Albemarle Corporation (ALB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. It's a pleasure to kick off the conference with Albemarle and specifically with Neal Sheorey. I've known him a long time. He's been with Albemarle not quite 2 years and it's been very clear, he's shaking the tree pretty hard at Albemarle. I mean they have plenty of challenges in what he's accomplishing there with cost cutting is amazing. Neal has had a 20-year career at Dow. And so we -- he covered a lot of territory in Dow. We've known him a long time. He's been terrific. He's been at this conference multiple times. It's glad to have him back and I'll kick it over to Rock to lead the Q&A. Go ahead.

Thanks, Steve. I appreciate Neal, you being here for this chat, looking forward to it. I would just love to get a quick overview to start of your assets and near-term outlook.

Yes, sure. Rock, thank you. Good morning. Thanks to BofA for having us here today. So a couple of things. First of all, we're very proud at Albemarle for the durable competitive advantages that we have as a company. We obviously start that -- all of that starts with our high-quality, low-cost resources that we have around the world, whether that's our brine assets in Chile or our hard rock assets in Australia. And obviously, we are very much tied to some strong growth drivers that we'll -- I'm sure we'll talk about over the next few minutes. We saw that last year, the lithium market continues to grow at 20% plus. That's kind of our near-term assumption as well. And then as Steve kind of highlighted, right now, as a company, we're really focused on what I call the 4 Cs. So cost, capital and cash conversion. those are really the core things that we need to be focused on, especially right now at the sort of bottom of the trough of the cycle. In terms of our near-term expectations, look, I think we're working on an updated supply-demand forecast that we'll provide with our first quarter earnings, but I don't think you're going to be too surprised. We're going to continue to say that we see a very strong secular growth trend that's happening, particularly in energy storage, where we do expect growth that's going to be in that high teens, 20% kind of level globally, really driven by China and the trends that are happening in China. And then not to discount what's happening in our specialties business, which continues to grow above GDP, usually 1.5 to 2x GDP, and that's kind of the growth rate that we've seen there. Maybe I'll stop there, and we -- I'm sure we'll get into some other supply-demand fundamentals.

Definitely. I appreciate the background there. One kind of hot topic of kind of starting late last year, has just been the impact of Trump's election, now Trump's presidency. Just wondering what impact do you foresee on both the lithium market and Albemarle specifically? And can you discuss Albemarle's long-term vision for its China-based operations given evolving policy risks, market demand and geopolitical factors?

Okay. Yes. I mean, interesting times for sure. At this point, I'd say we are still examining what is right now just some words that are coming out of the administration. And those words are generally seemed to be positive or at least headed in a way that is supportive of critical minerals and lithium. Obviously, the Trump administration coming out and saying that they aspire for the U.S. to be the largest producer and processor of critical minerals is a good sign for lithium. Lithium is obviously a very key component of that. But it's a little early right now to see how that's going to manifest itself. And I think one of the key things that -- one of the key points that we make within the industry and of course, with the government as well, is that to have a successful really supply chain around critical minerals, it's not just our part of the value chain. Of course, I want to see -- and I welcome the help to build out that supply chain in the U.S. for us. But we also need the battery materials, the cathode materials as well to really truly build out that supply chain. What I like about Albemarle's position is that we are the only U.S.-based company that has gone from the resource, whether that's the mine or the brine all the way to market, and we've done that all with domestic production. So we have the capability. We know how to do it. We welcome the opportunity to do it. Obviously, in today's pricing environment, those economics don't make sense. And so we obviously have to see a different equation there for us to invest into that trend. What was the second part of your question was around China?

Yes. Any kind of thoughts around how you position China given some policy risks?

Yes. Right now, we're very happy with our position in China. We obviously -- at the moment, we have 4 facilities. We just recently announced that one of those facilities will put into care and maintenance in the middle of this year or by the middle of this year. Those assets stand up on their own and compete extremely well in the China market. But from a people and technology sort of perspective, we have the people and the technology that we can deploy inside and outside of China. So at the moment, I don't see any restrictions to our ability to operate. We are a very trusted operator in China, very well known in the lithium industry there. And like I said, we have assets that compete very well in the industry as well.

