PLL General Discussion, page-654

@paulgf always good to talk from supply/demand perspective and economic fundamentals.

IMO GS knows heaps. Period. They are 1st,, 2nd and 3rd an investment bank and will look to profit from any situation real or imagined. Never underestimate them.

I think I can say this is "absolute terms" ... there will be no "demand destruction" for EVs ... only "demand deferral", The secular change is EV being substituted for ICE (which is where demand destruction is occurring and accelerating). There is possible "demand destruction" for EVs too but that is not in the immediate future IMO as it requires a change in behaviour of "asset ownership".

Back to present time. A recession in the USA appears "unavoidable". It does not have to a hard landing or for a long time but the US economy (and the world) is contracting. The facts are the facts. You can see this visibly in the trend of 2022.



The most up to date numbers (i.e. including Dec'22) for US are




Maybe the US is bottoming maybe not. But it has been contracting and has yet tp so shows of expansion. And while the Fed may be softening on rate of interest rate increases the foreseen terminal rate is still ~5% give or take.

And yes, in total agreement regarding Chinese lepidolite ... but I would add ... do we give a you know what? That is a China thing - their converters require a source to manufacture lithium ... and that is there's. If the RoW are erious about ESG etc they will stay away from it and anything produced with China source dirty Hydroxide (and I'd extend that to graphite as well ... but thats another story).

We (PLL) is laser focused on Hydroxide ... so not even LFP matters to us. That chemistry is not a substitute for the battery chemistries needed for longer range, higher performance, lower weight use cases. We are in a rather large TAM. Those price cuts from TSLA ... a sign of competition in their space ... good for us & possibly bad for TSLA, but IMO bad (for the moment) given current economic contraction and their stock price reflects that.

IMO though, while we are in a "good place" we are not in a "safe place". We are not in a bubble. We do require lots of future capital - however sourced - to implement our plans and that always has risk. And GS also wants to play in our sandpit. That's risky too.

Have you been to Edinburgh?