General Discussion Banter GLN, page-15476

That was another scatterbrain performance from JP in my view @daando37. I think Howard does a good job here, presses him on a few of his usual missteps:

• Straight up JP says “the market doesn’t realise” they have a lithium chloride concentrate strategy – have to call that out. JP and Daniel are serial conference attendees/presenters (even with the cash purse being so low), how TF can he carry on saying this, as though they’re some undiscovered secret? If by mid-2024 nobody in your market knows what your strategy is then you’ve wasted shareholder time and money flying yourself all around the world.
• JP again blames share price “depression” on the wider lithium market pricing but that’s only half the story. The share price collapse from ~50c to ~30c was largely because of their first raise, and the collapse to ~17c is largely because of their second raise. Talking about their low operating costs continues to baffle as everybody knows that’s not the core issue here.
• Howard notes that 70% payability is “very high” which somewhat derails JP’s point because they’ve used 79% assumption in phase 2 and he was seemingly trying to argue that they’d get way more than that sending it to China. I think Howard does a good job mentioning Glencore here because Galan can’t get high payability sending stuff to China when they’ve already committed to send it all to Glencore in country. There’s also little point talking about LiCL going into LFP batteries when, again, the Glencore offtake seemingly precludes them sending any of phase 1 directly to China (November announcement said “for 100% of Galan’s Phase 1 production”). JP really struggled here with his usual line “all options are on the table” because Howard notes China are open to providing capital in return for product, but that doesn’t work if you can’t give them the product. All JP can reference is “further offtakes”. Glencore aren’t giving up what they got effectively for free off Galan.
• JP suddenly talking about “phase one-and-a-half” feels like classic Galan make it up on the fly. The question was put will phase 2 be paid for by phase 1 cashflows… he says “the capex won’t be 100% payable from phase 1” which is a hilarious understatement. Stage 2 is US$310M capex, there’s no way the phase 1 cashflows (even if there was no debt to service) could fund that, not even 50% of it - unless there was an extraordinary and extended lithium price recovery.
• Lastly, he admits they got a CFO because they need his expertise in getting the debt side done. How did it take them this long to realise that? Hard to believe they “headhunted” a guy who came from Mallee Resources…

JP needs to realise that for the sake of shareholders he should step aside into a technical role and look for someone with the corporate know-how (and actual past experience) to get this done.