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>>> Li-Cycle Opens Lithium-ion Battery Recycling Facility in Alabama
BusinessWire
October 13, 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/li-cycle-opens-lithium-ion-100000160.html
Li-Cycle’s fourth Spoke recycling facility in North America has capacity to process up to 10,000 tonnes of manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries per year
The Spoke can recycle the equivalent of batteries required for approximately 20,000 EVs per year and has the ability to directly process full EV battery packs
TORONTO, October 13, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Li-Cycle Corp. (NYSE: LICY) ("Li-Cycle" or the "Company"), an industry leader in lithium-ion battery resource recovery and the leading lithium-ion battery recycler in North America, is pleased to announce that its Alabama Spoke located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has started commercial operations.
The Alabama Spoke utilizes Li-Cycle’s patented and environmentally friendly technology to recycle and directly process full EV battery packs without any dismantling through a submerged shredding process that produces no wastewater. Additionally, Li-Cycle’s full pack processing capability improves efficiency and is fit to process the growing variety of EV battery architectures, including cell-to-pack formats that have limited options for dismantling, which further differentiates the Company’s value proposition.
The Alabama Spoke is strategically located to support the recycling needs of the Company’s growing battery supply customer base in the southeastern U.S. region. The development of the EV supply chain in the region continues to accelerate as battery and automotive manufacturers establish operations. This growth is expected to continue to produce a significant amount of battery production scrap and end-of life batteries that will require recycling.
"Li-Cycle's new battery recycling facility in Tuscaloosa adds a dynamic new dimension to Alabama's evolving auto industry," Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said. "This facility will play an important role in the lifecycle of batteries powering electric vehicles by contributing an innovative sustainability solution."
"We are excited to announce that our Alabama Spoke has commenced operations," said Ajay Kochhar, co-founder and CEO of Li-Cycle. "This facility enhances our ability to support the recycling needs of our diverse and growing customer base in North America to ensure lithium-ion battery material is recycled in an environmentally friendly and safe manner. Li-Cycle is creating an essential domestic supply of recycled material to support EV production and assist automakers in meeting their domestic production content requirements."
Li-Cycle’s Alabama Spoke is more than 100,000 square feet in size, with an additional approximately 120,000 square feet in warehousing capacity. The facility is of the same design as the Company’s Spoke in Arizona, which opened earlier this year and is currently operating near target throughput. The Alabama Spoke has created approximately 45 new jobs and will leverage the key process improvements and optimization projects implemented in Arizona to benefit operations. The Alabama Spoke has a total input processing capacity of 10,000 tonnes of lithium-ion battery materials per year, and has the flexibility to expand processing capacity in the future.
Across its four operating Spokes in North America, Li-Cycle now has a total input processing capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year, or the equivalent of batteries from approximately 60,000 EVs. The four operating Spokes, which are located in Kingston, Ontario; Rochester, New York; Gilbert, Arizona; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ensure the Company has an established footprint in key strategic regions to maintain its first-mover advantage in the industry.
By the end of 2023, the Company expects to have a total of 65,000 tonnes per year of lithium-ion battery material processing capacity across its Spoke network in North America and Europe.
The primary output product of Li-Cycle’s Spokes is black mass, consisting of highly valuable critical metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel, which the Company will convert into battery-grade materials at its first commercial North American Hub facility. The Hub facility is under construction in Rochester, NY and Li-Cycle expects that it will be capable of processing 35,000 tonnes of black mass annually, with battery materials equivalent to approximately 225,000 EVs. Li-Cycle is targeting to commence commissioning the Rochester Hub in calendar 2023. The Rochester Hub is expected to be the first commercial hydrometallurgical battery resource recovery facility and the first source of recycled battery-grade lithium carbonate production in North America. The Rochester Hub is expected to position the Company as a leading domestic supplier of battery-grade materials.
About Li-Cycle Holdings Corp.
Li-Cycle (NYSE: LICY) is on a mission to leverage its innovative Spoke & Hub Technologies™ to provide a customer-centric, end-of-life solution for lithium-ion batteries, while creating a secondary supply of critical battery materials. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are increasingly powering our world in automotive, energy storage, consumer electronics, and other industrial and household applications. The world needs improved technology and supply chain innovations to better manage battery manufacturing waste and end-of-life batteries, and to meet the rapidly growing demand for critical and scarce battery-grade raw materials through a closed-loop solution. For more information, visit https://li-cycle.com/.
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>>> Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. (LICY) engages in the lithium-ion battery resource recovery and lithium-ion battery recycling business in North America. The company offers a mix of cathode and anode battery materials, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, as well as graphite, copper, and aluminum; and copper and aluminum metals. It also provides lithium carbonate, cobalt sulphate, nickel sulphate, and manganese carbonate. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.
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>>> LG Chem is going to build a $3B EV battery cathode factory – the largest in the US
Electrek
by Michelle Lewis
Nov 22 2022
https://electrek.co/2022/11/22/lg-chem-ev-battery-cathode-factory/
LG Chem today announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state of Tennessee to build a $3 billion cathode factory for electric vehicles.
The new plant, which will be sited in Clarksville, will be the largest of its kind in the US. It will sit on 420 acres and is expected to produce 120,000 tons of cathode material annually by 2027. That’s enough to power batteries in 1.2 million EVs with a range of 310 miles per charge.
LG Chem said it chose Tennessee because of its proximity to key customers, ease of transporting raw materials, and cooperation from state and local governments.
It also cites the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as a catalyst for the new factory, which will see the creation of 850 jobs.
LG Chem said that the Tennessee site will function as a supply chain hub, where material and recycling partners work together to supply global customers such as Tesla and GM.
The Clarksville factory will produce advanced NCMA – nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum – cathode materials for next-gen EV batteries with improved battery capacity and stability.
NCMA cathode materials are among the most critical ingredients for determining the battery capacity and life of electric vehicles. The company’s battery recycling partner is Li-Cycle.
The Tennessee plant will feature LG Chem’s most advanced production technology, including the ability to produce more than 10,000 tons of cathode material per line. LG Chem has already successfully applied this technology in its cathode factory in Cheongju, South Korea.
The company also plans to utilize its smart factory technology in Tennessee to automate the entire production process and establish a quality analysis and control system.
Construction of the factory will begin in the first quarter of 2023, with mass production to start in the second half of 2025. LG Chem says the new factory will run completely on solar and hydroelectric power.
The Tennessee site will play a critical role in Seoul-headquartered LG Chem’s strategy to increase its battery materials business, including cathode material fourfold from Korean won ?5 trillion in 2022 to ?20 trillion by 2027.
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>>> Glencore plc (GLNCY) produces, refines, processes, stores, transports, and markets metals and minerals, and energy products in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. It operates through two segments, Marketing Activities and Industrial Activities. The company produces and markets copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, lead, chrome ore, ferrochrome, vanadium, alumina, aluminum, tin, and iron ore. It also engages in the oil exploration/production, distribution, storage, and bunkering activities; and offers coal, crude oil and oil products, refined products, and natural gas. In addition, the company markets and distributes physical commodities sourced from third party producers and its production to industrial consumers in the battery, electronic, construction, automotive, steel, energy, and oil industries. Further, it provides financing, logistics, and other services to producers and consumers of commodities. The company was formerly known as Glencore Xstrata plc and changed its name to Glencore plc in May 2014. Glencore plc was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland.
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>>> Biden awards $2.8 billion to boost U.S. minerals output for EV batteries
Reuters
Oct 19, 2022
By David Shepardson and Ernest Scheyder
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-awards-28-billion-ev-battery-grid-projects-2022-10-19/
WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The Biden administration said on Wednesday it is awarding $2.8 billion in grants to boost U.S. production of electric vehicle batteries and the minerals used to build them, part of a bid to wean the country off supplies from China.
"By undercutting U.S. manufacturers with their unfair subsidies and trade practices, China seized a significant portion of the market," President Joe Biden said Wednesday in announcing the awards."Today we're stepping up... to take it back, not all of it, but bold goals."
Albemarle Corp (ALB.N) is among the 20 manufacturing and processing companies receiving U.S. Energy Department grants to domestically mine lithium, graphite and nickel, build the first large-scale U.S. lithium processing facility, construct facilities to build cathodes and other battery parts, and expand battery recycling.
The grants, which are going to projects across at least 12 states, mark the latest push by the Biden administration to help reduce the country's dependence on China and other nations for the building blocks of the green energy revolution.
The funding recipients, first reported by Reuters, were chosen by a White House steering committee and coordinated by the Energy Department with support from the Interior Department.
But the program does nothing to alleviate permitting delays faced by some in the mining industry.
Albemarle is set to receive $149.7 million to build a facility in North Carolina to lightly process rock containing lithium from a mine it is trying to reopen. That facility would then feed a separate U.S. plant that the company said in June would double the company's lithium production for EV batteries.
Albemarle, which also produces lithium in Australia and Chile, said the grant "increases the speed of lithium processing and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from long-distance transportation of raw minerals."
Piedmont Lithium Inc (PLL.O), whose shares rose nearly 11% following the news, was awarded $141.7 million to build its own lithium processing facility in Tennessee, where the company will initially process the metal sourced from Quebec and Ghana. Piedmont's plans to build a lithium mine in North Carolina have faced strong opposition.
Talon Metals Corp (TLO.TO), which has a nickel supply deal with Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), will receive $114.8 million to build a processing plant in North Dakota. That plant will process rock extracted from its planned underground mine in Minnesota.
The grants are "a clear recognition that production of domestic nickel and other battery minerals is a national priority," Talon said.
Other grants include $316.2 million to privately-held Ascend Elements to build a battery parts plant, $50 million to privately-held Lilac Solutions Inc for a demonstration plant for so-called direct lithium extraction technologies, $75 million to privately-held Cirba Solutions to expand an Ohio battery recycling plant, and $219.8 million to Syrah Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Syrah Resources Ltd (SYR.AX), to expand a graphite processing plant in Louisiana.
BIDEN'S GOAL
By 2030, Biden wants 50% of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric or plug-in hybrid electric models along with 500,000 new EV charging stations. He has not endorsed the phasing-out of new gasoline-powered vehicle sales by 2030.
Legislation tied to the program that Biden signed in August sets new strict battery component and sourcing requirements for $7,500 consumer EV tax credits. A separate $1 trillion infrastructure law signed in November 2021 allocates $7 billion to ensure U.S. manufacturers can access critical minerals and other components to manufacture the batteries.
The White House said that the United States and allies do not produce enough of the critical minerals and materials used in EV batteries.
"China currently controls much of the critical mineral supply chain and the lack of mining, processing, and recycling capacity in the U.S. could hinder electric vehicle development and adoption, leaving the U.S. dependent on unreliable foreign supply chains," the White House said.
In March, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to support the production and processing of minerals and materials used for EV batteries.
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>>> Piedmont Lithium Inc. (PLL), an exploration stage company, engages in the exploration and development of resource projects in the United States. The company primarily holds a 100% interest in the Carolina Lithium Project that include an area of approximately 3,116 acres located within the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt situated to the west of Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States. It also owns a 61-acre property in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. Piedmont Lithium Inc. is headquartered in Belmont, North Carolina. <<<
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>>> Albemarle Corporation (ALB) develops, manufactures, and markets engineered specialty chemicals worldwide. It operates through three segments: Lithium, Bromine, and Catalysts. The Lithium segment offers lithium compounds, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and lithium specialties; and reagents, such as butyllithium and lithium aluminum hydride for use in lithium batteries for consumer electronics and electric vehicles, high performance greases, thermoplastic elastomers for car tires, rubber soles, plastic bottles, catalysts for chemical reactions, organic synthesis processes in the areas of steroid chemistry and vitamins, life sciences, pharmaceutical industry, and other markets. It also provides cesium products for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries; zirconium, barium, and titanium products for pyrotechnical applications that include airbag initiators; technical services for the handling and use of reactive lithium products; and lithium-containing by-products recycling services. The Bromine segment offers bromine and bromine-based fire safety solutions; specialty chemicals, including elemental bromine, alkyl and inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon, and other bromine fine chemicals for use in chemical synthesis, oil and gas well drilling and completion fluids, mercury control, water purification, beef and poultry processing, and other industrial applications; and other specialty chemicals, such as tertiary amines for surfactants, biocides, and disinfectants and sanitizers. The Catalysts segment provides hydroprocessing, isomerization, and akylation catalysts; fluidized catalytic cracking catalysts and additives; and organometallics and curatives. The company serves the energy storage, petroleum refining, consumer electronics, construction, automotive, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and crop protection markets. Albemarle Corporation was founded in 1887 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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>>> 'We don’t have enough' lithium globally to meet EV targets, mining CEO says
Yahoo Finance
by Akiko Fujita
September 5, 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lithium-supply-ev-targets-miner-181513161.html
Climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act put the U.S. back on track toward significant emissions reductions, potentially reducing greenhouse gas output by 40% of 2005 levels.
But one miner warned that when it comes to the transportation sector, domestic resources for lithium, the most critical mineral used for electric vehicle production, may not be sufficient enough to meet some of the most ambitious targets. The Biden administration, for instance, aims to slash the sale of gas-powered vehicles to 50% of all new purchases by 2030.
“Yes, we’ll [eventually] have enough, but not by that time,” Keith Phillips, CEO of Piedmont Lithium (PLL), said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “There’s going to be a real crunch to get the material. We don’t have enough in the world to turn that much [lithium] production in the world by 2035."
With the average electric car battery requiring roughly 8-10kg of the metal, lithium remains a crucial material in the transition to emission-free vehicles. Growing demand has caused the price of lithium carbonate to nearly double this year alone, and the IEA projects demand to grow by 40 times in the next two decades, with a majority of that supply coming from outside of the U.S.
That has complicated climate targets set by the Biden administration. The president has called for half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric, setting aside billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to incentivize drivers to make the shift.
But those same tax credits come with requirements calling for parts and components to be largely sourced in North America, leading some EV makers to push back against the goals on the grounds that they are not realistic.
Piedmont Lithium is looking to cash in on the demand, as one of only a handful of U.S.-based lithium miners. On Thursday, the mining company announced plans to open a lithium processing operation in Tennessee, with construction set to begin in 2023.
Albemarle Corporation, based in Charlotte, N.C. is expanding mining operations at their Salar Plant to meet the rising global demand for lithium carbonate, a main component in the manufacture of batteries, increasingly for electric vehicles. To extract the lithium, natural brine is pumped from under the salt flats to a series of evaporation ponds. During an 18-month process, the liquid is concentrated through a series of 15 ponds, eventually turning from blue to yellow with a lithium concentration of 6 percent. It is then trucked to an Albemarle chemical plant in Antofagasta, where it is processed into battery grade lithium carbonate powder and shipped out internationally. The evaporation process produces large quantities of salt byproduct, much of which is then reprocessed and sold. Chile is the second largest global producer of lithium, after Australia.
Once fully operational, the plant will process 30,000 metric tons of lithium per year. The company is also planning another plant in North Carolina, which will allow the firm to supply lithium for 1 million electric vehicles per year.
“The world has changed,” Phillips said. “We're now in an era where everyone's going to want an electric car. The car companies can't make them fast enough, and people are now looking for the lithium they need for the batteries to go in those electric cars.”
While carmakers like General Motors (GM) have rushed to secure partnerships with domestic mining operations in anticipation of the demand, the Albemarle (ALB) Silver Peak mine in Nevada remains the only operational lithium mine with meaningful output.
Phillips said a slow permitting process has stalled approvals for new production sites. Meanwhile, China has continued to dominate the industry, refining more than half of all lithium supply while Australia and Chile remain the largest producers in the world.
“Projects get permitted [in Australia] in under a year,” Phillips explained. “Here, it's two, four, six, seven, eight years, which is a problem, especially in a business that's booming so fast.”
It's Tesla Motors biggest bet yet: a massive, $5 billion factory in the Nevada desert that could almost double the world's production of lithium-ion batteries by 2018. (2028 ?)
The White House has moved to accelerate the process by invoking the Defense Production Act to bolster the production of minerals critical to EV manufacturing, including lithium and cobalt. The IRA also established the Advanced Production Investment Tax Credit for domestic production.
But with the demand for EVs far outpacing supply and new mining operations working within a five- to 10-year timeline before coming online, Phillips said that, as it stands, the U.S. cannot meet its clean energy targets with the domestic sourcing priority.
“Energy security is a national issue,” Phillips said. “I think you'll see companies that are thinking about battery plants in different parts of the world or lithium conversion plants coming to America because this investment tax credit will be very valuable…The market opportunity is huge.”
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>>> Lynas Rare Earths Limited (LYSDY), together with its subsidiaries, engages in the exploration, development, mining, extraction, and processing of rare earth minerals primarily in Australia and Malaysia. The company holds an interest in the Mount Weld project, Western Australia. Its products include neodymium and praseodymium, lanthanum, cerium, and mixed heavy rare earth materials. The company also develops and operates advanced material processing and concentration plants. In addition, it offers corporate services. The company was formerly known as Lynas Corporation Limited and changed its name to Lynas Corporation Limited in November 2020. Lynas Rare Earths Limited was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in East Perth, Australia.
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>>> Frontier Lithium Inc. (LITOF) engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mining properties in North America. Its flagship property includes the PAK Lithium project, which covers approximately 27,069 hectares comprising two mining leases and 1,368 contiguous mining claims located in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The company was formerly known as Houston Lake Mining Inc. and changed its name to Frontier Lithium Inc. in May 19, 2016. Frontier Lithium Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is based in Val Caron, Canada.
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>>> Tesla Inks Battery Materials Deals With Two China Suppliers
Bloomberg
by Annie Lee
August 1, 2022
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. has signed new long-term deals with two of its existing Chinese battery-materials suppliers, the latest move by automakers to secure supplies amid intensifying competition.
Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. and CNGR Advanced Material Co. signed pricing agreements with the electric-vehicle giant for supplies until the middle of this decade, according to separate stock-exchange statements from the companies. The deals are for ternary precursor materials -- chemical cocktails that are key to storing energy in lithium-ion batteries.
The announcements come as major automakers look to scoop up battery metals in the face of a looming shortage. General Motors Co. unveiled deals to buy inputs ranging from lithium to cathode materials last week, shortly after Ford Motor Co. revealed a list of suppliers with raw materials including Argentinean lithium and Indonesian nickel.
Huayou Cobalt will supply the materials to Tesla from July 1, 2022 to the end of 2025. The miner said the prices of the products will be subject to market prices for nickel, cobalt and manganese, as well as refining fees. CNGR will supply the EV automaker between 2023 and 2025.
Shares of Huayou Cobalt and CNGR jumped more than 9% each on Monday morning.
The transition to cleaner energy is boosting demand for battery ingredients, while supply has been hampered by Covid-related logistical woes and a lack of investment. That’s pushing up the prices of the raw materials and is denting profitability for some carmakers.
Both Huayou and CNGR were among a list of direct suppliers named by Tesla in its 2021 annual impact report. CNGR said in its statement that it supplied Tesla from 2020 until this year.
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>>> US-funded breakthrough battery tech just simply handed over to China
The Register
by Brandon Vigliarolo
Aug 2022
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/us-funded-breakthrough-battery-tech-just-simply-handed-over-to-china/ar-AA10jT8h?li=BBnb7Kz
US-funded breakthrough battery tech just simply handed over to China
Licencing snafu sends American invention overseas
When US national laboratories develop a new technology, Uncle Sam is supposed to ensure it is commercialized in America. But that's not what happened with what's said to be a breakthrough battery design. …
A vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) design created at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has wound up in the hands of a Chinese company, which has since gone on to become the largest manufacturer of VRFBs in the world. The US, which owns the patent and invested $15 million of taxpayer dollars into its development, reportedly has no domestic production site for the novel VRFBs.
That's not to say that VRFBs aren't manufactured in the US – some companies do make them – but the PNNL battery design is different.
Over the course of six years, PNNL scientists developed a special mix of acid and electrolytes that they claim is twice as powerful as other vanadium-based batteries, doesn't degrade like other batteries, and can be infinitely discharged and recharged for as long as 30 years. The refrigerator-sized batteries could be installed in homes hooked up to solar panels and reduce demand on the power grid.
Research on PNNL's VRFB began in 2006, and in 2012 the project's lead scientist, Gary Yang, applied for a license to manufacture and sell the design. The license was granted, leading to the formation of UniEnergy Technologies, which branded the battery ReFlex.
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>>> Lithium shortages: threat or opportunity?
Over the past two years, the price of lithium has risen 13-fold. We explore the causes behind the increase and potential challenges to upscaling.
Mining Technology
By Zachary Skidmore
June 16, 2022
https://www.mining-technology.com/analysis/lithium-price-challenges/
In March 2022, lithium prices hit an all-time high of $77,000 per tonne. The boom in price has been the result of a range of factors, including surging energy prices strengthening the appeal for the energy transition, booming demand for electric vehicles (EVs), and rapid advancement in rechargeable battery technology.
