There is a lot of M&A activity in the Lithium sector atm, even BB put a Tweet out about it (do u still call it a tweet?)
EV sales are growing at a faster rate than expected & ESS demand has been underestimated, my point being Lithium prices will probably rebound just as they did in April. $3000/t is still a very healthy price for a low cost producer like we’ll be.
We’ve been hit by a double whammy, the Mali Government’s action - probably because of FFX, and the dropping prices.
I think we have to face the reality that a bid for Leo is quite possible.
We have no major holders apart from FFX who have their holding up for sale (by trying to sell the whole company), even Ganfeng will no longer hold the 10% they had proposed. Let’s face it there are no Tier 1 assets for sale and we have the 5th biggest deposit in the world - or at least 36-40.5% of it. Virtually every company on the asx with a JORC Resource has had some sort of ownership change through strategic investments. Chris Ellison is the Chairman of Delta now and the list goes on. Even the small resources and promising explorers without a resource are getting snapped up.
I think the FFX sale is held up mainly because the Govt won’t approve the sale of their interest in Morila SA, that in turn I’d suspect will delay the sale of FFX to anyone wanting their holding in Leo. The way I read it, suitors are not interested in having anything to do with Morila SA so want it sold before they’ll look at FFX for it’s Leo holding. Of course a change of Control of Leo extinguishes the escrow.
The big miners are all expanding in Africa, RIO, BHP, FMG, Glencore so although some retail investors are wary of Africa, many of the larger resource companies consider the reward to be worth the risk. Some of these companies are expending on massive infrastructure, railway lines etc. Some of the above companies have been hit by the QLD royalty hike - to the highest in the World, now NSW has followed suit - though by not as much. Australia is not without risk & has lots of red tape just like N America.
I would hate to see us taken over on an opportunistic bid (or any bid), even a one dollar bid valuing us at about $1.2b would have a chance atm.
Long term holders here know what the reward is when we are in stable production bringing in multiples of our present market cap.
Possibly this is why Simon & the Board opted for selling 5% at project level, to make us less desirable, though I think it has actually made us a bigger target with the drop in our SP. If ever there was going to be a bid, now is the time - though I wouldn’t be surprised if our SP goes sidewards for a while yet.
These companies writing out the big cheques are looking well into the future. ALB for example have said they’ll honour LTR’s offtake agreements despite needing the product for their own converters. Anyone looking at Leo knows we have stage 2 available (partly) and stage 3 - it’s all about securing supply.
Let’s just hope we can survive this to production without a bid, at least the FIRB would knock back a Chinese bid.
(20min delay)