Ramp up of next PLS shipment..., page-2877

In all honesty, I think it will be 200K, and they will do their best to hit that number just because it will look so good in the quarterly and year end presentations.

We hit over 175K of production each of the past two quarters (176K in Q2 and 179K in Q3), but only actually shipped 165K and 160K, those two quarters, so we had at least 30K of production that had not yet been shipped at the beginning of the quarter. Add that to what I would assume will be at least 170K of production in Q4, and 200K is possible, if we manage to ship it all.

Given the additional OTAs and OTA expansions PLS has signed, recently, it doesn't appear that demand will be an issue.

I think Q4 is going to wind-up being FAR better than Q3 was, considering:

1. Increased shipments (we're debating 190K or 200K).
2. Increased price (average realized price should be a bit more than U$200/dmt better than Q3).
3. Pricing adjustments. I've mentioned this a few times, but it seems people have forgotten how badly PLS was hit by negative pricing adjustments in Q3. Since SC6 prices have gone up by almost exactly the same amount as they had dropped in Q3, I anticipate a similar credit, this quarter, relative to the ding that we took for declining price price adjustment last quarter (it was A$218M).