However, at the same time, battery manufacturers are confronting a severe lithium shortage due to the reliance of the supply chain on Chinese manufacturers to process the mineral for commercial use. China currently controls 70%-80% of the supply chain for EVs and lithium-ion batteries, increasing pressure on Western manufacturers to ensure their supply.
This has led several EV manufacturers, namely Ford and Tesla, to explore other avenues of supply through direct agreements with companies and investments in new extraction methods, such as direct lithium extraction (DLE). It is expected that reserves from new extraction methods will be central to making up the shortfall of lithium needed to facilitate the increased demand.
Despite these moves to shore up supply, there remains doubt within the industry that sufficient control over the price of lithium can be achieved and new supply chains created. Additionally, many new extraction methods have yet to be scaled up for commercial use. Until they are, EV and battery manufacturers will be accountable to a small supply base for the foreseeable future, placing further pressure on the supply chain and leaving it prone to sporadic price increases.
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Lithium shortage - >>> Did Buffett and Munger See BYD’s One Problem?
The billionaire investors have shown a knack for getting in at the right moment. If confirmed, this move may show they’re also experts at bowing out.
Bloomberg
By Anjani Trivedi
July 17, 2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-18/did-buffett-and-munger-see-byd-s-one-problem-lithium-supplies
After years of sitting on an over 20% stake in China’s BYD Co, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway may be mulling an exit. A similarly-sized position showed up in Hong Kong’s clearing system last week, fueling worries that the Sage of Omaha was over the hot Chinese electric vehicle and battery maker.
It sure seemed like odd timing: BYD has risen to the top of global electric vehicle maker rankings. It’s closing in on Tesla Inc. while forging a clear path ahead on batteries and, somehow, circumventing severe supply chain snarls. The firm has done all the right things. On Thursday, the Hong Kong-listed company said it expects preliminary net income in the first half to jump 207%.
The question is, if the stake in the clearing house is Berkshire-related, what risk do Buffett and his vice chairman Charlie Munger see that others don’t? Could it be a judicious call, much like the one that led them to take a stake in BYD to begin with?
Beneath BYD’s stellar performance, a wrinkle is emerging: lithium supply. While it’s been well-telegraphed that a raw material shortage looms as prices surge, the company has so far circumvented those cost pressures. It’s been pushing a vertically integrated model: eyeing mines across the world, boosting production, making better batteries and keeping a tight hold on its supply chain. Among all those factors, its grip on lithium production has been the most uncertain. High material prices have been hitting China’s industrial firms so hard that Beijing called for capping the rising lithium price and is planning policies to help downstream firms.
BYD has been on a mission to get its hands on lithium mines and resources this year. The firm is connected with Youngy Co, one of China’s first spodumene, or raw lithium compound, miners. In March, it participated in a private placement in another miner, Chengxin Lithium Group. As part of this, the firm will get discounted lithium compounds in the future. While both are likely to continue buying more mines in the Sichuan region, it isn’t going to lead to immediate or guaranteed supply: Most of the quarries have future — not existing — ore production capacity and Chengxin doesn’t have full access to supplies in some of them.
Even if BYD were to take all the output from two of the mines, it would only get an equivalent of 80 gigawatt hours by 2025, according to Daiwa Capital Markets analysts. Across the top 9 Chinese battery companies, around 27 gigawatt hours of batteries were installed in June — and BYD added just over 5 Gwh. Clearly, the supply deficit is here to stay.
Meanwhile, the types of batteries the firm makes — mostly lithium iron phosphate — are now gaining traction outside of China as key patents that restricted production to the country get closer to expiring. That means there will be even more demand to pressure supply.
There are other, less-appreciated issues. For instance, analysts are counting on more lithium-bearing minerals and ores from Sichuan, but it could be lower than expected because the terrain is difficult, which affects how long mines can operate. There are also escalating environmental issues in the region.
These pressures led BYD to look at Chile, where it won a contract for lithium extraction. It was hindered again when some of those contracts were suspended by the South American country’s top court. It’s now looking for mines in Africa, but no clear deals have emerged.
The firm bet on EVs after announcing it wouldn’t make any more traditional cars. Still, it isn’t clear how it will churn out its lithium-heavy top-of-the-line batteries, or the estimated 1.5 million EVs this year that will need those powerpacks, without tied up supply contracts.
Whether it’s Buffet’s stake or someone else’s, investors are skittish around raw material supplies and costs, no matter how vertically-integrated a company is, or how good sales forecasts look.
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Nickel - >>> Tycoon Whose Bet Broke the Nickel Market Walks Away a Billionaire
Nickel’s ‘Big Shot’ is moving on, but the market is still reeling.
Bloomberg
By Alfred Cang, Jack Farchy, and Mark Burton
July 6, 2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-06/thanks-to-lme-tsingshan-s-xiang-guanda-escapes-nickel-chaos-a-billionaire?srnd=premium
Xiang Guangda, founder of the multibillion-dollar mining and steelmaking empire, Tsingshan Holding Group Co., made a giant bet on a fall in nickel prices that threatened to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry.
By 2:08 p.m. Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda’s giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was going spectacularly wrong.
Futures had just skyrocketed above $100,000 a ton and his trade was more than $10 billion underwater. It was threatening not only to bankrupt Xiang’s company, but to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry and possibly topple the London Metal Exchange itself.
But Xiang was calm. Within hours, more than 50 bankers had arrived at his office wanting to hear how he planned to respond to the crisis. He told them simply: “I’m confident that we will overcome this.”
And he did.
Four months on, the nickel price is falling, as Xiang had predicted. The coterie of banks led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. that were baying for his blood has been repaid. He has closed out nearly all his short position in nickel, making a loss on the trade of about $1 billion — a manageable sum given the profits being generated elsewhere in his business empire, say people who know him.
Crucially: the man nicknamed ‘Big Shot’ in Chinese commodities circles is poised to walk away from the fiasco with his multibillion-dollar mining and steelmaking company, Tsingshan Holding Group Co., intact and even expanding.
But while Xiang moves on, others are left dealing with the destruction wrought by the crisis. His miraculous escape was thanks in no small part to the actions of the LME, which controversially intervened to prevent prices from rising and then suspended trading until Xiang had struck a deal with his banks.
Those on the other side of the trade, who lost billions, were furious. Months later, the LME is dealing with a raft of investigations and lawsuits, and the nickel market is still reeling.
“Nice to see that @jpmorgan and The Big Shot got out of this whole thing with only scratches,” Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management, said last week in a tweet thick with sarcasm. “It’s just heart warming.”
This account of how Xiang extricated himself from a short squeeze that rocked the global metals markets is based on numerous interviews with people who were involved, all of whom requested anonymity. Multiple attempts to seek comment from Tsingshan were unsuccessful.
Massive Short Squeeze
Xiang had built up his massive short position in late 2021 and early 2022 partly as a hedge, partly as a bet that a planned jump in Tsingshan’s production this year would drag down prices. But when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted global markets, nickel started climbing — gradually at first, before rocketing 250% in an epic squeeze.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted global markets, with nickel prices at one point skyrocketing 250%.
On the evening of March 8, senior bankers crowded into a room at Tsingshan’s headquarters demanding answers. Others dialed in for video calls from London or Singapore. Of those present, some didn’t leave until early the next morning.
The crowd that night was so large because Xiang’s position was spread across about 10 banks and brokers — he had been a good client for many of them, including JPMorgan, for years. But after nickel started spiking on March 7, Tsingshan struggled to meet its margin calls. Now he owed each of them hundreds of millions of dollars.
The LME had eventually intervened to halt trading a couple of hours after nickel hit $100,000. It also canceled billions of dollars of transactions, bringing the price back to $48,078, where it closed the previous day, in what amounted to a lifeline for Xiang and Tsingshan.
To reopen the market, the LME proposed a solution: Xiang should strike a deal with holders of long positions to close out his trade. But a price of around $50,000 would be more than twice the level at which he had entered his short position, and would mean accepting billions of dollars in losses.
A New Era for Nickel
The unprecedented short squeeze drove nickel prices above $100,000 a ton
Xiang, who is in his early 60s, stood firm. From a start making frames for car doors and windows in Wenzhou, eastern China, he’d built Tsingshan into the world’s largest nickel and stainless steel producer, with an empire stretching from mines in remote Indonesian islands to steel mills on China’s east coast. Along the way, he’d acquired a reputation for visionary thinking and a taste for betting big.
He had caught the attention of the LME before, when in 2019 Tsingshan was on the other side of a short squeeze, withdrawing large amounts of nickel inventories from exchange warehouses and causing prices to jump.
This time, his aggressive approach to trading was having much wider ripple effects.
The spike in prices and the trading freeze caused havoc for companies that use nickel, like stainless steel mills and makers of batteries for electric vehicles. Some simply stopped taking new orders. On the LME, dealers were left frantically trying to recoup missed margin calls from clients who couldn’t pay, and at least one had to seek financial support from its parent company.
Trading At The London Metal Exchange As Commodities Markets In Chaos
Yet with unprecedented chaos rippling through the industry, Xiang — still facing his bankers in the early hours of March 9 — had a key advantage. They were more terrified than he was.
If he refused to pay, they would have to chase him in courts in Indonesia and China. What’s more, he had executed his nickel trade through a variety of corporate entities – such as the Hong Kong branch of battery unit Ruipu Energy Co. – and it wasn’t clear the banks would even have the right to seize Tsingshan’s most valuable assets.
The bankers understood that if things went wrong, their careers would be over, one person who was in the room remembered.
JPMorgan, which had the biggest exposure, took the lead. The group included some international players like Standard Chartered Bank Plc and BNP Paribas SA, but many were Chinese and Singaporean banks that had little experience handling a situation like this.
Personal Guarantee
Xiang told the assembled bankers he had no intention of closing the position anywhere near $50,000. A few hours later he was delivering the same message to Matthew Chamberlain, chief executive of the LME. Tsingshan was a strong company, he said, and it had the support of the Chinese government. There would be no backing down.
Instead, he wrote a list of the assets he was willing to put up as collateral: a string of ferronickel plants in Indonesia. But for some of the bankers, that wasn’t enough. They wouldn’t be able to do any due diligence on the Indonesian assets for weeks or months, and even those who worked closely with Tsingshan hadn’t seen the facilities for years because of the pandemic.
So Xiang made a further concession that was both valuable and, in Chinese business culture, humbling: a personal guarantee. If Tsingshan didn’t pay its debts, the bankers could turf him out of his home. That was what he was willing to offer. Take it or leave it.
It wasn’t much of a choice. On March 14, a week after the chaos that engulfed the nickel market, Tsingshan announced a deal with its banks under which they agreed not to pursue the company for the billions it owed for a period of time. In exchange, Xiang agreed a series of price levels at which he would reduce his nickel position once prices dropped below about $30,000.
When the market reopened two days later, prices moved lower, easing the strain on Xiang and the banks. A brief dip below $30,000 allowed Tsingshan to cover about 20% of its short position.
The pressure on the LME was only intensifying, however. The exchange’s regulators launched reviews of its governance and oversight. The Dallas Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund joined in a chorus of public criticism, and many hedge funds were still furious at the LME’s decision to cancel trades.
“The moment we realized what was really happening, we felt we could no longer entrust the LME with our clients’ money,” said Transtrend, a $6.7 billion Dutch algorithmic fund. Open interest across the exchange’s six main metals slid to the lowest in more than a decade as traders headed for the exit.
Exchange Exodus
The number of outstanding LME contracts has slumped sharply since March
Each month, Tsingshan and its banks reviewed their standstill agreement. After the initial dip, nickel spent long stretches in limbo with prices hovering around $33,000.
It was a nervous time. Tsingshan still had a vast short position, meaning it and its banks could still be exposed to large losses if prices started rising again — for example, if sanctions against Russia led to an actual disruption in nickel supplies, which so far they hadn’t.
Finally, in May, prices tumbled decisively below the key $30,000 level after China’s lockdowns dented metals market sentiment. Over the following weeks, Tsingshan reduced its position — which in early March had been over 150,000 tons — to just 60,000 tons.
By this point, prices were below the level at which Tsingshan had stopped being able to pay its margin calls in early March, which meant Xiang no longer owed the banks any money. He proposed dropping the personal guarantee from the deal, seeing it as a humiliating concession to his earlier financial troubles. Some of the banks were willing to do so, but JPMorgan was not: the number of nickel plants used as collateral was reduced, but the personal guarantee would stay. A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.
It was not the only sign that the crisis had soured Xiang’s relationship with his banks. In June, as recessionary fears swept global markets, Xiang’s short position was beginning to look like a smart trade. He asked some of his banks for a little flexibility, allowing him to run the position for longer than had been envisaged under their deal. Again, JPMorgan said no, and by the end of June Xiang had exited his position entirely with JPMorgan and several other banks, leaving him with a remaining short of less than 20,000 tons.
Operations At The Vale Canada Copper Cliff Mine, Smelter, And Refinery
The spike in prices and trading freeze caused havoc for companies that use nickel, like stainless steel mills and makers of batteries for electric vehicles.
People familiar with the matter estimate Tsingshan’s losses on the trade at around $1 billion. Xiang isn’t concerned. The loss has been roughly offset by the profits of his nickel operations over the same period. The standstill agreement, which Xiang extended from the initial three months, is set to expire in mid-July.
Now ‘Big Shot’ is moving on with his life, focusing on plans for the future at Tsingshan, which had revenues of $56 billion last year. His ability to trade on the LME may be reduced, for now at least, but he is still able to trade on the Shanghai Futures Exchange. He has ambitions to expand, not only in Asia, but also to Africa. And Tsingshan is as powerful as ever in the nickel market: a massive increase in production from his plants in Indonesia is one of the key factors driving prices lower, much as Xiang predicted.
But while Xiang may be moving on, the LME is still dealing with the fallout. Regulators have pointed to the chaos in nickel as a sign of the risks lurking in commodity markets, and called for greater oversight of the entire sector. Hedge fund Elliot Investment Management and trading firm Jane Street have launched legal action against the LME, seeking nearly $500 million.
And the nickel market is still broken, say people involved in it, with both open interest and trading volumes stuck at sharply lower levels as traders step away from using LME prices in their contracts. Jim Lennon, a veteran nickel market-watcher and managing director of Red Door Research Ltd., estimates that less than 25% of global nickel output is now being sold on the basis of LME prices, down from 50% before the crisis in March.
“A lot of the industry now has temporarily disengaged from the LME,” he says. “The market is still functioning, but it’s struggling.”
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>>> What's Going To Happen To The Millions Of Electric Car Batteries After Their Lifespans End?
MSN.com
by Nor'Adila Hepburn
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/whats-going-to-happen-to-the-millions-of-electric-car-batteries-after-their-lifespans-end/ar-AAYFSEm?li=BBnb7Kz
While driving electric vehicles is a step towards a greener future, the car batteries that power them are not as sustainable. Though the battery is at the heart of any EV, most are made from lithium-ion and have a limited lifespan that starts to degrade from the first time you charge them. So what happens when they reach capacity?
The cycle of charging and discharging causes them lose energy and power. The more charge cycles a battery goes through, the faster it will degrade. Once batteries reach 70 or 80% of their capacity, which happens around either 5 to 8 years or after 100,000 miles of driving, they have to be replaced, according to Science Direct.
Due to electric vehicles' rising popularity, it goes without saying that their battery waste will become a major issue. Experts estimate that 12 million tons of batteries will be thrown away by 2030, The Guardian reported. The conundrum that manufacturers and consumers have is that although they can be recycled, there are not enough facilities to handle them. To date, there are only four lithium-ion recycling centers in the United States (via WCNC). However, this number must grow exponentially in the next few years as Industry experts predict there will be 85 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030 (via Science Direct).
Recycling Is Complex
Recycling car batteries is an arduous and dangerous process that involves splitting them apart to extract the metals inside. To do it, recyclers typically utilize two techniques: pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy, Science reported. Pyrometallurgy, the preferred method, shreds the battery down and then a burning process takes the metal out. With hydrometallurgy, the battery is submerged in acid to separate the metal. With either method, there is a risk of toxic fume emissions or an outright explosion (via Science).
There are other issues too. Unlike other compact batteries, EV batteries weigh about 960 pounds, according to Wired. If you are an EV manufacturer, finding proper transportation and storage could prove a logistical nightmare. They are also a fire hazard if and when stored together. A report by the Environmental Protection Agency found that between 2013 and 2020, more than 240 lithium-ion battery fires broke out across 64 municipal waste facilities.
And that's not all. If these batteries find their way to landfills, harmful toxins such as lead and nickel can contaminate soil and groundwater supplies (via AZO Clean Tech).
Companies Are Giving EV Batteries A Second-Life
companies and EVs
Outside of recycling, old EV batteries can be repurposed as a renewable energy source for homes and businesses. Even if they have a reduced storage capacity, they can be reused to store wind and solar energy, according to Innovative News Network. This can extend their life cycle by another seven to 10 years.
A good example of this is Toyota's initiative to sustainably power Yellowstone Park. The car company equipped the landmark with solar panels powered by batteries that once belonged in Camry Hybrids, replacing diesel generators (via Toyota).
Toyota was not the only one, however. A Spanish company ran an experiment where it converted used lithiom-ion batteries into second-life batteries with great success. In particular, it proved the ability to use recycled electric vehicle batteries to help power one of the local electricity plants in the case that there is a temporary shut down (via Enel).
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CME Group - >>> CME explores nickel contract after LME trade chaos
Reuters
Pratima Desai
May 9, 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rpt-cme-explores-nickel-contract-070000197.html
* CME hoping to offer nickel sulphate contract by end-2022
* Auto industry needs to be able to hedge battery materials
By Pratima Desai
LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) - CME Group is talking to market participants about the idea of a cash-settled nickel contract for companies to hedge costs of the electric vehicle battery raw material, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Market participants say a viable alternative trading venue would give disgruntled users the opportunity to move away from the London Metal Exchange (LME) where nickel trading was thrown into chaos early in March.
Nickel prices on the LME doubled to a record above $100,000 a tonne within hours in March - as war in major producer Russia lit a fire under an already rallying market.
The spike was driven by expectations that Chinese stainless steel producer Tsingshan Holding Group and others would buy metal to cover substantial short positions.
The LME suspended nickel trade and cancelled deals worth billions of dollars, raising questions about its ability to run an orderly market.
The Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) has a nickel contract, but using it is difficult for non-Chinese firms as they need to be affiliated with a local entity and because it is priced in yuan.
For now, there are no feasible alternatives for hedging or trading nickel, mostly used to make stainless steel. The CME is considering launching a nickel sulphate contract, possibly by the end of this year, the sources said.
Nickel trading volumes on the LME have dropped since the market's suspension in March. In April the number was 819,108 lots or 4.91 million tonnes compared with more than 1.7 million lots or 10 million tonnes in February.
Both sources with knowledge of the matter said it was not possible to quantify how much volume a CME nickel contract could take from the LME's contract.
Nickel sulphate is a chemical used to make the cathode component of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles.
"CME have been talking to market participants, looking at the opportunity and appetite for a nickel sulphate contract," one source said.
"A financially settled nickel sulphate contract may work, electric vehicles are the future and the auto industry needs to be able to hedge the materials used to make them."
CME declined to comment.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates nickel demand for electric vehicle batteries will rise to nearly 1.7 million tonnes in 2030, or 33% of the total, from around 350,000 tonnes or 12% of the total last year.
Industry sources say a cash-settled nickel sulphate future has a better chance of success than a physically deliverable nickel metal contract, which would require producers to deliver metal to CME warehouses.
The CME's aluminium, zinc and lead contracts are physically deliverable and hampered by a lack of stock in its approved warehouses, industry sources say. The contracts are competing directly with already established LME products.
Volume for CME aluminium at nearly 460,000 tonnes in April is a fraction of the 95 million tonnes traded on the LME.
"The CME can't offer what the physical market needs, being able to hedge days, weeks, months and years ahead," a second source with knowledge of the matter said. "Copper is the only CME base metal contract that works and that's because it's popular with speculators."
Some speculators prefer the CME's copper contract as trades are settled as soon as they are closed, while those on the LME are settled on the third Wednesday of each month.
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>>> Biden administration announces $3.1 billion for America’s battery shortage
Yahoo Finance
by Ben Werschkul
May 2, 2022
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-administration-announces-31-billion-for-americas-battery-shortage-170756595.html
The White House announced $3.16 billion is on the way to help with the battery shortage in America.
The money, which will come from funds in the recently enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, was announced by the White House and the Department of Energy on Monday. Officials promise the money will help domestic manufacturers make more batteries in the U.S., iron out supply chain issues for components, and also mitigate some of the environmental impacts from battery manufacturing.
