For those of you who may have missed the OT thread on this topic I think it bears repeating here. Recently it was announced that the McDermitt Caldera in Nevada and Oregon was found to contain much larger lithium deposits than previously thought. Enough in fact that it might be the largest deposit ever discovered. 1.5 Trillion in lithium might be sitting on that site.

Lithium Americas (LAC) has won the rights to mine this deposit via their Thacker Pass project with extraction slated to begin in 2026. As someone who has only really started taking investing seriously the last 6 months (Im dumb, I know) when I read the news I obviously immediately thought to look who was gonna be mining these deposits which brought me to LAC.

This company has one of the craziest P/E ratios I have ever seen at -15,750. They have been hemorrhaging money because they have yet to begin extraction but the Feds and General Motors have together invested 2 billion in this company to mine this site. Stock is currently trading around $3.25 a share.

My question to the Money board (and I suppose those with a background in resource extraction) is the long term prospects for this company must be fairly good right? Even with the crazy P/E ratio and them owing money on these loans and the further capital that will be needed to scale this project out effectively, having exclusive rights to mine the largest lithium deposit in the world has to give this company a huge upside.

Resource extraction has always been known to be a huge boom or bust industry in the US from our history with gold up to modern black gold. In the MB opinion, how long would they need to be mining and selling this lithium for this company to start turning a profit and not just be paying off debt? Are we talking 5+ years? Or are we talking about less time?