What do we know - Amendment

My "What do we Know" thread generated a lot of interest and discussion, as intended. From the responses and discussions I have been using this to test my own theory to find something else that fits the facts of what we know better, or at least equally. Nothing could I find except one important amendment to the theory. I stick by everything I said in that post but can now add a different Conclusion. My Initial Conclusion, which may still hold of course, is that LTR is in play and a take over offer is coming this week, probably Monday, or at least a Trading Halt from LTR. The weakness in this Conclusion, which always troubled me, is that it meant that the predator had to deal with Gina's near blocking stake or do a deal with her. I surmised that perhaps she wants out for various reasons (such as wanting to concentrate on rare earths instead) and has privately indicated that for the right price she would sell. There is a lot of uncertainty in that theory and it troubled me even though it fitted the facts. The other problem is that if they do a deal with Gina then it invites other parties to make a superior offer now that they see Gina is happy to depart. Good for us but more uncertainty for the predator.

Another and perhaps stronger and alternate Conclusion is that the buyer is a company such as Rio, Tesla, Ford, GM, SQM, WES and many others, even Toyota, who merely want to take a strategic stake in LTR (without the intention to take us over) because they know what an important lithium resource it is to counter the currently Chinese dominated supply chain. They may also want to block Gina from taking it over or doing a deal with LTR without their involvement and they want to be in the best position they can to secure supply for themselves. Such a big player would want to keep their buying identity quiet until the last possible moment to try and avoid creating too much of a short squeeze to keep the price and media and competitor scrutiny down. This theory also fits the facts well.

If this theory is correct then the good news for us is that while it may not give us the quick sugar hit of a take over price, the longer term return will be better. In addition it will further underpin our share register with a major supporter and remove the already remote possibility for a CR in the future. The SP will start a slow upward trajectory from here with the price of spod AND the bonus is that all shorters will leave in droves, even those that shorted much higher up the chain. A company with a slowly increasing share price and with large strategic shareholders is not the right environment for shorters to make money. Gina's influence will also be blunted. So this theory will allow our SP to stabilise without the impact of large shorting and we can look forward to a further re-rate and ongoing share price appreciation and dividends over time as the lithium deficit arrives. If you are of the view that this deficit is illusory I suggest we ask this potential new big buyer if they agree because the upcoming lithium wave is the main reason IMO they would have moved to get a large stake in LTR.

So either of my Conclusions are very good for us. One immediate, the other more gradual. I can see no other reason why a buyer would want to take a large stealthily acquired stake in LTR with an obvious urgency so no one would have time to react. We will know this week which Conclusion was closest to the mark. AIMO of course. Good luck all.