Couldn't agree more. I bought in today.Is the next catalyst debt...

Couldn't agree more. I bought in today.

Is the next catalyst debt funding or offtakes/customer agreements? I suspect offtakes may be required to complete the due diligence for the DOE loan, as well as for other funding sources to support scale up for Phase 2.

I think this is where the market has misunderstood Novonix (and it's peers like Talga in the EU), and assumed lack of progress when that is far from reality.

Offtakes for a highly engineered battery ready product (coated anode) are very different to materials such as lithium. Lithium only needs to meet a certain purity specification, which is why we have seen many offtakes signed across the various lithium miners. Anode material however, is the end battery product and has specific requirements for each battery application and even model of car. Hence the qualification process takes far longer.

The problem with the qualification process is you can't just ship off samples, you need to prove you can manufacture commercially at sufficient scale before an offtake can be executed. You need to build an operational commercial plant producing 100 x of tonnes to specification for a period. I don't believe the the lack of sales from Riverside is due to a lack of customer demand, but they are providing qualification material to execute offtakes for the phase 2 scale up.

Talga are in exactly the same position. They had to build their commercial EVA plant in early 2022 which has been producing for over a year to support offtakes which are still yet to be executed (now apprently pending permit approvals).

We've seen the pictures of the tonnes of material stored in the warehouse, it's been going somewhere. I firmly believe this has all been happening behind the scenes under NDA and you won't know until a deal/deals are executed, but they will binding (subject to commercial production starting) and they will be significant, potentially with pre-payment or equity positions attached. It really could be any day now.