[attention] attracting foreign investment to discuss the debt dilemma to postpone the trough of lithium hydroxide has passed the days and the lithium industry has ushered in spring?

SMM12 March 14: December 8, Tianqi Lithium Industry Co., Ltd. passed the "motion on the company's wholly-owned subsidiaries to increase capital and shares and the introduction of strategic investors."

According to the "Investment Agreement" to be signed and related agreements: the company's wholly-owned subsidiary Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia Pty Ltd (, the former wholly-owned subsidiary Tianqi UK Limited,2020, changed its name on December 6, 2000, referred to as "TLEA"). After the completion of the capital increase of the Australian listed company IGO Limited;, a strategic investor, 51% of the registered capital of TLEA is held by IGO Lithium Holdings Pty Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of IGO Lithium Holdings Pty Ltd, which holds 49% of the registered capital of TLEA.

Tianqi Lithium Industry said that if Tianqi Lithium Industry smoothly introduces IGO, next year, the goal of both sides in the future is to jointly manage TLEA. At present, the commissioning of the Quinana lithium hydroxide plant is progressing in an orderly manner and will be put into operation as soon as possible to reach production in the fourth quarter of 2022. From Tereson's point of view, the construction of the second phase of production expansion was completed in the second half of last year, and it is now in the process of capacity climbing, and there are three production expansion plans in the future.

The news caused heated discussion in the market. Everbright Securities believes that according to the three-quarter report, the non-current debt of Tianqi Lithium Industry within one year is 13.3 billion yuan (the maturing size of domestic syndicates is 1.3 billion US dollars, and the overseas scale is about 600 million US dollars). The introduction of Warfare Investment (about $1.2 billion used to repay debt) will effectively ease its debt dilemma, and the Australian lithium hydroxide project is expected to accelerate.

SMM believes that domestic prices of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide have passed the trough and there is room to rise next year. Tianqi Lithium Industry has now solved its urgent financial problems. Although it has sold part of its stake in Greenbushes, it still owns this high-quality lithium resource and has the opportunity to make a profit at the beginning of the lithium market. It may need to pay attention to whether their cost advantage over lithium ore has diminished. The introduction of strategic investors from Australia is also beneficial to the technical level of the Quinana project, but it still takes time to start, which has little impact on the supply and demand of the domestic lithium industry for the time being. Spodumene of Greenbuses should continue to be handled by domestic refineries and will not be changed as a result of the introduction of IGO or deal a blow to the supply and demand or business of domestic refineries.

But investors take a different view on its outlook. Tianqi lithium shares have fallen for three consecutive days since the limit rose on December 9, and today they are down nearly 2%.

Terlison, which is controlled by Tianqi Lithium Industry, has the largest and best quality spodumene mine in the world, the Greenbush Mine in Western Australia. The company has achieved self-sufficiency in lithium concentrate by holding Terlison, which can fully cover all the lithium raw materials the company needs to produce lithium chemical products.

The lithium resource equity reserves owned by the company are converted into lithium carbonate equivalent statistics (unit: LCE million tons)

Compared with domestic enterprises in the same industry, the company has a strong lithium resource reserve advantage. The Greenbush spodumene mine owned by Terlison, a subsidiary of the company, has lithium reserves of 133.1 million tons, equivalent to 6.9 million tons of lithium carbonate. Sheng he Lithium Industry, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company, owns the mining right of Zola spodumene mine in Yajiang County, Sichuan Province, with an identified ore volume of 19.714 million tons and lithium carbonate equivalent of 630000 tons. Compared with the domestic lithium chemical industry production enterprises, the company has a strong resource advantage. At the same time, the company realizes the distribution of high-quality salt lake lithium resources by participating in 20% of Xigaze Zabuye and SQM25.86%.