Is Kalium the company set up by a farmer on his own pastoral lease?
The reality is that all these companies are trying to do pretty much the same thing and telling the same story (RWD, SO4, AMN, Rum whatever it has changed its name to, Kalium, Goldphyre under its new name and all the others). Some of the peers appear to actively avoid mentioning RWD in their presentations and prospectuses so as to obviously talk up their own position.
Reading some of the threads on the other companies it is clear that some posters don't appear to know the full history of the companies they are in. There is a poster on AMN who wants to know "what he is missing" yet hasn't mentioned the fact that AMN doesn't have an ILUA despite the fact that RWD bailed out of MacKay because of NT issues on that project.
One generalisation to make is that Ruane was on to SOP years before all these other guys and at one point in time had some of the tenements that others now have. A large part of the AMN project belonged to RWD. Furthermore the guy that runs AMN was previously an analyst that covered RWD and was involved in a cap raise for RWD. I think we know where he got his inspiration from.
The guy that heads up SO4 was a former top 20/40 RWD holder assuming the same name applies to the same person on an old RWD top 40 that I have.
All of these projects are a good distance from port. RWD has the most road infrastructure to upgrade.
They have all done varying levels of exploration and testing. Superficially they may look comparable but RWD has done the most. There has been some F$%^ing around at RWD to say the least with NT issues sucking up several years. In hindsight, time was wasted exploring nearby potential resources plus a period of doing very little to avoid cash burn.
I think the reality is that RWD is at least 12 months ahead of the others. One only has to compare AMN and RWD to see that the former is about minimal exploration and considerable consultant produced studies, which is probably wise as they haven't secured a NT agreement.
As it stands they will all have to pump brine from bores and trenches into ponds that may or may not require lining to base and or sides. They will all require a processing plant and access to large volumes of relatively fresh water. They all need power. They will all have to cart the SOP to port by road and possibly rail. The larger producers will export.
In my opinion the differences will be capex for infrastructure, capex for ponds and processing, opex for transport and opex for production. AND the unknown ability of management to get things done.
The quality of the brine will have an impact on the capex for ponds and the opex. Better brine needs a smaller pond surface area and lower volume of brine to achieve an equivalent amount of end product (assuming equal evaporation).
RWD has the best brine as far as I am aware. Of course RWD has to spend $40M upgrading a track into a road. With better brine it is more cost effective to increase output.
If Kalium is building a road but doesn't have much more than samples from 20-30-40 shallow holes, then it has a lot more to do. Whether it needs to do as much as RWD has done and whether they can do it and deal with some of the challenges in a far more efficient way is anyones guess. Do they intend on drilling deep holes into paleochannels? Can they access the lake surface easily? Are they planning on sinking larger diameter trial bores? Even the evaporation trials take months if they haven't been done yet. I assume they don't have NT to deal with but they still have to do an environmental study which RWD has already started.
So as for "peers", you may be on to a winner with Kalium but I haven't looked at it closely and Im not an expert in these matters. I have a position in RWD that is pretty illiquid, I'm not looking to invest anymore money in SOP now.
As for the others, I think the the market caps point to RWD being best value but that isn't a surprise because it is the most illiquid and unloved.
Good luck.
RWD Price at posting:
36.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
