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“CATch” Dividends with This Industrial Stock

Here’s something interesting pointed out by the Financial Times’ U.S. financial commentator, Robert Armstrong: industrial stocks have done well lately—really well. Since September 30, the S&P 500 industrials are up 20%, nearly double the full index.

Armstrong noted that of the 71 S&P industrial stocks, 58 have outperformed the index since the end of September, and only one stock, Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC), has fallen.

This is unusual, to say the least, because there is a widespread expectation that a recession is coming soon. Industrial stocks are cyclical, and therefore supposed to perform poorly heading into an economic downturn.

Many of those who expect a recession do so because the Treasury 10-year 3-month yield curve is very inverted. Yet shares in construction equipment company Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and farming equipment firm Deere & Co. (DE) have both recently traded at all-time highs!

Let’s take a closer look at Caterpillar, which is up more than 40% since the end of September and has a decent dividend yield—in excess of 2%—as well.

Caterpillar Performing Smoothly

Caterpillar, founded in 1925, is one of America’s premier industrial companies. It is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives.

Caterpillar has three primary business segments: Construction Industries (approximately 41% of 3Q sales), Resource Industries (18% of 3Q sales) and Energy & Transportation (41% of 3Q sales).

The company impressed investors by delivering growth in both its top- and bottom-lines for the last few quarters, despite inflationary pressures and supply-chain snarls. In fact Caterpillar increased equipment sales in the third quarter by 22% year on year to $14.2 billion.

The company’s adjusted earnings per share were $3.95 in third-quarter 2022, surpassing Wall Street estimates. The bottom-line figure marked a 48.5% improvement year over year, and the adjusted operating margin widened by 280 basis points to 16.2%. For the first nine months of the year, the company has earned $10.01 per share on an adjusted basis.

Caterpillar’s backlog at the end of the quarter was an impressive $30 billion, up by $1.6 billion.

This bodes very well for its top-line performance in future quarters. Caterpillar did not give full-year earnings guidance, but management has indicated that sales in the fourth quarter should be the highest of the year and that it is expecting a “strong” fourth-quarter adjusted operating margin.

CAT: Dividend Aristocrat

Caterpillar’s cash and liquidity position remains strong, ending the third quarter of 2022 with cash and short-term investments of $6.3 billion.

In June 2022, Caterpillar hiked its quarterly dividend 8%, to $1.20 per share. This was a case of management signaling confidence in the near-term outlook, despite the supply chain and inflationary difficulties, and it maintained Caterpillar’s status as a dividend aristocrat. The company, which has paid dividends since 1933, continues its 28-year streak of paying increasingly higher dividends to its shareholders.

Caterpillar’s dividend yield and payout ratio are higher than its peers. Over the past four years, CAT has returned an average of 99% of its machinery, energy, and transportation segments’ free cash flow to its shareholders. This is in sync with its target of returning all free cash flow from these segments to the shareholders over time.

The estimated dividend for 2022 is $4.71, and it’s at least $5.08 for 2023.

Buy Caterpillar

Morningstar had a great summation as to why Caterpillar is such a great long-term investment. Here is what Morningstar said:

We think Caterpillar will continue to be the leader in the global heavy machinery market, providing customers an extensive product portfolio consisting of construction, mining, energy, and transportation products. For nearly a century, the company has been a trusted manufacturer of mission-critical heavy machinery, which has led to its position as one of the world’s most valuable brands. Caterpillar’s strong brand is underpinned by its high-quality, extremely reliable, and efficient products.

I would add that customers also value Caterpillar’s ability to offer the lowest total cost of equipment ownership in its market segment, as well as value-added services through the company’s extensive global dealer network of about 2,700 offices.

Also attractive: Caterpillar offers a wide range of products that enhance fuel efficiency, thanks to its diesel-electric and electric drivetrain product offerings. And more than one million of its two million machines in the field are connected to its digital platform.

I believe Caterpillar has a lot of strong structural tailwinds in its favor.

One of these tailwinds is the increased infrastructure spending in both the U.S. and emerging markets, which will boost sales of Caterpillar’s construction equipment. Plus, increased spending on energy—both oil and gas as well as renewable—will boost demand for the company’s mining equipment, in addition to its well-servicing equipment (pumps, engines, etc.).

