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Some more speculation (in the absence of actual news) - the ops up date from last month mentioned "partnership interest at the project level" and also "organisations within the lithium value chain", so my take away from that is that they're looking to develop some sort beneficiation of the Li concentrate into lithium carbonate (likely battery grade) with a partner.
The Uis mine currently produces a "technical grade" petalite concentrate that would be used by the ceramics industry, I'm not sure that is the best feed for a battery Li plant, but there was a spodumene concentrate produced from Lithium ridge. So I would speculate that one possibility is a deal on the lihtium ridge property to develop that as a battery-Li mine, which would leave the current Uis operation unchanged. Such a deal might also provide some cash to accelarate the ramp-up of current Uis production.
Such beneficiation is in-line with the Namibian Mineral Beneficiation Strategy, which is also supported by the EU, and I suspect the deal will be with a European (German) company - maybe AMG Lithium or BASF?
Just me trying to read between the lines.
Agree @bohercom, it's the suspense that's killing us. A timeline/update would be great, but I feel AV should have been more circumspect from the get-go as there's now an expectation for a big deal to be done. It's distracting from the rest of the story, and could be detrimental to the SP if there is no deal (I would argue the delay is already hurting the SP).
@toptiger, the "detail" is pure speculation on my part, just trying to imagine potential scenarios - which is entertaining, but no subsititute for some actual news.
Do us all a favour and stop mentioning bloody Kodal this the Andrada mining !
Observer101 - agree with everything you say. I still think there are deals on the table. AV has been consistently upbeat about the process, even very recently. I trust in AV and the team to get the best deal for ATM.
I do have a problem with the open-ended nature of the updates though - “we’ll update you when we next update you” type of thing.
I see no reason why there couldn’t be a high level timeline laid out. I.e. we’ll narrow the offers to the best 3 by this date, we’ll go to next level of detail and non-binding offers on these 3 by this date, and we’re expecting to make a decision by this date.
They can always update the timelines if they need to.
This total vacuum is the very worst in terms of communications.
Well, right there observer you have given us more detail than AV ever has.
the kodal deal is really good, no way companies can raise that sort of money that easily, and cash to explore for gold. the ownership part isnt really that relevant.
he def does need to stop doing interviews, they are all the same anyway (same with other ceos), in my experience too many interviews and too much hype building is generally not a good sign.
Good morning Observer101.
Excellent balanced post, just one thing to pick up on, any deal process has to be light lipped both in the interest of the company and investors alike, we all want to know more but AV can only lawfully comment as much as he has done, if a deal is close or in the final stages, i'm not sure what else he can say.
Your comments though are refreshing to read.
If the Li deal is truly off the table, I feel that AV would have come out and said it was off the table. However, I do think that the massive drop in the Li price has affected things... I have no doubt there were multiple (eye-watering?) offers at the time, but I would assume those were non-binding, and it's quite likely the offers that came subsequently druing the Barclays process (as the Li price was tanking) may have been less enticing.
There is also likely to have been quite a bit a met testwork/DD from any prospective partners which could have delayed things, and if there were multiple offers then there may be some negotiation going on. So as frustrated as I am on the lack of news, I am also aware that there could well be a deal still coming.
I also think that if the current deal isn't really "eye-watering" then it would be best not to do a deal, and I trust that AV and the board will do right by long-term shareholders.
Nonetheless, although I have confidence in AV, I do think the communication around the whole thing has been really shoddy. I think the major mistake was to speak about these "eye watering" offers before anything was finalised. A good lesson to everyone to keep your trap shut until you've closed the deal.
As for a "kodal-style deal", since we're bringing that up here again, I personally don't think the Kodal deal was great - looks to me like they gave away the controlling interest in their flagship project as well as a hefty chunk of equity to fast-track a mine build. Time will tell if it works out, but mine-building is hard and they have 8 months to build a mine. I'm happier with the more conservative (albeit slow) ATM approach myself.