I didn't know much about Gina before other than some negativity created about her by the media. Yesterday night I watched all available YouTube videos about her. (This is a good one you can get a good idea; "
Gina Rinehart Channel 7 Extended Interview")
I saw that she doesn't like media (I can't blame her) and media doesn't like her either. She started to control the Hancock assets which were nearly in bankruptcy in 1992 when her father died and it seems she had a tough time and built everything herself. She is a hard worker. She is humble but she is tough personality. She is patriotic as well. She works with advisers because she values the the information from the right person.
Anyway this is what I see. The main point I got from her personality is she not in LTR for the short run. We all know that she is very much interested and now very much invested in lithium business.
My point here is that I don't think Gina has bought LTR 10.69% stake by to sell ALB for making a quick buck. She has invested nearly $700m into LTR now. That's a lot of money. So I don't think she is prepared to make any deal with ALB. She wants LTR to go to production.
I believe she was and still is with TG and LTR board, she wants LTR go to production.
She believes that KV projects is very good and worth at least $6.6b atm and it will generate a lot of cash in the future.
However, just think that you are investing $700m for a 10.69% stake in a lithium project without making and due diligence! Is it possible? Not of course.
Then it seems that someone (not me
) got her convinced to invest that much money only for 10.69%, or she was allowed to make a kind of DD for LTR before.
Maybe she had a coffee with TG and TO and listened to them, and got her pros to have a look at LTR's project in detail, or MINs Chris Ellison helped her to make a solid decision about LTR.
In any case I believe she did her homework very well for LTR and decided to buy in.
We can see today that she finished her buying and happy with the 10.69% stake. She is telling LTR that Hancock can help LTR. Obviously she wants a seat in board. No problem.
May she want to takeover LTR later on?
Maybe. But as long as LTR comes close to production and the fake lithium price drop stories go away over the coming months, that's no problem for us because the SP will climb up soon.
Today's drop in sp is OK for me. I told you it might go down but no problem. It's no problem for true LTR LT holders. It might be good buying opportunity for people who have money and want to buy more.
So I'm not looking at sp anymore.
I said this before and will say it again. LTR is going to be the best lithium project in the world. I'm saying this after purely being in the lithium stocks for the last 8 years. LTR is even better than the best and largest project Greenbushes as I explained before. There is no other lithium mine other than Greenbushes which can produce 6% spod concentrate. The next one will be LTR and Greenbushes will run out of high grade ore in 7-8 years.
The people in the lithium mining industry know this very well, at least they understood it well now. ALB is too late to make its offer for LTR. They should have done it 3 years ago. They were watching our KV project at that time, they put the drilling plans of LTR on their desk and were inspecting it, but never acted. So stupid,.. yeah but that has been very good for us.
See the Greenbushes mine map here. It's a messy mine. Also see the Greenbushes town is next to the tantalum pit, it's inside a forest too. It's the single "Lithium rich C3 pit" where they mine all their high grade lithium. The Tantalum pit Cornwall is very old and not being processed atm. The C2 lithium zone has very low grade and they are not even mining it. The process plant is very small as you can see on the image. Very low ESG credentials in this mine IMO.
And compare it with our KV project.
(20min delay)