Just listened to the E3 Lithium part of this conference (Chris Dornbas, CEO). It is still ongoing right now with other speakers (just back up to find his talk):
I still like them. $60M in cash and govt grants (which is a lot for their size and where they are at). Their pilot plant has been producing positive surprises. Recovery is solid and but flow is 3x what they were anticipating, which directly results in lower capex and higher profit. They will mostly make early decisions on their extraction vendors/technologies by 1Q24.
Traditional lithium mining take a long time to bring online. The only way the industry will keep up is from Direct Lithium Extraction, of which E3 is one of the players. E3's resource is in Alberta, a very resource extraction friendly province. Their project is very large, 130,000 tons vs 500,000 tons current worldwide production. They will publish their pre-feasibility study in 24Q1, which the CEO called the "launching pad" to get project financing. Battery companies and car OEMs are obvious targets to partner with the get financing.
End of 24, early 25, they'll have their feasibility done, which will have all the engineering done and be shovel ready, for start of production/operations end of 2026.
I suspect E3 stock will have a bump when pre-feasibility is done (it should show better project financing than current estimates), and a bigger bump when they line up project financing. So 2024 should be good for the stock. Their current market cap is LOW. $154M. Compared to other juniors, this is a bargain. Their resource is big, high quality, and they have a track record of constant milestone delivery.
BTW, the rest of the conference is awesome for those that have the time to listen.