Consolidated comments and responses...Neoarchean, Prisoner et al:
The news release is bizarre, unless it is really about something major and immanent.
With the BFS due within five weeks, and investors on pins and needles over it ,there is no doubt in my mind that this is telegraphing a major deal.
I consider the announcement to be preparation, regardless of how the Toyota reference got in there, and regardless of whether Toyota is going to be a partner.
PREPARING THE INVESTOR BASE: Suppose you are a public investor in Magna Mines, a titanium mining company. Then suddenly you get notice that Magna Mines wants to go into a totally different business line: they want to go into a JV with a bicycle frame company and manufacture titanium bicycle frames, and they send a proxy to approve a JV with Bodacious Bicycle to build a manufacturing plant.
You are going to go nuts over this. It is going to make you question whether management has all its marbles. You are going to bail out of Magna Mines because you don't give a sh$t about bicycles or manufacturing, you want to be in the titanium resource space, and here is Magna Mines going off in a totally different direction.
Now if Magna Mines were private, they don't have to worry about what public investors think. They can do as they please and quit mining and go into any business they want to, and nobody can say anything about it or stop them.
But CLQ is a publicly traded company, and if major new direction is contemplated, the public investors are owed an explanation, and might possibly need to approve the new direction, especially if major money or equity is concerned.
And I believe this is the situation CLQ is in. They are about to go into a major new line of business...
battery manufacturing...and they are getting everybody ready for it. The drums have been beating faintly
for a while. They went public last November on the Easpring deal and have notified everyone that a JV on manufacturing venture is on the table. They have stated in every investor presentation the interest from car makers and battery makers, and in the last one they said several companies had expressed "project level involvement". It was vague whether by "project" hey meant Sunrise, or a new venture; my guess is that they meant a new venture. So now the drums are beating louder.
"Hey folks, things are changing. This EV thing is out of control and everybody wants the cobalt and
nickel sulfates. We need to go vertical to max out the potential. We are not going to be rock crushers.
Don't say we didn't tell you, we are telling you now. And don't get freaked out when we do a JV on a
battery plant. Everything is going to be OK."
NEOARCHEAN: I disagree with your point of view on the importance of vanadium, but in deference to you and a few others I have segregated discussion of vanadium to another thread. However the following paragraphs touch on RF's vanadium interests, because I believe it has a bearing on what the structure of CLQ might be, in reference to the present conversation.
In digging around on Pu Neng, a private vanadium tech manufacturing company controlled by RF, I found quotations from Eric Finlayson concerning the intent and strategy of Pu Neng.
You will recall that Mr. Finlayson was CEO of Pu Neng, Chief Officer of HPX, a heavyweight BOD member at CLQ, and a geologist. He is the right hand of RF. He does a lot of the high-level work.
What Finlayson said was, "Pu Neng intends to be vertically integrated." From mining the vanadium ore out of the ground, to refining it, to manufacturing batteries out of it, Pu Neng intends to be vertical.
Pu Neng is in vanadium and is in China. But it is the same strategy that is being hinted at
by Clean Teq with respect to cobalt and nickel in Australia.
Pu Neng in Chinese vanadium and grid storage.
CLQ in Australian nickel and cobalt sulfates and EVs.
Same strategy. Same idea. Same CEO.
They are going vertical in the battery business.
INVESTOR PRESENTATIONS...PUBLICITY and SP SUPPORT...my opinion is that CLQ is very selective about trade and dog-and-pony shows, especially ones without very specific audiences.
RF is more concerned about building value than "pitching" his company to get the stock price up.
And that is fine with me. He has plenty of real stuff to do besides worry about whether the stock price is going to go up or down next week.
The only recent conferences ones I could find were the Macquairie and BMO conferences. RF also does Indaba in Africa, but since he has three tier 1 world class projects in sub-Saharan Africa, this is understandable.
CLQ is really at another level when it comes to attracting capital and they are selective about how they get public exposure. CLQ does not need run-of-the-mill trade shows and conferences to raise investor capital or keep the stokc price elevated.
RF (paraphrasing) hates "explaining his business to 25 year old analysts with MBAs in office buildings". I think criticism for not spending enough time and energy "promoting" his business
is misplaced. We will see the results of his time management soon enough.
PLATINUM...it so happens RF is rapidly progressing what will be the world's largest and lowest cost platinum mine: Ivanhoe Mine's Platreefs in South Africa. Ivan is a TSX stock so discussion on HC is understandably thin. However we note that Sunrise has a million ounces of Pt and that RF is bullish on it because of its applications in tech, green energy, and automotive. Long Ivanhoe Mines. Long CLQ.
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