Add it all up and Caterpillar is a buy anywhere in the low-to-mid $200s.
It’s not REITs or blue chips like Disney. A small, little-talked about area of the dividend stock market is pumping out market-beating returns like no tomorrow. Over 22 years, they’ve handily beat the market… and I have the #1 stock of these to give you now.

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Why Bonds Will Be Among the Biggest Winners of 2023

Along with a bear market for stocks, 2022 has, according to Morningstar, been the worst year ever for the bond market. Bond values have fallen up to 30% this year, putting a bigger dent in many retirement accounts that hold bond ETFs. Fortunately, in the current, higher interest rate world, you can invest safely in bonds with attractive yields and eliminate the potential for any losses.

But what goes down often comes back up. And 2023 is looking like a great year to invest in bonds.

So, let’s take a look at the best way to invest in bonds for growth and income in 2023…

In their recently released 2023 global outlook, Morgan Stanley said, “…we think that high grade bonds, one of the biggest losers of 2022, will be one of the biggest winners of 2023. Real and nominal yields have risen materially across a wide range of high grade markets. Less growth, inflation, and tightening make stable returns more attractive.”

But bond investing requires a different set of knowledge and skills than stock investing. Here is the short course on how to do it.

A bond will have a fixed maturity date and pay a fixed yield. For example, if you buy a $10,000 bond with a 6% coupon rate, the bond will pay $600 per year of interest and return the $10,000 when the bond matures. The important point is that if you hold a bond until maturity, you will get the face value back.

Bond prices change due to changing interest rates. If rates go up, bond prices go down, and the opposite for falling rates. Because of varying rates, a bond is unlikely to be priced at face value. Your broker will provide a yield-to-maturity rate, which takes in the current bond price, the face value, and the coupon rate. If you buy a bond and hold it until it matures, you will earn the yield to maturity as the annual rate of return.

An important concept: Bond funds and ETFs do not buy bonds and hold them until maturity. A fund constantly buys and sells bonds to maintain a targeted average maturity in the portfolio. Because of this, bond funds are more of a bet on the direction of interest rates and not stable income investments.

To invest in bonds safely, you want to be able to buy and hold until maturity. One way is to purchase individual bonds through your broker. U.S. Treasury Notes and Bonds are easy to buy for almost any face amount. If you have a seven-figure brokerage account, your broker will be happy to show you other types of bonds, such as corporate or municipal bonds.

I recommend getting bond exposure through the Invesco BulletShares series of bond ETFs for my Dividend Hunter subscribers. BulletShares are different than other bond investments. They are a series of funds with all of the bonds in a specific fund maturing in a single year. As far as I know, BulletShares are the only bond ETFs that hold bonds until maturity. As I noted above, this guarantees a return of the principal amounts, and you can count on earning the quoted yield to maturity.

For example, the Invesco BulletShares 2024 Corporate Bond ETF (BSCO) has a current yield to maturity of 5.19%.

Different BulletShares funds are available maturing from one to ten years. There are investment-grade bond ETFs, high-yield (“junk”) bond ETFs, municipal bond ETFs, and emerging market debt ETFs in the series. BulletShares pay monthly dividends, which will boost your final average yield if you put them on automatic reinvestment.

In this era of higher interest rates (thank you, Federal Reserve Board), you can put money safely to work and earn a reasonable yield. Just make sure you understand how the bonds or funds you choose function.
People like you and me don’t have time to wait around for massive capital gains. We need cash to live NOW. Cash to cover our bills every single month. And today, I believe we’re looking at the greatest opportunity in 22 years to generate monthly income from the stock market. Let me show you.

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The Only Retirement Strategy That Actually Works

You may have seen the quips about how this year the 401k accounts of many have become “201k” accounts this year due to the bear market for both stocks and bonds.

Hardly funny.

So if you want to be able to stop worrying about your retirement income, read on…

2022 has proven the traditional retirement planning model of a 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds, with 4% annual withdrawals to fund your retirement, doesn’t work. For a retiree counting on living off an investment portfolio, following the traditional plan means selling stocks or bonds at a loss and taking a 25% to 30% cut in their retirement income.

If you need to keep the same income, your retirement account will draw down much faster than the stock market losses plus withdrawals. Once you get behind due to a bear market, your account can never catch up, and your well-crafted retirement plan will go up in smoke.

Steep market declines come along about once a decade. Each time retirement savings are decimated. Yet financial advisors continue to use the same strategies. The retirement savings investment guidance from the financial industry has not changed since I became a Certified Financial Planner in the 1980s. Those strategies continue to get “blown up” every decade or so, and it’s not the financial planners who suffer the consequences.

