I had the pleasure (but it's only a pleasure with full hindsight now) to hold PLS since mid-2017. My initial buys were all in the 60c range and I got to feel very smart for a couple of years and then feel very stupid for a couple of years. That long slide from the peaks of January 2018 was pretty much good news all along the way. That's what really plays tricks with your mind, the feeling that somethings wrong that nobody is telling you about. There were resource upgrades and macro tailwinds, the news was allllll good, but the price just ground lower and lower and lower and lower. There were offtakes, there was even a cornerstone investment from a major Chinese industry player at about 30c, but by the time Covid hit (even though Covid had roughly zero impact on the company at the time) we were looking at 15c and people were pulling their hair out. Everything just felt completely bleak. But the rest is history, it recovered and everyone saw a lot of green. There will be further ups and downs but the future looks good. There wasn't anything wrong at all, it was just Mr Market being the psychopath he is. The concern throughout all of this time was really execution risk on the mine they were building, first production also had some iffy results regarding purity etc. It just takes time for a mine to become operational and get up to speed, but it's never easy to be patient and have faith when the price is taking almost every week for month after month after month. That execution risk created massive underpricing of the stock, and (with 20:20 hindsight) provided some of the best purchasing opportunities of recent years on the ASX....it went 15c to over $5 in the next couple of years.
I hold LOT, but i'm wondering if there's a risk of something similar playing out here before the mine comes online and is firing on all cylinders. Please, this is not investment advice of any kind, and I genuinely do not wish to fearmonger. This is just an amateur investor mulling things over on an internet forum. I'm long LOT and broadly-speaking I think 20c is a great price for anyone with patience and the stomach to handle things if it gets really tough. Maybe it's just wishful thinking in part, wondering if Mr Market will let us pick up LOT at similarly crazy low prices that were once on offer for a brilliant company like PLS. I'm going to hold what I have, but keep some powder dry just in case.
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