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Australia’s Pilbara
Minerals said on Wednesday that customer orders for its lithium remained strong
and prices may have bottomed after the exit of higher cost suppliers this year.
The country’s
biggest pure-play lithium miner said it had posted a 58% jump in June quarter
revenue from March due to an increase in sales volume and average realized
prices as it reported its quarterly production.
Revenue jumped to A$305 million ($201.64
million) for the three months ended June 30, compared to A$192 million in the
March quarter and it said it expects higher production in the current 2025
financial year.
“We continue to see strong demand from all
our major customers,” Pilbara Minerals CEO Dale
Henderson told an analyst briefing.
“It is incredibly hard to predict what is
the bottom for the market, however I do take a lot of comfort from the fact
that we have seen other supply sources come out of the market in the March
quarter,” he added.
High-cost supply closures included
lepidolite production in China and Africa and some Australian output, he added.
Prices for lithium raw material spodumene
are trading close to three-year lows at $970 per metric ton.
With no recovery in sight, lithium prices
force miners to reevaluate output
Pilbara Minerals shares were up 0.9% on
Wednesday in a downbeat Australian lithium sector.
Broadly, some “doomsday
headlines don’t reconcile with the broadly strong
growth market,” Henderson said.
In particular, lithium demand from energy
storage systems, such as those that back up solar arrays, is growing fast from
a low base, and has the potential to be a “sleeping
giant” for consumption, he added.
Pilbara Minerals said it expected output in
the current financial year of between 800,000 to 840,000 metric tons of
spodumene concentrate, up from 725,300 tons in the 12 months ended June 30.
It attributed the production forecast to a
further increase in capacity from two major brownfields expansion projects
being brought online.
In the June quarter, sales of spodumene
concentrate jumped 43% to 235,800 tons, the company said.
($1 = 1.5126 Australian dollars)