Albemarle Corporation (ALB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Let's kick off the app. Who's bored of gold, who's bored of base metals? This is about the critical minerals conference now, isn't it? I heard. Okay. So we're going to have a lot of critical minerals presentations today and tomorrow, and we're starting off now. And we're going to lead off with one of the giants in the space. So we have, of course, Albemarle, one of the leading and largest lithium producers in the world, also developing a plethora of global lithium projects, also has, I think, Bromine and Catalysts, is that right? I think Bromine and Catalysts. So we're going to have Kent Masters, CEO, come up and give a presentation. We'll have Q&A. We also have Scott and Eric from their management team. And please submit your questions on the app. You can also raise your hand, and we have a runner. But if you submit question on the app, I'll ask them for the Q&A. So Kent, let's go.

Okay. Good afternoon. Thanks, Joel, and thanks to BMO for hosting us today. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss Albemarle's role as a leading producer of critical elements for a lower carbon future. I haven't heard described this a plethora of projects before, but I kind of like that. As usual, today, we're going to be discussing some forward-looking statements. So the safe harbor language is on this slide and that same language applies to this presentation. We're also going to discuss some non-GAAP financial measures. You'll find a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP financial measures in the appendix of these slides. For those not familiar with Albemarle, we are a global leader in producing and transforming essential elements like lithium and bromine into critical ingredients for modern living. Our core businesses are energy storage and specialties. Energy storage, our largest and fastest-growing segment, is focused on the enormous opportunities around the transition to clean energy and clean transportation. I'm going to focus most of my time today on energy storage, but our specialty business is also a growth trajectory. And our Catalysts subsidiary, Ketjen, also represents significant value. In both the energy storage and specialties, our strengths in transforming essential resources give us outstanding opportunities across 4 transformative impact areas. First, mobility; from the battery and electric vehicles to the initiator for airbags, Albemarle is fundamental in the development of mobility products and solutions. Second, energy; from energy grid storage to the materials required for energy-efficient buildings neither would be possible without Albemarle. Third, connectivity; from the fire safety solutions to the protective glass on your cell phone, Albemarle makes connecting safer and more reliable. And fourth, health; Albemarle helps ensure the food we eat is safe, the water we drink is clean and the environment we live in is here to stay. So what can you expect to hear from us today? First, Albemarle is executing a clear strategy to accelerate growth and sustainability. Second, we'll talk about the durable, competitive advantages that distinguish Albemarle as a market leader and have enabled our solid track record of financial and operating performance. We'll discuss our lithium market outlook and what that means for Albemarle's own growth trajectory. And finally and most importantly, how Albemarle is fulfilling its purpose to make the world a more resilient, sustainable place. Now turning to Slide 6 for a look at our strategy. Albemarle has a proven, long-term strategy not just to maintain but to build our global leadership in both energy storage and specialties, and we continue to invest in both capacity and innovation to make this happen. Our strategy includes 4 elements: To grow profitably. We are expanding capacity today and partnering with market leaders to innovate next-generation materials and products. To maximize productivity. We are deploying our operating model. We call it the Albemarle way of excellence to build a strong foundation and a culture of excellence to grow well into the future. To invest with discipline. We are optimizing our portfolio and allocating capital to our highest-growth opportunities while still supporting our investment-grade credit rating and dividend. And to advance sustainability. We are building competitive advantage through industry-leading ESG performance and sharing those benefits with our partners and communities. The durable competitive advantages we bring to this moment include a diverse global portfolio of world-class resources and manufacturing facilities, industry-leading safety and sustainability performance, deep process technology and product applications knowledge and a strong balance sheet and financial flexibility to enable growth. We continue to build on these strengths and develop additional areas of competitive advantage. For example, we've developed expertise in capital projects execution. We've delivered capital projects on 5 continents, including during a global pandemic. In energy storage, our customer-centric collaboration includes partnerships across the value chain, including major cathode, battery and OEM customers. One of the added benefits of our move to indexed reference contracts has been to shift our commercial discussions from short-term pricing to long-term value creation around innovation and sustainability. These competitive advantages have enabled our strong financial and operating performance. In 2022, we delivered net sales of over $7 billion, up more than 2x the prior year and adjusted EBITDA of $3.4 billion, nearly 4x prior year. As we entered 2023, we are realizing the benefits of the deliberate, transformational steps and investments that we have taken to position Albemarle for substantial earnings growth. We anticipate our 2023 sales to be between $11.3 billion and $12.9 billion, up about 65% from prior year. As we've discussed, we had exceptional EBITDA margins in the fourth quarter of '22 of approximately 65%. We expect those margins to normalize in the mid- to high 40% range as we go forward. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to grow to $4.2 billion to $5.1 billion, up 45% year-over-year. And we intend to reach up to 600,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2030, and we are already well on the way. We've already increased nameplate capacity fivefold from 40,000 tons in 2015 to over 200,000 tons today. Turning to Slide 9 for a look at the lithium demand. The EV revolution is driving tremendous demand for lithium with EVs expected to grow from 14% of new car sales in '22 to nearly half of sales by 2030. In January, we increased our lithium demand forecast once again, primarily due to the higher expected EV production as well as stronger demand for other lithium-ion battery applications like grid and mobility. We expect 2030 lithium demand of 3.7 million tons, up 15% from our prior forecast. Our demand outlook reflects both the tremendous growth over the past year and accelerated future growth related to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. Recently, we have seen some moderation in demand, particularly in the Chinese spot market. Early indications are for January EV sales to be lower year-over-year in part due to the confluence of 3 factors: namely, seasonal weakness around the Lunar New Year, which happened completely in January this year; scheduled phasing out of national subsidies at the end of '22; and COVID-related shutdowns following that country's reopening. We expect this moderation to be