Just going off of the Chengdu care and maintenance decision. Just wondering kind of what factors led to that and what could potentially trigger its restart in terms of pricing levels?

Yes. Just to put in perspective, our Chengdu facility, that's the one that we announced just recently, we would put into care and maintenance by the middle of this year. The main reason for why we did this is market conditions. That Chengdu facility is a lithium hydroxide plant. And obviously, the demand around lithium carbonate right now is particularly strong. And so what we found with Chengdu is, number one, because it's relatively small, it's only about 5,000 kt. And therefore, it's got some cost competitiveness -- relative to our other assets, it's not as cost competitive as the other assets. It's relatively small in scale. It's fairly old as well. So for all of those reasons, that lithium hydroxide capacity, we can move to our other assets in our network, some of which are ramping up right now. And that gives us the flexibility within our network, and we can take that asset out and put it into care and maintenance. In terms of starting it back up, I'd say, Rock, at this point, for all the factors that I just mentioned, it's age, it's relatively small size. I'm not going to say never, but I think it would be a long time before we took -- thought about putting that plant and bringing it back online.

Makes sense. Just given your recent earnings presentation, the 3 different kind of pricing scenarios, obviously, you guys ended the year with kind of market prices roughly $9 per kg of lithium carbonate. Now China spot is around $10.4. Just wondering if you think this recovery is likely to be sustained? And how do you assess the likelihood more broadly of those 3 different pricing scenarios?

Yes. So on the pricing scenarios, probably the most important thing I can say is we don't aspire to call the lithium price. If we did, we would have been very wrong for the last 2, 3 years, up and down. What we are trying to do with those modeling scenarios is just give investors an idea of what the company will earn at 3, at least recently observed market prices. And the $9 case, for example, is sort of where we ended at the end of last year. It's basically the pricing that we experienced now. $12 to $15 was the average that we achieved in 2024 and then the $20 case is one that we observed in recent times, in the last couple of years. So in terms of the recovery in pricing, it's been a modest recovery in pricing at this point. And really, the way I think about it is pricing has sort of moved sideways for now at least the last 8 to 9 months, and we sort of have settled out here. This is not necessarily a surprising range for us to settle out at. If you take a non-integrated spod producer in -- or spod converter in China, take the current spot price today, today's lithium salt price is about where they have breakeven economics, maybe slightly negative economics. So it doesn't surprise me that we're hanging out there at the moment. In terms of where pricing goes from now, it's a little bit of anyone's guess, but we are obviously in a moment now where we have more supply than demand. And so we're going to have to see either more curtailments that are going to have to happen. In our view, 25% of the cost curve is breakeven or underwater today. However, only about half of that 25% has shut down. So we do think that there is more capacity that needs to shut down in this kind of environment. And then from a demand standpoint, we already have extremely strong demand happening in China. Our anticipation is that will happen again this year. The real question mark is what's going to happen in the West. The United States -- for all the news we hear about EVs and so on, the United States actually grew mid-teens percentage last year. It wasn't the weak area. The weak area was Europe. And so when we think about Europe, the question is what is going to happen with emissions regulations there? Are those going to start to get some traction? And if so, we actually -- that could be a tailwind for Europe and then a tailwind for overall global demand. But for the moment, this industry continues to be largely driven by China and the trends that are there.

Understood. And just to get a better idea of, I guess, what those market prices correlate to for what Albemarle is realizing. Just wondering to what extent might you capture a premium to kind of those different pricing scenarios. And obviously, that's going to be set up by your shift -- or your mix between contracted price and spot price, and that's been shifting recently. I just want to get a little better of an idea around that.

