From Bloomberg via Canada's Financial Post, November 6:
The world’s No. 1 cobalt miner is sounding the alarm over the shrinking role of the metal in electric vehicle batteries.
Chinese company CMOC Group Ltd., which has been churning out cobalt much faster than rivals like Glencore Plc, said the importance of the raw material in the energy transition is declining rapidly.
The adoption of cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries has gained momentum in recent years, due to them being cheaper to manufacture. The proportion of EV batteries in China containing cobalt will drop to 31% in 2024, from 44% two years ago, according to consultancy CRU Group.
“We predict that EV batteries will never return to the era that relies on cobalt,” Zhou Xing, a spokesman for CMOC, said in an emailed response to questions. “Cobalt is far less important than imagined” and the proportion of batteries containing the metal may eventually drop to less than a tenth, he said.
CMOC’s bearish view of the market comes amid a glut of the metal that’s been largely created by the Chinese firm’s expansion of two huge copper-cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It smashed through its full-year output target in the first nine months of the year, helping to push down cobalt prices to the lowest level since 2016.
While the Chinese miner has been ramping up production, Glencore, which CMOC overtook as the biggest cobalt supplier last year, has cut output at its Mutanda asset in DRC.
Cobalt, which is also used in aerospace alloys and in the petrochemical industry, is often extracted as a by-product of digging up copper, and CMOC has been eager to mine more of the red metal as it’s bullish on it in the longer term. Hoarding cobalt to stem a decline in prices would be pricey due to the increase in expenses, such as for warehousing, according to Zhou.
“The global cobalt outlook looks bearish for next year: new, cheap metal refining capacity has come online in China and Indonesia,” said Thomas Matthews, battery materials analyst at CRU. Prices should be lower on average next year and will take a few years to recover, he said....
Oh we had fun with the blue one 2016 2018, but then Elon Musk started making noise about the cost of cobalt and the writing was on the wall. Some links below....
October 2024 - "China is Winning The Race for Ultra-Fast Charging EV Batteries"
Deep Dive: Iron Batteries Crushed The Demand For Cobalt, Reduced The Demand For Nickel
Watch Out Elon, Here Come The Iron Batteries (TSLA)
Tesla's Pivotal Move In Battery Chemistry (TSLA)
"What Tesla’s bet on iron-based batteries means for manufacturers" (TSLA)
"Tesla will only use iron-based batteries for standard model EVs" (TSLA)
Batteries: Lithium-Iron may be Competitive With Lithium-Cobalt
Platts' "Commodity Tracker: 5 charts to watch this week"
Batteries: ...The Race to Build Europe’s First Lithium-Iron-Phosphate Battery Gigafactory
Lithium-Iron, it's all anyone is talking about....
"Tesla in talks with China's EVE for low-cost battery supply deal -sources" TSLA)
Well I guessTony StarkElon Musk is now officially Iron Man.
October 2023 - "Cobalt's Unexpected Plunge Shocks Global Market"
June 2024 - Morgan Stanley Analyst Adam Jonas Writes A Love Letter To Tesla (TSLA)
A confession of bullish bias up front, from April 24's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":
In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.
Below are the words that are adding billions ($50+) to the company's valuation.
Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one....
....Quite a few speculators greet each attempt by the Chinese government to pump liquidity into the economy as a reason to drag out the 2010 playbook.
But things change and if your thinking doesn't also change, you can get terribly surprised.More succinctly (and more rhyme-y) the old Turkish proverb:
