Lithium Carbonate price has no input to PLS's pricing mechanism,...

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hilldweller

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26/03/23

06:24

Post #: 66961436
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Originally posted by bigal36: ↑

I admire your optimism here and no doubt I won't be popular with this but you have to be realistic here.
The renegotiated Spodumene price of US$6300/dmt was negotiated back in December when the Lithium Carbonate price was around 560,000(CNY/T) and since then its dropped to a current price of 276,500(CNY/T)

Now if the Chinese and other suppliers agree to keep paying the renegotiated Spodume price of US$6300 then yes your $700M Quarterly NPAT is realistic and could be even higher but the Spodumene price was calculated based on the Lithium Carbonate price so its very unlikely the Chinese will keep paying US$6300 when they can buy the same stuff for half the price on the open market.
My guess is maybe up until mid Feb they kept paying US$6300 but I suspect now they are either making excuses not to take any more Spodumene or they have re negotiated the price down to as low as maybe US$3100.

If I am right on this we can expect an average Spodumene price of around US$4700 for the march quarter and maybe US$2500 - US$3000 for the June quarter.
That would still generate quarter NPAT's of around AUD$680M for the March quarter and around AUD$350M for the June quarter.
An average Spodumene price of say US$2700 for 2023/24 should still generate a NPAT of around AUD$1.4B and puts us on a PE on around 7.5 based on the current share price so we are still looking good value.

The issue is if the Lithium Carbonate price keeps dropping to say maybe the mid 2021 price of 100,000 (CNY/T) then we do have a problem but hopefully the current over supply of batteries will reverse and the Lithium Carbonate price will stabalise and hopefully start moving up again.

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Lithium Carbonate price has no input to PLS's pricing mechanism, they use lithium hydroxide which is not in anywhere near the declines of carbonate.

PLS Price at posting: $3.56 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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0 Great analysis

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