Yes. With our last earnings, we gave, I'd say, a clarification around how our contract structure is across the company and particularly in our energy storage business. So we have a significant amount of our volume under contract period. About 50% of our volume is on, what we call, long-term agreements. Those are agreements when they're struck are anywhere from 2 to 5 years, and all of them have floors. And you should think about that volume primarily being outside of China. The other 50% of our volume, a lot of that is on contract, but it's on contract inside of China, which means that the contracts are probably at most 12 months or less, and they're generally tied to spot price. So that's -- we provided that clarification just to make it a little bit better, if you will, for modeling purposes. Now Rock, I think you asked about kind of premium to market price. So you will see that. And in fact, if you look at these modeling considerations that we have there, I think what a lot of investors have done is they've taken our volume guidance for the year. They've taken the revenue guidance that we've given and they've just divided revenue by volume. And you find that on a pricing basis, whether you're looking at -- in particular, if you're looking at the $9 scenario or the $12 to $15 scenario, the actualized price is going to be higher. That gives you a sense of the interaction of our floors and our overall book of business. You can imagine at these kinds of prices, yes, we have floors that are activated today. You saw that throughout 2024, as the price came down, and you see that also in our modeling considerations.

Understood. I think one key positive piece of information from your recent earnings cycle was just that you guys expect to be free cash flow breakeven in 2025, even if pricing doesn't recover from current levels. Just wondering what your level of confidence is in that and how that would, I guess, be achieved.

Yes. Look, I feel very confident about that. We have a great plan in place. We shared that with investors on the last call of how we get to cash flow -- free cash flow breakeven. I think that's a significant accomplishment for the company and how we've come together to do that. And the way you can see that is you can see that in our modeling considerations as well. So we gave you not only some guidance ranges around EBITDA, but we also gave some consideration around cash conversion, which we expect to be very strong this year as well as how we've dropped CapEx this year as well. So where I sit today, Rock, I feel very confident now we just need to execute and make sure that we deliver on all these plans that we've put out to the Street, but I feel very good about hitting that breakeven point this year.

One other area in your earnings has just -- I mean, for this cycle, the last one is just on your cost savings initiatives, whether that be the $300 million to $400 million of savings that you guys plan to achieve or the pretty significant CapEx cut that you guys are doing for 2025? For the latter, you guys have recently cut an additional $100 million. Just wondering kind of as we think about volume preliminarily, is the 15% 2022 to 2027, volume CAGR still achievable if investment levels remain low in the next couple of years? And further kind of post 2027, how should we think about volume growth as well as the CapEx required to achieve that?

Yes. So yes, let me -- maybe I think you said it right, and I want to repeat that, Rock, in terms of what our growth trajectory is on already right now. So we don't need new capital to achieve this growth trajectory. We've said that from 2022 to 2027, we expect a volumetric CAGR of about 15% a year on average. Now how that translates over the 5 years will, of course, change. It won't be 15% every year. Perfect example of that is that in 2023, we had 30% volume growth -- 30-plus percent volume growth. Last year, it was 26% volume growth. So we've already had 2 years above the average. So naturally, you can expect that as we march through to 2027, you'll sort of have a little bit of a normalization because as we get these plants ramped up, we get closer and closer to full rates. This year is a perfect example of that. We expect volume growth to be -- we said 0% to 10%. So at the midpoint, they're sort of mid to high single digits kind of volume growth. But to your point, this is based on assets and projects that we have already put in the ground that are in the process of ramping and will continue to ramp over the next 2, 3 years. So those are things, like the Salar yield improvement project that we have in Chile. That's -- our Meishan facility that we started up at the end of 2023, and it continues to ramp up very well. And then, of course, we have a Kemerton facility in Australia that continues to ramp up. So that trajectory is the one that we're on for the moment. In terms of the CapEx reductions that we're delivering now, they don't have any impact on that growth trajectory. So that is really a sign of us really peeling back and getting very sharp at -- looking at our CapEx spending, really thinking about what is the absolute necessary maintenance spending that we need to do. We do have a little bit of resource spending that we need to continue to pursue. And then you'll see in our CapEx buildup, we do -- we are still going after a little bit of productivity and a little bit of growth. But this is sort of, if you will, lower case G growth. So these are quick payback, high-return types of projects, really anchored around reducing costs in our manufacturing operations or squeezing out a little bit of additional capacity in a cheap debottleneck kind of way or even shifting capacity like we did -- like we are doing at one of our facilities in China. So you get that with this kind of reduced CapEx budget that we're on right now. I think the last part of your question, Rock, was around how to think about growth beyond '27? Look, there's a lot of things that we have to figure out with -- especially with the lithium industry, as we go forward. So absent sort of an incentive pricing that makes us want to think about some larger investments, we absolutely still have growth potential in our existing assets. In lithium, as an example, we've just built several new plants. And with any of these kinds of large plants, there's always an increment that you can go to for debottlenecking purposes. Yes, it will take some CapEx, but it's usually a relatively low amount of CapEx to debottleneck those kinds of plants. So those kinds of things are most certainly on offer in our network, and those are the kinds of things that we would pursue. And then the other part is in specialties. Again, I just have to highlight in specialties, we continue to grow at that 1.5% to 2% GDP level. So absent any new kind of large growth programs, I would expect the company to be sort of in that mid to high sort of single-digit type of growth rate just based on what we have in our network today.

