...in defence, Joe Lowry says this won't hit the market for yet...

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    ...in defence, Joe Lowry says this won't hit the market for yet a few years.

    ...but that's actually worse, every lithium explorer says they are immuned to short term price declines because their production is a couple of years ahead. So all of them wants to proceed with their projects, and if you have investments sunk in, anyone would. And they can entice investors to invest with that narrative that their production is not in the short run, so by the time they are ready to produce, lithium price would have recovered. That's the hope.

    ....but what this means is that in the short and medium term, over the next 1-2 years, a lower EV demand is being matched by a lower lithium supply, so there is no imbalance but no excessive supply to cause price to fall significantly. Any fall in lithium price over the next 1-2 years is more likely to be driven by a fall in demand and no imbalance. If there is a recession, demand would get worse. Otherwise, EV and lithium demand could pick up after 2 years and this is also coinciding with large supply coming onstream from existing projects under development, so the higher lithium demand then would be met with higher supply, resulting in no imbalance again. But in 2-3 years time, EV battery chemistry could progress towards having more LFP and Na-ion for smaller EVs, so lithium demand would be less despite higher EV growth, so lithium price would likely not be materially higher than where it is now. Eventually, only low cost and state sponsored and vertically integrated mines would survive, while high cost private miners on large debt could struggle to generate the FCFs that their DFS had originally projected.

    ...a lower and stable lithium price range would be conducive to support EV growth globally on a sustainable basis and that could IMO be the long term outcome- a mature, commoditised market in which you'd rather be an EV stockholder than a lithium miner stock holder.

    #Argentina Is About to Unleash a Wave of #Lithium in a Global Glut
    https://x.com/LithiumWorld/status/1807596779510304919

 
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