{"id":31440,"date":"2023-05-02T21:32:46","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T21:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/livent-quarterly-profit-jumps\/"},"modified":"2023-05-02T21:34:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T21:34:00","slug":"livent-boosts-forecast-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/livent-boosts-forecast-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Livent boosts forecast on bullish outlook for lithium prices, demand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Ernest Scheyder<\/p>\n<p>(Reuters) -Lithium producer Livent Corp boosted its annual forecast on Tuesday after reporting better-than-expected quarterly profit, a bullish outlook fueled by rising prices and demand for the metal used to make electric vehicle batteries.<\/p>\n<p>Shares of the Philadelphia-based company, which has deals to supply the battery metal to General Motors Co, Tesla Inc and BMW, jumped more than 10% in after-hours trading to $23.15.<\/p>\n<p>While spot lithium prices in China had softened earlier this year, fueling concern the industry was entering a period of oversupply, Livent&#8217;s results reflect strong appetite for its lithium and reinforce the company&#8217;s strategy of selling the metal largely using long-term contracts. <\/p>\n<p>Roughly 70% of the lithium that Livent plans to sell this year is at fixed contract prices, Paul Graves, Livent&#8217;s CEO, told investors on a Tuesday conference call.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The spot market in China is not reflective of the entire market,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We have not reduced our lithium demand expectations for 2023.&#8221;    <\/p>\n<p>Livent is seeing strong appetite for its lithium outside of China, especially in Japan and South Korea, two of the world&#8217;s largest cathode producers, Graves said. <\/p>\n<p>Additionally, Graves said he expects &#8220;broad expansion delays and disruptions&#8221; across the lithium industry to keep the market undersupplied, although he added Livent&#8217;s expansions in Quebec are on track.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are absolutely not demand constrained, but we are absolutely supply constrained,&#8221; Graves said.<\/p>\n<p>Livent posted first-quarter net income of $114.8 million, or 55 cents per share, compared to $53.2 million, or 28 cents per share, in the year-ago period.  <\/p>\n<p>Excluding one-time items, Livent earned 60 cents per share. By that measure, analysts expected earnings of 39 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.<\/p>\n<p>For the year, Livent boosted its revenue forecast to a range of $1.03 billion to $1.13 billion, from a previous range of $1 billion to $1.1 billion. <\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/livent-quarterly-profit-jumps\/lithium-producer-livent-corps-processing-plant-is-seen-in-belmont\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ410TR-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ410TR-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ernest Scheyder (Reuters) -Lithium producer Livent Corp boosted its annual forecast on Tuesday after reporting better-than-expected quarterly profit, a bullish outlook fueled by rising prices and demand for the metal used to make electric vehicle batteries. Shares of the Philadelphia-based company, which has deals to supply the battery metal to General Motors Co, Tesla [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":31441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-31440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ410TR-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31537,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31440\/revisions\/31537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}