short-lived with mid- and long-term demand expected to remain robust. We continue to expect Chinese EV sales to grow 40% year-over-year and that's an increase of about 3 million vehicles. If we apply normal seasonality to 2023 January EV sales in China that estimate appears to be easily attainable. Early indications are that both cathode, lithium inventory and battery inventory in China are continuing to decrease, which is also a good sign for lithium sales. Turning from demand to supply on Slide 10. By 2030, we see potential for supply deficits of as much as 20% of demand. The cost curve has continued to move up over the past several years with a huge variance in production costs from existing resources and new geographies or unconventional resources. Not only are many projects needed to come online but projects are trending toward higher cost resources. Long-term market price is upwards of more than $20 per kilogram are needed to incentivize projects in order to meet demand. Albemarle has a low-cost position, driven by access to some of the world's highest quality resources. For example, the Salar de Atacama in Chile and Greenbushes in Australia. Many new projects come online today are lower grade than those currently operating. And as you know, lower grade resources are generally higher cost and harder to process with larger emissions, water and energy footprints. New projects, especially greenfield integrated projects are taking a long time to bring to market. A brownfield expansion project may take 5-plus years to come online, greenfield expansions can take 10 to 15 years to come online. Not to mention the time required to produce battery-grade material. Difficulties include fluctuating commodity prices and funding risk, technical and exploration risk, community support, permitting challenges and long procurement lead times. This is where our vertical integration and world-class resource base gives us a major advantage. We have hard rock and brine resources on 3 continents. We also have a global network of lithium conversion sites with an unmatched track record in capital project execution and operation. Our highest return expansion potential is in our existing resource base, Greenbushes as an example. It's a large, high-grade resource with ample, long-term potential. Our strategy is to expand existing conventional resources like Greenbushes, Wodgina and Kings Mountain, while also investing in new resources like Magnolia in the United States and Antofalla in Argentina. And these sites are well positioned to benefit from moves toward localization with customers and governments looking for secure supplies to reduce economic and geopolitical risks. Albemarle will continue to pursue new resource development, including additional technology and recycling capabilities. Our strategy includes potential M&A where appropriate. We have the balance sheet to make these investments to help fill resource gaps, feed our conversion assets and sustain our leadership position in lithium. Turning from resources to conversion capacity. As I mentioned, we expect to nearly triple conversion capacity from our current 225,000 tons to an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 tons of qualified, reliable capacity by 2030. This is about 15% higher than our previous target as we build our capital project capabilities and move projects forward in our pipeline. As a global producer, we intend to remain diversified across major markets and product types. In China, we are building a new lithium conversion plant at Meishan and have opportunities for expansion at Qinzhou. The formalizing of our agreement with [ MRL ] in China supports these opportunities. We also have expansion plans in free trade agreement countries like Chile and Australia that increase our share of IRA-compliant materials. Finally and importantly, we plan to localize conversion capacity for the growing U.S. and European demand. This allows us in the U.S. to be a strong player in meeting IRA-compliant needs and in Europe to meet EU critical mineral requirements. We are now finalizing our site selection process for our mega-flex lithium conversion facility in the Southeastern United States. Now you can see why we are projecting such transformational growth for our energy storage business over the next 5 years. Our investments in resources and conversion capacity are paying off as we ramp up production and sales. And Slide 13 takes that capacity to growth and turns it into expected production. As a reminder, we plan for about a 2-year production ramp for new conversion capacity. In 2022, our lithium production was up more than 20%. This year, we expect our lithium volumes to be up at least 30%. Over the next 5 years, we will continue to ramp production in Chile, China, Australia and the United States. We anticipate a 20% to 30% CAGR between now and 2027. All told, we expect to nearly triple sales volumes to more than 300,000 tons. Our accelerated investments should allow us to grow with the market and maintain our leadership position. We've recently revisited and refreshed our corporate purpose to enable a more resilient world. EVs are essential to the transition to clean transportation and the fight against climate change. That's because an EV can significantly lower carbon footprint more than a combustion vehicle. Researchers at Argonne National Labs established emissions both for a gasoline car and an EV with a 300-mile electric range. While greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and end of life are higher for the EV, the total emissions are about half those of a gasoline vehicle. As a result, we estimate that electrification of the vehicle fleet would avoid over 2 gigatons of carbon emissions per year by 2050. Bringing it closer to home, we project every 1 kilogram of greenhouse gas emitted by an Albemarle lithium production site enables the avoidance of more than 50 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions per year over the life of an EV. During my tenure as CEO, we've increased our focus on improving sustainability. In 2022, we expanded our role with the UN Global Compact by signing the CEO Water Mandate. By partnering with the UN Global Compact, we aim to proactively identify and manage business risk, realize cost savings through water use efficiency and honor our sustainability commitments. This past year, we also continue to work with IRMA, The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, by completing our first third-party audit at the Salar de Atacama in Chile. We are currently reviewing these audit results together with IRMA and plan to announce those results later this year. In 2022, we received our initial scores from CDP for climate and water. And just last month, we announced our inclusion in Bloomberg's Gender Equality Index for the fourth consecutive year. We are proud to take these steps toward greater transparency, and we'll continue to work to improve performance over time. In summary, Albemarle is a global market leader in resources that are essential ingredients for a sustainable future. We expect to see strong growth in 2023 across all 3 of our businesses. We are leveraging our competitive advantages and creating new ones to ensure long-term value creation. We have a tremendous growth opportunity in electric vehicles, but it's more than just EVs. We are prepared to grow across multiple areas, including mobility, energy, connectivity and health. And we're executing the strategy and implementing our operating model to take advantage of transformational growth. Thank you. I think Joel, you will facilitate the Q&A.

