ORE.AX - Orocobre Limited

[perulv]

This Australian company is also listed on the Toronto exchange (ORL.TO), and according to their own website "is building a substantial Argentine based industrial chemicals company through its portfolio of lithium, potash and boron assets."

 

I discovered the company while looking into SQM,  in this thread, and don't know much about it yet. For some reason, perhaps Australian regulations, only their're full and half year reports include detailed financial information. The company is 15% owned by Toyota Tsusho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Tsusho)

 

It seems the company only started making a profit a couple of years ago. But as far as I can tell, they did make a decent profit in the last half year reported (https://www.orocobre.com/wp/?mdocs-file=5389), and has almost no debt. The stock price is way down from the high in early 2018, the same as other lithium-stocks, I guess due to the over-supply and falling prices of lithium discussed in the thread mentioned above. The stock seems heavily shorted, https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/10-most-shorted-shares-asx-221932562.html.

 

I like that the company has no debt (I might actually be mistaken about this, the debt seems to be in a project-company (https://www.orocobre.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Olaroz-Investment-Figure_Full-Size.jpg) , and seem to be genuinely into sustainability.  On the other hand, it is hard to know if the sustainability-concerns are more than a paper-exercise, and I have no knowledge of the potential issues of operating in Argentina (currency, political etc).

 

Is anyone here familiar with the company, or have thoughts or insights? I am looking at this as an alternative to the two bigger companies SQM and ALB. Same industry (at least the lithium-part), different countries and a much younger and smaller company. 

 

Edit: this study, although not very comprehensive, at least gives some indication that their CSR efforts are not only "on paper": http://www.undergraduatelibrary.org/2017/lithium-mining-argentina-does-good-csr-result-positive-community-perceptions

 

Edit2: Argentina imposed an export-tax last year, which can further explain the drop in stock-price (and earnings):  https://stockhead.com.au/resources/barry-fitzgerald-here-are-the-winners-and-losers-from-argentinas-lithium-tax/

 

Argentina added export-tax, and Chile added royalties

 

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