Why Orocobre is the market’s most shorted stock
Seasoned mining analysts have heard just about every excuse under the sun for a production downgrade.
But the six brokers that dialled in to discover the reason behind lithium producer Orocobre’s shock revision in February had a new one to add to their list – a “spreadsheet error”.
“This is a 20-megabyte spreadsheet, it’s very sophisticated,” chief executive Richard Seville explained to bemused analysts.
“And within the inner workings of that spreadsheet, there is an error which was actually creating inventory that didn’t really exist in a couple of the ponds. If we went back 12 months ago it was negligible, but as time went on, it compounded.”…