Lithium Americas analysts sour as US stake sparks 175% rally
It’s almost old hat to the market by now. Take a struggling company, cut a deal with the US government, sealed with the approval of President Donald Trump, sit back and watch the stock take off.
But after shares of Lithium Americas Corp. soared 175% in less than two weeks, analysts are starting to challenge the stock’s vaunted valuation and the deal’s less than favorable terms for stockholders in the Canadian mining company.
“Simply put, we failed to appreciate how a heated bull market would interpret Trump’s magic touch, on a thematic commodity starving for attention,” Ben Isaacson, an analyst at Scotiabank, wrote in a note downgrading his recommendation to sector underperform from sector perform. “Of course, this is despite the magic touch being dilutive to shareholders.”
He recommended investors take profits now, and “reload at lower levels".
He’s one of four analysts that have downgraded their ratings since the agreement was announced. It’s a sign of the times — as US stocks climb to new heights while gauges tracking market mania flash a warning — that so far the market has largely ignored their calls. Despite a 6.5% drop on Monday the stock still trades near a two-year high and more than 40% above its average analyst price target.
Under the terms of the deal the US is taking a 5% equity stake in the Vancouver-based company and a 5% stake in its Thacker Pass mining project located in Nevada. The company is drawing $435-million from a loan given by the Department of Energy and $182-million of debt servicing will be delayed over the first five years.
It’s one of a handful of deals the current administration has hammered out since July, when the US Department of Defense made a $400-million equity investment in MP Materials Corp. Shares of the rare earth magnet producer are up more than 375% so far this year. Intel Corp. is up more than 50% since mid-August when details of the government’s nearly 10% stake in the beleaguered chipmaker started to surface. Late Monday, the White House announced a stake in another miner, Trilogy Metals Inc.
According to calculations from analysts at Jefferies, if each additional Lithium Americas loan drawdown requires similar concessions, that could dilute equity for existing shareholders by some 40% over the next several years.
“There’s other opportunities. If you’re an investor and you’ve seen this triple in a couple months, you take your profits,” said MacMurray Whale, an analyst at Cormark Securities. The analyst downgraded Lithium Americas to market perform from buy following the agreement. “I would rather tell people to wait to see whether there is a pullback after this excitement.”
Lithium Americas had a market value of more than $2-billion on Monday after shares more than doubled this year.
Morningstar Research also downgraded its rating on the stock to hold from buy after the share price bypassed its price target.
“The market’s gone from overly pessimistic on the stock to now overly optimistic, and so we don’t see a good price right now for someone looking to buy the stock,” analyst Seth Goldstein said.
Investors can expect more such deals to be hammered in the future, according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Potential candidates for Energy Department loan revisions include EVgo Inc., one of America’s biggest charging companies, and hydrogen producer Plug Power.
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