Ann: Orocobre Limited - September 2018 Quarterly Report, page-48

dyeman - thanks for your comments, I think you have made really insightful observations.

Re the "analysts" it seems that the brokerage firms only have their D grade teams working the Orocobre beat, or maybe they were all snowed under with work and were running flat, but in any case they gave Richard Seville an easy ride. My impression is that these "analysts" are actually model jockeys who ask the questions for the sole purpose of updating their spreadsheets, no meaning of life type questions as they can't plug that type of answer into any variable field. I would have thought a seasoned professional would be asking the sorts of questions that you and niu and SpaceWalker have posed. But anyway not to be.

I've gone back and checked the June quarterly on a couple of points. In that report commissioning of stage 2 was for the first half of 2020 so it is correct that moving the commissioning to the second half of 2020 is a six month delay (as Richard Seville stated). But in the June quarterly report regarding the LiOH plant it is stated "A final investment remains subject to joint venture board approval with commissioning forecast for late 2019". So whilst Richard Seville was right about a six month delay for the stage 2 expansion it was naughty of him to suggest that the delay to the LiOH was also six months when in fact it is a 12 month delay.

Also regarding his announcement that the jv had approved $40m to be spent on early works for the stage 2 expansion and that they had already spent $10m of that $40m. I took it to mean that this $40m spend was a new thing and that the $10m was spent in the September quarter. In fact the $40m spend was already announced in the June quarterly report and some of the work was already completed by the end of June (for instance the first 3 evaporation ponds had been completed and were already in use). My impression is that Richard Seville used the $40m and $10m figures to suggest there was a certain momentum building for the stage 2 and LiOH projects whereas in fact it is mostly old news regurgitated.