"We need a lot of batteries and we want American workers making those batteries right here in America," said White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy in announcing the news alongside her colleagues.
The effort is part of a broader push to encourage American independence when it comes to the precious minerals that fuel much of modern life but come from places like Russia and Ukraine as well as China.
The money will be made available in the form of grants to companies looking to build plants in the U.S. to process the raw components of batteries into finished products. Officials note the funds will require a match from the recipient company, and the minimum grant will be $50 million. That means the new plants will cost, at a minimum, $100 million each.
In an appearance on Yahoo Finance, a senior Department of Energy official highlighted various provisions in the bill, including recycling efforts. David Howell, who is Acting Director at the agency's Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains, noted the the recycling efforts would reclaim material from the spent batteries for reuse to hopefully "in the future, have more of a circular economy for electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries."
‘For electric vehicles, it's all about the battery’
Industry players have long noted that batteries are key to EV manufacturing.
General Motors CEO Mary Barra told Yahoo Finance Monday that "for electric vehicles, it's all about the battery" as she outlined her company’s plans to take control up and down the manufacturing process. Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta added in another Yahoo Finance interview recently that “battery technology is the main differentiator” in the auto industry.
During Monday’s conversation, Barra also discussed plans to launch multiple new American plants for battery manufacturing, which will presumably be able to take advantage of these some of these funds from Washington, DC to get them off the ground.
“We decided we wanted to have control over battery cell manufacture,” she said of the efforts, adding that some new plants are already coming online and others will be finished in the years ahead.
“This funding announcement will punch above its weight in not only accelerating a transition to a clean transportation future, but also in securing one of the most important supply chains in the U.S. economy,” Brian Deese, the Director of Biden’s National Economic Council, said during Monday’s announcement.
Deese added that President Joe Biden has prioritized the battery supply chain as key for the nation’s economy and security. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has more than $7 billion in total directed towards the U.S. battery supply chain, with initiatives like recycling critical minerals for domestic manufacturing. There are billions more set aside for things like EV charging stations and electric buses.
Biden has set a goal of having half of the cars sold in the United States by 2030 be electric; those cars will need to be powered by a massive increase in battery production.
‘Help to underwrite the private investment we need’
The batteries run on components that are at a premium include lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese. EV makers like Tesla (TSLA) have recently had to scramble to source nickel and Rivian (RIVN) has warned of supply chain woes.
The White House has deemed EV battery production to be in the interest of national defense and even invoked the Defense Production Act recently. The invocation of the Act — which allows the president to require businesses to take actions deemed necessary for national defense — allows the White House to force the building up of domestic production capability in these key materials. In other words, it paves the way for more mining.
Wednesday’s announcement is focused on lithium-ion batteries and is not intended to spur further mining or production of the raw materials, officials say. Rather, it will give companies more tools to process the existing supply.
The administration says the money will help companies process the materials needed to make lithium-ion batteries — such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite — and help mitigate supply chain disruptions in the years ahead.
The money announced Monday “will help to underwrite the private investment we need in the United States to build a reliable industrial capacity,” said Deese
Russia supplies about 20% of the world’s nickel, and both Russia and Ukraine are central to global supply chains of other precious metals. China dominates lithium production. Biden called efforts to secure battery components critical to “end our long-term reliance on China and other countries for inputs that will power the future.”
Industry players have said the U.S. is behind China when it comes to both the mining and processing these key minerals. National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan recently told Yahoo Finance that it's important to catch up to avoid “trading one concern of geo-petro politics for another related to metals mining and metals processing for the things we need for everyday life.”
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>>> Livent Corporation manufactures and sells performance lithium compounds primarily used in lithium-based batteries, specialty polymers, and chemical synthesis applications in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company offers lithium compounds for use in applications that have specific performance requirements, including battery-grade lithium hydroxide for use in high performance lithium-ion batteries; and butyllithium, which is used in the production of polymers and pharmaceutical products, as well as a range of specialty lithium compounds, including high purity lithium metal, which is used in non-rechargeable batteries and the production of lightweight materials for aerospace applications. It also provides lithium phosphate, pharmaceutical-grade lithium carbonate, high purity lithium chloride, and specialty organics; and lithium carbonate and lithium chloride for use as feedstock in the process of producing performance lithium compounds. The company was incorporated in 2018 and is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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>>> Livent Stock Is Soaring on Earnings Beat and Electrifyingly Large Guidance Raise
Motley Fool
By Beth McKenna
May 4, 2022
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/05/04/lthm-stock-earnings-livent-stock-lithium-stocks/?source=eptyholnk0000202&utm_source=yahoo-host&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=article
KEY POINTS
Q1 revenue surged 56% year over year, surpassing the 53% growth Wall Street had expected.
Adjusted EPS of $0.21 crushed the analyst consensus estimate of $0.14.
Management's big guidance increases are due entirely to higher expected realized lithium prices than it previously projected.
The lithium miner greatly increased its full-year 2022 guidance for revenue and a key profitability metric.
Livent (LTHM 23.36%) stock is up a whopping 24.1% in Wednesday's premarket trading session as of 9:17 a.m. ET following the lithium producer's release on Tuesday afternoon of a first-quarter 2022 earnings report that delighted investors.
The Philadelphia-based company beat the Wall Street consensus estimates for revenue and earnings. But the primary reason for the stock's surge is likely management's significant increase of full-year 2022 guidance for revenue and a key profitability metric.
Livent's key numbers
Metric Q1 2022 Q1 2021 Change
Revenue $143.5 million $91.7 million 56%
GAAP net income $53.2 million ($0.8 million) Flipped to positive from negative
Adjusted net income $40.0 million $3.6 million 1,011%
GAAP earnings per share (EPS) $0.28 ($0.01) Flipped to positive from negative
Adjusted EPS $0.21 $0.02 950%
Revenue was up 17% from the fourth quarter of 2021, as strong customer demand for its lithium products drove the company's realized prices higher than management had anticipated.
Wall Street was looking for adjusted EPS of $0.14 on revenue of $140.2 million, so the company surpassed both expectations.
In the first quarter, Livent generated cash of $10.8 million, down from $12.7 million in the year-ago period. The company ended the period with cash and cash equivalents of $68.5 million, up from $21.5 million in the year-ago period, but down from $113 million last quarter. It also ended the period with long-term debt of $240.8 million, flat with the year-ago period.
For context, in the fourth quarter of 2021, revenue jumped 50% year over year to $122.9 million. Adjusted for one-time items, net income was $15.6 million, or $0.08 per share, compared with a loss of $1.9 million, or $0.01 per share, in the year-ago period.
Capacity expansion update
The company said it remains on track with its previously announced capacity expansions. In addition, it has also announced additional capacity expansions for both lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide.
Lithium carbonate (all in Argentina):
The first expansion is on schedule to add 10,000 metric tons of capacity by the first quarter of 2023.
The second phase of the first expansion is expected to add 10,000 metric tons of capacity by the end of 2023, "which will nearly double Livent's total available LCEs [lithium carbonate equivalents] from 2021 levels," the company said in the earnings release.
The company began engineering work on a second capacity expansion and has begun evaluating a third expansion. Following the third expansion, it projects it can reach total capacity in Argentina of 100,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate by the end of 2030.
Lithium hydroxide:
The 5,000-metric-ton capacity expansion in Bessemer City, North Carolina, is projected to start commercial production in the second half of this year.
Another 15,000 metric tons of capacity is slated to be online in China by the end of 2023.
The company is evaluating building a facility in either North America or Europe that would process lithium material recovered from recycled batteries into lithium hydroxide.
Following these expansions, Livent expects to have total lithium hydroxide capacity (excluding Nemaska, discussed below) of at least 55,000 metric tons by the end of 2025, compared with its current capacity of 25,000 metric tons.
Agreement to double ownership stake in Nemaska to 50%. On Monday, Livent announced that it will double its ownership stake in Nemaska Lithium to 50%. Nemaska is a "fully integrated lithium hydroxide development project with 34,000 metric tons of nameplate capacity," Livent said in the press release. The company expects production on this spodumene hard-rock project to begin in 2025.
Livent will issue 17.5 million shares of its common stock to its joint venture partner, The Pallinghurst Group, to acquire its half of Quebec Lithium Partners. Government-owned corporation Investissement Quebec will retain its 50% interest in Nemaska.
2022 guidance increased significantly
Management hiked its full-year outlook for revenue and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) as follows. The increases are due entirely to higher expected realized prices across all its lithium products. There are no changes in its projected volumes.
Metric Updated Guidance Prior Guidance Updated Projected Change at Midpoint (YOY)
2022 revenue $755 million to $835 million $540 million to $600 million 89%
2022 adjusted EBITDA $290 million to $350 million $160 million to $200 million 360%
In short, Livent turned in a great quarter, though the biggest treat for investors was the huge increases in full-year 2022 guidance.
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>>> Lithium Is in Short Supply — But Probably Not for Long
Given the demand from electric-car makers, suppliers and governments are bound to mine more of it.
Bloomberg
By Liam Denning
January 26, 2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-26/lithium-is-in-short-supply-but-probably-not-for-long?srnd=premium
A cautionary saying in oil circles about the possibility of peak demand holds that “the stone age didn’t end for a lack of stones.” When it comes to electric vehicles, there is more concern now that the electric age will fizzle for a lack of lithium.
Lithium-ion batteries power smartphones, laptops — and electric vehicles. When I wrote this back in 2016, analysts at Citigroup were speculating about the transformational effect on lithium demand if, in 2020, battery-EV sales were to hit 1 million. As it turned out, more than 2 million were sold that year — and almost 5 million in 2021, not including plug-in hybrids.
Electric Shock
Sales of electric vehicles have blown away expectations in the past few years and look set to surge even higher
There was more than enough lithium to meet that extra demand — so much so that prices began sliding in 2018 and didn’t bottom out until 2020. But since then prices have surged. Battery-grade lithium carbonate in China hit more than $40,000 per ton in recent spot trades, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London-based data and market-intelligence provider, up from less than $6,000 18 months ago. Even if prices paid under long-term contracts haven’t risen as fast, it’s clear the market has tightened drastically.
Lithium prices have become more volatile in recent years and just hit a record
Political risk also appears to be rising. Serbia just blocked Rio Tinto Plc’s plans to develop what would have been Europe’s largest lithium mine, following widespread protests. In Chile, the world’s second-largest supplier, the election of a young, left-wing — and, it seems, Swiftie — president, who has called for the creation of a national lithium mining company, has raised concerns about future projects there.
Predictions of a looming shortage in lithium have been heard for years, but they’re now becoming consensus. There’s some irony in the way that fans of oil and boosters of its apparent nemesis lithium both warn that a dearth of investment will fuel shortages and painful price spikes. It’s important to remember that the dynamics here are familiar, even though the context of the energy transition is new.
“It’s kind of a ‘duh’ moment,” says Emily Hersh, a lithium expert who is now the chief executive officer of the exploration and development company Luna Lithium Ltd., referring to longstanding expectations of a shortage. But, she adds, “lithium is cyclical like any other commodity.”
There is no actual shortage of lithium resources per se; it’s all a question of economic and political support for development. I remember the nervous mood at a lithium conference back in 2018, when some predicted that South American producers would quickly tap their reserves and swamp the market. This cycle of hope and despair is familiar to anyone who has watched, say, the oil market over decades — and it is indeed a vital, if sometimes destabilizing, driver of investment. The recent rally and creeping panic about shortages is needed to spark activity and ward off those shortages.
Similarly, while political risk may be rising, the issue is too complex to describe by saying, for example, that a left-wing government in Santiago portends doom. In Chile’s case, the long lead times needed for project development and the licenses already held by incumbent operators suggest that even an energetic new president would need time to have a big effect on supply. Hersh, who lived in South America for years, also cautions against reading too much into what Chile’s politicians say. While that country is vital to lithium supply, lithium is only a tiny fraction of Chile’s economy — unlike copper, for example — and that makes lithium an easy political talking point as the debate over a new constitution heats up.
Serbia’s sudden move against Rio, meanwhile, should be viewed in the context of upcoming elections there. As frackers discovered in the U.S., commodity producers must protect their social license to operate if they’re to avoid a backlash. Lithium may be vital in terms of tackling climate change; but that doesn’t give the industry a free pass to disregard problems associated with brine-water management and the usual concerns with mining.
Above all, political risk is embedded in energy of all types. Have you heard anything lately about Ukraine and Russia and Europe’s gas flows? Or about the Middle East? Decades, and trillions of dollars, have been spent building and defending supply chains for oil. Lithium and other critical minerals will require their own security arrangements. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed, yes, but it’s not exactly a novel one.
One structural problem that the EV boom faces sets it in contrast to traditional vehicles. When automobiles became popular a century ago, the oil industry supplying them was already quite well-developed; Standard Oil was broken up in 1911. Crucially, oil producers were looking for a new outlet as the electric light killed demand for kerosene lamps. So the marriage of the automobile with gasoline occurred at a time when there was already a surfeit of fuel (and fixed capital) looking for a market.
A hundred years on, the marriage of the automobile with lithium involves the simultaneous development of both EVs and the supply chain of minerals for their batteries. In addition, Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines, points out that pricing for lithium remains largely opaque (as it does for the carbon emissions that EVs are supposed to address). That exacerbates an already enormous challenge: turning over the world’s fleet of more than a billion vehicles to electric models. Benchmark Minerals estimates that meeting the targets set at last year’s COP 26 climate conference would require 17 times more lithium than was produced in 2021.
Let no one doubt, therefore, that over the next few decades we are going to need a lot more lithium. The inherent bullishness of that situation is reason enough to think that suppliers and governments will find a way to tap it.
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>>> Europe Sleepwalked Into an Energy Crisis That Could Last Years
With its natural gas stockpiles running dangerously low, the European Union is at the mercy of two wily forces—Putin and the weather.
Bloomberg Green
January 4, 2022
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-04/europe-s-energy-supply-crisis-has-the-eu-at-the-mercy-of-putin-and-the-weather?utm_campaign=bw&utm_medium=distro&utm_source=yahooUS
The retired salt caverns, aquifers, and fuel depots that hold Europe’s stockpiles of natural gas have never been so empty at this point in winter.
Just four months after Amos Hochstein, the U.S. envoy for energy security, said Europe wasn’t doing enough to prepare for the dark and cold season ahead, the continent is grappling with a supply crunch that’s caused benchmark gas prices to more than quadruple from last year’s levels, squeezing businesses and households. The crisis has left the European Union at the mercy of the weather and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wiles, both notoriously difficult to predict.
“The energy crisis hit the bloc when security of supply was not on the menu of EU policymakers,” says Maximo Miccinilli, head of energy and climate at consultants FleishmanHillard EU. He expects the energy crunch to keep prices volatile and also trigger more political tension between regulators in Brussels and the leaders of the bloc’s 27 member states.
Although the situation came to a head abruptly, it’s been years in the making. Europe is in the midst of an energy transition, shutting down coal-fired electricity plants and increasing its reliance on renewables. Wind and solar are cleaner but sometimes fickle, as illustrated by the sudden drop in turbine-generated power the continent recorded last year.
Moscow’s increased leverage over its neighbors became apparent at the tail end of the last winter, an unusually cold and long one that depleted Europe’s inventories of gas just as its economies were emerging from the pandemic-induced recession. Over the summer, state-controlled Gazprom PJSC began capping flows to the continent, aggravating shortages caused by deferred maintenance at oil and gas fields in the North Sea and raising the stakes on a costly and long-delayed pipeline project championed by the Kremlin.
At the same time, countries from Japan to China were boosting their imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in preparation for the coming winter. All of this left Europe struggling to replenish its dwindling stockpiles during the warm months, when gas is less expensive.
Still, Europe’s leaders betrayed no alarm. On July 14, the European Commission unveiled the world’s most ambitious package to eliminate fossil fuels in a bid to avert the worst consequences of climate change. With their eyes trained on longer-term goals, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels, the politicians did not sufficiently appreciate some of the potential pitfalls that lay immediately ahead on the road to decarbonization.
Europe’s natural gas production has been in decline for years, which has left it more reliant on imports. Now, Russia stands poised to further cement its position as the bloc’s top supplier. Gazprom and its European partners have plowed $11 billion into Nord Stream 2, a 1,230-kilometer (764-mile) pipeline running beneath the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany.
Repeatedly delayed by U.S. sanctions, the decade-long project hit another roadblock this fall, when a new coalition government took power in Germany and the country’s energy regulator put final approval on hold. The move further roiled European energy markets, where gas prices had been breaking records day after day since July. Putin, in a televised speech delivered on Dec. 24, touted the benefits of the controversial conduit, saying “the additional volumes of gas on the European market would undoubtedly lower the price on the spot.”
A recent bump in LNG imports from the U.S. has provided some relief, but it’s temporary at best. France needs to take several of its reactors offline for maintenance and repairs, resulting in a 30% reduction in nuclear capacity in early January, while Germany is moving ahead with plans to shut down all of its nuclear plants. With the two coldest months of winter still ahead, the fear is that Europe may run out of gas.
Storage sites are only 56% full, more than 15 percentage points below the 10-year average. “In none of the past years since records began have we had comparably low storage levels at this time,” says Sebastian Bleschke, head of INES, the association of German gas and hydrogen storage system operators. Barring an increase in Russian exports, something that doesn’t appear to be in the cards, levels will be at less than 15% by the end of March, the lowest on record, according to researcher Wood Mackenzie Ltd. And that’s assuming normal weather conditions.
With energy policy largely in the hands of member states, EU officials lack the authority to compel national governments to replenish gas inventories more quickly. To make matters worse, Russia is building troops on the border with Ukraine, a move U.S. intelligence sources say presages a possible invasion. About a third of Russian gas flowing to Europe crosses Ukraine, and though shipments weren’t disrupted during Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, there’s no guarantee that would remain the case if a war were to break out this year.
The energy situation limits the scope of actions Western powers can take to counter Russian aggression, says Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “The ability of Europe and the U.S. to respond to a Russian invasion is constrained both by a desire not to exacerbate Europe’s energy crisis by sanctioning Russian energy exports and, more broadly, by the threat that Russia could retaliate to any confrontation by restricting gas flows into Europe, as Russia did in 2006 and 2009,” says Bordoff, a former energy and climate adviser in the Obama administration.
Traders are already preparing for the worst, with prices for gas delivered from spring through 2023 surging about 40% over the past month. Some say the crunch could last until 2025, when the next wave of LNG projects in the U.S. starts supplying the world market.
“It’s hard to see how a decent level of gas storage can be achieved without additional Russian exports via Nord Stream 2 or existing routes,” says Massimo Di-Odoardo, vice president for gas and LNG research at Wood Mackenzie. “2022 will be another volatile year for European gas prices.”
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>>> Solid Power, a Competitor to EV Battery Maker QuantumScape, Goes Public
Barron's
By Al Root
Dec. 9, 2021
https://www.barrons.com/articles/solid-power-stock-price-ipo-ticker-sldp-51638992711?siteid=yhoof2
It’s not just QuantumScape anymore. Investors have another newly minted, well-capitalized, solid-state electric-vehicle battery technology company to consider buying.
Shareholders of Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp III (ticker: DCRC), a special purpose acquisition company, have approved a merger with EV solid-state battery technology start-up Solid Power . That means the latter is now a publicly traded company with more than $500 million in fresh capital on its balance sheet.
Now that the merger is done, Decarbonization’s stock symbol changed to SLDP on Thursday morning. Holders of Decarbonization stock don’t need to do anything. New investors looking for exposure to new EV battery technology will need to use the new name and stock symbol.
Solid Power stock is down about 0.9% in Thursday trading. Shares, however, are still up almost 19% for the week. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are down about 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively.
SPAC shareholders have the right to redeem their shares for $10 instead of agreeing to the merger. That’s one reason the cash received on merger can fluctuate.
The merger brings roughly $540 million in cash onto Solid Power’s books. It was approved with 99%-plus of shareholders voting in favor, but some did redeem their shares, even though Decarbonization stock was at about $12 before the vote. Redeemers essentially swapped $12 for $10.
“Solid state,” for EV batteries, refers to how the battery’s electric charge is facilitated. In traditional lithium-ion batteries, that facilitator is a liquid. Solid Power is one of a handful of start-ups trying to disrupt the tradition lithium-ion EV battery industry by creating a lithium-ion battery without a liquid electrolyte inside the battery cell.
Existing battery players, such as China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (300750.China)—better known as CATL—also invest in solid-state batteries.
Solid-state batteries promise lower costs, faster charging, better safety, and longer battery life. Yet they haven’t been made at automotive scale, and solid-state battery packs typically operate under high pressure to stop defects from forming that degrade battery performance, making them harder to produce than lithium-ion ones.