For my Dividend Hunter service, I developed a different strategy. I believe a retirement portfolio should generate enough cash earnings to provide a retirement income and retain some cash to reinvest to provide a growing income.

Think about that idea compared to your current retirement savings. Do you earn enough in cash income to retire, or does your retirement plan depend on stock price appreciation to ensure a comfortable retirement? If you are counting on price appreciation, 2022 should show you how that strategy can fail at any time.

The 30 or so investments in my Dividend Hunter recommended portfolio generate an average yield of over 8%. That’s double the 4% withdrawal rate recommended by traditional financial planning guidelines. More importantly, the 8% cash flow will steadily continue, no matter what happens to stock and bond prices.

Many Dividend Hunter subscribers have told me how finding the Dividend Hunter service has helped them invest and plan for a worry-free retirement. If you worry about your retirement, it’s time to check out the Dividend Hunter below.But I like to share one good, income-focused investment idea with each article. The InfraCap Equity Income Fund ETF (ICAP) is a new (launched January 2022) fund that pays stable monthly dividends that should grow over time. ICAP currently yields 7.8%. This ETF would be a good starting point for building an income-focused retirement portfolio.
I strongly advise that you reconsider your retirement strategy after seeing THIS.It’s a brand new three-step retirement plan designed to:Eliminate guesswork…Cut risk to the bone…And, most importantly…Deliver more than enough income to retire safelyIt’s working for absolute beginners right now…And I have no doubts it will work for you. In fact — It wouldn’t surprise me if you NEVER run out of money in retirement following this unconventional, yet dead-simple approach.If you want to see how that’s possible… following just three simple steps…Click here right now for all the details.

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What My Parents Have Taught Me About Retiring Well – and Right

For the holiday, I traveled to be with my elderly parents. They are at an age when medical issues start to catch up and make life challenging. Helping them for the last few years has taught me some lessons that we all should heed, whether we are still working or in retirement.

My parents are both in their early 90s. They retired at ages 59 and 62, meaning they have been retired for 30 years! When they retired, they had a financial plan completed that worked with a life expectancy of 75 years.

Obviously, they beat that by a wide margin. But just 30 years ago, 75 was considered about the max lifespan. Now, when we hear of someone passing before they are 90, it feels like they went early.

That’s why, for those of us in our 50s and 60s, we shouldn’t be looking at current life expectancy when we plan. It seems logical that we should be planning to live to well over 100.

Here’s what that means…

Retiring at 65, that would mean looking forward to possibly a 40-year retirement. Our society will eventually start pushing expected retirement out further, which makes sense.

Let’s look at some financial considerations. According to the Bureau of the Census, in 1992, the median household income was $31,553. In 2021, the median household income came in at $70,784.

If the same happens over the next 30 years, if you retire now with a $100,000 retirement income, in 30 years, you will need to bring in around $220,000 to maintain your standard of living.

The good news is that 30 years is a long time to let compound growth work in your favor. If we dig up a compound interest calculator, to go from $100,000 to $220,000 in 30 years requires about a 3% annual growth rate of your income. That’s a doable number.

Social security and most traditional pensions will adjust for inflation. My Dividend Hunter services show subscribers how to earn 8% cash yields on their investments. If they draw 5% of that income once in retirement, it leaves 3% to reinvest. The reinvested 3% will grow the portfolio income by a similar percentage, providing sure income growth for as long as your retirement lasts. I am personally counting on at least 40 years.

My point, which I have learned primarily from helping and watching my parents, is that I need to stay focused on the LOOOOONG term with my investment portfolio. I use dividend/income-focused strategies to ensure my investment income grows every quarter.

This Thanksgiving, I will give thanks that my folks are still with us. I am also thankful that they gave me a vision of the future and what I need to do to make it enjoyable and comfortable.
It’s raised its dividend 37.5% on average, could be acquired, benefits from rising interest rates, trading at massive discount, and pays an 8% yield. This is my top pick for income during a rough market.Click here for details.

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Bank Earnings: Stick with Buffett

The latest bank earnings season highlighted the difference between the banks that rely on deal-making (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) versus those that are deposit banks that rely more on U.S. consumers and businesses (Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citibank).

