I agree and I disagree to an extent on this point. Your job as an investor is to interpret and decipher the expressed language and narrative in the most precise manner you can. And that is not hard to do really , and is really the easy part in this business. Whether you want to share your views is entirely up to yourself.
And of course the reasons why participants on a chat site wish to share their opinion , or even intentionally twist it to suit their own narrative for whatever reasons they have is their choice. That is why you have to fact check and / or take with a grain of salt what others are saying in regards to your investment(s) .
At the same time , most astute individuals would be able to discern those posters who are endeavoring to honestly apply a bipartisan opinion based on their experience and interpretation of comments or wordings expressed by the BOD or certain individuals / Management who represent the BOD.
So there is nothing wrong with this ' Chatsite ' process offered by an Investment forum because it can often bring more Clarity and less confusion. And it's often easy to pick out those who are ' Twisting ' the narrative to suit themselves. Especially when they don't even hold the stock and predominantly have clear vested interests elsewhere.
However in this instance , it is clear to me that it is Lynch himself who through his verbalizing style and more muffled responses has come across as almost ' skirting ' around the questions being put to him regarding the off-take and production numbers in general.
So it is HIM who has actually caused the confusion in my opinion. We didn't actually say or formulate his words. They came out of his mouth at different intervals and which gave rise to conflicting assumptions. And that's pretty straight forward in my opinion , and where even Blind Freddy listening would pick up the incongruences.
Now whether he has ' muddled ' the responses intentionally , or whether it comes from a place where he is ONLY interested in the longer 12 month horizon , or indeed whether the intent of his more casual response to the 50% v 113,000 and FIRST ton is more representative of it ( the offtake ) becoming almost irrelevant in the context of what his underlying belief and aims are .....or whether he just doesn't know and wants to err on the side of conservatism. The jury is still out , and leaves the door open for obvious conjecture and discussion which obviously occurs on an Investment DISCUSSION forum.
What we do know though from the December update is the Percentage of PFS lithium throughput tonnage which is sitting on the ROM pad ready to go. And this was covered off on the Forum as an important aspect of the starting point of your production forecasts. So the Forum discussion flushed this out from the interpretation of the that Announcement
So this December announcement update was clearly AFTER the AGM , so maybe there is a lot to make of Lynch's casual / vague responses as being more to do with the fact he is basically saying ' Hey look at what we have told you ' - ie when we signed the Mining Contract ( Sept ) , when they started excavating with boots on the ground , when they started blasting etc..... , and then put that all in the context of where were at now as to where we will most likely be by arch 31st 2023.
BIG STEPS FASTER .....is another giveaway to what he is endeavoring to elude to , as well as his comment that 2023 will likely be even better than 2022.
But whatever the case , the fact remains that the whole narrative is ' Inconclusive ' when the Key man makes statements like ' That would be the Plan ' when closing down the open ended question of the improvements to the concentrator . So he's given away NOTHING , and at the same time not even agreed with the number or the Steps highlighted by Loui . ie the ramping , testing and other pre-production hurdles. My take on that part was that Lynch was not buying into confirming there will be slow delays as production builds.
So this ' inconclusiveness ' can also be displayed when he was NOT prepared to give any guidance whatsoever on the actual SC6 output number come 31st March 2023 , but at the same time stated he could be held to account for the production to actually have been started by this point.
He displays this ' casualness ' again when he addresses the rather multifaceted Carbonate question re: the JV and and who has to agree. The Question brings attention to the the Quebec undertakings where Lynch re-iterates the penalties applying aspect . However the conversation fails to highlight one of the significant triggers which can result in the commencement of the redemption of the preference shares. ( see below extract from Note 19 in the Annual Report )
Terms of the preference shares are detailed below:
-Redemption commences in accordance with the NAL Constitution and Governance Agreement once afeasibility study regarding spodumene carbonate production is economically feasible and/or the mine is incommercial operation and the redemption term is up to 10 years after the first anniversary of the issue ofthese shares.
So while Lynch states that ' what else could you make of it ' given the monies we have spent with Hatch on the studies , the only real milestone is that fact that a ' economically feasible study ' has to be completed for the commencement of the Quebec C$20 million preference shares .....which can ALSO be triggered by ' Commercial ' production ( not start-up production ) which may or may not actually occur by 31st March 2023.
Irrespective of this point , the Carbonate PFS is stated as May 2023 anyway right . So that's a couple months after the official start of production.
So YES when you start to analyse date ,times , comments , announcements , and narrative , of course you are going to get different views. And sometimes as I've shown in my previous post regarding the September KEY Management hiring's ....sometimes when we focus too much on an Announcement like that of the Mining Contractor , other worthy and critical things get missed in a ' General Discussion ' thread. Like the fact the Guy Balleau was Chair and President of the Quebec Institut des Mines which was NOT in his Linkedin page of previous work experiences.
So the forum definitely does have a role to play in disseminating , reviewing , and providing this information as it comes to light , and not burying it into obscurity and missing out on valuable information. Its when posters do it clearly for their own self promotion of other investments where it definitely becomes obvious and a bit grey.
Call it like it is and debate it openly in that manner and there should never be any issue. Did I have to provide this information which was missed about Guy and which was now 4 months old. Absolutely not , but I still felt an obligation to find room in the conversation to make sure it was covered off. So its not to confuse people , its actually to inform people with another perspective.
(20min delay)