it doesn't matter if they have a 50 - 100 year LOM if only producing 200,000 tonnes p.a. ... anything could happen in the next 10 years, although undoubtedly Lithium will still play a key part in proceedings by it's very nature / position in the periodic table!
We have a 10 year LOM already, with the likelihood that will be more like a 15 - 20 year LOM once the current round of drilling is wound up. That should give the investment community confidence that this is going to be a very solid project for well over a decade.
When finance is secured, this stock is going to re-rate substantially. As SB confidently said, "this will happen over the next few months."
Bring on the FID.
Have a great weekend folks!
