Orocobre vs. Rodinia Orocobre is just slightly ahead of Rodinia in developing their project; their shares currently trade in the $1.60 range, with a 52 week high well above $2.00.
Their latest quarterly report/investor information can be viewed a number of places, but I read over it here:
https://www.marketwire.com/press-release/orocobre-limited-quarterly-report-operations-for-period-ended-31-december-2012-tsx-orl-1751587.htm
Some of the noteable points:
1. They completed a joint venture agreement with Toyota Tsusho, which allowed them to secure project financing.
2. The construction cost is expected to reach as much as $229 million for 17,500 tonnes annual production.
3. Orocobre issued new shares (mostly to institutions but also to individuals) amounting to about 14.5 million shares dilution, raising about $23.7 million. This amounted to about 20% dilution. It seemed to have a modest downward effect on the share price (no more than 15%) since that time. I notice that the share price has been spiraling downward anyway since September 2012. With financing announced, and project construction commencing, you'd expect the price to start making a positive move, but that doesn't seem to be happening yet.
I also noticed that Orocobre is largely owned by institutions, as seen in the chart here:
https://www.orocobre.com.au/Capital_Structure.htm
It looks like there's only 14 million shares of float out of about 118 million shares outstanding. After all the good news they've released the volume is still remarkably low and the price is not going anywhere fast.
Orocobre's Salar de Olaroz project has a little more than twice as much LCE (6.4 million tonnes) as Rodinia (2.8 million tonnes). They also have a very low production cost / ton ($1,512) without potash credits.
It looks to me like Orocobre is about 1 year ahead of Rodinia in their project development, but their price has been ridiculously high for more than 3 years. It actually hit $4/share back in early 2011. One has to wonder what's going on with Rodinia's depressed share price for such a long period of time when compared to others in its peer group. Part of me wants to buy all I can and part of me says wait and see.
I haven't been following Orocobre very closely, but they've had their definitive FS since May 2011. Their price was already firmly over $3 before it was released. They didn't have a firm commitment on financing at this point either. Anyone have any thoughts on what's going on with Rodinia's inability to break out considering their similar situation to Orocobre?