Got it. And just with the broader trend in the industry of a lot of producers pushing back CapEx kind of -- and then with the demand story remaining at that 20% kind of long-term growth, just wondering if that gets us into the position where we're in a pretty sizable shortage. How do you guys think about kind of bringing capacity back on in a quick way? And kind of one specific area, I have to ask you about is just the Mega-Flex facility. That's one that has been recently paused, but would be able to take in kind of nontraditional lithium sources that could be kind of a way to catch up. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are there.

Yes. On the -- you're thinking about it right, Rock, that unfortunately, we're in a period right now where at least for Western-based suppliers, there is no pricing incentive to pursue large growth investments. And so for those reasons, you've seen ourselves, we've pulled back significantly on investments. You've seen others put mines in care and maintenance and other plans getting shelved. So for sure, there is a lot of plans that have been pulled back significantly and yet the industry continues to grow at 20% plus. So we might be -- yes, we might be headed toward a period where things get -- where those kind of come together and we get short again. I'm not going to maybe get out the crystal ball and predict that. But I see some of those kind of setups happening. Look, even if price were to inflect and even if it were to be a modest inflection, our posture right now is we're very happy with the growth trajectory that we've got, with the assets that we have, with the things that we're connected to. We're going to be patient, however, even in a price inflection moment. And the reason is, is that I think we all have learned a lot about this industry over the last 2 or 3 years. And just because price starts to move up, doesn't mean that it couldn't necessarily come right back down quickly because we have seen a pretty rapid supply response in different parts of the world. I think we need to be a lot more patient and really understand what are the drivers of any kind of price movement and if they are durable enough for us to invest in. In terms of the Mega-Flex, so just for reference, I think you're referring to the plant that we had planned in South Carolina. And so that has clearly been put on ice. We talked about that earlier in 2024 when we pulled back on several of our investments. This comment is really a comment around conversion, particularly in the West. If we wanted to build out a Western supply chain, and we do think things like our Kings Mountain mine in North Carolina and a potential Mega-Flex plant, if that's in South Carolina, those can be real linchpins of a Western supply chain. But a Western supply chain makes no sense at these kinds of pricing dynamics. And we've said pricing needs to be considerably higher. And of course, we need to have confidence that they will stay considerably higher than they are today for us to be able to invest in that. There's most definitely several cost factors that are much more expensive in the West than they would be in China. And of course, what I think about, too, is, are we going to have a really a full value chain that gets built out in the West. So you're talking about Mega-Flex, which gets us all the way to the lithium salts. The question is, am I still sending those lithium salts right back to China or to Asia, where they're converted into batteries or are we going to have that value chain built out here in the U.S.? And that remains to be seen. So that's just an example. It's not just pricing. There's several other factors that we need to understand before we sort of go after an investment like that.

Appreciate that clarity there. And at the same time, with the Western producers perhaps pushing back CapEx, cutting operations, you do have some recent news of Chinese producers bring capacity back on. Just wondering how you think this might impact the near-term pricing outlook as well as Albemarle's competitive position?

