The bottom in lithium commodity price appears to be in. That has Wall Street a lot more bullish on lithium mining stocks.
UBS analyst Joshua Spector upgraded shares of lithium miner
Albemarle
(ticker: ALB) to Buy from Hold on Thursday. His price target went to $225 a share from $196.
Benchmark lithium prices are rising again, making it a good time to add shares, he said, adding that
Albemarle
is the best “growth opportunity” in his chemicals coverage.
Albemarle sales are expected to grow at about 12% a year on average between 2022 and 2025. The growth is driven by the rise of electric cars. The International Agency expects roughly 350 million EVs to be on global roads, up from roughly 25 million today. Those EVs need batteries and lithium is a key component.
Albemarle stock was up about 1.6% in premarket trading after Spector’s positive take.
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures were up 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively.
Premarket gains add to the stock’s recent run. Coming into Thursday trading, Albemarle shares are up about 20% over the past couple of weeks. The stock has picked up five new Buy ratings over that span, according to FactSet.
Rising commodity prices have been a catalyst for others on the Street, too. Benchmark lithium prices peaked at almost $90,000 a metric ton in November, they dropped below $24,000 in April and are now back above $33,000 a ton.
Spiking prices led battery makers to, essentially, stop buying and work off their own lithium inventories. That process is over, according to analysts. And new buying has lithium prices moving up.
With another upgrade, about 71% of analysts coving the stock rate shares Buy. That’s the highest Buy-rating ratio for Albemarle stock since 2018.
The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 53%. The average analyst price target for Albemarle stock is now about $264 a share.
Write to Al Root at [email protected]
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