@GCar although I have appreciated some of your posts over recent times, I will have to disagree with some of your points noted. Firstly, I resent the notion that anyone who expresses any form of frustration are "traders chasing pips and ST milestones, and getting frustrated when their plan fails." This has been an overused cheap classification over the years designed to antangonise, and honestly quite unfair to those who are more impartial to their investment in the company. The opposite could be said with your overly positive views on the company that your inability to critique or constructively evaluate the negatives on the company are akin to up-rampers who are trying to pump the company. Now, I am not saying this is you, but you can see how unfair that is to throw that at you. I know many LT holders that have positive and negative views so I know for a fact that a balance is required. I am a LT holder (going 6 years strong and plan on holding for many more) yet although I can see the long-term value we are building, I also have my criticisms of timing and steps taken. I'm a firm believer that complacency is a killer.
With regards to OT/Strategic deals, I was at the AGM and Jerko confirmed he could sign the deals now if he wanted, but felt there was no rush right now given we don't have the permits (others who attended can attest to this). This for me confirms the terms have already been agreed in principal, so your comment that "any concrete deal will only be done when those things are confirmed" isn't the full picture as he has indicated that executing the deals are now in our control. Happy to be corrected if anyone at the AGM thinks Jerko miscommunicated this point, as he made it quite clear. So if you slot that in the overall context, I personally don't understand why we don't execute the deals now if they are ready to go to help put a floor in our SP that has now fallen below pre-2018 levels. Before anyone tries to jump the gun again and imply I have a ST pip-trader perspective, again, i could flip the narrative and say the preference to execute the deals and announce them when sentiment and macros are better and around the time permits are announced, are doing so to maximise SP appreciation in a shorter time-frame - pip-traders?. Again, I am not insinuating this, but you can see once again how the narrative can easily be twisted for those that prefer not to have a constructive discussion on the positives AND negatives.
As far as the "ticking boxes" go, my views are somewhere in the middle between yours and @Rob826. I can see both your views. In substance, I agree with you that the company have progressed things so far that appears to have put us in the strong position that we are now in which is hopefully validated in the next 2-3 months with permits, executed deals and plant commissioning, but I also agree with@Rob826 in that many of the boxes to be ticked as perceived by many shareholders are based on Jerko's own volition. Examples:
- The narrative of 'fast-track' --> In theory yes he is not wrong, but as delays year-on-year occur, it slowly erodes this description. As another poster mentioned, this will only be confirmed in time.
- The overuse of 'imminent' --> yes he appears to have quashed this in recent times, but just another example of the expectation for shareholders that he had set. Has he now moved on to 'advancing'?
- OT deals --> Jerko has spoken about this for years since we achieved our first sample of battery grade Li2Co3 years ago. We agreed a non-binding deal with Mitsubishi after a long-period of talk that many parties wanted our product, then had to release a clarification the very next day which crashed the share price (long-termers will remember this vividly).
- Alex was brought in to help bring financing options for the construction of our Stg 2 plant. I don't need to get into my views on Alex...I'm sure most have similar views. By the end of it, us shareholders had to help fund the construction ourselves (which I was happy to assist with) as no party was willing to provide finance on our terms.
- Permits are 18 months overdue. Yes this is somewhat out of Jerko's control, but his overly optimistic timelines have indeed hurt the SP over this time. I would have much preferred more conservative time-frames being communicated to prevent this. Yes delays happen, but also, in the investing world, market perception is everything, and whether we care for it or not, the market can only rely on what is announced via the ASX. This perhaps is a good learning experience for Jerko as it seems no one had any awareness of how long permits take.
If I were to summarise the above, my biggest criticism of the company is the quality of communication. At the end of the day, what is communicated is all we have to rely on, and I am critical on how things have been communicated over the years. The monthly updates have probably been the only shining light to my memory (more so when they first started), but even these along with our quarterlies have somewhat become a copy-paste job in recent times. However, I appreciate there is confidentiality with what is communicated, so this is purely my own perception, and acknowledge there are perhaps more to this than we know?
Now, the above are just come gripes I have, but it doesn't mean I don't trust in the company's long-term potential. If I didn't, I would have sold a long time ago. I'm not going to get into all the positives as many including myself have done so many-a-time on this forum. However, I think it is also just as important to address the negatives. We need to stop demonising any views that oppose agendas surrounding being 100% positive.
Now, hopefully we can get these long-overdue permits and deals. I understand they are advancing.
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