Ganfeng, page-32

That’s probably the eventual net effect, Random, but per the words of Leo’s own announcement: “Leo Lithium’s interest in Goulamina via MLBV is now 40% and Ganfeng’s interest is now 60%. The Mali Government has yet to take an equity position in Goulamina.”

MLBV currently has the full stake in the mine with the potential for 10% uptake by Mali under the old code or up to 35% under the new code, so Leo is presently not walking away today from 26%.

Reconstituting the chronology and supposing the exact sequence of next steps may make us feel a bit better for the moment, but we are very clearly in the announcement that Goulamina has not yet been transitioned to the new mining code. Nor has the Mali Govt taken up its stake or transacted for its intended stake. How much, when, and the means by which that potential stake of up to 35% (including the 5% private/community ownership bit) occurs is now going to be between Ganfeng and the Govt, and we are mere bystanders who will probably hear about it secondhand. GF shareholders will surely be hoping their company can limit the 35% by whatever means. Regardless, what they will get to do is tear up the offtake pricing agreement they had with Leo, rewrite the rules, and probably extract from the mine at bare minimum cost & royalty, and that alone is going to be worth far more to GF than anything else.

As I’ve said previously, the numbers will get sliced and diced to suit a narrative, and we’re seeing this now, but the underlying fact is this company has offloaded its full stake that it inherited from its cursed parent - 50% of Goulamina - in a series of manoeuvres while in largely silent suspension, and we have extremely poor government relations, strategic naïveté, and too much spin to blame for most of it.