Apologies if someone else has posted something similar in recent times (I've stuck a bunch of the regulars here on ignore to filter out some of the bickering).
One possible alternate reality:
Week One: (next week) release of the June quarterly report. I'm not expecting fire works from this report.
Week Six: (first week of September) release of the brownfield (including Renard) and greenfield (excluding Renard) scoping studies /preliminary economic assessments. Unless Chris Evans has pulled the greatest bluff of all time I expect that overwhelmingly the Adina project including Renard will be assessed as being the better choice.
Week Nine: (last full week of September) Winsome exercises the Renard option. They raised the last stack of cash of A$11.8m at 85 cents a pop so if the share price at the end of September is lower than 85 cents they may well make the initial down payment of C$15m mostly in cash whereas if the share price at the end of September is much higher than 85 cents they might use more scrip. One factor that might change the scrip to cash mix is how much they want to bring Investissment Quebec onto the share registry. In any case I expect they will not muck around by putting off exercising the option till the end of December or even the end of February next year. In my view time is Winsome's greatest enemy and the sooner they start developing the project - the pathway to production - the sooner they will have product to sell (and the sooner the market will start believing that Adina is for real).
Weeks Ten to Twenty Two: (till the end of calendar 2024) I think that following their decision to include Renard in the Adina project Winsome will announce some form of initial bond with either Ecopro or POSCO in which whichever Korean entity they go with provides a pathway of financial support for the Adina project. In his recent interview with Howard Klein CE named Ecopro and POSCO as being already active in Quebec. He also named two US firms, Ford and GM, and two Europeans, BASF and Northvolt as being active. In fact POSCO and GM are working on having a C$300m cathode active material facility at Becancour up and running next year and Ecopro, Ford and SK On have started building a C$1.2b cathode facility also at Becancour, which is expected to begin production in 2026. Given CE in April (?) took a trip to Korea but not to Europe after the big PDAC get together in March and more tellingly soon after announcing the Renard option in early April my guess is that the "strategic" that comes on board will mostly probably be Korean (with Ecopro my pick). Both POSCO and Ecopro are already financially committed to Quebec so they will be keen to secure their supply lines. The only other local uncommitted lithium supply will be from Arcadium's Galaxy project (previously called the James Bay project), Critical Elements' Rose project and maybe Sayona's NAL project. POSCO and Ecopro only have a handful of lithium sources to choose from.
From the start of calendar 2025 the main work streams will include:
- permitting, funding and construction of the Route 167 extension and upgrades;
- the completion of the appropriate feasibility studies for the mine and project;
- the permitting of the Adina mine and re-permitting of the Renard mill infrastructure;
- the capital structure of the project - funding by equity, by debt, and/or by forward payments from the strategic partner;
- the construction of the Adina mine;
- the repurposing of the Renard facilities.
I've no idea which of those streams will form the critical path - my stab in the dark is that the feasibility studies and the permitting could be potential drags - or what the timeline for all these streams will be. I'm hoping that the scoping study shines some light there.
I know some here are getting impatient for some drill results. My own impression is that for the important milestone announcements - like the maiden MRE announcement - CE tends to want to get ahead of market expectations. I think the two big milestones for the remainder of 2024 will be the acquisition of Renard and the bonding with a strategic downstream partner. The drill results come into play next year when they update Adina's MRE and move into the feasibility studies.
(20min delay)