1) On the revenue side: Today’s V2O5 price = ~US$6/lb. Adjusted for inflation, does today’s $6 = 2016’s ~$5 or less?? It has already been almost 7 years since the following article: Where is the impact of VRFB on Vanadium prices? Vanadium prices are outside of Management control.
2) On the costs side: Largo’s vertiginous increase in costs since commercial independence is simply beyond imagination. Cost control is within Management control.
3) On the company's leadership : A subpar management team that is unable to deliver on the company's promises.
Three critical factors for a perfect storm!
More than 90% of Largo's market value have already been destroyed since commercial independence.
https://silverelef.com/the-vanadium-bull-500-and-one-vanadium-stock-that-few-talk-about/
The vanadium bull (500%) and one vanadium stock that few talk about
August 1, 2017 by John Lee, CFA (https://twitter.com/johnlee25893955?lang=en)
Roughly 8 months ago in December 2016, I published an article titled “Ride the Vanadium Wave After Lithium”.
In the article, I talked about vanadium redox flow batteries (VRB) which are ideal to store the electricity produced from solar and wind farms that struggle to sell their electricity at times of peak production; and compared to lithium-ion batteries, VRB are non-flammable, environmentally friendly, have estimated lifespans in excess of 10,000 cycles and maintain 90% of their capacity over 20 years.
In 2017, I have written an additional 3 articles about the virtues of vanadium batteries and vanadium’s potential upside for investors.
Today, July 31, the price of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), which is the proxy for the benchmark price measure for vanadium, reached US$12.4/lb, having more than doubled from US$5/lb at the time when I started covering vanadium 8 months ago. The price is up over 500% since January 2016.
I am not alone on my bullish vanadium stance,
In May Mr. Robert Friedland stated:
“We think there’s a revolution coming in vanadium redox flow batteries,” he says. “You’ll have to get into the mining business and produce ultra-pure vanadium electrolyte for those batteries on a massive scale.
We’re very deeply interested in how you store electrical energy in the grid.
The beauty of the vanadium redox battery is that you can charge and discharge it at the same time, something that can’t be done with a lithium battery. With a vanadium redox flow battery, you can put solar power and wind power into the battery, and you can put excess grid power into the battery at night, and at the same time you can have a stable output into the grid.”
In July at the Natural Resources Forum event at the London Stock Exchange, Robert Friedland was said to be
“in a Vanadium-induced ecstasy. Never could we have imagined the metal having such a euphoric effect. In any case it gave the Friedland imprimatur to a metal which most metals watchers have rarely paid any attention to due to it (largely) being a by-product of other mining and curiously of the petroleum refining industry.
It was not just Friedland though that has latched onto this bandwagon as we have heard vanadium name-checked at a number of recent events recently as the next best thing now that Lithium has somewhat done its dash with promoters overcooking the souffl.”
The logical question now is: where does vanadium go from here?
Consider the following
Demand Side:
According to Mark Gordon, Senior Resource Analyst, Breakaway Research
“The main use of vanadium is as a steel additive in high-strength steel, which accounts for about 92% of the current global demand of ~100,000t of contained vanadium (~180,000t V2O5 equivalent). The addition of just 0.2% vanadium to steel increases steel strength by up to 100% and reduces weight in relevant applications by up to 30%”.
As buildings are getting taller, the vanadium demand will only increase as China and other developing countries continue to upgrade building safety standards against earthquakes and floods.
Vanadium battery adoption is still in its infancy with less than 500MW (0.5 GW) of installed capacity globally while solar and wind energy combined capacity is at 550GW in 2016, up from 100GW in 2007. There is a lot of pent up demand for VRB, not even counting any future growth of wind and solar capacity.
Supply Side
According to Vanitec (www.vanitec.org), a vanadium industry support organisation,
“Titaniferous magnetite (titanium iron ore) is the most important source for vanadium presently accounting about 85% of the current world V2O5 production.”
I have not come across a credible vanadium analysis of the Chinese market, however based on various sources I gather China accounts for 60% to 80% of world vanadium production. About 20% of the annual Chinese vanadium production, or about 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of vanadium come as a by-product from small and medium-sized steel mills that are gross air and water polluters with low energy efficiencies and metal recoveries.
Articles at www.asianmetals.com and www.metalbulletin.com attributed the recent vanadium price run up to environmental inspections in China, whereby thousands of tonnes of vanadium supply were removed from the market in July because of facility shut downs or capacity reductions.
I wonder, why do they shut down plants during inspection? Are not inspectors required to collect air samples from chimneys and samples of solid and liquid discharged materials for analysis?
I estimated potentially 10% of global vanadium supply (or 20% of the Chinese vanadium supply) could disappear over the coming months due to permanent plant shut downs. Given the abundance of Chinese vanadium resources, new vanadium production will come on stream however ramp-up could take years considering time for permitting and construction. Suppliers will certainly charge a premium to pay for the new plants that adhere to environmental standards.
Overall, in the short and medium term, I see rising vanadium demand, and flat to possibly declining supply. Throw in a shrewd trader like Glencore plc which controls about 10% of the global vanadium supply, you certainly would not want to be on the short side.
At present time, there is no meaningful or declared vanadium inventory. Vanadium consumers without pre-existing relationship with a bonafide supplier are truly at the mercy of a handful of traders as they scramble for supply at present time at all costs to avoid disruption of their business.
A rising vanadium price makes for increased interest in miners that produce vanadium metal. The only vanadium mining company I know of that’s listed on US or Canadian stock exchanges is Largo Resources Ltd (“Largo”).
Largo’s Maracs Menchen mine is situated on a magnetite (iron ore) deposit. The vanadium grades are high compared to other similar magnetite deposits. However, the operating cost is also high as the vanadium ore (1%) is mixed with high iron (>45%) and other metals. Iron and other metals have to be separated and extracted out by several pyro-metallurgical steps (where vanadium is lost through each step) before the vanadium can be extracted at an overall combined low recovery rate.