PLL General Discussion, page-1119

CB,

Being new to this forum there is a lot of reading you might want to consider doing ... the OTA is a source of great misunderstanding - and I would say particularly on the other forum but hey source your research carefully.

What I would suggest is prepare yourself for uncertainty. We (PLL) have certain rights and entitlements as the buyer. Now I saw a reference on SYA forum questioning why SYA is not selling product to the enduser (I imagine they mean someone like LG Chem). Firstly it would be SYQ not SYA. Secondly what makes this a little bit different is that PLL is at the same time
(a) an equity owner (25%) of the JV - that is SYQ
(b) the largest shareholder of SYA (~14%)
(c) the largest customer of SYQ (the greater of 113Ktpy or 50% of annual production)

PLL is an "enduser" of NAL SC6 - whether that be in its own downstream refineries or as sellers to another company (they could even use a Chinese refinery as a tolling partner and sell LiOH)

Now what happens in the future, whether that is 2026 and an operating lithium carbonate plant - but don't take that literally because apparently you are not supposed to take what Brett Lynch says literally - but lets for discussion purposes contemplate the following"

1. What constitutes "unreasonably withheld" - see, I think what Roberto is getting at, is that in would be "unreasonable" for PLL not to agree with its JV partner SYA to invest the capital to build the other half of the carbonate plant. Contracts have such clauses, but what exactly is the application of it. So the JV owns an asset - a partially constructed carbonate plant. If PLL did not want to make that investment then its not up to SYA to determine that is unreasonable - that's a business decision they make. What would be unreasonable is PLL denying SYQ use of plant ... in other words if SYA wanted to say say "acquire" the plant entirely, it would be unreasonable for PLL to say no - because it has already decided it did not want to proceed with it in the JV. So let the JV (SYQ) dispose of (sell) the asset to SYA on whatever the cost basis is in the JV's books.

2. That would make the Carbonate plant a non-jointly developed and operated plant, and as such, it has no priority to production. That's not to say SYA (note SYA not SYQ) couldn't buy from PLL at market, in exactly the same way they would buy at market from SYQ (because the JV is the SC owner and only distributes profits to equity owners)

3. Now that makes the 100% SYA Carbonate plant "just another refinery" and with refining margins (which are lower that miner's margins). That BTW is exactly what TLP (albeit it it is PLL-TLP buying from PLL-Ewoyaa-JV and the same % production volume as equity interest).

4. IQ is going to have some say ... but they also have a fine line to walk ... this is not the only SC project in Quebec and if/when there is a surplus of spodumene being produced ... which needs to be exported ... a heavy handed Gov't approach is not useful (unless you are Europe and Canada at times appears much more like Europe than USA). Now if GoQ & IQ step up and provide say matching grant and then a loan like the USA DoE has done for the capital needed for this plant, then that changes many things.

At some point we'll know (after the fact) how this plays out. For now, you have to decide based on the well publicized facts given.

Just a few things to chew over.