Chris Heminway, Exec-Chair at Time To ACT, explains why now is the right time for the Group to IPO. Watch the video here.
Piedmont results announcement yesterday: “In Ghana, we are encouraged by the support of the Ghanaian government evidenced by the sovereign wealth fund’s investment into the Ewoyaa Lithium Project (“Ewoyaa”) announced last year. Ewoyaa continues to advance through the permitting and approvals processes, and the project is poised to be a near-term spodumene producer with exceptional logistics and relatively modest capital and operating costs” and “Lithium has been a cyclical business for the past decade with trough markets in pricing generally followed by new record highs. As we navigate the current market, which seems to be in the throes of ‘peak pessimism,’ we’re bolstering our balance sheet by monetizing non-core assets, deferring capital spending, and employing cost savings plans designed to reduce our corporate overhead. Our goal is to protect shareholder value in this downturn, while remaining strategically positioned for the lithium market recovery that we believe is a matter of time.”
A theory on what’s happening. There are many sellers in Australia with lithium shares in the doldrums and many shareholders suffering and selling. Our bidder Assore is using that liquidity to buy up many of those sold Australian shares. Then in London our bidder is selling just enough throughout the trading day to keep the share price down near 20 pence and stop it breaking out and being more expensive for their next takeover bid. Rinse and repeat. I’ve noticed that the daily range is below 20 pence on the ASX (last night close was 37 cents @ 1.93 FX = 19.2 pence). So our bidder could even be making a turn on this strategy. There are too many weird trades in London to be individual investors. E.g. this morning there were 11 sells of exactly 8,031 shares within 40 seconds, and 3 of 7,180 shares within 10 seconds. Otherwise, who are these sellers in London? Spreadex shows 100% of bets are Longs.
I was going to agree with you go_ly_dow, the MMs play around with this a lot. However, just a thought, a factor could be the Australian market. That had a range overnight of 36.5 cents to 38 cents. At FX rate of 1.935 that's 18.86p to 19.6p. So there could be some arbitrage going on between ASX and UK market that's holding down the open here? And gives us weird price action most days. Anyone agree, or have alternative view?
With all respect to BoA, they are not lithium experts. What some believe is now happening at these lithium prices is that some producers are reducing their volumes or stopping production, changing the supply/demand dynamic and leading to prices increasing. By much we don't know. But for sure there's a floor to the price and some believe we are about there now.
Market Capitalisation of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) is $6.2bn USD, so Atlantic Lithium would be 2.5% of the whole stock exchange value. It looks like there are only 31 main listed companies. So ALL listed would be a big deal and high profile, and many locals might buy some. Hard to know how large an impact that might have, but they won't be selling that's for sure.
So that's maybe we receive GBP 70m for the offtake prepayment and suddenly the company's enterprise value is just £50m. You can see why they're trying to take us over down here. 20 pence buys just now showing as sells for some reason