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“We’re at a point that there’s a lot of interest in lithium,” he said. “We had a lot of parties contact over us the last year.”

Lithium X joined the TSX in 2015 through a reverse merger with Royce Resources Corp, a company in which serial mining entrepreneur Frank Giustra was a major shareholder, Moubarak said. In an online interview in 2016, Paes-Braga referred to Giustra as a mentor.

Since 2015, it has acquired several lithium projects, including its flagship Sal de Los Angeles lithium brine project in Argentina’s Salta region. It holds more than 1 million tonnes of indicated reserves of lithium carbonate equivalent plus one million inferred tonnes, according to a National Instrument 43-101 report.

Feasibility study

Moubarak said his company is not yet extracting lithium at Sal de Los Angeles, and the next step is to conduct a feasibility study to determine what size project would maximize cash flows.

Lithium X also holds a 19 per cent stake in Pure Energy Minerals, which has a lithium project in Nevada, and it has a second project in Argentina.

In October, Lithium X’s auditors filed financial statements that said the company had no recurring source of income except the interest accrued on its cash, approximately $19 million in working capital (as of June 2017) and that the company had historically posted negative cash flows.

Its shareholders will vote on the deal in February.

Nextview will pay a $20 million break fee if it walks away from the deal. The company also said it raised a US$1.5 billion fund in 2017, along with others, to invest in overseas mining assets with a focus on the new energy sector.

Officials from Nextview could not be reached for comment.

The company has not disclosed its exact strategy to develop the assets held by Lithium X, but said it is focused on the electric vehicle and new energy market.

Its other investments include Nanjing Yuebo Auto Electronics Co., Ltd., which supplies products to 100,000 electric vehicles in China annually, according to a press release announcing the deal.