The companies are very different. GXY is a mining company. It...

The companies are very different.

GXY is a mining company. It mines rock, crushes it, physically concentrates it (the lepidolite containg the Lithium is lighter than the other minerals in the mined ore), and sends it off to another company with a chemical processing plant to extract Lithium from the crushed rock as Lithium Carbonate or Lithium Hydroxide.

ORE is a chemical processing company, not really a mining company. It produces Lithium Carbonate directly from concentrated brine that it pumps from the nearby salt lake (salar).

I would rather ORE stick to producing high quality Lithium Carbonate (and also Lithium Hydroxide from its JV with Toyota in Japan) rather than something it has no experience in - digging up rocks.

ORE already has a strategic shareholder (Toyota with 15%) which I think provides much more protection than any link with GXY.