Final reminder that Arcadium's quarterly conference call is on bright and early tomorrow morning (7:00 am Tamworth time) -
LINK HERE .
Twice now I have heard the boss of Arcadium, Pall Graves, dump on Pilbara Minerals for being just a one-mine-wonder whose success is not sustainable.
Yeah right.
Do yourself a favour and have a listen to Dale Henderson's presentation today at Diggers and soak up his humble measured optimism that Pilbara can continue on its stellar trajectory. Worth noting how Pilbara has one of the great lithium mines in the world - it currently produces about 8% of the world's lithium and is working towards trebling that output in the medium term - but is also diversifying in both location and product. PLS is a A$8.4b market cap company and its share price is down year-to-date by a bit less than 30%.
https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=1K3RB-Gd6PQ ................................ (remove the space between "you" and "tube" to get the link to work)
Then tomorrow morning tune into the smug arrogance of Pall Graves rationalising why Arcadium put in yet another mediocre quarter. Worth remembering that Argentinian (and Chile) salars are home to the lowest cost lithium operations in the world. Now should be the perfect time for companies like Arcadium, which has three brine facilities up and running, to be absolutely creaming it (when I decided to invest in Orocobre more than a decade and a half ago rather than in any hard rock operator the tipping point for me was that low opex brine operators should prosper even when the lithium price collapses - there goes that theory!). During the last lithium price crash from 2018 through to 2021, Orocobre took the opportunity to re-acquire Advantage Lithium and to merge with Galaxy. By way of contrast, in the 7 months of Arcadium's existance Mr Graves has so far acquired an US$11m experiment (I suppose he will claim the Allkem Livent merger but that kicked off in the first part of 2023 when lithium was going gangbusters so not a depression era manoeuvre)... Oh, and by the way, Arcadium plc has a market cap the equivalent of A$4.2b and the CDIs are down 63% year-to-date (so half the market cap of Pilbara and more than double the share price loss).
Seeing how both Olaroz 2 and Salar del Hombre Muerto should be ramping up new production Graves should have a positive message for us looking forward. Also if Galan Lithium was to go on the block - I suspect it will not as the insiders there are strong - I would expect that Arcadium would take advantage of its inside running.
I would also hope to hear positive news that they have pulled their fingers out with the Whabouchi and Galaxy (ex James Bay) spodumene projects and the Becancour hydroxide facility all in Quebec. POSCO and GM are working on opening a US$500m cathode production plant at Becancour next year and EcoPro, Ford and SK On have started construction of a US$1.2b cathode production plant, also at Becancour, to open in 2026. The next-into-production Quebec spodumene operation other than Arcadium's pair should be Critical Elements Rose project (but CE clearly intends to hibernate through another lithium price trough), Sayona is struggling with its NAL facility that is already in production but running at a loss but then probably comes Winsome's Adina that may be into production as soon as 2028. I reckon there is an opening for Arcadium to tie up POSCO and EcoPro but not if they have Whabouchi and Galaxy idling. (I detect a clear differentiation in mindset between Australian miners who all go hell for leather and north American miners who seem more conservative in how they approach the development of projects).
(20min delay)