Once upon a time, FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC) The stock was A stock of lithium. It is no longer, has not been for years, and it is Poor performance Earlier this month, when they are lower than expected, sales have resulted in a sharp drop (74%) of the declared profit, can highlight the risk of abandoning diversification and concentrating too exclusively on a Only sector (agricultural chemicals).
But what happened to FMC lithium activities anyway? And where is it now? This is the story that I want to tell today, for all those who may have missed it at the time, and for all those who could be interested in buying one of the best stories of lithium growth next years.
No more recently than 2018, the FMC was one of the largest lithium stocks in the world. He had built his lithium things in more than four decades, and next to SOCIEDAD QUíMica y Minera de Chile And AlbemarleClassified among the three largest producers of lithium listed on the batteries of electric cars.
Electric vehicles were increasing at the time, and FMC wanted to capitalize on this trend by turning its lithium operations as a pure game on this popular product. In 2018, FMC announced (and in 2019, it finished) a spin-off of its lithium activity as a newly public “Livent Corporation”. What has remained was the company of $ 4.6 billion (closer to $ 4.2 billion in sales today), focusing on the production and sale of insecticides, Herbicides, fungicides and crop nutrition chemicals, which we know as FMC Corporation today.
And Spun-Off Livent? Well, Livent remained an independent company for about five years, until the beginning of 2024, when the company concluded an equal merger with the Australian minor with lithium Allkem (himself formerly Orocobre). These two companies have been renamed as Arcadium lithium (Nyse: altm) After their merger, and boasted of their “first lithium resource and manufacturing sites in key places in the world through the lithium value chain”.
Arcadium lithium remains an independent lithium producer to date, and with $ 155 million in net PCGR profits in the last 12 months, it is undoubtedly one of the most successful lithium actions. But the Arcadium lithium will not be independent much longer. Last year, a mining giant based in London Rio Tinto group (Nyse: rio) announced that it would pay $ 6.7 billion to acquire all Arcadium lithium and use the company to increase lithium income from its own small “mineral” business.
Rio is still finalizing this last merger, but once this happens, Rio plans to create a new commercial segment called Rio Tinto Lithium. With less than $ 7 billion in estimated annual income, I expect Rio Tinto Lithium to end up being the third or fourth largest commercial unit in Rio (which focuses on the operation of iron and aluminum)) .
