I hear your frustration. The opportunity cost for Talga has been...

I hear your frustration. The opportunity cost for Talga has been high as lithium stocks have soared while Talga has stayed flat. Assuming permits are granted, I do believe Talga has the best business case out of most of the companies in the battery materials space - massive high grade resource, green operations, full vertical integration and extremely high margins.

Unfortunately they're called lithium ion batteries and the market has been obsessed with lithium. Offtakes for lithium are also easy as it's just a raw material, whereas coated anode is a battery ready product and requires battery expertise and rigorous qualification. This means the barriers for entry for anode are high. It's also only recently that graphite has started to get some attention despite it making up the most of a battery by volume and the large majority of production coming from China. China have now run out of stockpiles (down 100% YoY) so expect prices to start moving up. I think the OEMs will be in for a rude shock.

"In the short-run, the stock market is a voting machine. Yet, in the long-run, it is a weighing machine."

I believe in the long run Talga's true value will be realised when compared to some of the other stocks that have already run (and are arguably overvalued). Talga's true long term potential value with full production is many many multiples of today's shareprice, however I always had around mid this year as my target for a significant shareprice increase with permits, funding and JV secured, maybe even an offtake or two. There have clearly been delays due to the permitting process but I don't think it will be 18 months, I'm thinking closer to 6 months.

In the Talga webinar with the EU leaders Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou and Peter Handley, Peter mentioned there is an "umbilical link" between EU investment and permitting, and there are stages where you're stuck waiting for approvals. I see this is where Talga are currently stuck, everything is lined up with the EU and JV partners, but we won't see any announcements from the EU until the permits come in.

We now have an announcement from the courts which means the process is reaching the pointy end and Talga expect this to be finalised in Autumn (September/October). We also have the recent land acquisition which suggests land and access agreements are being finalised with the Mining Inspectorate for the processing concessions.

The EVA Plant has now been pumping out commercial anode since February so who knows when we may see a battery manufacturer or OEM make a move. My question is how long will it take to qualify the output - is it just confirming it meets the same standard of the anode that has already been tested from pilot production?

Between now and the permits/JV/funding we should also get a JORC resource upgrade many multiples of the current resouce to allow for significant expansion beyond the current plans.

I think it will be an interesting few months and anything could happen.