I will. Okay. A couple of questions on the app, and I'll combine some ideas. So lithium prices have been falling. Spot price has been falling for, I don't know, 3, 4 months now. It has continued. There's lots of data points out there. It feels like inventory built up maybe across late '22 before subsidies dropped of parts of the battery supply chain, capital supply chain. How do you think lithium prices play out in the next few months? And then the headlines we saw or the stories we saw about CATL maybe 10 or 11 days ago about maybe trying to set up lithium price internally or domestically later on. How does that play into what's going on. Maybe Eric's going to...

Yes. So let me start. Eric can add a little detail to that. So we see it a little differently, right? So I don't think inventory has been building for months. And actually, we see inventories of lithium in the -- across the supply chain being about where they were the last half of last year, which are historically very low levels. But they've moved around in the supply chain moving back toward the material producers. And then the subsidies that came off at the end of the year that's been planned for quite some time, and we would expect to see volume -- EV sales drawn forward into December. So January would be slow naturally. Seasonally, it's slow. We had COVID lockdowns in early January. The Lunar New Year was all in January this year. So really, I mean, I kind of say we didn't have a January in China from a commercial perspective. So we're not surprised to see it slow down. Prices have responded to it in the last month of the spot prices. So that's a pretty small market, not one that we play in dramatically but the spot market is down. Those are kind of -- those are facts that we see. Our view is that, that market bounces back fairly quickly as demand in China picks up, and it remains tight. The whole supply chain remains tight. If the forecast for EV demand looks anything like what we project and we feel pretty confident in that. Eric, do you want to add something to that?

No. I mean I think you've covered it, Kent. The spot market has no January, really, as Kent said it, but the contracted volumes continues to progress and demand outside of China continues to be very strong. So we view this as a period of time of transition from reopening of an economy. And as Kent said, the projections we have really call for significant EV growth, and that's based upon actual investments, new models and the like being produced within China. And even though incentives rolled off, there's still a substantial number of incentives outside of the federally mandated incentives that are attractive.

So what were your views on the CATL kind of headlines in the last week and half about setting a price may be lower 30,000 ton, whatever it was, what were your views on that?

But we've seen action throughout the whole supply chain for -- to gain share, to improve economics to the consumer. You've seen Tesla cut prices, others follow at the OEM level. We've seen battery producers -- some of its public such as what CATL has announced, some of it is maybe not as obvious. But people are trying to drive costs down to improve the economics to the OEM level. Our view is that CATL is taking advantage of their integration position and using that to pass that benefit, that margin over their production in lithium, their internal production to help drive that share gain in the market locally. They did call out a lithium price as part of that, and that's clearly very obvious from their announcement, but it's really an attempt to gain share and to shore up that part of their business.

And I would just add, Eric, that we're looking at about 10% to 15% of CATL's volume of lithium consumption that they're doing this on, and that corresponds to about how much they're backward integrated into production in China. So really leveraging their internal profit pools to gain battery share.

