UPDATE: AGY is now officially mining Lithium! While the others...

UPDATE:

AGY is now officially mining Lithium!
While the others grab land (and hope there is Li on it) or drill to find Lithium, AGY has started...

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20161118/pdf/43d0gy3j74s3v9.pdf
http://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ann-rincon-development-site-works-commence.3052634/#.WC81ntR9548

AGY have the former GM of FMC's Argentina's Lithium operations running the show on the ground in Argentina. Pablo Alurralde has over 20 years mining Lithium at one of the BIG3. No other Lithium explorer can come close to AGY "Boots on the ground" management experience.

Pablo Alurralde also has 3 Li mining/extraction/processing PATENTS to his name.
https://www.google.com.au/patents/US20120141342

These patents should show a improvement over the current speed/process of extraction and the Li grade, which determines the final price.

AGY will have a small sample amount of LCE in 10 months. 100-150 tons.
This is stage 1 and is basically to work the kinks out of PA's new process. If it's grade is close to what ORE is currently shipping AGY will be looking around 1.8M in sales.
According to industry experts (DYOR) ORE's final grade isn't great. I don't know if this is due to ORE's Salta (land) they are mining from or their LI extraction process.

I don't know what margin AGY will have on the sample amount but, I don't expect it to be high, as they are starting OPS. I do expect and hope the the margin of stage 2 is close if not better then ORE's recent results which were 60%. (That's a good business is be in. x2 Microsoft's margins!)

ORE LCE shipment have ranged from 6k-12k over the past 6-12 months. The last month shipments have been increasing to 10k-15k!
(http://hotcopper.com.au/threads/1st-export-17-000-usd-t.2784389/page-6#.WC9I2NR9548)

From reports I'm seeing which you can Google yourself, suppliers are getting desperate for supply as there isn't much. I don't know if ORE's grade has improved or if the recent Li supply shortage is now here? As we all know the spot price at the beginning of the year got red hot and there were prices of 20k-25k. I hope we get back to those levels by the time AGY starts stage 2 of RINCON.

However, as PA's patents are from 2012 and he's bringing his 15+ years of BIG 3 GM Li mining experience. I'm going to say the grade should be better. We'll find out in 10 months.

AGY's stage 2 is set to start in 12 month, after stage 1 is finished. The target amount for stage 2 is 1500 tons of LCE. As Stage 1 has now started I believe Stage is a lot more likely to happens as we are currently being exposed to 80+ public Lithium stocks saying to are looking for Li...or have found some Li working towards production. AGY has NOW started production and is fast tracking.

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20161031/pdf/43cjxly1wn6yw1.pdf

AGY don't need to build a 50,000-100,000 plant. 5-10k of production is ample for Rincon. AGY also has 2 other Li projects in Argintina that could fast track production once Stage 2 is under way. Each with 5k-10k?

Once AGY produces it's 1500 tons of LCE...I'd expect the 2-3 of the worlds Giga factory would be ramping up major production and the Li supply would be tight. This combined with AGY having worked out any kinks from it's sample test batch....I'd expect a conservative LCE of 15k-20k.

At a price of 17K... AGY would fetch price of 25 million for it's 1500 tons stage 2 LCE.
I'd also hope for a margin of at least 60%. This should be done in 24 months!

Mr. Alex Molyneux AGYs chairmen who lives in China and speaks mandarin and is currently CEO of ASX 200's Paladin EnergyDN. Alex is also a former investment banker and has a reputation as a deal maker.

Needless to say. One can easily assume a off-take deal would be forth coming shortly as AGY management have stated at the AGM they were getting calls already...that was 6 months ago.

This above doesn't include AGY's Cobalt/Copper/Gold project with is a JORC and could have 200-400M in metals at it's Wee Macgregor site in QLD.

-AGY has no debt.
-Heavy insider ownership.
-Current MC of 20M.
-AGY has a JORC with Cobalt which is going to see dramatic price raises in the next 6-18 months.
-Thinly traded.
-Off-take deal with-in 6-12 months?
-Brokerage coverage hopefully coming soon.

-It's possible that Stage 1 and 2 production estimates have been under-estimated as is sometimes the case for obvious reasons.

You can find a wealth of solid research on AGY here...
http://hotcopper.com.au/asx/agy/

All the above is IMO...DYOR!!!