I don’t think either of you are wrong, you’re just looking at the same chessboard from different angles.
On the Gina point first. Gina Rinehart blocking the Albemarle bid at $3 when the stock was around $1.48 wasn’t random and it wasn’t sentimental. That was a hard valuation call. If you’re sitting with a blocking stake you don’t pull that trigger unless you think the asset is worth materially more than what’s on the table, not eventually but once execution risk comes off.
Was it frustrating at the time. Absolutely. Was it irrational. No.
Fast forward and Liontown Limited is still a single asset company but it’s now much closer to proving it can ramp and operate properly. That’s the big difference. Majors don’t pay top dollar for geology they pay for de risked cash flow. That’s why the next few updates matter more than any takeover chatter.
On valuation, a $6 billion market cap for a near term producing asset with scale and strategic relevance is not heroic. It’s conservative if ramp up goes to plan. Albemarle’s bid was roughly a 100 percent premium at the time because the market was still pricing execution risk. Remove that risk and the conversation naturally shifts.
The $4.10 or $12 billion starting point isn’t crazy either. That’s just applying the same logic Albemarle used back then but on a cleaner asset with fewer question marks. If someone like Rio Tinto ever decided they wanted long dated lithium exposure without building it themselves, LTR would tick a lot of boxes.
So yeah the takeover logic is sound. Gina’s behaviour actually reinforces it rather than undermines it. People with blocking stakes don’t say no to billions unless they think they’re early not wrong.
Whether it’s her another billionaire or a major doesn’t really matter. What matters is execution first. Once that’s obvious the negotiating power shifts very quickly.
The irony is the loudest takeover debates always happen before the asset is ready. The real ones tend to surface quietly after the work is done.
