They were at $950, he said it would not be a 40 or 50% hit but would be an impact. I think we can safely say it was a 20 to 30% hit which would put their contract price somewhere between $665 and $760. I have been piecing together tid-bits from other sources and my guess is a range from $675 - $700. My only * to this, is that it is possible that in the original 5 year contracts that were penned, had a "Max change %" or a "Not to exceed" clause that would protect them and the customer from huge price swings. If this were true the price could be higher. The YOP should be done, but they advised it will need to be dialed in and could be 6 months to achieve. We should see an improvement in grade as well now that we are mining on the other side of floater rd. I think this all will add up to be a profit (for Mt. Catlin) for the quarter with each quarter thereafter getting better. All my opinions of course DYOR.
from the Q4 transcripts - this is a vague answer at best.Nick Herbert
Okay, thank you. And then finally just on the contract process and just trying to get a bit more of this year if we could place and on what that looks like I guess for the next six months and you comment that process is notably weaker than last year. I’m just wondering, what can we take from that? Does that imply a sort of 7 in front of it for the pricing or possibly a 6?
Brian Talbot
Well, I mean, we haven’t completed all of our contracting yet, I mean we’ve completed part of it or obviously kind of our early shipments and now other customers we’re just working through over the course of this period before Chinese New Year. In the same vein that what we did last year, ultimately yourselves and others will be able to see kind of our pricing and our results, but we probably won’t be announcing kind of pricing specifically.
Other than that, I can actually guide towards the fact that if you actually look at in terms of the see-through carbonate price in China, in comparison year-on-year, I think you are seeing a change from circa RMB150,000 kind of to about RMB80,000 today. And so, you’ve seen up to probably approximately 40 something, close to 50% kind of change on a year-on-year basis. What Alan was referring to earlier in terms of kind of the guidance on pricing is that obviously there will be an impact on the see-through price as spodumene, but it would not be to that level be any portion of that change on a year-on-year basis from the Chemical front.
