Ok I'll bite, I usually let these kinds of posts go however have read enough of your posts and need to rebut.Put plain and simple, to compare the situation in 2015-18 to now is misguided and/or ignorant. The market, mainly downstream has evolved dramatically over this period, as all posters on this forum who have been around for more than than 5 seconds will know.
Back in the original "Lithium boom" in 2017 sure there was hype, and there was funding for a number of new mines and yes I think everyone got a bit ahead of themselves. So at this time a number of new mines were able to come on board - some more feasible and well managed than others, and this was able to out pace downstream conversion, as there were only a handful of meaningful converters at the time.
Fast forward to where we are now - there are 100s of capable downstream converters, all SCREAMING for product as evident by the recent BMX auction. Sure there may be feasible mines that could be developed, however the issue is that there was a run (from 2018 to late 2020) where due to suppressed/manipulated prices that none of these developments progressed to stages of PFS/DFS/FID/funding etc. etc. etc. So although these mines may be able to be developed, there is going to be a fundamental shortage in supply for the mid-term. Sure, once these mines develop and produce it may be a different story, but this is still years away IMHO. To simply say that the production/supply of raw product will increase to far outweigh demand like it did previously is a pretty ignorant and uneducated comment.
So what happens next...In my opinion PLS will be plant 2 back online, and be selling on the spot market for profits of +$1000USD/t for the next 12-24 months at a minimum. Stage 3 developments will progress and be funded primarily through existing facilities or maybe a CR if Ken wants to be even more generous to existing shareholders. Will new mines come online? YES! Absolute they will! However as evident from past events, construction, up-ramping and tuning a mine is not a straight forward task. If you had done some meaningful research before firing from the hip with some of your commentary, you would know that even if EVERY viable lithium project was somehow magically able to get up and running in the next 24 months (which they won't), demand forecasts would still outstrip supply.
Thankfully PLS was able to fine-tune their mine to a world-leading level during the lithium glut and still make it through, well placing us to take advantage of the current market situation. I haven't even touched on PLS's downstream ventures with POSCO and CALIX, but I will leave that for another time.
A lot of people have been here and invested for a long time, and I know are all open to welcomed discussions and debates, but I would suggest before coming out guns blazing, that you do a bit more research before rubbing people up the wrong way with some ill-informed comments.
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