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Piedmont Lithium (NASDAQ:PLL) -2.1% in early trading Thursday following a Reuters report that the company has canceled its application for a debt package from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office due in part to costs associated with the process.
The move, which comes after Piedmont (PLL) ended plans for a Tennessee lithium project that had received a $141M government grant, is raising questions about where the company hopes to secure financing for its flagship North Carolina project, projected to cost more than $1B.
Piedmont Lithium (PLL) CEO Keith Phillips told Reuters the company does not feel “a sense of urgency at this stage” to move forward on the DoE loan application given market conditions and changes to its North Carolina plans, and that the company will “maintain discipline and manage cash, which invariably means that our timelines for development will” be delayed.
“We would expect to submit a fresh application at a point in the future and we would look forward to working with [the DoE] when that time comes,” the CEO said, according to the report.
Piedmont (PLL), which reported $59M in cash at the end of June, laid off nearly a third of its workforce earlier this year, and reportedly has spent $1.9M on DoE loan application-related costs, as well as stock- and transaction-related expenses, since October.
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