I think they should try sell Mt Cattlin, if only to get away...

I think they should try sell Mt Cattlin, if only to get away from C&M and remediation costs. At a giveaway price I can't see why Bill Beaumont wouldn't be keen on the asset. It seems like a good fit for them.

Continued Nemaska development makes lots of sense, reading between the lines it was clear from the conference call that they have customer commitments and floor pricing agreements for it in place, so it's unlikely for Nemaska's lithium hydroxide to be sold below US$17,000 per tonne. As far as I'm aware it also means they will operate the only lithium conversion facility in Canada. IMO it's unlikely for any other Canadian operations to be competitive with WA spodumene, as they will most likely need to ship it to Asia for conversion. The IGO and Albermarle experience in WA, and lack of investment in domestic conversion from PLS, says that it's not trivial to develop conversion capacity in the West. Of course, there's companies like POSCO that might choose to invest in conversion capacity in Canada, but realistically this will need to outcompete shipping lithium hydroxide from their Asian facilities.

The brines give them their competitive advantage, and the salars have enormous resources. So, I was disappointed that these expansions are now being done sequentially. I think the problem with running both brine expansions concurrently would be the huge CAPEX this entails. I also don't like the idea of them becoming very heavily indebted, so I can tolerate this. The other issue with brine seems to be that there is a long ramp-up period from legacy AKE's brine ponds, and because the semi-DLE of Livent uses heaps of water, it's not necessarily acceptable for use either.

I think they have demonstrated very solid company performance with this quarter's results, and now we just need to wait 3-4 years to see the rewards. PLS probably has more upside in a booming lithium market, but I think LTM will be the clear winner if prices remain suppressed for that time, as they will slow and steadily grow revenue and profits.