Qomolangma in Tibet wants to increase the salt lake to extract lithium from the salt lake with an investment of 1.7 billion US dollars to test the company's financial skills.

With the continuous fermentation of the heat of the lithium electricity industry, many enterprises have increased the size to expand production. Recently, two salt lake development projects with a total investment of US $1.7 billion have been officially launched in Argentina by Mount Qomolangma (600338.SH) in Tibet. However, the reporter noted that for Mount Qomolangma in Tibet, which had revenue of 1.5 billion yuan in the first three quarters, the huge investment of 1.7 billion US dollars was not easy, and the company also issued a risk warning announcement.

"the scale of the company's project is staggering," an industry analyst told reporters. "the risks of the project are the technical difficulties of salt lake development, the backwardness of local infrastructure, the instability of policies, and the difficulties of raising huge amounts of funds."

In spite of this, there is still more confidence in the progress of the project within it. A person close to the company told the Financial Associated Press, "the project investment funds will be matched according to the project schedule through company self-financing, guaranteed financing, bank loans, non-public offering financing, and so on." And at present, the company's asset-liability ratio is only 32.22%, with good debt financing flexibility, non-ferrous metal mining business has also maintained high profitability, strong cash solvency. "

The reporter learned that the company's current monetary funds in the third quarter are only 103 million yuan, fixed assets 1.55 billion yuan, assets and liabilities a total of 1.25 billion yuan, and its asset-liability ratio shows a downward trend.

It is worth mentioning that as early as September this year, the company issued a plan to raise an additional 8 billion yuan for the company's expansion project. "at present, the relevant work is moving forward in a tense and orderly manner, and all projects have entered the implementation stage in accordance with the division of labor plan." For the implementation of the fund-raising plan, the above-mentioned person close to the company added to the reporter. The planned increase includes a $700 million project to build an Anheles Salt Lake with an annual production capacity of 50, 000 tons of lithium carbonate and a $15 million geological exploration project for Arizaro Salt Lake.

In addition, for its original annual production capacity of 2500 tons of lithium carbonate project, the company told reporters, "but due to the local epidemic, product sales stagnated." At present, the work of resuming production has been started in an all-round way. "

With regard to the market situation of lithium carbonate in the fourth quarter, the above industry analyst added to reporters, "due to the decline in the output efficiency of extracting lithium from salt lakes in Qinghai in winter, the production scale of the whole industry will decline to a certain extent. Lithium carbonate prices are still likely to rise again in the fourth quarter. At present, supply and demand is still tight, and the industry will be in a gap between supply and demand in the next two to three years. The gap between supply and demand is expected to be about 10% this year and 6% and 8% next year. "

According to SMM data, as of November 17, the average price of lithium carbonate (99.5% battery grade / domestic) has reached 197500 yuan per ton, approaching 200000 yuan. In addition, the research of CITIC Construction Investment Securities also pointed out that the lithium demand in 21-22 is expected to be 610000 tons and 800000 tons respectively, with a shortfall of 43000 tons and 57000 tons respectively. The permeability of new energy vehicles continues to exceed expectations, and the expansion rate of upstream lithium resources is difficult to meet the demand for downstream battery materials.