Yes. I don't think it's going to change necessarily our competitive position. I think on an absolute basis, we sit on the most attractive brine in the world. We sit on the most attractive hard rock in the world as well. So I think I feel very good about our resource competitiveness and our resource position. What's interesting about this particular case, I think you're probably referring to a CATL mine that went offline just a few months ago and then just recently came back up. What's interesting from our perspective is when we looked at this particular producer, our inclination was that this particular producer only -- or was primarily focused on looking at the economics through a battery lens. They were working on battery economics, of which lithium is a small component of those economics. And so frankly, a few months ago, when that mine came offline, we were surprised. That had us kind of scratching our heads a little bit. And so even in our own internal supply/demand modeling, we sort of haircut how long that mine would be down. We really didn't expect it to be down that long. And so when it came back up, that was the part that didn't surprise us. So that sort of made a little bit more sense to us. So, Rock, I would say probably everything came back together and started to make sense when that mine came back up. It seems to be driven by the kinds of economics that we expect. So it wasn't a huge surprise from our standpoint.

I see. Just given the cuts that have been made thus far for Albemarle regarding both, I guess, recent production, care maintenance and CapEx delays, wondering if lithium prices remain trough for even longer, are you able to still kind of healthily produce at these levels? Or might you consider kind of further lowering operating rates or delaying CapEx to signal unsustainable pricing to the broader industry?

Yes. I think the powerful thing that we got across to investors is that even in this low price environment, we can take the steps that we need to get our cost position into the right place to bring our CapEx down to sort of those minimum levels and to really get focused on cash conversion and make sure that we're generating the kind of free cash flow that at least gets us to breakeven, if not to positive at some point even in this kind of environment. So Rock, I feel really good about the trajectory we are on and the way that we are building the resilience of the company to operate at this kind of level. And even in this kind of environment, we are still going to at least grow for the next few years. And we have incremental growth projects that we can pursue after that. In terms of turning back our rates, look, that is very much going to be a case-by-case kind of situation. Like I mentioned, though, today, I feel very good about our assets. Even our assets in China, they are extremely competitive relative to what we see in the China dynamics. We have a healthy tolling market that we tap into in China. So we have a pretty good sense of what the typical Chinese producer can operate at. And when we stack that up against our assets, we feel really good about our assets as well. So I feel good about my position. And it's going to be -- sort of as you've seen from the company all year, it's a case-by-case basis. As the market dynamics change, we have different levers that we can pull, and we'll evaluate those.

Sure. Outside of CapEx, how is Albemarle thinking about capital allocation over the next couple of years?

Yes. There's 2 maybe that I'll put side by side in terms of the top importance. The first one is our dividends. We obviously have a preferred dividend that we're funding for the next couple of years until that preferred converts. And then we have our common dividend. We're very proud of our dividend aristocrat status and many, many years of having that dividend in place. So those are the 2. And then the second one that's equal priority is deleveraging. So obviously, our leverage has increased -- it's at a decent level right now, but it's increased quite quickly. We ended 2023 at less than 1x levered, and we then ended 1 year later at just about 2.5x levered. So obviously, we have a desire to look at our leverage and make sure that we're on a gross basis, delevering the balance sheet as well. So that's another piece that we'll be focused on. After that, I would say, look, if we have a little bit additional free cash flow, the next place that it will go to will be things like CapEx, expanding our CapEx slightly so that we can go after some additional productivity measures or growth measures that, quite frankly, in this environment, we've just pushed off. So there are things like that, that we may want to bring back into our arsenal and things that we would go after, but that's kind of how I would stack it up right now.

Understood. And then on the OpEx side, could you speak to the progress that Albemarle has made thus far with transitioning to a fully integrated functional model? And with Albemarle already achieving over 50% of the $300 million to $400 million cost savings goal by year-end '24, is there a potential upside to that savings target? What -- where could the incremental savings come from?

