Albemarle, the world's largest producer of lithium, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit and lifted its annual forecast on Wednesday, citing surging prices and demand for the electric vehicle battery metal.
The results and forecast reflected a bullish outlook for the electric vehicle industry despite recent macroeconomic concerns and warnings of market softness from some rivals. Albemarle counts Tesla and other prominent EV makers as core customers.
Shares fell 3.6% to $256.99 in after-hours trading, though, after quarterly revenue missed Wall Street's expectations due to weakness in the company's bromine division, which sells chemicals used in fire extinguishers and is unrelated to the lithium division.
Albemarle reported third-quarter net income of $897.2-million, or $7.61 per share, compared with a net loss of $392.8-million, or $3.36 per share, in the year-ago period.
Excluding one-time items, Albemarle earned $7.50 per share. By that measure, analysts expected earnings of $6.99 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Sales for the quarter rose 152% to $2.09-billion. Analysts had expected sales of $2.25-billion.
Lithium sales more than quadrupled to $1.5-billion on higher prices and the opening of new processing plants. The company has several expansion projects underway in China, Chile, Australia and the United States.
An earlier-than-expected shipment of lithium-bearing spodumene ore from Australia boosted results by $100-million.
For the full year, Albemarle raised the bottom end of its profit forecast to $3.3-billion from a previous $3.2-billion, and kept the high end at $3.5-billion.
The company trimmed its 2022 sales forecast at the high end to $7.4-billion from $7.5-billion due to the weak bromine sales.
Albemarle received a $149.7-million grant from US officials last month to build a lithium processing facility in North Carolina.
Charlotte, North Carolina-based Albemarle plans to hold a Thursday conference call with investors to discuss the quarterly results.