re: Diving deeper on Standard Lithium?

These are some good questions. I’m not an OG here but I do tend to follow SLI pretty closely. Rambling off the top of my head,

1) I’ve seen new CEO’s work history with Koch/Georgia Pacific on LinkedIn but can’t find much else about him. However, the combo of Robinson/Mintak recently stressing on Joe Lowry’s podcast that Equinor isn’t playing around with this and has insisted that Standard adopt more “grown up” ways of doing things makes me vaguely optimistic about the new CEO.
2) I don’t believe Exxon has released their lithium concentrations yet. And Exxon plans to choose a DLE tech by end of year, per Patrick Howarth (their low carbon guy). Exxon has a small 6k acre project with Tetra, who has recently invested in DLE provider KMX Technologies.
Standard’s SWA project territory (leased from Tetra) is around 30k acres. And COO Robinson has said in Feb or May earnings that Standard’s East Texas project is expected to be a “multiple” of SWA.
3) Lanxess has officially opted out of partnering on Phase 1A and has also opted out of its lithium offtake. They’ve decided to only be a brine/infrastructure provider. Other than the royalty, these brine/infrastructure agreements are what mgmt says is the holdup. I saw Phase 1A as a stepping stone to the larger projects, but I don’t know how necessary it is now that Standard has Equinor as a JV partner and is running an actual commercial-sized DLE column at the demo plant now. Add in currently depressed lithium prices and I wouldn’t be shocked if they skipped Phase 1A.
4) The current SLI presentation estimates 2027 first production for SWA project and shows no estimate for Phase 1A first production. I’m inclined to believe the 2027 SWA timeline since Equinor is funding SWA development for now. Lithium sentiment may be hurting share price, but Equinor is helping share price stay irrelevant to progress by preventing the need for an equity raise.
On share price, I think it also hurts that many might still believe that Equinor bought 45% of SLI for $160M. And not knowing that Equinor potentially assumed 45% of the $billions in capex burden between SWA and ETx projects.
5) I don’t know the value of SLI’s leased acreage. I do remember that Albemarle offered over $4B for Liontown Resources last year when Liontown had one large project similar to Standard’s SWA. Similar NPVs. If I remember correctly that project was 12-18 months past it’s DFS being filed when Albemarle made the offer. Standard expects SWA DFS completion in 2025. ETx PFS in 2025?
6) The next royalty hearing is scheduled for 9/24/24. We’re more optimistic about this one since it is a joint application between SLI, Lanxess, Exxon, Albemarle, and Tetra.

If you haven’t, definitely check out Standard’s Equinor partnership presentation (Equinor has bought 45% project equity in the 2 large projects) and the new August Management presentation.

PS we’ve been told in previous earnings to expect to hear something from them on “larger” grants by the end of summer this year. Earnings should come end of September.