Solid-state development is a race to see who can make a technology that is robust enough for cars first. Several partnerships have formed in that race. QuantumScape (QS) is part owned by Volkswagen (VOW3.Germany). Solid Power is aligned with Ford Motor (F) and BMW (BMW.Germany).
Solid Power is also partnering with SK Innovation (096770.Korea) to manufacture Solid Power-designed battery cells. Solid Power doesn’t plan to build large battery plants. It hopes to essentially license its technology to existing industry players and earn royalties. It’s an asset-light strategy that means Solid Power has enough cash to make it to profitability—if everything goes as planned.
Solid Power is still years away from seeing significant sales. The company projects about $1 billion in sales by 2027. Investors will have to watch milestones between now and then to judge company performance. “Our plan is to kick off the sample validation phase next year,” CEO Doug Campbell tells Barron’s, referring to sending battery cells to partners that demonstrate the technology works and can be made.
After that initial validation, investors can look for production to scale up and then more samples sent for testing to automotive partners.
The development road is long and unmapped, but the potential rewards for reaching the end of that road are large.
Decarbonization shares were up about 15% from just after the merger announcement in mid-June through Wednesday. The S&P and Dow were up about 8% and 3%, respectively, over the same span. QuantumScape stock dropped about 3% over that period.
Solid Power stock is valued at about $2.2 billion based on roughly 184 million fully diluted shares outstanding, now that the merger is done. QuantumScape stock is valued at roughly $11 billion based on its fully diluted share count.
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>>> Koch Charges Up with Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Company
Koch Newsroom
SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
https://news.kochind.com/news/2021/koch-invests-koch-charges-up-with-lithium-ion-batt
Koch Strategic Platforms has announced a $100 million investment in Toronto-based Li-Cycle – the leading lithium-ion battery recycler in North America – to help meet the rapidly growing global demand to source and recycle critical and scarce battery-grade materials.
“KSP’s strategic investment in Li-Cycle will further fund and accelerate our growth as we scale our efficient and proven commercial lithium-ion recycling technology globally to grow in lockstep with our customers,” said Li-Cycle co-founder and CEO Ajay Kochhar. “KSP has made significant investments in the energy transformation and the electrification of transportation, and we’re proud to partner with their team to leverage their expertise and this capital to continue to execute our global growth plan.”
WHAT IT MEANS: Improving the scale of lithium-ion battery recycling and recovery is critical to the transformation of the electric vehicle (EV) value chain, said KSP President David Park.
“Li-Cycle is a true leader in the space with proven innovative technology and a robust portfolio of customers and strategic partners,” Park added. “We’re confident in Li-Cycle’s cutting edge technology ability to deliver growth and long-term value to shareholders and their stakeholders throughout battery supply chain.”
KOCH AS A LAB: KSP’s investment will enable Li-Cycle to tap into expertise across the enterprise, including Koch Engineered Solutions, which specializes in design, engineering, equipment, project management, service and analytics to help industrial customers improve operations through improved efficiency and safety and reduced waste and emissions.
KES and their Optimized Process Designs group are exploring opportunities to support the incremental global deployment of Li-Cycle’s Spokes – part of the company’s Spoke & Hub system to recycle lithium-ion batteries. The Spoke facilities process lithium-ion batteries into battery materials (a.k.a. black mass) and mixed copper/aluminum before they are processed at Hub facilities into battery-grade end products for reuse in lithium-ion production or other applications.
Li-Cycle will also benefit from Koch’s support for execution, operational readiness and supply procurement, as it gears up for the 2023 launch of its North American Hub facility in Rochester, New York.
THE BIG PICTURE: From cellphones to energy storage systems to electric vehicles, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are seemingly everywhere these days.
But once they reach the end of life, they often end up in landfills with valuable, non-renewable materials still inside, like nickel, cobalt and manganese.
KSP’s investment in Li-Cycle will support the company’s ability to address a growing addressable market in North America, Europe and Asia.
GO DEEPER: Li-Cycle is only the latest investment in the EV value chain for Koch companies, including deals with next-gen battery cell developer FREYR, thermal aerogel producer Aspen Aerogels, zinc-powered energy storage system producer Eos Energy and e-mobility company REE Automotive.
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>>> A Big Oil Company Is Jumping Into EV Batteries
Barron's
By Al Root
Sept. 24, 2021
https://www.barrons.com/articles/totalenergies-big-oil-company-ev-batteries-51632487450?siteid=yhoof2
Less than 10 million of the roughly 600 million cars, trucks, motorcycles, and buses on roads in the U.S. and Europe are electric. Nonetheless, a big oil company might already be feeling the threat.
French energy giant TotalEnergies (ticker: TTE.France) has entered into an agreement with Chrysler owner Stellantis (STLA) and Daimler (DAI.Germany) luxury division Mercedes Friday in a pact to make EV batteries.
The trio will each own a third of the joint venture, called Automotive Cell Company, which plans to produce at least 120-gigawatt hours of batteries annually by 2030. That’s roughly enough to provide power for 2 million EVs a year.
“This new step is another demonstration of TotalEnergies transformation into a broad energy company and of our willingness to extend our footprint in electric mobility,” said Patrick Pouyanné, TotalEnergies’ Chairman and CEO, in the announcement.
TotalEnergies changed its name from Total in June. The name change was a sign that the $123 billion market capitalization company is thinking about the transition away from a fossil-fuel-powered economy. Friday’s announcement is the equivalent of Exxon Mobil (XOM) pouring billions in to EV battery production.
For Mercedes and Stellantis, the announcement is another in a long line of battery announcements. General Motors (GM) and LG Chem (051910.Korea) expanded their plans to build EV battery capacity earlier this year. Ford Motor (F) and SK Innovation (096770.Korea) announced plans for battery capacity in May. And Volkswagen (VOW.Germany), Toyota Motor (TM) and, of course, Tesla (TSLA), along with other auto makers, all have their own plans to build battery capacity.
Roughly tens of billions of dollars is being spent by the industry between now and 2030 to produce enough batteries to make tens of millions of EVs a year.
The plan for 120-gigawatt hours contemplated by Stellantis, Mercedes, and TotalEnergies should end up costing between $8 and $9 billion.
“This investment marks a strategic milestone on our path to CO2 neutrality,” said Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius. CO2 neutrality refers to operations and sales that add no additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Neutrality is difficult for a car company because its products are powered by burning an oil product.
“Stellantis’ electrification strategy is running full-speed ahead, and today’s announcement is the next step in our plan to be the automotive frontrunner, with all 14 brands committed to offering best-in-class fully electrified solutions that meet demands of customers,” said Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares.
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>>> Orocobre Limited (OROCF) engages in the exploration, development, and production of lithium and boron in Argentina. The company's flagship project is the Olaroz Lithium Facility located in Jujuy province in northern Argentina. Orocobre Limited was incorporated in 2005 and is based in Brisbane, Australia. <<<
>>> The world’s biggest mining firms, including BHP Group and Glencore Plc, are emphasizing their links to clean energy, while smaller competitors are surging. Lithium producers including Pilbara Minerals Ltd. and Orocobre Ltd. are advancing faster this year than battery giants like Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and are among the top performers in the Bloomberg Electric Vehicles Total Return Index. <<<
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-materials-silver-to-lithium-worth-big-money-in-clean-energy/?srnd=premium
>>> Top USA and International Capacitor Manufacturers and Suppliers
Share:
https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/top-suppliers/capacitor-manufacturers-suppliers/
Introduction
Types of Capacitor Suppliers
US Capacitor Suppliers
Top 12 Global Supercapacitor and Ultracapacitor Manufacturers
Top 9 Key Global Lithium Capacitor Manufacturers
Introduction
Capacitors are passive electronic devices which perform a variety of important functions such as to store electrical charge, provide filtering of noise in electrical circuits, and supply a source of current under peak demand situations such as when starting the rotation of an electric motor from a static non-rotating state.
Types of Electrical Capacitor Suppliers
Capacitors vary in the materials used for their electrodes and dielectric layer sandwiched between the electrodes, which affects the electrical performance characteristics and useful life of the device. In this summary, we consider the top suppliers of capacitors and have segregated these into three main groups:
US- based suppliers of capacitors, which may include manufacturers or distributors of general styles of capacitors including electrolytic, mica, ceramic, film, and PTFE to name several common styles
US-based and global manufacturers of the specific type of devices known as Supercapacitors and Ultracapacitors
US-based and global manufacturers of Lithium-ion capacitors
Supercapacitors and Ultracapacitor Manufacturers
These global companies and startups manufacture Electric Double Layer Capacitors (EDLCs), commonly known as supercapacitors or ultracapacitors. EDLCs do not have any dielectrics in general, relying instead on an electric double layer (a dielectric layer is an insulator that can be polarized). These capacitors can be made with both non-water soluble and water -soluble electrolytes, which affect energy density and weight. They can also be built in a cylindrical or prismatic design (which is a flatter shape, like that of a cell phone battery). In cylindrical manufacturing, electrode cells are deposited onto a sheet and wound like a jelly roll into a cylinder. A casing maintains the capacitor’s shape. Cylindrical designs are more common, but more prismatic designs are evolving so that EDLCs can substitute for lithium-ion batteries in consumer electronics. Most established companies in this area are based in Japan, though many startups are located in Europe and the USA.
Lithium-ion Capacitor Manufacturers
A Lithium-Ion Capacitor (LIC) is an EDLC that uses a lithium-ion salt as the electrolyte solution. LICs are typically manufactured in a cylindrical form in the same manner as EDLCs, but prismatic forms are also emerging.
We've evaluated the top general suppliers of capacitors and top companies in both of these smaller categories below.
US Capacitor Suppliers
Below in Table 1, we have compiled information on the top 10 capacitor suppliers in the United States, sorted in descending order of annual sales. Table 1 also offers information on each company’s headquarters location and year founded. Sales are shown in US dollars.
Table 1: US-Based Capacitor Suppliers*
Company Headquarters Founded Annual Sales
F.W. Webb Company Bedford, MA 1866 $250+ Million
Mouser Electronics Mansfield, TX 1964 $250+ Million
Aerovox Corp. New Bedford, MA 1922 $25-49.9 Million
Admat, Inc. Norristown, PA 1997 $10-24.9 Million
NetSource Technology, Inc. San Clemente, CA 1997 $5-9.9 Million
Thermal Devices Mount Airy, MD 1975 $5-9.9 Million
Condenser Products, A Custom Capacitors Inc. Co. Brooksville, FL 1934 $1-4.9 Million
High Energy Corp. Parkesburg, PA 1971 $1-4.9 Million
Diamond Needle Corp. Carlstadt, NJ 1949 <$1 Million
bisco industries Anaheim, CA 1973 NA
Notes:
* Information as supplied on Thomasnet.com company profiles
Capacitor Manufacturers in USA — Company Summaries
F.W. Webb Company, based in Bedford, MA, offers start and run capacitors between 110 and 440 volts. Capacitors are available in reversible, clockwise, and counterclockwise rotation. It also offers other pump, circulator, motor, heating, and cooling products.
Mouser Electronics distributes ceramic, MLCC, tantalum, aluminum, film, organic, polymer, super, and ultracapacitors, among others. It also offers capacitor hardware and kits, and is based in Mansfield, TX.
Aerovox Corp., based in New Bedford, MA, offers defibrillator, lighting, microwave, motor run, general purpose, power factor correction, pulse, custom, snubber, UPS, and high voltage AC and DC film capacitors.
Located in Norristown, PA, Admat, Inc. distributes tantalum hybrid capacitors as well as capacitor lead sealing. It also offers other refractory metal products and parts.
NetSource Technology, Inc. offers capacitor types including molded tantalum, ceramic, thin film, radial electrolytic, and niobium oxide. The company is based in San Clemente, CA.
Thermal Devices, in Mount Airy, MD, distributes power factor correction capacitors, as well as other low voltage products.
Condenser Products, A Custom Capacitors Inc. Co., is based in Brooksville, FL. It offers high voltage oil-filled capacitors in various container configurations.
High Energy Corp., in Parkesburg, PA, offers ceramic, metallized film, water-cooled, and oil- filled high voltage capacitors.
Based in Carlstadt, NJ, Diamond Needle Corp. distributes capacitors as parts for sewing machines.
bisco industries, headquartered in Anaheim, CA, offers a variety of capacitors, as well as other electronic components, fasteners, and hardware.
Top 12 Global Supercapacitor and Ultracapacitor Manufacturers
The top 12 global EDLC manufacturers are summarized in Table 2 below, in alphabetical order. These manufacturers include startups and conglomerates that develop and manufacture EDLCs.
Also shown in Table 2 is the country in which the manufacturer is headquartered as well as estimated financing for startups and revenue data for those companies where financial data was reported.
Table 2: Top 12 Global Supercapacitor and Ultracapacitor Manufacturers
Company Country Founded Estimated Financing* Revenue**
1 Cellergy USA 2002 NA NA
2 Ioxus USA 2007 $160.1 Million NA
3 Maxwell Technologies USA 1965 NA $130.4 Million
4 Murata Manufacturing Japan 1944 NA NA
5 Nanoramic Laboratories USA 2008 $9 Million NA
6 Nec Tokin Japan 1938 NA $24.0 Billion
7 Nippon Chemi-Con Japan 1931 NA $1.02 Billion
8 Panasonic Japan NA $71.8 Billion
9 Paper Battery Company USA 2008 $5.7 Million NA
10 Skeleton Technologies Estonia 2009 $53.8 Million NA
11 Yunasko UK 2010 NA NA
12 ZapGo UK 2013 $18.2 Million NA
Notes:
* Financing as reported on Crunchbase as of August 8, 2018 and converted to US dollars using foreign exchange rates as of August 9, 2018.
**Revenue is based on fourth quarter reported values, reported as of 2017 and converted to US dollars using foreign exchange rates as of August 9, 2018.
Capacitor Manufacturers — Company Summaries
Cellergy designs, develops, produces and markets supercapacitors and ultracapacitors for the industrial, consumer, mobile, and medical electronic markets. Cellergy was purchased by the Israeli PCB group in 2010.
Ioxus’ EDLC and LIC product lines include iCAP ultracapacitors, iMOD modules, and THiNCAP. Serves the hybrid automotive, hybrid bus, wind turbine pitch control, UPS, and industrial markets.
Maxwell Technologies offers products for commercial applications, including commercialized EDLCs, high voltage capacitors, and microelectronic components and systems. In 2017 it purchased Nesscap Energy, a leading developer and manufacturer of EDLCs.
Murata Manufacturing is involved in the development, manufacture, and sales of electronic parts, including components for capacitors and piezoelectric products.
Nanoramic Laboratories, formerly known as FastCAP Systems, specializes in nanocarbon materials. Its ultracapacitor division, FastCAP Ultracapacitors, specializes in harsh environment energy storage, producing the only ultracapacitors capable of operating in temperatures up to 150oC and under conditions of high shock and vibration.
Nec Tokin manufactures electronic components and devices. The product portfolio of the company includes conductive polymers, super capacitors, tantalum capacitors, and proadlizers. It also offers transformers, choke coils, EMI countermeasure parts, piezoelectric ceramics, piezoelectric inverters for cold cathode tubes, multilayer piezoelectric actuators, and flex suppressors. Its EDLCs are utilized in A&V equipment and telecommunication equipment as environmentally safe back-up power supplies.
Nippon Chemi-Con develops various electronic components, including aluminum electrolytic capacitors.
Panasonic is involved in the manufacture of EDLCs used for heavy power supply applications. It is one of the group companies under Panasonic, which is comprised of more than 680 companies involved in the manufacturing of electronic products.
Paper Battery Company, or PBC Tech, manufacturers ultrathin supercapacitors as replacements for lithium batteries. It offers ultrathin supercapacitors of 1 Farad. The company targets the consumer electronics, wearables, and wireless sensor markets.
Skeleton Technologies manufactures and develops EDLCs with high energy and power density. The company serves the transportation, automotive, industrial, and renewable energy markets. It also offers high-end carbon and adsorption materials.
Yunasko develops EDLCs and LICs with prismatic designs. Its R&D facility is located in Ukraine. Yunasko EDLC cells are manufactured in special prismatic encasements made from multi-layered laminated aluminum foil. Depending on the number of cells connected in series, the module can handle the voltage range from 2.7V (single cell) up to 750V (large assemblies of cells).
ZapGo derived its trademarked carbon-ion technology in partnership with Oxford University. The company is at the proof of concept stage with a number of prototype demonstrators. Its power module is due to enter the production phase in 2018.
Top 9 Key Global Lithium Capacitor Manufacturers
Nine major global LIC manufacturers are summarized in Table 3 below, in alphabetical order. These manufacturers include startups and conglomerates that develop and manufacture LICs. Several of these companies manufacture EDLCs.
Also shown in Table 3 is the country in which the manufacturer is headquartered, as well as estimated financing for startups and revenue data for those companies where financial data was reported.
Table 3: Top 9 Key Global Lithium Capacitor Manufacturers
Company Country Founded Estimated Financing Revenue
1 Fujikura Japan 1843 NA $5.9 Billion
2 General Capacitor USA NA NA NA
3 Ioxus USA 2007 $160.1 Million NA
4 JM Energy Corporation Japan 2007 NA NA
5 Maxwell Technologies USA 1965 NA $130.4 Million
6 Nawa France 2013 NA NA
7 Silatronix USA 2007 $13.6 Million NA
8 Taiyo Yuden Japan 1950 NA $2.2 Billion
9 Yunasko UK 2010 NA NA
Company Summaries
Fujikura is a Japanese conglomerate that manufactures optics, cables, and electronics for the telecommunications, energy, transportation, manufacturing, and digital electronics industries. In 2016 it announced that it had developed a small LIC with an energy density five times higher than an EDLC and two times higher than any other LIC.
General Capacitor is located in Tallahassee, FL, USA. It is a startup partnered to the U.S. Army Research Lab and contractor to the US Department of Defense. It specializes in R&D, marketing, and manufacturing of patented high performance LIC and hybrid electrochemical capacitors.
Ioxus’ EDLC and LIC product lines include iCAP ultracapacitors, iMOD modules, and THiNCAP. It serves the hybrid automotive, hybrid bus, wind turbine pitch control, UPS, and industrial markets.
JM Energy Corporation started as a member of the JSR group in August 2007 and developed the world’s first lithium ion capacitor at the end of 2008. It now develops, manufactures, and markets lithium ion capacitors, a new type of electricity storage device. In 2011, JM Energy Corporation announced that it had developed the world’s first flat prismatic lithium ion capacitor and associated control module.
Maxwell Technologies offers lithium-ion capacitors. Compared to traditional ultracapacitors, lithium-ion capacitors triple energy density and reduce the total weight of the energy storage system by 50 percent.
Nawa Technologies has a unique nanoscale structure and one-step roll-to-roll manufacturing process that enables the mass manufacturing of its technology. Its NAWACAP achieves power densities more than five times higher than existing ultracapacitors.
Silatronix is the leading producer of patented Organosilicon (OS) materials that enable extreme performance in Li-ion batteries.
Since its establishment in 1950, Taiyo Yuden has offered leading edge technology in capacitors, inductors, circuit products, surface acoustic wave (SAW)/film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) devices, energy devices, and recording media. It targets the telecommunications, Internet of Things (IoT), and energy industries.
Yunasko develops EDLCs and LICs. Its R&D facility is located in Ukraine. Yunasko LICs are available in prismatic cells and can be assembled into modules with 15-450 volt ranges.
Conclusion
Above we’ve listed the top 10 US suppliers of capacitors, the top 12 supercapacitor and ultracapacitor manufacturers, and the top 9 global lithium ion capacitor manufacturers. Many of these companies are emerging startups, so expect the landscape to be continually changing and developing.
We hope this information has been helpful to you in your supplier search. To make your own custom lists of capacitor suppliers in your area, visit the Thomas Supplier Discovery Platform, which features over 500 capacitor suppliers.
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>>> A supercapacitor (SC) (also called a supercap, ultracapacitor or Goldcap) is a high-capacity capacitor with capacitance values much higher than other capacitors (but lower voltage limits) that bridge the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable batteries. They typically store 10 to 100 times more energy per unit volume or mass than electrolytic capacitors, can accept and deliver charge much faster than batteries, and tolerate many more charge and discharge cycles than rechargeable batteries.
Supercapacitors are used in applications requiring many rapid charge/discharge cycles rather than long term compact energy storage: within cars, buses, trains, cranes and elevators, where they are used for regenerative braking, short-term energy storage or burst-mode power delivery. Smaller units are used as memory backup for static random-access memory (SRAM).
Unlike ordinary capacitors, supercapacitors do not use the conventional solid dielectric, but rather, they use electrostatic double-layer capacitance and electrochemical pseudocapacitance, both of which contribute to the total capacitance of the capacitor, with a few differences:
Electrostatic double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) use carbon electrodes or derivatives with much higher electrostatic double-layer capacitance than electrochemical pseudocapacitance, achieving separation of charge in a Helmholtz double layer at the interface between the surface of a conductive electrode and an electrolyte. The separation of charge is of the order of a few ångströms (0.3–0.8 nm), much smaller than in a conventional capacitor.