So just to -- 2024 was an active year for us and for the industry. And just to put it in perspective, you may all remember, in January of 2024, we announced the first cost-out measures, which was around about $100 million of cost out. Then in the middle of the year, we pulled the next lever, which is we had to make the painful decision to shut down some assets, stop construction on other things and demobilize some investments. That was the next step. And then we talked about doing a comprehensive look at our cost and our operating structure, which led to our announcement in the back end of last year to take out $300 million to $400 million of cost and go after some productivity actions. So I say -- all of that to say we've been moving very quickly and adjusting very quickly throughout 2024. For that reason, we moved very quickly after we announced that $300 million to $400 million. I don't want to make it sound like this was pleasant work. It's not, but it's the necessary thing that we needed to do in this environment. And for that reason, we hit the 50% run rate at the end of last year. So in terms of the range of what we have, the $300 million to $400 million, we have a plethora of actions that have already been actioned as well as others that we're going after to get into that range of $300 million to $400 million. I think the -- so I feel very confident in our ability to get into the -- somewhere in the middle of that range by the end of this year. We've said we'll be at 100% run rate on that $300 million to $400 million by the end of this year. The stretch, if you will, or the challenge that we're giving ourselves right now is how do we get to the top end of the range, the $400 million or maybe even higher. And it's not that we're without ideas. We have some ideas. Those are going to take a little bit maybe longer to do or there's a little bit more thinking that we have to do to get after that. But I think the key message I can share here is that we have a very long list of plans for sure, to get in the range of $300 million to $400 million. How we get to $400 million and higher, that's the work that's going on right now to create the additional list of actions and ideas.

I see. Shifting gears a bit. Are there any updates on technology advancements or innovations within Albemarle's processing capabilities that could potentially meaningfully improve cost efficiency or product quality?

There's -- as you mentioned that question, there's sort of 3 that pop to mind. There's not going to be all encompassing for everything going on in Albemarle, but maybe 3 to give you a sense of this. We take -- we talk -- you'll hear us as a company talk about process chemistry, process technology know-how. We take great pride in our ability to do that, particularly in the assets and the technology where we practice these kinds of things. So I'll give you an example. In Jordan, we mentioned this on our earnings call, we're going after a project that we call it Nebo. Nebo is a mountain in Jordan. So that's where the name came from. But what it is, is it's not necessarily a project that's going to push more pounds out of our joint venture in Jordan, but actually, it is going to really enhance productivity there and drive down costs. So it is a -- it's basically an integration project that's very unique to us, that allows us to take some waste streams and recover the bromine in the waste streams in a very energy-efficient way and essentially drive down costs even further at that site. That's just an example of sort of old-school process technology know-how and optimization that we're doing there. Another example is what we mentioned on the last earnings call, we have a very unique opportunity at one of our conversion plants in China that it was built this way actually. And so it's a capability we hadn't taken advantage of. That plant has the ability to go from hydroxide production to a little bit of carbonate production. And so what we identify -- what the team has identified is that for a very low CapEx spend -- And when I say very low, I'm saying single digits, millions of dollars -- low single digits, millions of dollars, we can implement this change. And because carbonate demand is so strong right now, that is something that made sense in this environment. So we're going after that. We actually think it should be a very fast payback kind of project. When it gets to its full potential, it could be as much as 10,000 tons of hydroxide that we can convert over into carbonate. So that's another perfect example of the teams kind of pulling out these different ideas of what we can do in this kind of environment. And maybe the last one that I'll talk about is DLE. That is obviously a hot area of research at the moment, as we think about future sources of lithium. We have 2 DLE pilots that are underway right now. One is in Arkansas over the Smackover Formation and the other one is in the Salar in Chile. And there's not a lot I can say at this point other than to say we are already in the early stages of these pilots. I mean the equipment is in place. We're literally beginning to bring material into these pilots. So we're starting to work around this. Not only are we using some third-party technology, but we actually have developed our own proprietary technology that we're testing there. So that's another example of where we brought together a lot of expertise in the company. Interestingly, a lot of bromine expertise that has come over on to thinking about a lithium problem. And so that's another example of something that hopefully, you'll hear about more and more as time goes on.

