Trident Royalties (AIM:TRR), a diversified mining royalty company with assets spread across four continents, is reacting today on news that Lithium Americas Corporation (NYSE:LAC) has received a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a $2.26 billion loan to proceed with the Thacker Pass Lithium Project in Nevada.

The loan, combined with a second tranche of funding from General Motors worth US$330m, effectively finances the Project through to Phase 1 production in 2027.

Trident holds a net 1.05% gross revenue royalty over Thacker Pass (after expected exercise of a partial royalty buyback), which would see $13.2 million to Trident.

Adam Davidson, CEO of Trident Royalties, explains the significance of the news for their investors, highlighting that analysts expect the income from Thacker Pass to become the largest revenue stream in the Company’s entire portfolio, comprising between a 30% and 40% of total Net Asset Value.

In this interview with focusIR, investors will also learn:

• What level of involvement Trident is likely to have with Thacker Pass during the coming years

• How well the company is placed to handle volatility in the lithium market

• Where Davidson sees the biggest opportunities to pick up new assets, specifically with regard to uranium

• How he rates the company’s current performance

• How likely it is that Trident will be adding assets in the second quarter

Davidson concludes by highlighting how happy he is with the progress made by the company over the last year, saying that “if you look at where we were last year, Thacker Pass was still going through permitting challenges, the DoE loan obviously wasn’t there [etc]… fast forward to today, effectively our share count is roughly the same, Thacker Pass has been massively derisked, we’ve added four acquisitions, we’ve lowered our cost of debt with the recently announced revolving facility with BMO and CIBC, so everything has moved forward in the right direction - we couldn’t be happier with the portfolio.”