Thinking outside of the lithium box...

Hi all, long time for me since being active in LLL after a long journey since the original BGS / Langford drama days.

Personally, I am not in favour of picking up another lithium project and think that in the end we got out very very lucky. Ganfeng could have really just let us drown.

My pitch for best use of the tranche of US$171M?

Acquire Antilles Gold (AAU):
- They have 2 small-mid sized projects ready for development pending funding.
- NS project. Offtake is in place on attractive terms. Needs $35M CAPEX with a 12 month construction time. Initial short mine life with limited drilling done but still a US$70M NPV using $2250/oz gold and $9,000/t copper... so plenty of upside on that NPV at todays metals pricing and more drilling - there are also smaller satellite deposits they can process through this mine to extend the life. AAU-ASX-Announcement-13January-2025-Pre-Feasibility-Study-for-Nueva-Sanana.pdf
- LD project. $100-150M CAPEX to produce gold/silver/antimony. 10+ year mine life. US$400M+ NPV at todays metals prices. Microsoft Word - Split Bulk Concentrate to Silver-Antimony Concentrate - Final 2023-03-21 (rev 1)
-The Cuban government have floated giving AAU a 3rd development ready gold/copper project once it is demonstrated that they can deliver NS. More upside.
- AAU already hold 3 other copper-gold projects in Cuba that are more at the exploration/appraisal stage... so plenty of upside after the first 3 projects are up and running.
- NPV of expanded and optimised NS+LD projects at current metals pricing would be >US$500M.

For various reasons and some quite poor management decisions/execution lately, AAU is only at a ~$8M market cap. Many stale holders in this one who I think would happily head for the exit at a AU$25M offer, or maybe less. Including myself. It has been the most frustrating stock I have ever held. They have an attractive pipeline of solid small/mid size mining projects but no capex to get the ball rolling and difficulty arranging finance for projects in Cuba given the wider geopolitical context.

As a holder of both AAU and LLL/FFX, this is a tie-up I would love to see happen and genuinly believe it is the best use of our LLL funds. LLL can basically buy a portfolio of $500M+ NPV projects with plenty of upside for all of $20M odd. They will be a fully funded mid-size copper/gold/silver/antimony miner overnight with a short ~12 months timeframe to positive cashflow. Then if they still want lithium they can go after it later on but at least be a diversified miner.

I am sure other M&A opportunities like this likely exist and I would at the very least like to see LLL explore outside of lithium and get more aggressive in takover opportunities.