Electrochemical pseudocapacitors use metal oxide or conducting polymer electrodes with a high amount of electrochemical pseudocapacitance additional to the double-layer capacitance. Pseudocapacitance is achieved by Faradaic electron charge-transfer with redox reactions, intercalation or electrosorption.
Hybrid capacitors, such as the lithium-ion capacitor, use electrodes with differing characteristics: one exhibiting mostly electrostatic capacitance and the other mostly electrochemical capacitance.The electrolyte forms an ionic conductive connection between the two electrodes which distinguishes them from conventional electrolytic capacitors where a dielectric layer always exists, and the so-called electrolyte (e.g., MnO2 or conducting polymer) is in fact part of the second electrode (the cathode, or more correctly the positive electrode). Supercapacitors are polarized by design with asymmetric electrodes, or, for symmetric electrodes, by a potential applied during manufacture.
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Form Energy - >>> Stealthy battery company backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos has a lot to prove
CNBC
AUG 25 2021
Catherine Clifford
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/form-energy-raises-240-million-on-iron-air-battery-promise.html
KEY POINTS
On Tuesday, Form Energy announced it closed a $240 million Series D funding round. Among the backers renewing is Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which includes celebrity investors like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
The company has not shared data or proof its iron-air battery technology works with the public.
CNBC talked to investors, partners and outside experts to get their take on the viability and looming questions about Form Energy’s technology.
A secretive start-up called Form Energy says it’s developing and scaling the production of a new type of rechargeable battery that can store electricity for 100 hours.
Form hasn’t publicly demonstrated its technology or shared proof that it works. Nonetheless, the company has lined up more than $360 million in funding, including a new $240 million round that closed Tuesday, and partners and outside experts are optimistic about its potential.
Form Energy’s core technology is based on three cheap and readily available materials: Iron, air, and water. The battery works with a process the company calls “reversible rusting,” in which the battery charges and discharges by converting iron back and forth into rust. By using these inexpensive materials, the company aims to have its batteries cost less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, which experts say is up to one-tenth the cost of the more common lithium-ion batteries in use today.
In order for carbon emissions to hit net-zero by mid-century, meaning that the globe is absorbing as much greenhouse gases as are still being emitted, solar and wind capacity will need to quadruple and investments in renewable energy will need to triple by 2030, according to comments from United Nations Secretary General António Guterres.
For that to happen, there also must be a ramp up of long duration battery storage. There has to be a way to provide electricity when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. That’s the market Form Energy is attempting to serve.
One notable funder is Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which includes tech celebrities Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman and Richard Branson as investors. In one of his blog posts, Bill Gates touted the importance of Form Energy’s work, writing that it was “creating a new class of batteries that would provide long-duration storage at a lower cost than lithium ion batteries.”
Its first utility partner, Minnesota-based Great River Energy, describes their work together as a pilot project that could be an “important contribution to grid reliability and energy affordability should they achieve commercial success,” a spokesperson says.
No public data, lots of faith
Until recently, the company had been operating under the radar. In October 2019, CEO Mateo Jaramillo, a former Tesla vice president, noted his own reticence to speak with the media.
“As you’ve maybe seen, there isn’t a lot of press about us. And we’ve tried to tamp down anything other than what’s necessary,” he told CNBC at the time, speaking at the Tough Tech Summit in Boston, in the backyard of the company’s headquarters in Somerville, Mass. “There’s just a fraught history with battery startups over the last 15 years. Which is why that hesitancy in general. The industry is a little weary, I would say.”
Despite the company’s early tendency to skirt the spotlight, it’s had no trouble raising funds. On Tuesday, Form Energy announced it had closed a $240 million Series D financing round, led by the decarbonization XCarb innovation fund of the global steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal. Form Energy and ArcelorMittal are working together to develop iron materials for Form’s first commercial battery technology which “ArcelorMittal would non-exclusively supply for Form’s battery systems,” according to a statement. Breakthrough Energy Ventures also participated in the round.
However, Form has released no public data to verify the performance of its long-duration battery technology. (The company prefers the term “multi-day storage” to differentiate it from other companies working on shorter-long-duration batteries.)
“We have been doing extensive testing internally. But you asked about public data. There is no public data, we don’t publish public data. We’re a private company, so we don’t need to,” Jaramillo told CNBC in a phone conversation in August.
“We are extremely transparent with our partners ... about the testing that we have, the cells that we’re building and testing ... but all of the structure of our experiments and exactly what goes in there that’s quite proprietary,” Jaramillo said.
CNBC spoke with several of these funders and partners to learn what they saw in the company’s technology.
Great River Energy is working with Form Energy to implement a one-megawatt battery storage pilot project in Cambridge, Minn. Form Energy’s battery technology depends on having access to iron, and a swath of northern Minnesota is called the Iron Range for its extensive deposits.
The management and technical teams of Form Energy and Great River have been collaborating for more than three years, says Jon Brekke, vice president and chief power supply officer for the utility.
“During this time, Form has shared with us plans, actions, and results of their technology development work that directly supports our pilot project,” Brekke told CNBC. “A shared vision of low cost, long duration storage led us to this pilot project. We see these efforts as an important contribution to grid reliability and energy affordability should they achieve commercial success.”
While Great River Energy reports to have seen evidence of Form Energy’s battery tech working, the California Energy Commission, from which Form Energy won a $2 million dollar grant, has not.
In June 2020, the California Energy Commission, the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency, granted Form Energy the money to be used for pursuing the development of energy storage technologies that do not require lithium. ”Grants are awarded on a competitive basis, meaning they are scored based on their technical merit,” Michael Ward, spokesperson for the California Energy Commission told CNBC.
That said, the California Energy Commission “has not seen specific performance data on the iron-air technology yet,” according to CEC researcher Mike Gravely. It expects to “receive that data when the system is built and tested” at a test site at the University of California at Irvine.
A co-chair of the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Carmichael Roberts, said the firm would not comment on the performance of Form Energy’s technology. However, he told CNBC the caliber of the personnel gave the Breakthrough team the confidence to invest.
“When we started Breakthrough Energy Ventures, we knew that long duration energy storage was going to be an important part of the portfolio. When we learned that Yet-Ming and Mateo were each creating a new battery company, we saw it as the perfect opportunity to bring together two of the world’s leading experts, and Form was launched,” Roberts told CNBC. Yet-Ming Chiang is a co-founder and the chief scientist at Form Energy, and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1985.
“We knew that the core technology had great potential, but more importantly we had faith in the team that could deliver it,” Roberts said.
The rechargeable iron-air battery Form Energy is not the only technology the company has pursued.
In 2018, Form Energy received $3.8 million from the federal government’s Department of Energy as a part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (abbreviated as ARPA-E). But that was for a different battery based on “aqueous sulfur battery chemistry,” Form told CNBC.
“We chose to focus on an iron-air battery as our first commercial offering both because of its promising performance in the lab and because the iron-air chemistry positions us to tap into the global iron supply chain that already exists to support steel manufacturing,” the company said.
How iron-air battery tech works
The essential ingredients in Form’s battery are iron, air and water, all readily available and low cost.
To charge, an electric current converts rust back to iron and the battery breathes out oxygen. To discharge, the battery takes in oxygen from the air and converts the iron to rust.
Each battery is filled with a non-flammable electrolyte liquid, similar to the electrolyte used in AA batteries, and is about the size of a washing machine, Form Energy says. Thousands of the washing machine-size battery modules are clumped together in power blocks and depending on what is needed, tens to hundreds of power blocks can be connected to the electricity grid.
The idea behind the technology is not new. “You can get something to rust, obviously. Rust happens all the time,” Jaramillo told CNBC. “To better control that process and to control it at its least cost, most performing points is an altogether separate matter.”
Experts agree that the technology has promise.
“There is obvious economic potential if iron can substitute for expensive precious metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium,” says Stefan Reichelstein, an accounting professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business whose recent work includes studying the cost competitiveness of low-carbon energy solutions.
“But the information disclosed thus far leaves open the key question: What is the unit cost of storing (and discharging) electricity in relatively few — rather than daily — cycles each year?” he added.
The cost question
Form Energy aims to have its battery cost less than $20 per kilowatt-hour, the company tells CNBC. If the company can deliver on that cost goal, it would be a meaningful advance, experts say.
“From an economics point of view, Form’s announced cost target of $20 per kilowatt-hour is in line with what we found in our study published in Nature Energy to be the cost level required for long-duration energy storage to play a significant role in decarbonization of energy systems,” Nestor Sepulveda, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in developing methodologies that combine operations research and analytics to guide the energy transition and cleantech development, told CNBC.
By comparison, lithium-ion batteries cost between $100 and $200 per kilowatt-hour, explained Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford.
“If the cost is actually $20 per kilowatt-hour, that would be a breakthrough and allow the rapid large-scale transformation of all electricity world wide to clean, renewable (wind-water-solar) electricity,” Jacobson said.
Battery tech at the $20 per kilowatt-hour price point “would eliminate the need for natural gas or any other type of combustion fuel for backup power,” Jacobson told CNBC. “It would break any chance of nuclear power from playing a role in an energy future. It would end coal, fuel oil, and natural gas as fuels for electricity generation.”
Sepulveda, who is currently working as a consultant, is a bit more conservative about what $20 per kilowatt-hour means.
He said the threshold is meaningful “with very high penetration of renewables (not our current levels).” So in order for $20 per kilowatt-hour to be meaningful for the quest for carbon reduction, there will have to be more renewable energy production on the ground. “The question then becomes, is there a market in the near future for these technologies? I think that the answer is that there is going to be a niche market for long-duration-energy-storage in the short-medium term, but a big one in the long-term.”
Even while ”$20 per kilowatt-hour is very cheap,” Sepulveda and his co-authors determined it the price of long-duration battery storage would need to be less than $10 per kilowatt-hour to “meaningfully displace” other forms of firm energy generation, which refers to energy technologies that can be counted on to meet demand when it is needed in all seasons and over weeks or longer.
The demand for multi-day-battery technology depends on the development of other technologies, too.
“While it seems plausible that iron-air batteries are less expensive than lithium-ion batteries, the more interesting comparison will be with other seasonal storage technologies, for instance, hydrogen conversion,” Reichelstein said to CNBC.
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QuantumScape - >>> This Bill Gates-backed battery maker is on track to do big things for electric vehicles: CEO
Yahoo Finance
Brian Sozzi
Mon, August 2, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/this-bill-gates-backed-battery-maker-is-on-track-to-do-big-things-for-electric-vehicles-171925284.html
With its stock price down about 72% year-to-date amid an overall cooling in the SPAC craze, QuantumScape founder and CEO Jagdeep Singh has a message to the market.
The upstart solid state battery maker remains on track with everything it said it would do when it debuted via a SPAC transaction late in 2020.
Singh said on Yahoo Finance Live the company is still eyeing commercialization of its battery technology in the 2024-2025 timeframe. Its key partner and backer Volkswagen will be the first recipient of those batteries. Prototypes of the batteries will be delivered in 2022 to original equipment providers (namely Volkswagen).
Singh says the company is not looking at a capital raise in the near-term to support the build out of its manufacturing footprint.
QuantumScape said it plans to enter 2022 with $1.3 billion in total liquidity.
"I think what's encouraging is to see us tracking well to that timeline," Singh said of the start of commercialization of its batteries.
QantumScape was founded in 2010 by Singh and backed early by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and auto giant Volkswagen. Both continue to be investors in QuantumScape.
In early December, Singh publicly revealed test results for QuantumScape’s solid state battery. QuantumScape’s data showed its battery cell could charge up to 80% of capacity in 15 minutes. Further, it retains more than 80% of its capacity after 800 charging cycles, is non-combustable and boasts nearly double the energy density of high-end commercial lithium batteries.
Singh highlighted another key milestone hit just a week ago.
"We now have 10-layer [battery] cells. Of course that's a big deal because while the single layer cells demonstrate that the chemistry works and we can make these solid state cells and the performance is better than has ever been reported before, and starts to close the gap with combustion engines. We needed to stack those into multiple layers to make bigger cells. The results make us feel like we are going to be able to hit our targets in 2024 and 2025 timeframe to commercialize," explained Singh.
J.P. Morgan analyst Jose Asumendi recently initiated coverage of QuantumScape at a Hold rating with a $35 price target. QuantumScape shares currently trade at $22.
"We are mindful of the various risks associated with scaling up industrial production," Asumendi wrote in a research note to clients. JPM's Hold rating acknowledges such risks, but places a bit more confidence in QuantumScape sticking to its production timeline.
Added Asumendi, "We estimate the company will be able to execute its business plan as presented to investors in Oct’20, wherein QS’ solid state battery will be commercially produced from two facilities QS-1 and QS-2, with an annual production capacity of 91GWh (910k vehicles). Under this scenario, the company estimates that they would be able to generate revenues of $6.4 billion and EBITDA of $1.6 billion (25% margins)."
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>>> U.S. judge rules Lithium Americas may excavate Nevada mine site
July 24, 2021
By Ernest Scheyder
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-judge-rules-lithium-americas-165330077.html
(Reuters) -A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Lithium Americas Corp may conduct excavation work at its Thacker Pass lithium mine site in Nevada, denying a request from environmentalists who said the digging could harm sage grouse and other wildlife.
The ruling marked a rare win for a U.S. critical minerals project as environmental groups increasingly pressure courts and regulators to block mining projects, even if they produce metals key to building electric vehicles.
Chief Judge Miranda Du of the federal court in Reno, Nevada, said late on Friday that the digging - needed to determine whether the land holds historical import for Native Americans - may proceed while she determines the broader question of whether former President Donald Trump's administration erred when it approved the project in January. Du said she will try to publish her decision by early 2022.
Vancouver, Canada-based Lithium Americas had agreed not to dig before July 29 while Du deliberated. It was not immediately clear if the company now intends to start digging on that date. Company representatives could not be reached for comment.
The land that would be affected amounts to less than a quarter of an acre on a project roughly 18,000 acres in size, a factor which Du said affected her decision.
Additionally, Du said, environmental groups could not prove what specific damage would be caused by the digging, only hypothetical guesses. Environmentalists "failed to meet their burden to show they will be irreparably harmed," Du said.
"We are disappointed in the court's ruling allowing the company to dig up and remove cultural and historical artifacts," said Kelly Fuller of the Western Watersheds Project, one of the environmental groups that sued to block the project.
Fuller said the group looks forward to a hearing with Du in the future to argue the entire project should be canceled.
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>>> Tesla Strikes Deal With Top Miner BHP Over Nickel Supplies
Bloomberg
by Thomas Biesheuvel
July 21, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-strikes-deal-top-miner-230100065.html
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. has struck a nickel-supply deal with BHP Group, as the electric-car maker seeks to protect itself from a future supply crunch.
BHP will provide the automaker with the metal from its Nickel West operation in Western Australia, the world’s biggest miner said in a statement. BHP gave few further details, but said the companies would work together to make the battery supply chain more sustainable.
Telsa’s billionaire boss, Elon Musk, has repeatedly expressed concern about future supplies of nickel due to challenges in sustainable sourcing. Musk has pleaded with miners to produce more nickel, with demand set to skyrocket as the world increasingly moves toward electric vehicles.
Nickel is a key component in lithium-ion batteries, used in electric vehicles. It packs more energy into batteries and allows producers to reduce use of cobalt, which is more expensive and has a less transparent supply chain.
Telsa has struck a string of deals with mining companies for the commodities it needs to make batteries, including cobalt pacts with Glencore Plc and supporting a nickel venture in New Caledonia.
For BHP, it marks a turnaround for the company’s Nickel West business. The company unsuccessfully tried to sell the unit in 2014 and has since pivoted it to serve battery makers, rather than traditional customers such as the stainless steel industry.
Bloomberg originally reported that the two companies were in talks in October.
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>>> Batteries Enter Infrastructure ETF Plays
Yahoo Finance
by Jessica Ferringer
June 29, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/batteries-enter-infrastructure-etf-plays-200000513.html
With bipartisan support of a new $579 billion infrastructure spending bill, investors naturally are turning their attention to ETFs that focus on the space for opportunity.
But as per “ETF usual,” despite the similar sounding names, the 12 infrastructure ETFs are differently constructed, with different goals. Some ETFs are better positioned to take advantage of the proposed policy’s focus on “hard” infrastructure.
The bill’s projected funding for electric vehicle infrastructure could benefit lithium battery ETFs as well, which typically fall outside the definition of “government-funded infrastructure.”
New US Infrastructure Start
The plan still needs to go through Congress with costs and line spending to be worked out, but the bipartisan support bodes well for the plan and could build a foundation for U.S. infrastructure ETFs to perform well.
One such ETF is the Global X U.S. Infrastructure Development ETF (PAVE), the biggest ETF in the space, with $3.67 billion in assets under management. This fund tracks a market-cap-weighted index of U.S.-listed companies that receive most of their revenue from, or have a stated business purpose related to, infrastructure development.
The holdings within the portfolio include many players in the construction supply chain, such as producers of raw materials, construction equipment producers, industrial transportation and engineering services.
Another ETF that plays in this space is the iShares U.S. Infrastructure ETF (IFRA), the fourth largest infrastructure ETF, with $591 million in assets.
IFRA splits its portfolio into two sections. One half of the portfolio is invested in infrastructure enablers, such as construction companies and engineering services. The other half is in infrastructure asset owners and operators, which includes things like utilities or energy transportation and storage.
Digging Into The Differences
As mentioned above, the funds have different ways of defining the infrastructure space.
The asset size difference shows up in the average spread, which can be found using our ETF Comparison Tool. PAVE’s toll is more expensive at 0.47% relative to IFRA’s 0.40%, but factoring in the lower trading spread for PAVE evens things out between the two funds.
PAVE Steamrolling IFRA Performance
The two funds have performed in line with one another until recently, when PAVE started bulldozing IFRA’s returns.
PAVE is up 75.9% over the trailing year compared to 59.2% for IFRA.
This outperformance makes sense when looked at through the context of how each fund defines infrastructure.
By focusing on the construction supply chain, 63% of PAVE’s portfolio is in the industrials sector, with another 24% in materials. Both sectors have been the beneficiary of the reopening trade that has defined markets over the past year.
IFRA’s decision to allot half of the portfolio to include asset owners and operators means nearly 44% of the portfolio is in the utilities sector, which has not fared as well over the past year. Utilities is a defensive sector and tend to do poorly during periods when bond yields are rising, making these stocks look less attractive.
The plan’s focus on “hard” infrastructure—roads, bridges and transport—could set PAVE up for further outperformance.
Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Real
A notable line item in the proposed plan is the $15 billion in funding for electric vehicle infrastructure and electric transit.
This federal support for electric transportation comes at the same time many automakers are building out their efforts in the electric vehicle space. Though electric vehicles have been perceived as being for the “green” crowd, Ford’s F-150 Lightning—an electric version of the automaker’s F-150—received nearly 45,000 pre-orders in less than 48 hours.
Growing federal support and consumer interest in electric vehicles could charge up ETFs such as the Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF (LIT). This fund tracks a market-cap-weighted index of global lithium miners and battery producers, an essential component in electric vehicle production.
Another ETF that might benefit is the Amplify Lithium & Battery Technology ETF (BATT). This ETF tracks a market-cap-weighted index that invests in global advanced battery material companies such as those that mine or produce lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and graphite.
These funds have been supercharged over the past year. LIT has gained 131.8%, while BATT is up 100.3%. However, there are signs that EV-related ETFs such as these could have even more room to run.
According to Pew Research Center, 7% of U.S. adults said they currently have an electric or hybrid vehicle. However, 39% said they were very or somewhat likely to seriously consider buying one the next time they were in the market for a new vehicle.
The proposed package still needs to weave its way through Congress, where negotiations will likely change the details of the package. But with bipartisan support for hard infrastructure, including electric transportation, the outlook for passage is optimistic.
For a list of ETFs that offer exposure to domestic and global infrastructure, check out our Infrastructure ETFs channel.
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ElectReon - >>> Israeli Startup Sees Electricity Paving Road to the Future
ElectReon uses induction technology to recharge batteries on the go
Bloomberg Green
July 6, 2021
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-06/israel-s-electreon-charges-electric-car-batteries-on-the-go?srnd=premium
Oren Ezer insists that the road to the electric-vehicle future will be paved with ... well ... asphalt, just like today’s highways. But beneath the surface, Ezer says, will be conductive coils that can wirelessly charge battery-powered cars, buses, and trucks, offering a fix for the biggest hurdle in the emerging EV industry: range anxiety. ElectReon Wireless Ltd., the company Ezer co-founded in 2013, has lined 6 kilometers of roads in Israel and Sweden to prove the viability of the idea, and it’s working on similar projects in Germany and Italy.
