@DaisyAI agree 100% with all what you said.
From here the shorters have no reason to hold their short positions as the reason they were shorting is now not valid. LTR will fund that $200m and we all know that. Also it is now being more obvious to me that the spod price will climb even further soon.
As you said what will the shorters do now is the question!
Interesting things are happening. I was checking the short squeeze list of Fintel on Friday. After the anns. LTR went down the 4th row from 2nd row during the day.
But in the afternoon after Tim Goyder's share purchase and TO's webinar and the stock price closed at the middle,
LTR went up to 2nd row on short squeeze list, which means the shorters will have hardship to cover their shorts. That's what FIntel's system and algo believes. (Not sure if there is a human interaction on that system though).
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Here is the ASX short squeeze list of Fintel. You can see it yourself).
Most probably they covered some (maybe a lot) of their shorts on Friday though unless they are really stupid or they have another reason to hold them. I see a huge positive in LTR's cost blow out although it was not a good thing for us at all. I can see that we have a lots of advantages are coming with it:
- Firsts of all the cost blow out shows that it will be very hard for a current explorer or a new developer to realise their projects and enter the market if it's not fully funded from today. The inflation on goods, services and work force is incredibly high atm.
- I can see the banks or other funding instos will not fund the projects easily even though the bankers know that the lithium projects are profitable. I don't think 50% of the exploration stage projects in ASX and TSX won't be funded and die unless they get some Chinese capital. I also read a lot about liquidity problems all around the world. I think it will explode soon.
- That means that the lithium deficit will increase more as the supply side will not match the demand side for a long time.
- And that means that spod prices will not come down easily, instead they might go up even further above $8000/t for SC6.
- We now have increased the production plan 100kt spod pa from 500kt to 600kt which means at least $500m more revenue pa (spod $5000/t assumed)
- DSO which was not accounted for before is now being a plus revenue for us. It can bring $500m per annum if LTR can produce 500kt per annum and sell at $1000/t.
- If I were the management I would also make DSO production at Buldania. The main part of Buldania resource is at the surface and at quite good grade. There is 15mt at 1% L2O resource at Buldania. I think it can be converted to 8mt to 10mt 1.4% to 1.5% DSO ore. At $1000/t DSO price it would make $8b at least. Say 50% of it profit, then LTR would make $4b there. Then LTR can even put some part of that money in Downstream Integrated KV project.
That would mean sacrificing Buldania's full potential for KV. But I'd do that if it's full potential is no more than 20mt. It'd be better for the benefit of shareholders. Riding the wave at the right time is important than anything. KV is already very long life mine.
You can see how a good resource Buldania is for DSO mining from the cross sections of Buldania below. Very high grade at surface.
(20min delay)