Lithium brine ponds may be toxic but are strangely photogenic
Lithium futures (blue shaded) versus Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF ($LIT, green), Chile’s SQM (yellow), Albemarle Corporation (red) and Arcadium (purple).
The aggregate market cap of the (mainly lithium) miners extracted from the $LIT ETF only comes to $69bn (only 15% bigger than the listed uranium miners).
Some (not completely unironic) cover stories on some of the original ‘carnival barkers’ in the sector …
Some of my favorite follows on the mining space like Macro-Ops’ Brandon Beylo tweeting this in the same week that my pal Ben Brey had pinged me a chart of Albemarle unprompted for my views sent a tingle down the rodent’s spine!
Apparently, the recent fires (in Wyoming) and floods (in North Carolina) are all part of a ‘Deep State’ conspiracy around the control of domestic lithium assets.
Not to be outdone on this front, the Biden administration chose last week to cry foul on Chinese “predatory pricing” that was potentially undermining the efforts of the US Inflation Reduction [sic] Act to diversify ‘energy transition’ supply chains.
Some of Arcadium’s shareholders are not satisfied with Rio’s bid (interesting interview via image above).
Management’s 2028 ‘Nirvana’ scenario also, per Macquarie numbers, looks like a business that could ‘running on fumes’ by that time. Plenty of execution risk.
Rio’s bid for ALTM is at a healthy premium to the median of the EBITDA positive lithium mining comparables.
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