Understood. And I definitely appreciate the clarity on all 3 of those. Just going to the second one, I think you're talking about your Qinzhou asset. Just wondering if that carbonate mix could be kind of further increased beyond the 10,000 tons. And if this strategy, how easy would it be to potentially replicate in other downstream assets and kind of speak a little bit more about what allows the project to be so capital cost efficient to switch the output?

Yes. On that last point, I might have said it, but it -- the plant was built from the beginning with this potential ability thought about in the design. So it is really a very unique opportunity that we have at that Qinzhou plant. It's not to say that the technology couldn't be put in into some of our other plants, but the capital cost will be significantly more. The retrofitting will be quite a bit different. So this was a specific opportunity that we went after because it was sort of built into the asset, and that's what allowed it to be so cheap of an increment to go after. Can we get it above 10,000? We're just starting, Rock. So let me say this, 10,000 is already a good aspiration for the team to go after. We'll see what else we can do once we get it up and running. There's also -- I think, once we get up to a certain level also, we'll have to go back and look at permitting and other things that are involved to take the capacity even higher. So right now, our target is let's get it up and running as quickly as possible, test it out and then start to ramp towards that 10,000.

Understood. Just more broadly then, how do you think about kind of your mix between hydroxide and carbonate as well as kind of even more broadly than that, just your diversification, both geographically in terms of resource type and then just kind of upstream versus downstream?

Yes. Our goal has always been to have this sort of diverse mix of whether that's resource or product mix when it comes to salt. And I actually really like our geographic mix as well because it gives us multiple source points. And this is something that we hear from customers as well is that they appreciate the broad scale of our assets and capabilities and the way that we can flex across the portfolio. So when you think about us today, we are probably right around that 50-50 mix of hydroxide and carbonate. Obviously, coming out of Chile, we have a lot of carbonate coming out of Chile. China is primarily a hydroxide machine. However, remember that we always aspire to be a little bit long on resource, and we are long today on resource. And where we put that resource right now is into our extensive tolling network, and that's where we have the flexibility to shift between hydroxide and carbonate. Might not surprise people if I said that today, we've kind of shifted that tolling network more towards carbonate because of the strong demand that we see in the market. So that's the increment on the edge where we can actually flex with the market demands, and that's why we like to have that foot in the tolling market.

Understood. And just I think speaking about your being positioned, being able to be long in the upstream, a lot of that is likely attributed to your Greenbushes asset. I think it's definitely one of the much better assets in the market right now, just given the very low operating costs. So just wondering if you can speak a bit about this asset. And I know you had mentioned that 2025 assumes kind of a lower-than-usual dividend from that JV. Just wondering if you could provide any additional details on that expectation?

Yes. Well, Rock, you buried the lead there. I think the Greenbushes asset is by far the best spodumene asset in the world. It continues -- for those of you who see the data around it, continues to be just a really impressive asset even in these lower kind of spodumene prices. And we're obviously very happy with it, and it is a core part of our supply network. With regards to the cash coming off of the JV, yes, this year, we do expect dramatically lower dividends off of the JV. Not because the JV isn't delivering free cash flow? It is. Number one is we, of course, have lower spot prices. So that is going to impinge on their cash generation ability. But the other -- the real reason is that the large majority of the free cash flow in Talison is going towards an expansion or finishing up an expansion called CGP 3. That's about a 500,000 ton spot expansion that's going on right now. It should be done this year. We expect CGP 3 to be in start-up somewhere in the fourth quarter of this year and then ramping into 2026. So for those reasons, that's why the dividends are going to be lower. I'm not going to say the dividends are 0, but they're obviously going to be significantly less than the equity income that we're getting off of the Greenbushes JV. Obviously, that changes the picture when you go into 2026. The CGP investment will be done. And we're hopeful that the Greenbushes will then return to kind of a more normal kind of dividend return to all of the parents. One thing I can tell you is all of the parents, who have ownership of Greenbushes is very -- are all very interested in the long-term success of that mine, which includes dividends coming back to all the sponsors as well. So we're all unified and focused on making sure we're getting the most out of that mine.

Awesome. It's great to hear. Looks like we're just about out of time here. So I'd like to thank you for your time here.

Thanks very much. Appreciate it.