Deposit banks are in a generally better position to earn greater margins on the vast piles of customers’ funds at their banks. This came through during the earnings calls. While there was nervousness over the direction of a falling U.S. housing market, and its impact on banks’ balance sheets, executives’ comments were notable for the insistence that they were not seeing any signs of consumer weakness.

Let’s take a look at the best deposit bank – one that’s backed by Warren Buffett’s himself…

It’s a Good Time to Be a Bank

The large nationwide U.S. banks are benefiting from the Federal Reserve’s policy of increasing interest rates to combat inflation. They are charging more for consumer loans and corporate lines of credit, without offering their customers significantly better rates on deposits.

These banks are experiencing higher demand for their lending products as companies tap credit lines to prepare for a possible economic slowdown, and consumers borrow on their credit cards to make ends meet.

This was clearly shown in the latest results, which were boosted by net interest income (NII) — the difference in what they pay on deposits and earn from loans and other assets. To be blunt, handling money for the masses remains a bright spot for America’s biggest banks.

At JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citibank, credit card purchases grew 18% on average, and card loan balances rose 17%.

Net interest income at JPMorgan and Wells Fargo jumped by more than a third and by 18% at Citibank, amid the revival in loan demand and higher interest rates. JPMorgan reported NII of $17.6 billion in the third quarter, up 34% year-on-year and a new record for the bank. And both Wells Fargo and Citibank reported their best NII numbers since 2019.

And the outlook going forward is still rosy. Both JPMorgan and Wells increased their full-year guidance for NII. JPMorgan is now forecasting that its NII for 2022 will rise around 38% this year, while Wells Fargo says it will rise 24% year on year. Citibank expects its NII to grow by $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion in the fourth quarter.

So which of the major U.S. banks is the better investment? Why not go with the one that Warren Buffett made a major investment into earlier this year?

Buffett and Citibank

Buffett is deeply familiar with the banking and financial services industry. He believes it’s a relatively straightforward business and one that can be extremely lucrative if it is well managed.

While Buffett has unloaded some of his other bank stock holdings, he added a new bank to his collection this year: Citigroup. During the first quarter of 2022, he added 55 million shares ($2.5 billion) of Citigroup at $44 a share to the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio.

Apparently, Buffett is betting on a turnaround story at the bank. So far, at current prices, Buffett’s return on investment is about 10%, excluding dividends.

Buffett is not alone. Morningstar rates Citibank as its top pick in the sector, saying “the bank is trading in deep value territory”.

And indeed, Citibank is in deep value territory, lagging badly behind its peers. Over the past five years, the stock is down over 31%. For comparison, the SPDR S&P Bank ETF (KBE) is up 9%. The beating the stock has taken has made it cheap, which Buffett loves. Citibank shares are trading at little over half of the tangible book value of $80.

The company is now attempting to resurrect its fortunes. Last year, Citibank’s board appointed Jane Fraser as the new CEO — making her the first female leader of a major U.S. bank.

At its Investor Day in March 2022, Citibank outlined plans to achieve an 11%-12% return on tangible common equity over the medium term. It highlighted its focus on five interconnected businesses: Services (treasury & trade solutions), Markets (fixed income and equities), Banking (investment banking, corporate banking and commercial banking), Global Wealth Management (Citi private bank and wealth management), and US Personal Banking (branded credit cards, retail services and retail banking).

The bank’s best-performing business is its institutional clients group, where the bank’s commercial banking and capital markets operations have scale and a unique global footprint that few can replicate. Its global presence differentiates the bank from all of its U.S.-based peers, and its wide geographical footprint should help Citibank remain the bank of choice for multinational companies.

Citibank: Buffett Value Play

Like Buffett, you will have to be patient with Citibank. There remains a long road ahead for the bank to grind through the many steps of its turnaround. But it is simply too cheap to ignore.

While you are waiting, you can collect a nice dividend from Citibank. It currently pays a quarterly dividend of $0.51 a share, for a yield of 4.16%.

The stock is a speculative (waiting for the turnaround) buy anywhere below $50 per share.
That’s what my old coworker told me years ago. I listened up because he was the most successful broker I ever worked with. And also incredibly lazy. He found a small niche in the market no one talks about and made enough to buy in the most expensive zip code in Maryland. Here’s what he invested in.

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Rates are Still Going to Rise – Here’s How to Prepare

If you think that last week’s inflation numbers would cause the Fed to pivot, I have a bridge conveniently located in lower Manhattan that offers easy access to Brooklyn available for immediate sale.

