Liontown Resources Limited

Pilbara down 2.1%.

Liontown, though, managed a 0.7% gain.

And Mineral Resources down 2.4%.

Linus down 1.5% there.

No major action though in our market today.

PLS finishing down 0.7% and Liontown down 1.4%.

As for the banks, they did follow US counterparts higher.

We had NAB finishing on top today, up 1.9%, while ANZ was the worst of the big four, up 0.6%.

You've already seen a lot of mining companies be very quick to move towards hybrid renewables plus battery storage, plus a little bit of diesel, um, for their power mine sites.

So Liontown, a lot of people made fun of them at the time for being a bunch of hippies or whatever.

That looks like an act of genius now.

Um, but I think the next big thing is the mining trucks.

But my God, the amount of infrastructure that has to go in there, it's like looking at WA in the early 2000s.

It's real money.

I, I mean, how do you think the, the, the rapid nature of the last kind of cycle shapes the M&A? Like, we saw Albemarle ju- just about get their deal with Liontown over the line, and then within a couple of weeks of that not going through, they were, they were counting their lucky stars that it didn't because the price just dipped.

It is still with that same strong demand narrative that you highlight, but it just dipped so much harder than, than everyone kind of imagined it, it would, given it's still bounced back 18 months later.

That will be a 1.9 billion Aussie dollar project alongside another 600 to 650 million of planned infrastructure investment.

This follows Liontown's recent expansion FID, as well as Lithium Argentina's plan to double capacity, which shows a dichotomy.

Major lithium producers feel strongly about the long-term industry fundamentals, while the financial community, as always, focuses on the daily price movements on the GFX.

We had the opportunity to interview the Liontown king, Tony Ottaviano, published earlier this week, which we'd strongly recommend you watch if you haven't already.

We also had our first interview with another important new producer, Lithium Argentina's CEO, Sam Pigott.

Please watch that one as well, and stay tuned for our latest video with another producer, Sigma Lithium's Ana Cabral, which will come out in the coming days.

Um, uh, but where we've been caught out more, uh, than we thought is that we always said supply couldn't keep up with demand, but it turns out, you know, the Chinese, like in so many other industries, can build things ridiculously fast on the processing side, and lithium projects don't take as much money or time to get up and running, uh, at least historically, as, let's say, a copper mine.

That said, you know, let's turn to PLS, whi- which admittedly I've not been able to du- dig in, uh, deeply enough, and you haven't either, so we'll probably have more commentary on this next week.

If you followed Oracobre, Arcadium, and now Rio, many of you know Ganfeng and understand joint venture structures like IGO's Greenbush's JV with Tangshi and Albemarle, for example.

Lar is working toward an ASX listing, which will open up all of Australia to benchmark the story to other producers like PLS, Minrez, and Liontown.

But for those Australians who could access U.S. stocks, you might want to start researching the story now before a potential re-rate when it does get to the ASX.

Some housekeeping before we begin.

public valuations for these things.

Yeah.

And the other thing that we interviewed Liontown's Tony Ottaviano, who concurs with you that the cost curve is steepening.

And when he decided to go into Bryant, which he dipped his toe in the water, he also referenced that what he picked was actually close to your two projects, right? So it was also...

It's Tuesday, October 6th.

And today, Matt Fernley and I are very pleased to welcome for the first time, Tony Ottaviano, Managing Director and CEO of Liontown, which is listed on the ASX under ticker symbol LTR.

Liontown traded last night at 83 Australian cents with an equity market value of approximately 2.6 billion Australian dollars.

Tony joined in 2021 after senior roles at BHP and Rio Tinto.

He since led the development of Kathleen Valley in Western Australia and brought Ford, Tesla, and LG Energy Solution into the customer story and navigated a takeover approach and a difficult lithium downturn.

I'm going to start with just a couple of questions and then Matt will dig in.

You know, the first of which is, you know, you come from BHP and Rio.

So what drew you from there to Liontown? And what should a first time viewer understand about Kathleen Value and the company that you're looking to build?