Six months is a long time in the battery metals world. IGO’s (ASX: IGO) Ivan Vella might know this better than any presenter at Diggers & Dealers.
Mr Vella, a former long time Rio executive, acknowledged it was his first diggers, and what a year to front the auditorium.
Since taking the reins in December 2023, lithium prices have remained stubbornly low; and Indonesian laterites flooded the market, gutting the prices and throwing the metal’s long-term fundamentals into chaos.
“This is exciting, go easy on me,” he said.
When commodities cycle and spot prices swing, the value of a business and its share price are often misaligned. IGO is far from the only battery metals play feeling the pinch.
Despite set backs at the Kwinana hydroxide plant, Mr Vella remains confident IGO’s lithium arm, and that Greenbushes, with the backing of Albemarle and Tianqi, is the world class asset driving outstanding EBITDA, and the asset to beat the lithium bears.
At a thumb suck, Mr Vella said that by 2027 EV fundamentals will outperform their fossil fuel counterparts on all metrics – better product, cheaper product and, importantly, when the western world gets over its range anxiety.
Nickel, however, not so much…
“Nickel is a much more difficult story. It is a much more mature market and much more challenging at the moment,” he said.
“Indonesian laterites have fundamentally changed the supply. The cheaper the nickel is, the cheaper the stainless steel is.”
It should not come as a surprise, with the company last week moving to put Forrestania on care and maintenance – even as the asset approaches the end of the mine life cycle – and Cosmos in January.
