We don't know what the instos or people are aiming to gain by shorting LTR and in general the lithium stocks. There are many reasons to do that; some are shorting for making money by selling high and buying low, some are trying to build a stake as it was true in LTR's case (we saw Goldman Sachs and Albemarle's subsidiary build 4.9% and 2.2% stakes respectively after so much shorting), some genuinely think the lithium stocks are in hype and shorting all of them without any discrimination.
I don't know if;
- all those shorters really know what they are doing!
- they have solid facts to short lithium stocks because the lithium market will be oversupplied!
The most important thing those shorters can't understand is that they are putting all the lithium stocks in the same basket. That's wrong. They will understand that by making losses in some of them again, as it happened in LTR before. (that's why they are not shorting LTR a lot, just touching a little bit because they are scared).
Some stocks are shorted rightly by some professional institutions which also announced what and why there were shorting. I'd short those stocks if didn't think shorting is unethical as I said before. (They were LKE, CXO, VUL, etc ...). But these shorters are completely different than the large insto shorters like GS, JP Morgan etc. Those ones have done their homework and shorted the right stocks.
THE OVERSUPPLY STORY IS WRONG,
BUT THE HYPE IN LITHIUM STOCKS IS RIGHT...
The ordinary shorters are shorting the lithium stocks because the lithium price will go down due to coming oversupply is totally wrong. The lithium price will not come down because the oversupply story is BS. I will show that to you by facts below.
Yes the hype in lithium space is true, but not the oversupply. This is not understood well and the facts are not recognised properly.
The hype is clear because there are so many lithium stocks everywhere. And most of them, maybe 90% of them will be uneconomic for mining.
NOT ALL LITHIUM IS EQUAL,
BUT NOT ALL LITHIUM PROJECTS ARE EQUAL EITHER
People still can't understand the facts that "Not all lithium is equal". That is the technical part of the things and the main thing, but its not enough on its own. We know that from AVZ Manono project in DRC. The deposit is world class but not possible to produce spod concentrate there for maybe another 10-15 years.
Other than a technically good lithium deposit you need to have a power and road infrastructure, a skilled workforce, a mining friendly jurisdiction and little sovereign risks, and there are more things to consider indeed.
If a deposit is in a remote area to everything then most probably it will not be economically viable.
If the pegmatites explored are at very depths of 250m-350m at a remote area and frozen land they will not be economically viable either. Think about the Sayona's (SYA) projects. Even it's at very south of James Bay area ta Quebec, its process plant is completely covered by building. I can't think what the others (PMT and WR1) at far north of James Bay would do!
Therefore many lithium projects will not be realised despite they discovered pegmatites with some good potential (all Tier-2 I guess).
This is the map of James Bay project at Quebec region.
This is the map of North American projects.
The another important thing is to get mining permits and approvals. It's not that easy.
As you may know eve AKE's James Project in James Bay in Quebec Canada got the environmental approval in 5 years..! That's what happens in that area. So the other James Bay projects will consider this issue s ana example. (PMT, WR1, REC, IEC, CY5, C1X, RB6, etc).
OUR MAIN INDICATOR IS EV SALES GROWTH.
IT IS NOW OVER 50% in H1-2023 (for major OEMs)
2nd INDICATOR IS BATTERY PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION GROWTH.
IT'S ALSO MORE THAN 50% in H1-2023
THE SUPPLY HAS NOT INCREASED ANY MORE THAN 25%
THAT'S WHY THE OVERSUPPLY STORY IS BS.
An article which was full of wrong statements was published by * on Friday (below link) and it was discussed on many other threads on lithium explorers in HC. Here is my comments about it below.
“
Is your lithium stock having a rough week? China may have something to do with it”
The * analyst and article mention about the declining stock prices in last 3 weeks. Then he gets the support from Fastmarkets senior research analyst Chandler Wu.
The numbers like growth rate of EV sales they are giving are all wrong. As you may remember I’m mainly following the EV sales growth rate then calculating the deficit. As I know the supply side very well it’s being easy for me.
Wu says the EV sale growth rate is 20-30% this year. Then he says the supply side is also around 30% maybe more, then there you go there is no deficit, even maybe oversupply..!
Now these guys are giving so wrong numbers to the market, and I don’t believe they don’t know what I know about the real growth rate of EV sales in the H1 of 2023.
We haven’t got the global sales yet but we know the major EV OEMs sales as you will see below.
BYD’s first six months sales growth is much higher than 50%.
The total sales is 1,250,000
And they always sell 1/3rd of annual sale in H1 and then they sell 2/3rdof annual sale in H2.
That’s why BYD tells that they are aiming to reach 3.5m EV sales in 2023.
And BYD sold 1.8m in 2022.
That comes to nearly 100% growth rate for 2023.
Tesla is also increased its sales significantly.
See the below image.
Tesla sold 890k EVs in H1 2023.
Probably they will reach to 2m cars as the H2 is going to be much better. That’s again over 50% growth rate for Tesla.
All the other brands are also making much better sales than 2022 btw.
In the US sales are more than 51% for H1-23.
Europe numbers are not clear yet but I know it’s quite a lot.
That is the EV side.
EV BATTERY CONSUMPTION INCREASED 50.1% in H1 2023
Let’s look at the battery consumption and production side now;
We’ve got the report of SRE Research (Korean research company, well respected).They stated that the global EV battery consumption increased 50.1% in H1 2023.From 202GWh to 304GWh.
The largest battery producer CATL’s (has 38% of global share) battery production increased 56%in the same period, from 72GWh to 112GWh.
Therefore all data from both EV and battery consumption side tells us that the EV growth rate is being over 50% for H1-2023, and it should be even higher in H2-2023 according to the statistical data.
You may remember my latest research posts on HC. I was saying that I was only following the EV growth rate. The general forecast ave. was 35% for 2023, and I said they will be all wrong. It will be over 45% and there will be a big deficit again, and the lithium price will go ballistic at the end months of the year.
So these analyst guys are telling us that EV growth rate is about 30%. And that’s a BS.
In regards to supply side. Because we can’t get the exact numbers from the producers, I can’t make the calculation but we know the 2022 numbers anyway. I’m mainly following the majors, like ALB, SQM, PLS, MIN, etc.
They haven’t increased their production much in 2023. For example Greenbushes; they produced 1.4m ton spod in 2022, and it’s the same amount for this year. The others are in the same position as well.
I don’t think there is more than 25% increase in global production by those major producers. I also think that the production growth in Chinese mines is no more than 25% for this year either.
So, if the agree that the EV growth rate is 45% and production increase from the producer is 25% then we will see that there will be a net deficit of 20% for this year.
So let’s wait and see where it goes. Truth will come out in the year end.
(20min delay)