I'm repeating; LTR has no problem.
It's the best lithium project in the world. High grade, low cost, long life, best jurisdiction, etc, etc.
All of the major companies in lithium supply chain know those facts. I'm not sure if Hancock know that well, I hope they don't
. Anyway I don't care.
I'm not only researching the lithium projects, I am also researching the battery space and EV manufacturing and sales. The world will need huge amount of lithium in next 4-5 years and all those BS forecasts which show oversupply from 2024 to 2030 will be wrong. It will actually be the opposite; the supply will be more after 2030 I believe. However because the market dynamics will be more settled down at that time, the lithium price will not be less than the cost of it after 2030.
Therefore we will see big swings in lithium price starting very soon.
It's highly probable that LG will open a credit to LTR or buy a stake in LTR.That's why I don't care if Hancock will make a bid or not. If the bid is good enough we may sell our shares, if not then we will not sell and we are going to be in production very soon. I believe we will be around $4 ($10b mcap) in next 12 months.
I know LG has a lot of battery supply agreements with major automakers all around the world. Also LG wants to overtake BYD and is targeting to be the next big battery maker in the world after CATL. SKI (Korea) has the same ambitions, they also need a lot of lithium. The future capacities of LG's and SKI's battery gigafactory projects tell that to me.
LG has done lithium hydroxide offtake agreements with Tianqi from its Kwinana plant in 2019 but that plant still can't produce meaningfull lithium hydroxide to supply its offtakers (including Northvolt/EU and SKI/Korea). Same for ALB's Kemerton plant. (that's why the market have had this low spod price problem; Greenbushes poured that spod to spot market stupidly, but now cutting the prodcution)
LG also has done a lithium hydroxide agreement with Covelant lithium (WES/SQM JV - Mt Holland project) but the destiny of that project is still not clear. (Tesla has an agreement with Covelant Lithium and it's not clear too).
So, LG can't get the lithium hydroxide to feed its battery factory projects. Then now I believe they are trying to secure the spod concentrate from LTR. LG already has 150kt spod concentrate agreement for 5 years (plus optional 5 year). But it needs much more than that now.
In the original plan LTR would mine 3mt ore to produce 500mt spod concentrate and 450kt of that was already sold to 3 offtakers (Tesla, LG and Ford). Only 50kt was open for sale to spot market.
Then LTR updated the project to 4mt ore to produce 600kt+ spod concentrate by bringing the underground mining to an early stage. Then LTR had 150kt+ free spod to sell out.
Then by the last project update the LTR management said that they will review to bring the ore production back to 3mt by delaying the U/G mining.
However they didn't said that that would be the case definitely. It was only a review. Now I believe LG will fund LTR and LTR will go by the 4mt ore mining plan to produce 600kt spod concentrate, and then LG will get more spod concentrate from LTR, maybe another 100kt on top of 150kt.
As a supportive fact to this opinion; as you know PLS is making with more and more offtake agreements with the Chinee lithium companies including Ganfeng which is already lithium miner.
My dear shorters..!
You may get burnt big this time. It's not all under your control.
You can control banks, and some financial institutions but,
You can't control LG.
Hancock can't control LG either. I would think twice and close my short positions if I were you.
Also.., my dear Hancock should think twice if they want to make an offer. We are not happy to sell at a cheap price because the market is low.
(20min delay)