My personal preference (for what it's worth...) would be to get...

My personal preference (for what it's worth...) would be to get the DFS done asap, even if it means it not being quite as good as it could be. It should be the most impressive one even if it just repeats the PFS assumptions and I'm not sure how advantageous it would be to eke out another 5% of potential value, for instance, at this stage.

I think the most important thing is to get the project up and running asap (without cutting corners), as I'd much rather it was our product hitting the market before Agrimin's, for instance. I completely buy into the long-term trends around increasing demand for SOP, and the advantages of brine over secondary etc, but I'm not sure how quickly 1m tonnes or so of new brine SOP could be absorbed into the market, at least without the price softening a bit. So I'd much rather be at the front of the new supply queue than the back. And if the production numbers turn out to be 5% better than the DFS then happy days - we'll get our reward in due course.

It might also be debatable how much capacity / desire funding sources like NAIF will have to fund every SOP project going, so locking aspects like that down sooner rather than later would be beneficial I imagine. I have zero knowledge of NAIF's mandate though so could be completely wrong!

Overall I'd personally take a bit of a hit in the short-term (eg future CR at a lower price than if the DFS was more impressive) in exchange for the better market position I imagine that we'd get from getting the project up and running sooner than otherwise.

Ideal scenario would be Lake Way production going to plan, de-risking the WA SOP sector a bit and making it more attractive to the investment community, who'll then look around for earlier stage opportunities in the sector and see a shiny new DFS from Reward that clearly positions it as the best opportunity in the space.