I've been waiting until this last week before deciding which way to vote. I have to made a decision now and I'm voting "Yes".
There has been alot of good arguments made for and against on the forum, for me some of the reasons against don't bother me, ie the CDI vs local listing and CGT issue (which won't be an issue, if it is, it will be first time in history they don't allow rollover relief).
For me the two main issues to consider are:
1. Does merging the companies make sense?
2. Is the valuation fair?
For me the first one "Yes", it definitely makes sense to merge, there is no other company out there that has as complementary assets and we are more upstream focused, while Livent is more downstream. There definitely will be cost synergies out of this in the Argentina assets. The other main benefit is the IRA, we will be in the drivers seat to qualify for IRA discount, Australian Spod to China will not qualify, this is big advantage of merging.
The second question is what I struggled with the most, do I think merge ratio is fair?, its not in my opinion. I initially thought that 66% to 34% would be fair, however I've come to see more value in the Livent assets, maybe a 60%/40% might be more fair. Bottom line if the ratio was to change in our favour it would have happened by now. With the lithium market correcting recently a few points, Livent's brine asset will be more valuable in the short term, hard rock might be easier to build and get into operation, but brine at costs of $5-6k and pricing at $15k is still very healthy. Offsetting that, cash is king and our $700m should attract more value. I, like many on the forum probably won't get over the valuation question, but we are stuck with it, we can only hope the merge of the 2 companies creates enough value to overcome the loss on the merge ratio.
Seems like its going to all happen regardless what we on the forum think, so wishing everyone luck as we move to becoming Arcadium.
Expand