Okay. So it's also been newsworthy, last week or 2 feels like is a lot of news around lepidolite in China, which may be the marginal cost. Maybe you can talk about first just high level, if that's going to be the marginal cost going forward for lithium, we think that's going to be. We've seen now some slowdowns in lepidolite production, lot of blurry information. Do you want to talk about that? Is that changing the dynamic? Could that help prices stop falling if lepidolite production has closed in some of the provinces?

Well, I think it's going to -- I mean it's all about supply demand, right? So if there's less supply, it's going to tighten the market quite a bit. And lepidolite's got to be unique to the Chinese market. So it would be interesting to see that had been stopped previously. They brought it back online. Now seems like they're stopping that again. So that will tighten the market. But we'll -- I think there's -- it's supply/demand and what happens in this particular period. I think January is going to -- it looks like, from our view, it's kind of extraordinary from some of the negative demand aspects about the stuff that we talked about, COVID, Lunar New Year, all in January. So I think the next month or 2 as to what happens will be very telling. But our view is the year is still on track for the EV demand and therefore, lithium sales in China.

And lepidolite is about 10% of the global market. So it's a meaningful shutdown depending on how long that lasts.

So I remember talking to the team sometime last -- early last year and you talked about just trying to get a little more leverage to the OEMs. I feel like it was maybe last spring. Now we're seeing -- I feel the OEMs really start to say, "Oh, wow, security of supply and all those fun expressions about lithium getting nervous." We're starting to see OEMs take some stakes in mining companies, mining projects. Maybe comment on that, do you see OEMs now maybe approaching you and want to small stakes in Albemarle and turning for offtake. Or what's the engagement like OEMs? How it changed the last 3 months, 6 months?

Yes. I think it's -- I mean, if you go back a couple of years, it's changed significantly. We've been engaging with them for some time, but it was at a lower level, it's become more senior. It's obviously become a more critical issue for OEMs. And we've been able to change the level at which we interact with those customers. So it's -- and they're investing significant amount of money in electric vehicles. So it's fair that they are concerned and making sure that they've got the resources and the materials to supply that. I won't talk about any conversations we've had with any of our customers about what we might be talking about or not. But you can see investments being made in the industry up and down the value chain and that will probably continue to happen. But I don't think the OEMs want to be fundamental in those resources. They want to make sure they can -- they have security of supply, and they're not disadvantaged.

So last week, it was really [indiscernible] about for long time, Min Res talking about a lot, you reorganized your MARBL or Wodgina JV with Min Res to where -- what they're taking a little more mining exposure on the JV, you're taking little more chemical conversion exposure and they're putting some money into some chemical plants in China, so far so good?

So far so good.

There's a lot of words in the press release. It's little complicated. But can you -- the motivation for that, was that really about Min Res wanting more exposure to mining? Is that about the difficulty of moving sulfuric acid into Port Hedland and complicated things like that? And just broadly if we need more conversion assets that can't be in China because that's not correct politically and it can't be in Australia because that's expensive. Where does conversion assets go?

Well, okay. So you pivoted there on the question. So the first 1 around MRL, let me clarify that first. So we had a 60-40 JV with MRL and we had control. And there were parts of that they wanted something a little different. We wanted something a little different. So we've gotten larger part of Kemerton, which is IRA-compliant material. So we like that. We've given up a little bit of product at the mine and then they're investing more into the Chinese conversion assets. So Wodgina product -- the plan, it could change, but the plan would be Wodgina product goes to China for conversion. Kemerton is fed by Greenbushes and that would be IRA-compliant material, and we have a larger piece of that. So it wasn't that complicated. There's a couple of -- it was a win-win. A couple of things we wanted, a couple of things they wanted. It took us a while to work that out, but we got there.

sorry to interrupt. Was there some -- about sulfuric acid moving into Port Hedland, is that some of it? Not at all? Okay. Sorry. Keep going.

That didn't come into the conversations. .

And just more broadly going forward about conversion assets, Australia, China, where else can they go if it's complicated in those places.

Yes, we'll see, right? I don't know exactly. I mean we have been saying for some time as Albemarle, we were pivoting towards the west. The lithium business and the battery business kind of grown up in China, the EV battery business. And now it's shifting outside of China towards the West, Europe, North America. Everyone wants to localize the supply chain to the extent possible. So those investments will move west. And the product will come from where the resources are, they will shift. So -- and it just depends. We can build conversion facilities cheaper and operate them cheaper in China, but there's some geopolitical risk about that, plus our customers want localized supply chain. So that's going to lean toward North America and Europe investments. We've got to work out the resource angle in Europe. North America, we think we got -- we've got options there, several options in North America. So we'll be investing there and trying to work out how we do Europe.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Joel.