Absolutely not convinced and the narrative is so poor I don't think the companies truly believe the arguments.
AKE is bringing about 73 per cent of resources and 66 per cent of capacity (according to another article). AKE is brining ~700M USD in cash, Livent is brining ~$100M. AKE has diversification across multiple continents. LKE has one mine. AKE NPV sitting at $30B AUD, I don't know what Livent is at but considering they have been operating Hombre Muerto for decades and managed nothing I also don't care. Current NET profits are also far from 50/50 with AKE maybe 3x (with much more growth to come on its own).
So what is Livent contributing here? A US listing? We have cash, make some US acquisitions and some WA acquisitions and AKE is a power house. Livent can't even contribute to that process because they have no cash - their quarterly call was the CEO (who also is a joke) trying to convince analysts that they have enough to self fund their very small expansion plans at HM.
AKE needs be more aggressive on their own. Finally, the argument that both share prices are falling together as justification for the valuation is illogical, the prices were pinned together at the announcement of the merger. It's all arbitrage and complex games by US hedge funds driving the prices to exploit the outcome of the merger.
Ken Brinsden sums it up regarding mining lithium also (for which Livent contributes NOTHING): “What they didn’t do was get the mining capacity right. And that is why you have seen pretty incredible spikes in the price of the raw materials,” Brinsden said.“But the truth is that from now, exactly the same thing is happening in the western world.“Masses of chemical capacity is going to be built in the western world, or is already under construction, including in North America and Australia. But the same mistake is being made.There is a lot more chemical capacity being built than there is underlying raw material capacity. .... There will be incredible price spikes in the raw materials because it is the raw materials that are going to be short in the world – not the chemical capacity, not the battery making capacity, and not the EV making capacity.” -- https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/incredible-lithium-price-spike-on-way-as-new-chemical-capacity-drives-demand-says-brinsden -- Livent is not contributing anything from this point of view (AKE has 73 % of the combined resource).
