It's Redwood that we are interested in. The other three, Climeworks, Solugen and Sila Nanotechnologies may or may not make it but Redwood seems to be a possible fortune builder.
From Barron's, December 13:
It has been a disastrous year for clean-energy stocks, with higher interest rates battering profits. Share prices for almost every solar, wind, and hydrogen company—and several electric-vehicle makers—have fallen by double-digits.
But clean energy’s long-term trajectory is still angled sharply upward. A new generation of companies, undaunted by the current challenges, is moving toward the public markets just as the world begins pouring real money into the energy transition—more than $1.7 trillion this year alone.
Because the transition represents a stark change with plenty of unproven technologies, these companies all come with high risks—but also potentially high returns. It isn’t often that investors can place bets on a sea change in the gargantuan world of energy. There are dozens of promising clean-energy companies, but only a handful with the necessary size for public markets.
“Just because your technology works, it’s meaningless in the energy industry,” says Gene Berdichevsky, CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies, an electric-vehicle battery company. “It’s amazing the scale that it takes just to get in the game.”
With that in mind, it’s worth considering the small group of companies—Sila among them—that have broken out of the pack and could go public in the next couple of years, most with valuations of more than $1 billion. They were born from lab work and garage-tinkering. Now they’re the new energy unicorns.
Redwood Materials
New battery manufacturing plants are popping up all over the U.S., helped by the Inflation Reduction Act. But the materials that go into batteries are in short supply domestically, and recycling scrapped products will be a key way to replenish those materials.Redwood Materials, based in Carson City, Nev., is a significant player in the battery-recycling industry. Redwood was founded by JB Straubel, the former chief technology officer and co-founder of Tesla . It has already inked deals with Toyota Motor , Volkswagen , and Panasonic to recycle battery materials. It even recycles some lithium-powered Amazon.com products. By 2025, the company aims to produce enough anode and cathode material to power one million electric vehicles. By 2030, its goal is to make five times that much.
Redwood is a leader in the nascent industry, because it has a factory already up and running, notes TD Cowen analyst Jeffrey Osborne. That facility recycles material from the Panasonic gigafactory, which builds batteries for Tesla, and other partners. The company got a loan from the Department of Energy to expand its Nevada operations and is building a new factory in South Carolina.
Redwood plans to build “circular” factories that take used material from electric-vehicle makers and process it into parts that can be used in new cars. Toyota announced a deal in November where it will pay Redwood to take material from old electric and hybrid vehicles like the Prius and turn them into cathodes and other items for Toyota’s new EV factories. Cathodes are the most valuable part of the battery, making up about half its value. Right now, there’s almost no cathode manufacturing in the U.S., so auto makers are scrambling to secure as much domestic content as possible. Localizing the supply chain is “central to our mission,” says Jason Thompson, Redwood’s CFO.
Redwood’s business plan isn’t without risk. Competitor Li-Cycle Holdings halted work on a factory in upstate New York in October, and its stock has tumbled 85% this year. Redwood faced some supply disruptions during Covid, but otherwise its capital plan is moving forward on schedule, Thompson says. It helps that top executives worked at Tesla, and are no strangers to obstacles: “We’re fortunate to have that kind of capability on our team.”
Climeworks
Replacing fossil-fuel energy with cleaner alternatives will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But even a world where every car is an electric vehicle won’t be carbon-free. To reach climate goals, it will be necessary to remove existing carbon from the air. Climeworks is focusing on that goal. “You can think of us as sort of a last-mile provider to net zero,” Climeworks CFO Andreas Aepli tells Barron’s....
....MUCH MORE
Also at Barron's, December 15: "Electric-Vehicle Stocks Have Gotten Slammed. What Investors Should Do Now."
Recent posts on Redwood Materials:- "EV Battery Recyclers Redwood Materials Raised Over $1 Billion"
- Battery Recycler Redwood Materials Will Have 5 Million Square Feet Under Roof At Its Nevada Campus
- Tech/Manufacturing/Business: "J.B. Straubel talks Tesla, Redwood Materials and keeping a startup mentality at any scale"
As we noted in a 2021 Redwood Materials post, "Watch Out Umicore: Ford partners with battery recycling and materials startup Redwood Materials":
Straubel was more than just Chief Technical Officer at Tesla. He was part of the company's founding team and more than anyone got the batteries and gigafactory into mass production.Which may explain the Go Big or Go Home approach to industrial facilities.
