New TA/Charting, page-6353

Big late article on AFR about LTR, sorry if someone already has mention. Just reading it now.

Mr Ottaviano said mainstream banks were now more willing to lend to lithium projects than they were between 2015 and 2020, when the first wave of Australian lithium miners had to rely on customer pre-payments and equity to build their projects.“We have seen a completely different dynamic today. The traditional project financiers are much more developed in their thinking around lithium projects, so we are seeing very strong interest from a number of tier one domestic and international banks,” he said.RELATEDBanks warm to lithium but the training wheels are still on“We are constantly engaging with them now, we have got indicative term sheets ... so the debt element seems very compelling at the moment.“We have got the equity option and the markets are strong at the moment, but we have also got alternative options, customer prepayments, streaming opportunities, green loans, there is flexibility and optionality on the funding side.”The period of time between outlining the scope of a project – as Liontown did on Thursday – and securing funds for construction has historically proved difficult for pre-revenue, single-asset companies developing what appears to be a major resources project.Companies such as graphite miner Syrah Resources and lithium upstarts Pilbara Minerals, Galaxy Resources and Orocobre all had their market darling status reversed in the period between 2017 and 2020 as they tried to fund and establish their large battery minerals projects.The need to conduct dilutive equity raisings made those companies lucrative targets for short-sellers between 2017 and 2020.RELATEDAustralianSuper stares down shorts on Syrah“I think where listed equity markets get a lot harder are really that mid-cap level where you have got a world-class project which needs hundreds of millions of dollars of funding,” veteran resources industry banker Richard Phillips said during a speech in 2019.Liontown may also seek to sell a stake in the Kathleen Valley project to help fund it, but Mr Goyder struck a defiant note on Thursday, saying shareholders like him were not focused on simply selling their interests and instead wanted to create “another Fortescue”.Mr Goyder owns just over 17 per cent of Liontown.