ElectReon uses 1.2-meter-long coils buried fist deep in the road to deliver power to vehicles. To test the technology, ElectReon equipped a bus with three receivers under the chassis to pick up the charge on the go, using induction technology similar to plug-free phone-charging mats. The layer of asphalt zeros out the chance of passersby getting electrocuted, Ezer says. “There are no pyrotechnics,” he says while riding the bus on the 2-km stretch of a road in northern Tel Aviv where the technology is installed in 100-meter-long sections spaced about 200 meters apart. “You get on the road. You get your charge. You keep moving.”
The potential for such systems is huge as electric vehicles accounted for less than 5% of new car sales globally last year—and 2% in the U.S.—in large part because would-be buyers fret about the hassles of refueling. President Joe Biden wants to build 500,000 charging stations across the U.S. by 2030 at a cost of $15 billion. Germany, which is testing electric highways around Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Stuttgart, expects as many as 10 million electric vehicles on its roads by the end of the decade, about 20 times the current figure. Sweden, aiming for zero net emissions by 2045, plans to build 2,400 kilometers (1,491 miles) of electric roads by 2037.
ElectReon is facing some formidable rivals. Germany’s Siemens AG has developed catenaries—the spring-loaded systems atop many trains—that attach to wires strung above roads to give trucks a boost. French transport giant Alstom SA is among multiple companies that are working on street-level rails that deliver power through a sliding contact below the vehicle, which proponents say is safe because the systems are activated in short bursts or only when cars drive over them. But when Sweden wanted to test the idea on a 2.5-mile shuttle bus route to the airport on Gotland Island two years ago, it chose ElectReon, largely because any unsightly equipment is hidden beneath the pavement.
The Swedish Transport Administration says ElectReon’s system in Gotland costs about €1 million ($1.2 million) per kilometer, slightly more than half the price of a catenary network. But ElectReon’s coils deliver about a quarter of the electricity—energy travels more efficiently when the power source is in direct contact with the battery—so the company would require more infrastructure to achieve the same level of charging. The ElectReon system “is easy to deploy and has almost no visible parts and hopefully also low maintenance costs,” says Jan Pettersson, director of strategic development at the Swedish Transport Administration. But reaching Sweden’s climate goals will require “a whole palette of solutions,” including fast-charging stations or heavy trucks powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which promise much longer ranges, he says.
ElectReon has increased the amount of energy it can transfer, to 25 kilowatt hours per receiver—almost 10 times what it was a few years ago—and it aims to hit 45 kWh by next year. At the current rate, the average city bus could run a full day on two hours of charging, says Ezer. It’s testing the technology with Renault on the compact electric Zoe and on buses and trucks with Volkswagen, Jeep, and China’s Higer. ElectReon is nearing deals with two other car manufacturers that it aims to conclude by December, and it expects to begin highway projects in Germany and Italy in the coming months. “There’s an almost limitless market,” Ezer says.
Skeptics say the technology risks being rendered obsolete by improvements in battery performance. Volvo Group AG, which recently teamed up with Daimler Truck AG on hydrogen-fuel-cell trucks after passing on an electric roads partnership with Alstom, says such systems would cost taxpayers 10 times as much as fixed charging stations. The “costs, benefits and uncertainties clearly speak against a large-scale electric road investment,” says Claes Eliasson, a senior vice president at Volvo.
Ezer maintains that the viability of his system isn’t threatened by better batteries. ElectReon’s on-the-go charging would allow vehicles to have much smaller power reservoirs, which means an electric bus using the technology could cost significantly less than one with a full-size battery. Similar math applies to private cars, according to Martin Gustavsson, project coordinator at Swedish Electric Transport Laboratory. “It’s become more and more apparent that with electric roads,” Gustavsson says, “cars could drive very long distances without large, heavy, and expensive batteries.”
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>>> First Look: Solid Power, a Ford-Backed QuantumScape Rival, Will Go Public via SPAC
This is more than just another electric vehicle SPAC deal.
Motley Fool
by John Rosevear
Jun 15, 2021
Solid Power, a promising solid-state battery start-up backed by Ford Motor (NYSE:F) and BMW (OTC:BMWYY) (OTC:BAMXF), said that it has agreed to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Decarbonization Plus Acquisition III (NASDAQ:DCRC).
The deal values the combined company at about $1.2 billion.
Many investors have been overwhelmed by the number of SPAC deals in the electric-vehicle space over the last year, and some have soured on the space now that a couple of last year's darlings have turned out to be, well, less than they seemed. But if you still believe that electric vehicles are the future (I do), Solid Power is worth a close look. It's a company with real potential, with some big customers ready and waiting for its products, and with technology that's much closer to mass production than that of its most prominent rivals.
What is Solid Power
Colorado-based Solid Power, founded in 2012, is one of several companies working to develop so-called solid-state batteries, which omit the liquid electrolyte used in the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric vehicles today. (Among the others: QuantumScape (NYSE:QS), which drew lots of attention from investors after it went public via its own SPAC deal late last year.)
Solid-state batteries have the potential to offer greater energy density than lithium-ion batteries with less weight, but a design that can be mass-produced at a reasonable cost has eluded researchers for years.
That may soon change.
What makes this a big deal
First and foremost, Solid Power appears to be closer to mass production than its rivals. Most solid-state battery efforts are at least a few years away from production. QuantumScape, for example, is hoping to begin pilot production of its batteries in about three years. But Solid Power is already producing its second-generation 20 ampere-hour (Ah) battery cells on a pilot production line, and it expects to begin pilot production of its full-scale 100 Ah batteries next year.
Second -- again, unlike most competitors -- Solid Power's solid-state battery cells can be manufactured with equipment and processes adapted from lithium-ion battery manufacturing, meaning that existing battery plants can be converted to build Solid Power's cells at relatively low cost.
Finally, as I mentioned above, both Ford and BMW are investors in Solid Power. Both participated in the company's most recent funding round earlier this year, both expect to receive batches of those 100 Ah cells for testing in their own electric vehicles next year, and assuming those tests go well, both will be early customers for the company's mass-produced cells.
What are the terms of the Solid Power SPAC deal
Solid Power's deal to merge with Decarbonization Plus III follows the pattern of other SPAC deals we've seen in the electric vehicle space over the past year, in that it includes a PIPE (for "private investment in public equity") that allows big investors to buy stock in the merged company at an agreed-upon price, adding extra cash to the deal.
Here are the key points of the deal:
Decarbonization Plus III is contributing the cash it holds in trust, about $350 million.
The PIPE will bring another $165 million from investors including Riverstone Energy, Koch Strategic Platforms, and funds advised by Neuberger Berman and VanEck Global.
Together with the $135 million that Solid Power raised in its Series B round last month, the post-merger company will have about $650 million in cash.
The merged company will retain the Solid Power name and will trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol "SLDP."
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.
What are the risks if I buy DCRC now
As with any SPAC deal involving a company that hasn't yet brought its product to market, there are risks investors should keep in mind:
It's possible that the deal won't close, or that it'll close later than scheduled.
It's possible that the company's technology won't pan out, or that it goes into production later than expected. Investors who are used to tech start-up time frames should note that the pace of progress in the battery space is glacial by comparison. Solid Power has been working on its batteries since 2012, QuantumScape since 2010.
It's possible that one or more competitors will beat Solid Power to market, taking significant share.
It's possible that we'll learn things about Solid Power that make it a less attractive investment. (I have no reason to think this will happen, but all SPAC investors should be mindful of the examples of Nikola and Lordstown Motors, both of which made important claims that were later found to have been exaggerated.)
FORD'S ELECTRIC F-150 LIGHTNING WILL USE CELLS DEVELOPED WITH KOREAN BATTERY MAKER SK INNOVATIONS. BUT THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE TRUCK, EXPECTED LATER THIS DECADE, MIGHT WELL USE SOLID POWER'S CELLS.
Is DCRC a buy
I'm not sure yet, but right now I'm leaning toward "yes." Solid Power's technology is very promising, and executives at Ford think highly of the company's technology and leadership team. As with any battery start-up, the question is when (and whether) the company can bring its batteries to market -- but I think Solid Power will still have good growth potential even if production slips by a year or two.
That said, I'm still working through all of the company's investor materials, and I expect to have more thoughts on Solid Power's valuation and growth potential in a few days. Stay tuned.
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>>> Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. Introduces The eTower, The First Ultra-Fast Charging Portable Lighting Solution, Through Successful Demonstration
Yahoo Finance
March 4, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/triad-pro-innovators-inc-introduces-162500455.html
LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / March 4, 2021 / Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. (OTC PINK:TPII), a leading developer of proprietary devices for the storage of electricity utilizing the patent pending Triad Pro eCell, introduces eTower, the first ultra-fast charging industrial portable lighting solution with the capability to reduce diesel consumption by up to 90% compared to traditional products. The Triad Pro eCell technology allows for operation of the units down to -50C without reduction of power performance, compared to similar solutions utilizing battery storage technologies which can lose 50% efficiency. This is expected to be game-changing, as current solutions in cold climates rely on portable diesel generators. The eTower can also be provided with optional solar panels to rely fully on solar power for charging during the day.
"The eTower is perfectly positioned for the portable industrial lighting industry, which is projected to be greater than $6B annually by 2025," Murray Goldenberg, CEO. "We applaud the Biden administration's push for more renewable energy and US made products under the "Made in America" program. Through US assembled SPREE solar golf carts, Triad Pro eCell grid storage, licensing Triad Pro eCell technology, and other products in development; Triad Pro Innovators will make a significant impact in reducing global emissions."
Per Dataintelo's "Global Portable Lighting Industry Research Report, Growth Trends and Competitive Analysis 2019-2025," the global portable lighting industry is posed to grow from $2.331 billion in 2018 to $6.283 billion in 2025. The North American market makes up 33.1% of the global market. Triad Pro Innovators expects to capture a significant percentage of this market in the next 2-3 years.
Through this successful customer demonstration and product launch, Triad Pro Innovators expects to receive orders shortly as part of a North American rollout focused on rental equipment and construction equipment companies.
About Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. (OTC PINK: TPII):
Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. has developed a proprietary device to be utilized in a variety of circumstances to store electricity. The newly developed Triad Pro power supply provides our storage system with tremendous operational flexibility. Using our propriety hardware and software solution, our eCell can be configured to store energy at a rate limited only by the network providing it, and then release that energy in a regulated way based upon the application, which allows for flexibility unknown in current chemical battery-based storage systems. Triad Pro creates and designs renewable energy solutions including Co-Generation and the Rapid-K Power Cells that can be used stand alone or modular as energy demands increase.
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>>> EV Battery Start-Up QuantumScape Is Driven Solely by Promise
Barron's
By Al Root
February 1, 2021
https://www.barrons.com/articles/ev-battery-start-up-quantumscape-is-driven-solely-by-promise-51611918010?siteid=yhoof2
QuantumScape, a battery start-up founded by Stanford University scientists a decade ago, generates no sales and says it won’t have meaningful revenue until 2026.
Yet its stock has rocketed 377% since August—even after a recent pullback of more than 60% from its peak. QuantumScape (ticker: QS), at a recent price of $47 a share, has a market value of roughly $21 billion, greater than all but one auto-supplier stocks trading in North America.
QuantumScape has generated excitement by pioneering a new battery technology. But by any measure, this is an overvalued stock.
But expensive need not mean a price driven skyward by fads, short squeezes, or other forces, as in the case of GameStop (GME). Overvaluation is everywhere in 2021. The better questions are: How do investors make sense of this? And what to do about it?
QuantumScape isn’t the only stock that has ridden a frothy wave of investor exuberance. There are about 50 companies with less than $1 million in revenue and a market value of more than $1 billion, compared with 22 just two years ago. The combined market value of those 50 companies is nearly $200 billion, versus $64 billion for the 22. What’s more, there are more than 90 firms trading for more than 50 times trailing 12-month sales. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, the comparable number was 16.
The figures don’t include those without any sales, like QuantumScape. Firms are being valued at a multiple of sales years down the road.
That’s true of at least five other electric-vehicle stocks that, like QuantumScape, went public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, last year. “The multiples are going higher and sales further out,” says Bernstein analyst Mark Newman.
One way overvaluation happens is that valuing high-growth stocks can be difficult. It’s easier to compare stocks to peers. That means that electric-vehicle stocks, like QuantumScape, have a Tesla (TSLA) problem, says Newman. Investors will look at the electric-vehicle maker and say, “If Tesla is worth X amount, then QuantumScape can be worth 10% of that,” he says. That’s dangerous thinking to Newman, because people then assume that such a valuation is inevitable.
“‘If Tesla is worth X amount, then QuantumScape can be worth 10% of that. ”
— Mark Newman, Bernstein analyst
QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh tells Barron’s that he leaves valuation to markets and tries to focus on what he can control. We asked him about valuation after the stock had doubled, to $36, around the end of November.
The stock eventually rose above $130. Newman, the only analyst covering the company, says none of his institutional clients are investing in QuantumScape at current levels.
Yet there is serious money betting on QuantumScape. Volkswagen (VOW3.Germany), the Qatar Investment Authority, Bill Gates, Jeremy Grantham, and George Soros’ Quantum Partners are strategic investors.
As is Sun Microsystems co-founder and technology investor Vinod Khosla. In an interview with Barron’s, he made the case for QuantumScape. “EVs will be dominant by 2030,” Khosla says. “The battery will represent 25% of the cost of the EV.” That implies that the battery business will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the next decade.
Higher and Higher
The 29 most highly valued U.S. companies with revenue of less than $1 million for the past 12 months.
Company / Ticker Recent Price Market Value (mil) 52-Week Change
QuantumScape / QS $47.27 $21,177 377%*
Arrival / CIIC** 27.80 16,847 179*
Virgin Galactic Holdings / SPCE 42.05 8,436 141
Nikola / NKLA 25.64 7,966 148
Kodiak Sciences / KOD 145.91 7,909 128
Allakos / ALLK 127.89 6,904 74
Iovance Biotherapeutics / IOVA 44.61 6,822 106
TG Therapeutics / TGTX 50.00 6,796 280
Beam Therapeutics / BEAM 89.77 6,228 428*
Desktop Metal / DM 26.32 5,946 163
Allogene Therapeutics / ALLO 34.17 4,626 51
SpringWorks Therapeutics / SWTX 83.93 4,094 119
Immunovant / IMVT 39.64 4,089 152
Fisker / FSR 15.33 4,054 51
Canoo / GOEV 16.21 3,959 59
Lordstown Motors / RIDE 26.45 3,828 163
Apellis Pharmaceuticals / APLS 44.89 3,506 11
Rocket Pharmaceuticals / RCKT 53.59 3,447 139
IGM Biosciences / IGMS 96.80 3,128 144
Workhorse Group / WKHS 32.18 2,978 945
CytoDyn / CYDY 4.66 2,877 307
Axsome Therapeutics / AXSM 72.99 2,822 -16
Karuna Therapeutics / KRTX 99.42 2,756 -1
Hyliion Holdings / HYLN 19.43 2,652 94
XL Fleet / XL 20.81 2,622 108
Stoke Therapeutics / STOK 65.20 2,461 178
Romeo Power / RMO 20.25 2,344 102
Kura Oncology / KURA 32.80 2,277 180
Replimune Group / REPL 39.41 2,070 132
*Price change since firm's 2020 IPO. **CIIG Merger Corp. plans to merge with Arrival and the new company will trade under the ticker ARVL.
Quantum is working on lithium anode solid-state batteries. Solid state means there is no liquid electrolyte common to today’s rechargeable batteries. Solid-state batteries promise better EV range, life, and safety, with lower costs and faster charging time. No one has been successful yet with solid-state lithium anode batteries.
Khosla doesn’t expect Quantum will be the only player, but he believes that Quantum is in the lead. “Is there a competitor that will have a comparable battery in the next five years? Extremely unlikely,” he says. “That gives us the ability to be dominant in the battery market.”
Dominance for Khosla translates into higher-than-average profit margins. If the car industry reaches 30 million electric vehicles by 2030, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggests it will, that would add up to roughly $1 trillion in annual EV sales. By Khosla’s math, that amounts to $250 billion in annual battery sales.
After figuring sales, investors still have to decide what Quantum’s market share and profitability will be. With 10% to 15% share of the battery market and above-average profitability, Quantum could be generating roughly $5 billion in annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, by 2030.
QuantumScape, in its SPAC merger presentation, said it expected to earn roughly $1.6 billion in Ebitda in 2028. That isn’t as bullish as Khosla, whose numbers are aggressive but not unreasonable. The largest auto suppliers earn about $5 billion in Ebitda today.
There is a path for Quantum to be a huge success. But there is still risk.
Investors still interested in holding expensive stocks like QuantumScape can do a couple of things to reduce that risk. For starters, they can hold small positions. Position sizing can help sate investors’ need for growth and limit overall portfolio risk.
Another possibility: They can sell covered call options. Selling a call means selling an option that gives the buyer the right to purchase a stock at a fixed price. This may be risky for the seller, but less so if the seller already owns the stock that may be acquired by the call buyer. Some theoretical numbers can help. The option seller might sell for $5 a call with a strike price of $100 for a share trading at $90. If the stock then rises to $110, the seller of the call is out $5.
But if the seller owns the stock, then they hand over a share to the buyer, essentially selling the stock for $105. The seller also forgoes the upside to $110, but if the stock is pricey, they might not have believed it was worth $105 anyway. And if the stock drops, the call seller still has a position in the shares, plus the $5 from the call buyer. Covered call selling requires experience. New call sellers should start small and ask for help.
The philosophical way to avoid overvaluation requires experience, too. Investors need to build up resistance to the fear of missing out, or FOMO—even if the future turns out to be driven by solid-state lithium batteries.
Corrections & Amplifications
In the examples of selling call options, a seller who does not hold the stock is out $5, and a covered call seller foregoes $5 in profit. An earlier version said the call seller without the stock was out $15.
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>>> Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. (TPII) operates as a renewable energy producer and storage provider. It owns and operates combined heat and power renewable energy facilities in California and the Western United States. The company is also involved in the purchase and sale of power generation equipment, as well as in the operation, repair, and maintenance of power generation equipment for other energy facility owners. In addition, it offers energy storage solutions for residential, small business, industrial, and utility applications. The company was formerly known as Shing-Mei International, Inc. and changed its name to Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. in January 2012. Triad Pro Innovators, Inc. was founded in 1994 and is based in La Quinta, California.<<<
>>> Batteries have long been the big issue in the electrical vehicle market. Traditional batteries have high energy density, that is, they can release energy for a long time. But these batteries charge very slowly. Batteries have relatively few charge/discharge cycles, which reduces their lifespan and eliminates using a solar panel to charge. Using a solar panel to recharge actually shortens the batteries’ useful life. So batteries, whether flooded or sealed lead acid, or lithium, cannot independently repower using only the sun.<<<
>>> The Golf cart industry has changed very little over the years with the development of new technologies. A brand new golf cart today looks much the same as one produced many decades ago. While some manufactures have recently partnered with lithium battery companies to extend the life of batteries, none of the manufacturers have ventured away from the usual large heavy 3.5 horsepower electrical motor, nor have they innovated with other energy storage alternatives. To this day, all electric golf carts spend five or more hours each day plugged in to recharge, and the entire battery bank must be replaced every few years.
Triad Pro Innovators has completely redesigned the golf car mechanically and electrically. Starting with the Triad Pro eCell which has high power density, that is, it can take up and release energy very fast. The Triad Pro eCell with its million charge/discharge cycles unlocks the full potential of a roof mounted solar panel. In addition, the Triad Motor array’s efficiencies complement the eCell’s lack of energy density. By using the lighter, more efficient Triad Motor array, and minimizing the weight of the entire golf car, we can leverage the synergistic strengths of all three components, the solar panel, the Triad Motor array and the Triad Pro eCell. Our patented and proprietary controller circuit board drives the efficiencies of the entire system. There is nothing like the SPREE golf car on the market today. <<<
https://triadproinc.com/spree/
>>> Tesla's power businesses are beginning to take off
Yahoo Finance
Jonathan Shieber
January 27, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/teslas-power-businesses-beginning-off-233030830.html
Tesla just released its latest earnings report, and the results indicate that Elon Musk's bets on energy storage and solar are beginning to pay off.
The storage business was the star of the company's power plays in the fourth quarter, with quarterly year-on-year growth approaching 200%. As the company said in its presentation to shareholders, "[energy] deployments grew substantially from 2019 to 2020. For the first time, our total battery deployments surpassed 3 GWh in a single year, which is an 83% increase compared to the prior year.
