LRSThere's clearly some market expectation (see this weeks share...

LRS

There's clearly some market expectation (see this weeks share price performance relative to the sector) around the upcoming JORC and/or offtake. I've said for a while that I believe our offtake will be announced at a similar time to A11 (both started their offtake process in ~October 2023, both appointed Macquarie Bank to run the process and both have similar schedules for first production (depending on whether A11 starts some smaller scale production in 2025). Anyway, it appears that A11 may have concluded their process and may be announcing their partner next week (see screenshot below). They said in a recent webinar they'd be travelling to asia 'soon' to finalise their offtake and then this popped up on twitter yesterday from the A11 CFO. It looks to me as though A11 have gone with a Chinese partner (I assume the travel is to conduct a signing ceremony and photos etc).

It's a bit of a leap to conclude that based on this, that LRS will also announce their offtake, but for the reasons above, it seems a decent chance of happening to me. I won't be surprised to see both the JORC and offtake announced this coming week (but I'll caveat this by drawing attention to my previous failures at guessing timing on major news items).

The main question is whether CG has followed through on his previous comments that he wants to sell into North America, or whether he's happy to take Chinese money.

Finally, if there is one upside to the horrific lithium sector sentiment, it is that low lithium prices tend to focus investors on projects with the lowest marginal cost of production. This should mean a relatively strong share price performance for LRS (although this will be limited by our ability to achieve key miletones like Capex funding and permits etc).

Macro

Lithium is still a dirty word - sector sentiment is back to what I'd describe as firmly in the gutter, after a few weeks of short term share price rises for many companies. But this week tells the story. Only two stocks managed positive returns (A11 and LRS), while everyone else posted week on week losses, with GLN down 20%, SYA down 14% and WR1 down 12%.

LAC (Lithium Americas) had a short report released and got a towelling last night - https://www.bleeckerstreetresearch.com/research/lac

GLN drew down on an ATM facility and then a few days later ran a CR - the market responded accordingly sending them to multiple new 52 week lows - if you're wondering how a company could be so far through construction but not funded, you could ask the same question of LTR who are weeks / months from first production but still haven't secured their debt funding.