Semmel
Your comment about who might benefit from a suppressed share price whenever good announcement is made is spot on. I do not profess to be a bull on this stock I attempt to look at what is released to the ASX, whether the company is still on track of its stated objectives and whether it has the resources to carry out its plans. I have been a long term investor and I admit in the early days it would have been a very speculative stock on the basis of continued funding requirements in the face of no income. That TLG has reached this point on a shoe string and delivered many milestones, that it has had the flexibility to address potential hurdles speaks volumes of the small team running the business. That team is being expanded step by step to address up coming milestones, whether it be R&D, production capability, marketing and the vexed question of permits.
The more I read from official documents, sometimes posted on this forum by other shareholders, whether they be consultancy submissions to the Swedish authorities or the actual full report now under consideration by those Swedish authorities, invariably meshes with what the company says it is doing, although the time frame has been somewhat fluid of late, mainly on the back of pandemic restrictions.
The drilling campaign currently underway will reveal the full extent of the deposits it still holds and any positive news will reveal the extent of the market manipulation that has been occurring from time to time, but never more so than since the beginning of 2021. The company has long known about the size of the deposits it holds beyond those supported by JORC requirements and has been quite transparent about them as many previous presentations attest.
The run of share price activity is of course very frustrating to all those who hold and has been an opportunity for those who seek to accumulate at the lowest possible price without starting rush into this stock, which the hidden hands might no longer be able to control. Naturally, these are bold statements, but generally speaking they are supported by events on two fronts. The first is aggressive selling on any positive announcement, there is unequivocal evidence of this with the bid side in the market being hit relentlessly all day for several days to dampen demand. This is designed to discourage day traders and retail buyers, and to trigger stop/loss initiatives in a volatile stock with insufficient volume. The insufficient volume is the consequence of most of the institutional holders sticking with their position and sometimes adding to their holdings, all as evidenced by a very stable Top 20 as a percentage of shares outstanding, whether pre or post any capital raising. I would argue that this practice has not been successful as total shareholders have more than doubled in the last financial year to well over 10,000. Secondly, this means that when the institutional and retail holders are taken into account there is very little stock available for the free float in the market. All attempts to take the price down further appear to have failed with the share price stuck in its current range.
Whether the share price volatility is the consequence of a spat between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, or activity from potential JV participants in the public domain, past and present, and those acting for them, as well as those that have yet to reveal their hand publicly, remains to be seen, we will probably never find out.
I remain positive on the back of the forthcoming tsunami of demand as evidenced by the elevated price of many stocks in the lithium space, where there are many players, whether in South America (brine), Germany (brine) or Australia (spodumene) to name but a few locations. There are alternative sources for lithium, but very few for the equally critical graphite component of EV batteries in low risk jurisdictions that come anywhere near the quality of the TLG deposits. I am happy to be corrected on this last point, but I have yet to come across anything that enjoys the margin advantages TLG has. I discount Mozambique on the basis of recent disturbing unrest in the North of the country that has deterred a major oil and gas multinational in completing a multi billion dollar gas liquificateon plant, as well as the deposits in Southern Tanzania just across the border, generally a rather fluid arrangement in Africa. Naturally, the elephant in the room is China the dominant supplier, but rising geopolitical tensions from an increasingly prickly leadership in that place with almost every major economic block you would care to mention with the exception of Russia place that particular supply as a very precarious source in the future.
I have just reread this rather long post, but I think it is worth restating.
Naturally, I hold TLG and continue to do so. This is not a recommendation, but a synopsis of my perspective and opinion on TLG, so please do your own research into the aspects discussed above and draw your own conclusions.
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