Solar deployments also had their day in the sun. For the year, solar energy installations increased to 205 MW, an 18% increase over the prior year. "This growth is the result of meaningful improvements to our solar retrofit strategy, including product simplification, cost reduction and industry-leading pricing.
Revenue from the energy generation and storage business came in at $752 million for the fourth quarter, up from $436 million in the year-ago period, and up $579 million from the third quarter.
This is likely only the beginning of the surge that's coming for Tesla's power business. The company has long stated that it wants to be one of the world's largest power or utility companies, and global capital is marshaling resources to encourage the shift to renewables.
Tesla could be a huge beneficiary from the Biden administration's renewable plans through their goals to dramatically boost solar development and buildings. The big infrastructure spend will require big batteries to store renewable power. It will also require massive solar installations.
A Biden presidency doesn’t need a Green New Deal to make progress on climate change
And even as the federal government makes money moves to renewables, private capital is coming in to boost solar installations and energy storage dramatically.
Over the last week alone, investors have pumped nearly $2 billion into companies that lend money to homeowners for solar installations and energy efficiency upgrades. One company, founded by a former SolarCity executive, announced that it had raised $800 million in capital just today.
At least some of that money will have cash registers ringing for Tesla's energy storage and solar installation business.
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>>> Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF (LIT)
MarketWatch
12-11-20
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-electric-vehicle-stocks-style-133544446.html
52-Week Range: $17.83 – $54.69
Year-to-date (YTD) change: Up 98.45%
Dividend Yield: 0.82%
Expense Ratio: 0.75%
Our first choice today is the Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF, which provides access to global businesses that focus on lithium. Their operations range from mining and refining lithium to manufacturing lithium batteries, which have been in high demand due to increased EV sales.
InvestorPlace readers likely know that battery costs affect the final sales price of any electric car. Thus, any discussion on EV stocks would also benefit from paying attention to companies engaged in the manufacturing lithium batteries.
LIT, which has 41 holdings, tracks the Solactive Global Lithium Index. This fund started trading in July 2020 and net assets stand close to $1.4 billion. From a geographic standpoint, China-based companies top the list with 43.3%, followed by the U.S. (22%), South Korea (11.7), and Japan (6.7%), among others.
The top five names, Albemarle (NYSE:ALB), Ganfeng Lithium, LG Chem (OTCMKTS:LGCLF), Samsung and Tesla comprise close to 34% of the fund. So far in 2020, the fund is up over 98% and hit a record high in early December.
Given the recent run-up in the price of the fund, short-term profit-taking could well be around the corner. However, the bull trend in batteries will likely continue into 2021 as well.
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QuantumScape - >>> Stanford Scientists Create a Billionaire Factory
Bloomberg
Chris Bryant
December 29, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/stanford-scientists-create-billionaire-factory-080020831.html
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- One of the most unsettling developments in business in 2020 was the trend for electric-vehicle companies to list on a stock exchange before they have their first revenues. Though standard practice for research-intensive life sciences companies, going public before you have a purchasable product is pretty unusual in the automotive world.
And yet, pre-revenue companies such as Nikola Corp. and Fisker Inc. have achieved multi-billion dollar valuations. Now, Californian battery start-up QuantumScape Corp. has taken electric-vehicle mania to a new level.
Founded by Stanford University scientists a decade ago, with financial backing from Volkswagen AG, QuantumScape became a public company in November after merging with Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company. The company won’t generate significant revenue until 2026, but it’s already valued at $43 billion, or $51 billion on a fully diluted basis.(1)
From a climate perspective, it’s great that investors are committing capital to electric transport. The promise of such riches will encourage others to join the emissions-cutting cause. However, the same speculative fever that has propelled Tesla Inc. and China’s NIO Inc. appears to have taken hold of QuantumScape investors.
An average of $2.8 billion of the battery company’s stock was traded daily during the past week. Technical factors may have contributed to QuantumScape’s surge, too: Only a small percentage of the shareholder register is available to trade.(7) For retail investors who buy stock at these levels, there’s a long way down.
First, the good news. In laboratory tests QuantumScape’s “solid state” battery cells have achieved very encouraging results, which suggest the innovative chemistry could one day enable electric vehicles to travel further and be charged faster, at lower cost.(2) This is exciting because it’s become harder to extract significant performance gains from conventional lithium ion batteries. Chief Executive Officer Jagdeep Singh’s team of scientists appears to have pulled off a real feat.
However, when the SPAC deal was announced in September the parties decided a $3.3 billion valuation was appropriate.(6) This seemed ample for a company with fewer than 250 employees and one which doesn’t have a finished product or factory. Following a blistering stock-market run, QuantumScape is now worth more than 10 times that initial value, and more than automakers like Ford Motor Co. and battery giants such as Panasonic Corp. and Samsung SDI.
Those who bought shares in the Kensington SPAC in August have enjoyed a 1,060% return, while QuantumScape warrants that once sold for 80 cents are now worth 50 times as much.(3) The three Stanford founders — Singh, Fritz Prinz and Tim Holme — have become paper billionaires. Volkswagen, which invested about $300 million in QuantumScape, will own a 23% stake worth almost $10 billion. (4)
As is often the case with SPACs, the Kensington sponsor — controlled by Justin Mirro, a former Moelis & Company and RBC Capital Markets investment banker — has also done well. It received shares and warrants worth more than $900m, a huge return on its $7 million or so investment and one achieved with only a few weeks work.(5)
QuantumScape’s other prominent backers include venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, Microsoft Inc. cofounder Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire George Soros’s Quantum Partners and investor Jeremy Grantham. JB Straubel, a former chief technology officer at Tesla, is on the board. Such endorsements, and the years of R&D that have gone into the batteries, suggest there’s more here than just hype. The contrast with Nikola, whose own technology (or lack of it) was the subject of a scathing short-seller report, seems clear.(8)
Volkswagen’s production expertise should smooth the path to commercialization. The partners plan to start production at a small pilot facility in 2024, and then at a much larger factory two years later. But success isn’t guaranteed.
So far QuantumScape has only produced single-layer cells and it still needs to find a way to stack more than 100 on top of each other to create a battery package. Competitors such as China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., won’t sit by idly. CATL’s shares have also surged this year, valuing it at about $110 billion.
One advantage of SPACs is that they’re allowed to publish detailed multiyear financial forecasts, whereas companies that go public via a traditional initial public offering usually only publish historic finances. Given QuantumScape’s significant production hurdles, it would be imprudent for investors to over-rely on these estimates, but whatever happens they’re in for a long wait:
Even assuming QuantumScape’s forecasts prove accurate, the valuation looks disconnected from reality. The market capitalization is equivalent to 13 times the revenue the company hopes to generate in 2027. Tesla shares are also incredibly frothy but they’re a comparative steal at slightly more than 13 times its expected revenue in the next 12 months. Volkswagen, which will be QuantumScape’s biggest customer at first, is valued at just 0.3 times next year’s sales.
QuantumScape’s batteries may end up propelling the next generation of electric vehicles, but sustaining that valuation could prove even more challenging than advanced battery chemistry.
(This column was updated to remove a comparison with Alphabet’s stock trading volumes, because the reference didn’t account for all of the company’s trading lines.)
(1) The fully diluted 447.5 million share count includes unexercised stock options, restricted stock units and additional shares issuable to Volkswagen.
(2) The SPAC's public shareholders account for only 5% of the shareholder register. Existing QuantumScape shareholders hold 82%, some of whom aren't sellers or are subject to lock-ups.
(3) QuantumScape’s design doesn’t require a manufactured anode, which keeps costs down. The lithium-metal anode is formed when the cell is charged.
(4) When adjusted for QuantumScape’s cash.
(5) If QuantumScape elects to redeem them, the warrants will convert to a maximum of 0.365 shares.
(6) Volkswagen owns 71 million shares of QuantumScape but will be issued another 15 million subject to achievement of a technical performance milestone, according to the S-1.
(7) Kensington sold shares in an IPO on June 30 and had already signed a non-binding letter of intent with QuantumScape just three weeks later.
(8) QuantumScape also has far more patents, for example.
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>>> A Million-Mile Battery From China Could Power Your Electric Car
Bloomberg News
Bloomberg
June 7, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-07/a-million-mile-battery-from-china-could-power-your-electric-car
CATL ready to sell pack that lasts 16 years, chairman says
Milestone could bring EV ownership costs down, boost demand
The Chinese behemoth that makes electric-car batteries for Tesla Inc. and Volkswagen AG developed a power pack that lasts more than a million miles -- an industry landmark and a potential boon for automakers trying to sway drivers to their EV models.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. is ready to produce a battery that lasts 16 years and 2 million kilometers (1.24 million miles), Chairman Zeng Yuqun said in an interview at company headquarters in Ningde, southeastern China. Warranties on batteries currently used in electric cars cover about 150,000 miles or eight years, according to BloombergNEF.
Extending that lifespan is viewed as a key advance because the pack could be reused in a second vehicle. That would lower the expense of owning an electric vehicle, a positive for an industry that’s seeking to recover sales momentum lost to the coronavirus outbreak and the slumping oil prices that made gas guzzlers more competitive.
“If someone places an order, we are ready to produce,” said Zeng, 52, without disclosing if contracts for the long-distance product have been signed. It would cost about 10% more than the batteries now inside EVs, said Zeng, whose company is the world’s largest maker of the batteries.
Concerns about batteries losing strength and having to be replaced after a few years is one factor holding back consumer adoption of EVs. Tesla last year flagged it expected to bring into production a battery capable of a million miles of operation, and General Motors Co. last month said it is nearing the milestone. That distance is equivalent to circling the planet 50 times.
Anticipating a rapid return to growth for the EV industry, CATL is plowing research-and-development dollars into advances in battery technology. While the coronavirus outbreak will drag down sales throughout this year, EV demand will pick up in early 2021, said Zeng, who founded CATL a decade ago.
Million-Mile Electric-Car Battery Is Ready, Chinese Giant CATCL Says
Car buyers holding back during the pandemic is creating pent-up demand that will be unleashed starting next year, led by premium models, he said. CATL’s customers include BMW AG and Toyota Motor Corp.
Zeng’s comments strengthen views that electric vehicles are set to weather the economic slowdown caused by the outbreak better than gas guzzlers. Battery-powered cars will swell to 8.1% of all sales next year in China, which accounts for the largest share of global EV sales, and to 5% in Europe, BNEF predicts.
“The pandemic may have a lasting effect throughout 2020, but won’t be a major factor next year,” Zeng said. “We have great confidence for the long run.”
Gassed
In a market broadsided by the pandemic, global sales of gas-powered cars and trucks may have already peaked.
CATL struck a two-year contract in February to supply batteries to Tesla, a major boon for the Chinese company as the U.S. electric-car leader has thus far mainly worked with Japan’s Panasonic Corp. and South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd. The deal followed months of negotiations, with Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk traveling to Shanghai to meet with Zeng.
The CATL batteries are set to go into Model 3 sedans produced at Tesla’s massive new factory near Shanghai, which started deliveries around the beginning of this year. Batteries are the costliest part of an EV, meaning suppliers of those components have a chance to reap a lion’s share of the industry’s profits.
Zeng said he often shares insights with Musk, with the two exchanging text messages about developments in technology and business. CATL is strengthening its relationship with Tesla, with matters such as cobalt-free batteries on their agenda, Zeng said.
“We’re getting along well and he’s a fun guy,” Zeng said of Musk. “He’s talking about cost all day long, and I’m making sure we have the solutions.”
Zeng said Musk also requested his help in obtaining ventilators for coronavirus patients. The U.S. billionaire delivered more than 1,000 of the breathing machines from China to officials in Los Angeles in March.
Shares of CATL have advanced about six-fold in Shenzhen since its initial public offering in 2018, giving the company a market value of about $47 billion. Tesla, by far the most valuable EV maker, has a market capitalization of about $160 billion (--> over $800 Bil)
A “trigger point” for electric cars will occur once they overtake gasoline-powered vehicles around 2030-2035, Zeng said. That view is more ambitious than that of researchers such as BNEF, which expects the shift to take place a few years later.
CATL, which is adding a production facility in Germany, is set to make more than 70% of batteries required by BMW, an early customer, Zeng said. CATL also works with Volkswagen’s Audi unit and is cooperating with Porsche, he said.
Zeng didn’t rule out building a plant in the U.S., though he said the company has no specific plans for now.
“Our team has made achievements in competing with our global rivals in overseas markets,” Zeng said.
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QuantumScape - >>> CEO of Bill Gates-backed electric car battery startup comments on company outlook after stock plunges 40%
Yahoo Finance
by Brian Sozzi
January 5, 2021
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-of-bill-gatesbacked-electric-car-battery-startup-quantumscape-comments-on-company-outlook-after-stock-plunges-40-171904816.html
The first day of trading in the New Year wasn’t too kind to the red-hot shares of upstart battery technology player QuantumScape (QS). But its founder Jagdeep Singh is quick to tamp down any speculation the fundamental story has changed overnight.
Somewhat out of nowhere, shares of QuantumScape plunged 41% on Jan. 4. According to a source, the sell-off was triggered by the company filing what’s known as a Resale S-1 form on Dec. 31. The market interpreted the filing as the company would be selling shares amid the stock’s surge in value, which would have the effect of diluting investors. Others speculated QuantumScape’s institutional investors are gearing up to sell shares.
Singh tells Yahoo Finance none of that is true and the business fundamentals haven’t changed.
“There has been no change in business. Everything we have discussed with investors remains on track,” Singh says. Singh adds insiders are not readying to dump stock, and that the blow-off top in the stock Monday likely reflects more momentum traders booking profits. “I hate to see the stock do that, but we remain focused on the long-term.”
QuantumScape sought to clarify its aforementioned filing on Tuesday.
“The purpose of the Resale S-1 was to permit the resale of shares that were already issued or that may be issued on exercise of options and warrants that were already issued. Most of the shares subject to the Resale S-1 remain subject to contractual lock-up agreements that prohibit sale during the lock-up periods,” QuantumScape wrote.
Shares spiked 12% in early afternoon trading after Singh’s comments (above video).
To say this type of harsh reaction in the stock hasn’t been the norm for QuantumScape shareholders would be an understatement. Shares exploded 388% from when it merged with a blank check company on Nov. 27 and Christmas Eve. At its height, the pre-revenue tech company boasted an eye-popping $50 billion valuation.
QantumScape was founded in 2010 by Singh and backed early by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and auto giant Volkswagen. It recently took a big stride in bringing a major battery technology to market, hence fueling a major run-up in its stock price.
In early December, Singh publicly revealed test results for QuantumScape’s solid state battery. QuantumScape’s data showed its battery cell could charge to 80% of capacity in 15 minutes. Further, it retains more than 80% of its capacity after 800 charging cycles, is non-combustable and boasts nearly double the energy density of high-end commercial lithium batteries.
Singh tells Yahoo Finance he and his team remain focused on road-testing the battery technology and then scaling up manufacturing.
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>>> QuantumScape stock falls more than 30%, its most ever
MarketWatch
Jan. 4, 2021
By Claudia Assis
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/quantumscape-stock-falls-more-than-30-its-most-ever-11609788865?siteid=yhoof2
Shares of electric car-battery developer QuantumScape Corp. fell the most ever on Monday, a day that saw stocks of EV makers soaring on sales news.
QuantumScape QS, -40.84% shares were down nearly 39% at last check, poised for their lowest close since Dec. 7 and suffering their worst one-day percentage loss on record.
Related: Tesla and other EV makers report record sales, sending stocks to new highs
The stock was on a tear for most of 2020, including a 31% jump on Dec. 8, when it released performance data for its solid-state battery and said that the batteries, according to company tests, were far more lasting and faster to recharge than conventional batteries.
QuantumScape went public in November after a merger with a blank-check company, a path that many companies, including EV- and alternative-energy ones, have taken in recent months. .
Monday’s losses extend the stock’s down trajectory to a fourth session, with the shares losing 55% over the period. QuantumScape shares are down 61% from its record closing high of $131.67 on Dec. 22.
Lithium-ion batteries presently in use in electric vehicles as well as tools and gadgets rely on liquid electrolyte solutions. Higher energy-density, cheaper-to-make solid-state batteries are expected to further increase range and shorten charging times for EVs in the future.
In addition to QuantumScape and other companies such as Samsung SDI Co. Ltd 006400, +6.85%, research and development units of several auto makers, including Toyota Corp.’s TM, -0.83%, are focusing on solid-state batteries for EVs.
Volkswagen AG VOW, -2.12% in June increased its stake in QuantumScape and said it was making an additional investment of up to $200 million in the company.
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>>> The Hot Battery Startup That Could Zap Tesla
Wall Street Journal
By Stephen Wilmot
Jan. 1, 2021
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-battery-startup-that-could-zap-tesla-11609497031?mod=itp_wsj
Investors are enthusiastic about QuantumScape, developer of an electric-vehicle battery that promises more power for less cost. If the company succeeds, Tesla could face new challenges.
One of the wildest plotlines in the great 2020 electric-vehicle rally was the late-year rise of QuantumScape, QS -14.08% a battery startup that has yet to report any revenue. If investors are even close to being right about its roughly $44 billion market value, they may need to worry more about the fortunes of Tesla.
QuantumScape’s shares have soared since going public in November. The company revealed promising test results for a limited version of its “solid state” battery in early December, but otherwise the stock’s meteoric ascent has been hard to explain.
Based in San Jose, Calif., and backed by Volkswagen and Bill Gates, the company now has a market value greater than Ford. Investors have gotten used to dizzying valuations for electric-vehicle startups positioning themselves as the next Tesla. With QuantumScape, the mania has reached potential suppliers too.
Solid-state batteries have long been seen as a way of breaking through performance limitations associated with today’s electric vehicles. Like your smartphone, a Tesla or BMW i3 is powered by a battery with a liquid electrolyte that carries lithium ions back and forth between the cathode and anode during charging and discharging. These liquid electrolytes are bulky and liable to overheat. General Motors recalled almost 69,000 Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles in November after five reported fires.
The promise of solid state is to get rid of the liquid, and with it the fire risk. Moreover, “lithium-metal” cells being developed by QuantumScape, among others, combine the lithium component with the anode, further reducing bulk and potentially delivering more power at a lower cost. This is also critical: Electric vehicles have long been held back by the relatively high cost of batteries, which makes them more expensive than combustion-engine equivalents.
Other advantages of solid state include rapid charging and longer life expectancy. QuantumScape said in December that its cell as tested could be recharged to 80% in 15 minutes and retained more than 80% of its capacity even after 800 charges. Such numbers would make owning an electric vehicle much more similar to owning a gas-powered one today.
Many in the battery industry see solid state as the most likely technology of the future. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk is a prominent exception. Solid state wasn’t among the many developments discussed in the company’s September “battery day.” Mr. Musk told analysts on the third-quarter results call that removing the conventional anode “is not as great as it may sound” in terms of delivering space savings in the cell.
Tesla’s skepticism may also be related to its own battery technology, which would likely make it harder than for others to adapt to solid state electrolytes. Tesla uses cylindrical batteries formed from rolled cells, whereas its competitors typically favor so-called prismatic batteries, in which cells can be stacked. Because solid-state cells are more brittle than liquid ones, they will be much easier to stack than to roll.
Adapting most of today’s electric-vehicle battery factories to the new technology won’t be too disruptive, says Graeme Purdy, chief executive of Ilika, a U.K.-based solid-state company that is working with Jaguar Land Rover to ensure a smooth transition. But it might be another story for Tesla. This could be the point where the company’s batteries, which have been a competitive advantage to date, turn into a competitive disadvantage.
Tesla does have time on its side, if it needs to change tack. Toyota probably has the most advanced solid-state batteries today: It planned to have them powering prototype vehicles at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed a year, and is targeting a mass-produced model by 2025. But the technology probably won’t be cost competitive with today’s batteries until the late 2020s at the very earliest.
QuantumScape’s investors are playing a very long game. The business plan doesn’t envisage meaningful revenues before 2026. There is also no guarantee that the company’s solution will win out over those of Toyota and others. The test results QuantumScape announced last month were for single-layer battery cells. Private U.S. startup Solid Power is already producing multi-layer solid-state batteries in a factory in Louisville, Colo. “The manufacturing challenges get exponentially harder as you move to multiple layers,” says Mark Newman, an analyst at brokerage Bernstein who focuses on the battery industry.
The valuations of companies like Tesla and QuantumScape require investors to look far into the future and assume mass disruption to the status quo. The wrinkle is that if QuantumScape’s plan works out—a big if—Tesla itself could be one of the companies most disrupted. In 2020, investors bought almost anything related to electric vehicles. This year they need to become more discerning.
