Thanks for this
@Pizzas4
These are the kinds of prices I have heard mention of too but dare not say - unless somebody might accuse me of being over-optimistic
At $800/t we'd stick this thing in full throttle.
At $1000/t we'd levitate above the rest of the ASX like a drone.
Before we completely dismiss $1000/t as entirely implausible - consider that at these prices, depending on the costs and clients that the converter has that they may still be able to net a $5k-$10k profit margin on a ton of carbonate/hydroxide.
Joe Lowry is forecasting a 2017 increase for the lithium price.
You only have to look at Tianqi's mad rush of investment to see that they're not grabbing the cheque book for billion dollar investments to ride a boom that is anywhere close to running out of steam. Rule 1 of investment : Follow the Money.
All we need imho is higher than $600/t to disprove the last bits of the over-supply arguments with the incontrovertible proof that we are serving a sector that is starved of supply, that it has its own battery factory clients banging on its door and has a profit margin already large enough that it is more than willing to share more of , for certainty of supply.
We have as many as 4 clients on the hook - it is almost impossible at the moment to see how this situation could lead to any lower than $600USD/t.
Remember this price was negotiated prior to the current mine upgrades, when the Chinese clients were already mindful of the high mica content. Now we will be producing much more of an improved specced product that causes them less hassle, time and money at the converter plants and has its own production cost efficiencies at our end too - less time delays to deal with mica dust and cheaper transport by using Esperance rather than Bunbury.
Blue Oceans obviously haven't had time to investigate Mt Cattlin or Galaxy that closely - but had they done so, then they would have discovered that Mt Cattlin Version 2.0 comes very close to the product grade that PLS offers (not 5.5% as they state). The main difference there is LOM and resource quantity, but as Mt Cattlin is just the stepping stone for Galaxy to move onto SDV and James Bay then you can look at the current market caps of the 2 companies and ask some serious questions as to how the market has managed to pull off the absolute smashing of this company's value in the last few weeks. With everything we have going for us the MC should be headed to $1b, same as the latest Bailleu report has suggested.
Good to see the beginning of our rally even on a tough day on the markets.
And lots of new faces here on the board.
The one benefit of all this manipulation is the second chance that its given investors who were thinking they may have been too late to get in before. Now, a few months and one giant scare campaign later, there is even more proof of the enormous tide of money that is flowing into established mining operations.
Hope those sitting on the side-lines can take advantage of the gift the shorting has delivered and get a good long position. It's not going to hang around down here for much longer now.