You could make millions charging other people big bucks to use your new bridge and recoup your costs in no time.

Yes, the chatter last Thursday was that the new inflation would allow the Fed to slow the pace of rate hikes, and so stocks skyrocketed.

But this does not mean rates have stopped climbing. The Fed itself has said so.

Here’s why, and how to position your portfolio to weather the coming rate hikes…

Look, the Fed has already talked about doing slowing the pace of rate hikes, possibly starting as soon as December.

But Jay Powell warned us that the pace did not matter as much as the ultimate level of Fed Funds rates would reach. He said that he now thinks that will be higher than the estimated 4.6% level.

The additional rate hikes of at least 100 basis points are not baked into stock prices.

With the S&P 500 priced at almost 20 times earnings, I cannot say stocks are cheap here either.

Fed officials rushed out last Thursday to tell people that inflation was not beaten yet and more rate hikes were coming:

Mary Daly, the head of the San Francisco Fed, said 7.7% might be lower than 8%, but it is a long way from the 2% target.Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said the inflation trend is still unacceptably high.Kansas City Fed President Esther George told us that inflation was still too high and monetary policy had more work to do.Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said that there were no rate cuts anytime soon and that more increases were coming.

The markets ignored them and partied like it was 1999.

The boom of 1998, as you you may recall, was followed by a very ugly 2000.

For now, I am sticking with my strategy of owning heavily discounted closed-end funds in Underground Income and low PE, high-yield bank stocks with solid balance sheets and excellent credit conditions, and carefully selected undervalued REITs for readers of The 20% Letter.

So far, they are both working really well. I expect that to continue.

I am also constantly on the lookout for special situations with upside potential regardless of market movements for you, the readers of The Hidden Profits Report.

One of my favorite hunting grounds for special situations is among companies that have announced a strategic review. A strategic review is a discussion of a board committee about what changes need to be made to the business to increase profitability., There is often a discussion about selling unprofitable or non-core subsidiaries or selling the company outright.

The board of Garrett Motion (GTX) is said to be having talks about strategic alternatives and possibly selling the company.

You may never have heard of Garrett Motion if you are not a car-loving gearhead. If you are a gearhead, you are very familiar with this company,

Garrett Motion makes turbochargers for the automobile industry and is one of three companies that dominate the industry.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and emerged in April 2022. Garrett Motion did not file because the business needed to be better or because they could not pay their bills.

It was the only way to settle a matter involving asbestos brake pads with its former owner Honeywell (HON).

The pads in question were sold back in the early 1980s.

That is behind them, and the company should produce more than $300 million of free cash flow in 2022.

Garrett Motion is not worried about competition from electric cars killing the turbo business. Instead, they are pioneers in the development of electric vehicle turbochargers.

Construction and farm machinery will always need some turbocharged boost to get the job done.

The market for turbochargers, both conventional and electric, will be growing for years to come.

With an eye to the future of the automobile, Garrett Motion is also developing cybersecurity systems for connected cars.

This stock is cheap. Management expects to produce between $310 and $370 million this year. The equity value of the stock right now is just $461 million.

The stock is trading at 1.3 times free cash flow.

A sale of this company would be worth at least twice the current stock price and probably more than that level.

The stock has no coverage from Wall Street, so the best way to unlock this company’s massive amount of hidden value might be to sell the business outright.

No matter what the market does, you own a great business producing tons of cash flow at a ridiculously low valuation and with a decent probability of a sale sooner rather than later.
It’s raised its dividend 37.5% on average, could be acquired, benefits from rising interest rates, trades at massive discount, and pays an 8% yield. This is my top pick for income during a rough market. Click here for details.

Rates are Still Going to Rise – Here’s How to Prepare Read More »

Strike It Rich with this Lithium Stock

There was a recent major development that many investors have almost completely ignored: the U.S. government is getting into the domestic mining and battery industries.

As part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Department of Energy handed several companies big lumps of cash in mid-October, ranging from $50 million to $316 million, adding up to almost $3 billion in total investment.

Today, let’s look at the firm that will benefit the most…

Building a U.S. Battery Supply Chain

The Inflation Reduction Act introduces strict rules about the sourcing of raw materials used in manufacturing electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries. This is the government is making a push to build up the local supply chain. The aforementioned grants all went to companies building or planning battery metals processing facilities.

