I've realised an error in my thought process on the debt vs...

I've realised an error in my thought process on the debt vs equity conversation so thought I'd correct it here.

In short, a large part of my thinking that Galan would have to rely on equity was driven by looking at how other ASX lithium players have funded their projects. The most recent examples of those who went from developers to producers are CXO and SYA. Both relied entirely on capital raises - that definitely flavoured my thinking. However what I've since realised (thanks to a gold junior I follow) is that it's likely these two companies were forced to go with equity because they were effectively rushing their projects ahead to get to market as quickly as possible; both Core and Sayona have taken what I would call shortcuts to production without slowly stepping through all the usual hoops. Debt providers will look very closely at resource models etc to ascertain that what's modelled in a DFS will prove true-to-life when production actually starts (and thus they'll get their money back). This has become apparent with goldie Tietto Minerals (TIE) who originally were chasing a large debt facility but in the end "decided" (*cough*) to go with equity. Fast forward ~18 months and the share price has crashed because the resource that was modelled in the DFS doesn't look anything like what they are actually digging out now they're in production - they simply didn't do enough drilling to prove up the resource to a level that debt providers would have found acceptable (and now they're having to do a bunch more drilling to prove it up, seeing the grade/tonnage reduce, etc). So unlike CXO and SYA who have rushed ahead and have since been punished, Galan's measured approach hopefully makes debt access more likely.

That said, I still think debt for an Argentinian development project will be very expensive (considering, like I said earlier, some US/AUS projects are being done at ~10% rates) but it's probably unfair to directly compare them to how CXO and SYA did things. Cheers