👉 Background: Liontown Resources is an ASX-listed lithium miner with two major lithium deposits in Western Australia. Over the last few years, Liontown has been highly rated because its lithium mines are some of the world's largest, as well as the highest grade.

👉 What happened: Early last year, Liontown signed a 5-year deal to provide lithium to Tesla for its EV batteries. That's on top of its deal with LG and Ford. These deals piqued the interest of US-based miner, Albermarle.

👉 What else: Albermarle originally offered Liontown $2.20 per share, which was rejected. Then $2.35 per share. Then $2.50 per share. But now, they have offered Liontown $3 per share... which the Liontown Resources board have strongly recommended. This comes at a time when Australian lithium companies are seeing a major surge in buyout offers.

What's the key learning?

💡The gap between price expectations of buyers and sellers is starting to close.

💡Over the past few years, lithium miners have been on a faster trajectory than Margot Robbie. That meant these companies were attracting serious valuation premiums. As a result, it's been hard for potential acquirers to meet the price expectations of these companies.

💡But given the cost of exploring and drilling is super expensive, many of the 80 ASX-listed lithium miners can't afford to do this alone anymore. So now, they are keen for investors to pump in money to ramp up their drilling activities.

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