The goal of the restrictions is twofold: first, to boost the domestic automakers that are moving at top speed into electric vehicles. Second, to develop a local supply chain for electric car batteries.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) understands this perfectly, having noted in a September statement: “The new rules have restricted the eligibility for tax incentives to a relatively small number of vehicles assembled in North America in the short term and, in the medium term, may disqualify any vehicle at all from obtaining such a benefit due to very high local-content rules for batteries.”

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is a specialist information provider for the EV battery industry. It has raised its forecast for the North American EV battery industry, thanks to the IRA legislation. Benchmark forecasts that North America will now produce 12.3% of the global output of batteries by mid-decade, up from the prior forecast of 8.2%.

Lithium

The key component for the current generation of EV batteries is lithium.

Lithium and many of the other raw materials that are used for electric batteries, such as graphite, require significant processing to get to the high-purity forms that go into the final product. China’s existing expertise and production capacity mean it will comfortably remain the top dog for years to come.

As the electric vehicle market grows, other countries will need to increase their self-reliance due to the race for raw materials and the potential for geopolitics leading to export and import routes being closed off. That’s why the IRA legislation was so important.

And make no mistake: a lot of lithium will be needed if the EV industry is to really take off.

Benchmark Minerals says that by 2040, the industry will need to produce more lithium in a month than was mined in all of 2021!

That number could make one conclude that, between soaring demand and the cash being thrown around by the U.S. government, any company with lithium exposure is worth investing in. However, I am taking a more nuanced approach.

Albermarle

I prefer to invest in a major lithium producer that is a member of the S&P 500—Albermarle (ALB).

The company is a global manufacturer of highly engineered specialty chemicals for a wide range of markets. It became the world’s largest lithium producer through its January 2015 acquisition of Rockwood Holdings. Its other leading products are bromine (second biggest global producer)—which is used in fire safety solutions—and the catalysts used in oil refining.

Lithium, though, generates the majority of total profits. Albermarle produces the metal through its own salt brine assets in Chile and the United States, as well as two joint venture interests in Australian mines: Talison and Wodgina.

Albermarle’s Chilean operation is among the world’s lowest-cost sources of lithium. And the Australian Talison site, in which the company has a 49% interest, is one of the best spodumene resources in the world. This allows Albemarle to be one of the lowest-cost lithium hydroxide producers, as spodumene (lithium hard rock concentrate) can be converted directly into lithium hydroxide.

The company plans to expand its lithium production from 88,000 metric tons in 2021 to nearly 500,000 metric tons over the next decade. This includes the company’s 60% interest in the Wodgina spodumene operation (Australia’s Mineral Resources (MALRY) retains the other 40% interest). The joint venture will begin producing spodumene and have a 50,000-metric-ton lithium hydroxide plant in Australia.

Albermarle got a nice $150 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the first set of projects funded by the IRA legislation. The grant funding is intended to support a portion of the anticipated cost to construct a new, commercial-scale, U.S.-based lithium concentrator facility at Albemarle’s Kings Mountain, North Carolina site.

Albemarle expects the concentrator facility will supply up to 350,000 metric tons per year of spodumene concentrate to the company’s previously announced mega-flex lithium conversion facility. The mega-flex conversion facility is expected to eventually produce up to 100,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium per year, to support domestic manufacturing of up to 1.6 million EVs per year.

Buy Albermarle

I believe that the lithium market will remain undersupplied throughout the rest of the decade, supporting prices well above the marginal cost of production.

This is important because Albemarle has wised up on to how to price its lithium. Management’s former lithium pricing strategy hurt shareholder value in the past, by limiting the company’s upside and not preventing downside when prices fell.

Earlier this year, however, management finally changed its approach to pricing, announcing a new three-tier pricing system. Under this system, 15% of battery quality lithium is sold at short-term prices based on the market price, and 65% is sold at index-referenced prices, some of which have a set cap and floor, but fluctuate based on market prices. Albermarle sells the remaining 20% at fixed prices that reset every six to 12 months.

For long-term investors looking to invest in the lithium industry, Albemarle, which owns two of the best resources in the world, is a great choice. The stock is a buy anywhere around the $300 per share level.
It’s raised its dividend 37.5% on average, could be acquired, benefits from rising interest rates, trading at massive discount, and pays an 8% yield. This is my top pick for income during a rough market.Click here for details.

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