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>>> Batteries Serve as 'Secret Sauce' for EVs: 4 Stocks in Focus
Yahoo Finance
by Rimmi Singhi
December 22, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/batteries-serve-secret-sauce-evs-140902027.html
Electric vehicles (EVs) are the future of transportation. For years, it seemed that Tesla TSLA was the only automaker that was playing at the forefront of the EV phenomenon and taking the concept of green vehicles seriously from a real-world functionality standpoint. However, things are changing as most of the automakers are now fast changing gears to electric. Climate concerns, stringent fuel-economy targets, and advancement in technology as well as charging infrastructure are boosting the environment-friendly EV market.
EV sales across the globe are projected to grow 50% or more in 2021 compared with ICE expected sales growth of a meager 2-5%, as predicted by analysts at Morgan Stanley, quoted in a MarketWatch article. Global EV penetration is projected to jump from 3% to 31% by 2030.
Widespread adoption of e-mobility will have a trickle-down effect in the supply chain, making battery stocks more attractive than ever. Batteries are the most common element of green cars and will play the most important role in accelerating the EV revolution. Battery specs are the cornerstone of an electric vehicle’s performance. Without the right battery technology, the EV industry wouldn’t be able to live up to its hype.
Global EV Battery Market Charged Up
The EV battery space is mostly dominated by Asia, with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd, LG Chem, BYD Co. Ltd BYDDY, Panasonic Corp. PCRFY and Samsung SDI spearheading the game. Riding on the enormous optimism in the battery space and EV frenzy, California-based EV battery maker QuantumScape QS recently made its NYSE debut. The Bill Gates-backed EV battery supplier is developing the next generation of batteries utilizing lithium metal, which has a significantly higher energy density than lithium ion. Set to disrupt the world of batteries, QuantumScape claims that its batteries are designed to offer up to 80% longer range than the existing lithium-ion batteries. Per the company, its batteries would charge up a vehicle to 80% of its full capacity in around 15 minutes.
Per ReportLinker data, the global market for EV battery is estimated at $30.7 billion in 2020 and expected to witness a CAGR of 16% over the next seven years to reach $87.2 billion. Currently, the most popular source of power in green vehicles is lithium-ion batteries. Notably, the lithium ion battery segment is likely to record a CAGR of 17.7% over the next seven years, with China, the United States of America, Europe, Japan and Canada driving global demand. Amid the upbeat scenario, investors should put battery-related stocks onto their radar.
4 ‘Pick & Shovel’ Stocks to Play the EV Boom
Panasonic Corp.: Panasonic is one of the key players in the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries for green vehicles. Continuous research and cutting edge technology have kept the company at the forefront of battery development. Its advanced lithium-ion battery tech offers improved energy density, lower costs and improved driving range. Partnerships with auto biggies like Tesla and Toyota TM are likely to boost the firm’s prospects. Notably, the company is targeting zero cobalt in its battery cells and plans to commercialize cobalt-free batteries in a few years. Panasonic currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its fiscal 2022 earnings indicates a year-over-year increase of 82.1%. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
EnerSys ENS: Headquartered in Pennsylvania, EnerSys engages in manufacturing, marketing and distribution of various industrial batteries. Battery brands of the firm include EnergyCell, NexSys and PowerSafe. Solid product portfolio, new product offerings, acquired assets and shareholder-friendly policies are key strengths of EnerSys. Amid the changing dynamics of the industrial battery landscape, the company remains focused on the development of Thin Plate Pure Lead and advanced Lithium-ion technologies. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) and has an expected EPS growth rate of 10% for the next three-five years.
Albemarle Corp. ALB: Considered as the world’s biggest lithium producer, this Charlotte-based company is expected to gain immensely from rising production of electric cars. Albemarle has battery-grade lithium-producing plants in Europe, Australia, China, Chile and the United States. This Zacks Rank #3 firm remains focused on strengthening the lithium business. Even amid the coronavirus crisis, Albemarle managed to surpass earnings and sales estimates in the last reported quarter. The company expects net sales for 2020 between $3.05 billion and $3.15 billion. Solid cost-cut initiatives and investor-friendly moves of the firm are encouraging. The company has an expected EPS growth rate of 11.9% for the next three-five years.
Vale S.A.VALE: Wondering why this Brazil-based giant miner is also on the list? Well, lithium-ion batteries mostly rely on nickel and Vale is the largest producer of the metal in the world. Most of the EV makers are aiming to eliminate the usage of cobalt in battery cells as the commodity is expensive and instead increase the nickel content. At the Battery Day event, Tesla revealed its intent to increase the nickel content in its battery composition, which would improve the range of vehicles and cut costs. So, the rising popularity of EVs is not just likely to buoy lithium demand but will also jack up nickel demand. Hence, Vale could very well be on your watchlist if you want to tap the EV boom. This Zacks Rank #3 company carries a VGM Score of A and has a long-term expected EPS growth of more than 25%.
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>>> Obvious reasons why a Tesla-crushing Apple car won't exist
Yahoo Finance
by Brian Sozzi
December 23, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/obvious-reasons-why-a-true-teslacrushing-apple-car-wont-exist-143346203.html
The Apple and Tesla blogs (and shares of electric vehicle related stocks, naturally) are going bananas this week on reports the iPhone maker will enter the electric vehicle space.
But some Wall Street analysts are casting doubt on the arrival of the “iCar,” for more reasons other than it would badly screw up their finely tuned discounted free cash flow models.
“We would assign the chances of Apple unveiling its own standalone car by 2024 as 35%-40%,” says Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives.
Apple (AAPL) could start production on its own electric vehicle as early as 2024, according to a report out of Reuters this week. The car will be powered by a “breakthrough” monocell battery design that offers up greater range than traditional electric vehicle batteries. Apple, which did not respond to Yahoo Finance’s request for comment, is also reportedly exploring the use of a lithium iron phosphate battery, which would not include hard to mine metal cobalt.
Analysts like Ives contend making an electric car is an operational headache that Apple CEO Tim Cook probably won’t want to take on directly.
“There are the Herculean-like auto production capabilities, battery technology ramp, financial model implications, and regulatory hurdles involved in such a game changing initiative,” Ives explains. “In addition, on the autonomous front and given safety/regulatory issues we would see a longer timeframe if Apple ultimately heads down this path especially given the cautious DNA of Cook & Co. in launching new products.”
Apple has bought a struggling self-driving car startup as the iPhone maker continues to explore the potential market for robotic vehicles, despite recently curtailing its work on the technology. The Cupertino, Calif., company confirmed its acquisition of Drive.ai Wednesday, June 26, without disclosing the price.
Instead, Ives believes Apple will go the partnership route to enter the surging electric vehicle space. It would likely lead with the Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) technology it has reportedly been developing since 2014. Doing so would reduce capital outlays and regulatory hurdles, among other elements to the complicated story that is making a car in the modern day.
“We believe based on our investor conversations over the last few days that many on the Street would rather see Apple partner on the EV path, than start building its own vehicles/factories given the margin and financial model implications down the road, coupled with the strategic product risk around such a gargantuan endeavor. This speaks to our view that the chances of a strategic partnerships with the likes of a Tesla, VW, or other auto manufacturers in China (e.g., Nio, Xpeng) are in the 70%+ range over the next few years and could lay the groundwork for a dual path (start building its own line of EV autos post 2025) over the next decade if this EV/autonomous venture is successful with consumers,” adds Ives
Speculation on Apple’s potential EV entry has put a spotlight on shares of many suppliers in the space. Battery startup shares of QuantumScape (QS) spiked 29% on Monday and rose nearly 40% on Tuesday. A source tells Yahoo Finance QuantumScape is currently not in talks with Apple.
Meanwhile, shares of Lidar sensor maker Luminar (LAZR) are up a cool 31% this week. The company debuted on the Nasdaq Composite earlier this month.
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QuantumScape - >>> Bill Gates-backed electric car battery startup is on the cusp of changing the industry
Yahoo Finance
by Brian Sozzi
December 17, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gatesbacked-electric-car-battery-startup-is-on-the-cusp-of-changing-the-industry-184517860.html
Even after a 60% surge in the stock price this month, QuantumScape (QS) founder and CEO Jagdeep Singh stresses he still isn’t constantly checking the company’s share price. Nope, he just has his head down trying to change the world of electric car batteries.
“I don’t claim to be someone who can predict the near-term stock market behavior. Our focus is to keep our nose to the grindstone, head down, and bring these batteries into real cars on real roads as fast as we can. If we do that, we think there is an opportunity to create a tremendous amount of value regardless of what the short-term stock price does,” Singh told Yahoo Finance Live.
QuantumScape — founded in 2010 by Singh and backed early by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and auto giant Volkswagen — recently took a big stride in bringing a major battery technology to market. And by extension, probably lifting QuantumScape’s market cap well beyond the current $22 billion level as the company moves from pre-revenue stage to serious revenue producer.
Earlier this month, Singh publicly revealed test results for QuantumScape’s solid state battery. QuantumScape’s data showed its battery cell could charge to 80% of capacity in 15 minutes. Further, it retains more than 80% of its capacity after 800 charging cycles, is non-combustable and boasts nearly double the energy density of high-end commercial lithium batteries.
The market took this development to mean two things (and then proceeded to send the stock soaring).
First, QuantumScape may have developed the battery that addresses some of the biggest problems with electric vehicles: speed to charge and safety. And secondarily, the company’s battery breakthrough may be leveraged across other commercial applications.
Investors who have piled on the QuantumScape bus in the weeks since the public disclosure do assume a great deal of risk, however.
For starters, the company isn’t expected to start production of its solid state batteries until 2025. And when the batteries do ship, they are likely to first go to support electric autos by Volkswagen — which owns 31% of QuantumScape’s outstanding shares after the company’s SPAC debut a few months ago.
“Unfortunately it takes a long time to get batteries into the market, we have to scale up productions and build technologies,” Singh acknowledges.
Meanwhile, it’s unclear if QuantumScape will have to raise more capital before it starts battery production given the capital intensive nature of the business. Singh says the company has $1 billion on the balance sheet and is well capitalized for its battery-making mission.
If Singh could pull off an electrifying future of super batteries, the payoff could be large. The company estimates revenue of $6.4 billion and adjusted operating profits of $1.6 billion by 2028.
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>>> 8 Battery Stocks That Electric Vehicle Companies Rely On
These battery stocks are going to benefit heavily from the EV revolution
By Louis Navellier
Dec 10, 2020
https://investorplace.com/2020/12/8-battery-stocks-that-electric-vehicle-companies-rely-on/
2020 is turning into a tipping point for the electric vehicle (EV) industry. EV stocks are making huge gains, while traditional oil and gas companies are taking it on the chin. The popularity of EVs has a trickle effect through the supply chain, and that means big potential for battery stocks.
Without batteries, there is no EV industry. Canny investors are increasingly eying battery-related stocks, including companies that mine and refine lithium — the key element in lithium ion batteries. Lithium is often referred to as “white gold” or “white oil” in a reference to its value and central position in the green energy revolution.
As electric cars grow in popularity, these eight stocks stand to benefit from the ramped up demand for lithium-ion batteries:
Albemarle corporation (NYSE:ALB)
Enphase Energy Inc (NASDAQ:ENPH)
EnerSys (NYSE:ENS)
FMC Corp (NYSE:FMC)
Lithium Americas Corp (NYSE:LAC)
Livent Corp (NYSE:LTHM)
Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (NYSE:SQM)
Vale SA (NYSE:VALE)
Adding to the attractiveness of battery stocks is that fact that many have lagged EV stocks in terms of growth. As demand ramps up, expect that to change, but for now shares in many of these companies remain affordable.
Albemarle (ALB)
North Carolina-based Albemarle describes itself as “a leading global producer of Lithium, Bromine and Catalyst solutions.” The company has over 5,400 employees and operates in over 100 countries. Much of its business is in specialty chemicals, but Albemarle is a big player in lithium production. In fact, it is currently considered the world’s largest producer of lithium.
With EV production ramping up and production of electric cars expected to triple the current demand for lithium, Albemarle is positioned to be a big beneficiary. ALB stock reflects that strong position, doubling in value since the start of 2020.
Enphase Energy (ENPH)
Enphase Energy is unique among these battery stocks because it earns an ‘A’ rating in Portfolio Grader. It’s also an unusual pick because Enphase doesn’t mine lithium or manufacture EV batteries.
So why is ENPH stock on the list? Enphase is the world’s leading supplier of the micro inverters used in solar power installations. And Enphase also offers Encharge solar battery systems. These use solar power to charge a battery, offering an integrated home backup power solution. Something that’s increasingly popular during an era of extreme climate events like wildfires that can knock out power for days at a time.
In addition, as EVs grow in popularity, they are shining a light on home solar + battery installations. That halo effect has helped drive ENPH stock to 360% growth so far in 2020.
EnerSys (ENS)
Pennsylvania-based EnerSys is all about batteries — or as the company describes its business, “stored energy solutions.” If any company belongs on a list dedicated to battery stocks, EnerSys is it.
The company owns a number of battery brands including PowerSafe, NexSys, Purcell, Odyssey and EnergyCell. It supplies batteries to a wide range of sectors, including industrial and military. It even makes lithium ion batteries used to power satellites.
ENS stock has had its rocky moments (it rates a ‘C’ in Portfolio Grader), but it has been on a growth trajectory over the past decade. The current interest in battery-powered EVs is also spilling over into industrial and commercial applications. This makes EnerSys a battery company worth watching.
FMC (FMC)
FMC is a long-time chemical manufacturer. The company started with pesticides, then expanded into a wide range of products, even manufacturing amphibious landing vehicles during World War II. However, the reason FMC is on this list is the company’s interest in lithium.
FMC had been involved in lithium production for 40 years, long before lithium ion batteries were invented. However, that line of business suddenly became very interesting (and profitable) as EVs began to generate demand for lithium ion batteries. In 2018, FMC spun off its lithium business as Livent (also on this list of battery stocks).
The two companies still maintain ties at the leadership level, but FMC itself is no longer in the lithium business. Regardless of that, FMC stock is still worth watching. It has been in growth mode for most of this century, especially since 2016. Even in a tough year, FMC has posted respectable 21% growth so far in 2020.
Lithium Americas (LAC)
Lithium Americas is a Canadian lithium mining company. The catch with LAC is that its two massive lithium brine projects (one in Argentina and the other in Nevada) are still in the development phase. When they enter production, that is going to be a big deal. The Argentina deposit is considered the world’s third largest and LAC estimates it will be in production for 40 years once operational.
Lithium Americas investors have had a rough ride this fall. LAC stock plummeted 42% over three weeks in October. This was probably a case of profit-taking, in which case LAC is looking rather tempting.
Livent (LTHM)
Livent is focused on innovation based on the use of lithium. A big part of that is lithium ion battery production for EVs, as well as consumer electronics, medical gear and household applications.
So when it comes to battery stocks, Livent is a company that should be on your radar.
Part of the appeal of LTHM stock is that it offers the big upside that comes with its involvement in the EV battery rush. But LTHM also has a buffer in case that market unexpectedly hits a speed bump. The company’s light weight lithium metal products are used in the aerospace industry and have military applications as well. Livent also produces lithium lubricants. Its lithium-based polymers are used to manufacture “green” products like fuel efficient car tires and modified asphalt.
Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM)
Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (let’s stick with SQM) also lays claim to being the world’s largest producer of lithium. As a by-product of its lithium brine operation, SQM also produces nitrate (which is used in fertilizer) and iodine (used primarily for X-Ray media).
With lithium demand up and expected to continue increasing as EV makers ramp up production, SQM is planning to increase production capacity. In its third-quarter earnings report, the company’s CEO told investors: “I’m happy to announce that today the Board approved expanding our lithium capacity even further in order to reach 180,000 and 30,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide respectively by 2023.”
SQM stock has been subject to big swings over the past 15 years, but with EV stocks taking off it is up 78% so far in 2020.
Vale (VALE)
Brazil’s Vale SA is the world’s largest producer of nickel, including large operations in Canada. So why would a nickel producer be included in a list of battery stocks when everyone knows lithium is the secret sauce in these things?
The answer is that lithium actually makes up a small percentage of the material used in most lithium ion batteries. The latest versions of lithium ion batteries used by EVs actually contain up to 60% nickel. Because nickel is more common than cobalt (another key metal used in these batteries), “[r]esearchers are working on pushing nickel up to 80%” for next-generation EV batteries.
Rising demand for EV batteries isn’t just going to increase demand for lithium, it’s going to push up demand for nickel. VALE stock is going to see the benefit from that demand.
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>>> 3 Lithium Stocks Getting a Boost from a Biden Presidency
Investor Place
by Ian Cooper
December 11, 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-lithium-stocks-getting-boost-175713610.html
Thanks to the electric vehicle boom and Joe Biden, lithium stocks have been explosive.
For one, Joe Biden seems to want far more EVs on the road.
In fact, Biden’s web site noted, “There are now one million electric vehicles on the road in the United States. But a key barrier to further deployment of these greenhouse-gas reducing vehicles is the lack of charging stations and coordination across all levels of government. As President, Biden will work with our nation’s governors and mayors to support the deployment of more than 500,000 new public charging outlets by the end of 2030.”
Two, there is substantial demand for electric vehicles now – and likely in the future. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, just signed an executive order banning the sale of gasoline-powered passenger cars in the state starting in 2035.
Three, “Forty percent of the company’s U.S. entries will be battery electric vehicles by the end of 2025. Barra also announced an increase in GM’s financial commitment to EVs and AVs today to $27 billion through 2025 – up from the $20 billion planned before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to General Motors’ Chairman and CEO Mary Barra.
However, for any of that to happen, the world must have far more lithium supply.
Over the next four years, demand is expected to more than double, as the production of EV batteries gears up for big growth, as reported by Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly.
That being said, here are three of the top lithium stocks to consider:
Global X Lithium & Battery Technology ETF (NYSEARCA:LIT)
Albemarle Corp. (NYSE:ALB)
Lithium Americas Corp. (NYSE:LAC)
Lithium Stocks: Global X Lithium & Battery Technology ETF (LIT)
One of the best ways to diversify your EV portfolio is with an ETF, such as LIT. The Global X Lithium & Battery Tech ETF invests in the full lithium cycle, from mining and refining the metal, through battery production, says Global X.
Not only does this ETF give investors exposure to lithium and battery stocks, such as Albemarle Corp., LG Chem, Samsung, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), BYD Co. (OTCMKTS:BYDDF), and Panasonic Corp. (OTCMKTS:PCRFY), it does so at less cost. For example, if you were to buy 10 shares of every listed stock, it would cost thousands of dollars. But with this ETF you can gain exposure at just $54.50 a share.
Albemarle Corp. (ALB)
The last time I weighed in on Albemarle, I noted it could run to $100, near term, “given the likelihood of higher demand.” But ALB did better than that, running to a recent high of $140.84 a share. From here, I strongly believe it could run to $180.
All thanks again to exceptional lithium demand. The lithium market could benefit from a Joe Biden victory, noted Albemarle Corp. CEO Kent Masters, as quoted by Bloomberg. “There’s the incentives, and the emphasis that’s put on electrification and EVs around that. The market side of it would be more favorable with Biden.”
Lithium Americas Corp. (LAC)
Lithium Americas Corp. operates as a resource company in the United States, with interests in the Cauchari-Olaroz Project in Jujuy province of Argentina and owns a 100% interest in the Thacker Pass lithium project in northwestern Nevada.
When I last mentioned LAC on July 21, I said it could run to $10, near-term. It’s now up to $10.40 and could easily run higher with lithium demand surging. Helping, the company just got final approval for its Nevada lithium project, with full federal permitting expected by early 2021. Plus, according to Reuters, “Lithium Americas has said it plans to spend $400 million on the first phase of its Thacker Pass project with output of 20,000 tonnes of lithium annually. The mine is expected to open by 2023.”
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Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd Class A | 300750 | 7.50% |
Tesla Inc | TSLA | 6.65% |
BHP Group Ltd ADR | BHP.AX | 6.12% |
BYD Co Ltd Class H | 01211 | 4.48% |
NIO Inc ADR | NIO | 4.12% |
LG Chem Ltd | 051910.KS | 3.41% |
Glencore PLC | GLEN | 3.33% |
Mining and Metallurgical Company NORILSK NICKEL PJSC ADR | MNOD | 3.30% |
Samsung SDI Co Ltd | 006400.KS | 2.60% |
EVE Energy Co Ltd | 300014 | 2.18% |
Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Albemarle Corp | ALB | 13.06% |
EVE Energy Co Ltd | 300014 | 6.47% |
Ganfeng Lithium Co Ltd | 002460 | 5.57% |
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd Class A | 300750 | 5.47% |
Yunnan Energy New Material Co Ltd A | 002812 | 5.19% |
Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment Co Ltd A | 300450 | 4.65% |
BYD Co Ltd Class H | 01211 | 4.39% |
LG Chem Ltd | 051910.KS | 4.04% |
Samsung SDI Co Ltd | 006400.KS | 4.02% |
Mineral Resources Ltd | MIN.AX | 3.88% |
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