Bloodbath at Core Lithium as CEO Gareth Manderson goes with the miner crumbling to a $167.6m loss

Core Lithium’s boss and a key board member are heading for the exit as the struggling lithium miner tables a massive half-year loss. The company announced after market close on Tuesday its chief executive Gareth Manderson would “step down” and non-executive director Andrea Hall had resigned to “enable a board that is fit for purpose for the future of Core”. Chief financial officer Doug Warden has been bumped up to interim chief executive officer — with a $20,000 pay rise — and James Virgo will temporarily take Mr Warden’s seat as the company’s top bean counter. Ms Hall had only been on the board since April 2023. She was the chair of the Core’s risk and sustainability committee, as well as a member of both the audit and remuneration committees. But she has no shortage of board seats to occupy her time, currently serving as a director of Western Power, Perenti, Evolution Mining and the Fremantle Dockers. The departures of Mr Manderson and Ms Hall coincided with the Perth-based lithium miner unveiling a whopping loss of $167.6m for the final six months of 2023, which it pinned on a 75 per cent fall in the spodumene price during the period. This predominantly stemmed from a non-cash impairment of $119.6m and onerous contract provision of $27.6 million, as a result of the January decision to suspend mining at its flagship Finniss operation in the Northern Territory. Core indicated on Tuesday it still intends to suspend mining for the foreseeable future and told the market it will continue to just process stockpiles until the middle of this year. The company has about $124m in the bank as it shifts to cash-preservation mode. It burnt through $54.8m of cash during the half-year from revenue of $134.8m. Core has also informed NRW subsidiary Primero — the operator of the dense media separation plant at Finniss — the plant will be switched off once the processing of remaining stockpiles is completed. The DMS plant shutdown will almost certainly add to the job cuts executed so far at Finniss, which had more than 300 people on site, Mr Manderson told The West Australian in January. “But over 300 people on site, the mining team would be the largest, so you could probably expect 40 per cent or 50 per cent of those people will be impacted in some way,” he said at the time. Mr Manderson did not confirm whether there would be corporate job cuts when quizzed by The West at the time, but said the company was “moving through that process”. Core relocated from Adelaide to a brand new office on Mill Street in Perth’s CBD to get closer to the country’s lithium hub just last year. Mr Manderson — who hails from Queensland and was in the top job from August 2022 — told The West in December he played a key role in convincing the majority of Core’s corporate team to make the move to Perth. “Most (of Core’s staff) made the move . . . but some of them decided they’re born and bred South Australians, they’re a bit like West Australians, they like to stay where they grew up,” he said. From the start of 2020 to the end of 2022 Core’s shares skyrocketed around 3300 per cent, but since 2022 it has shed about 82 per cent of its value. It finished Tuesday’s trade up 7.3 per cent to 22¢.