Tianqi Lithium (09696) announced interim results with losses attributable to shareholders of approximately RMB 5.198 billion, year-on-year profit to loss

According to the Zhitong Finance App, Tianqi Lithium (09696) announced its 2024 interim results, with revenue of about 6.401 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 74.18%; losses attributable to the company's equity shareholders were about 5.198 billion yuan, a year-on-year profit and loss; the basic loss per share was 3.17 yuan.

According to the announcement, the decrease in total revenue was mainly due to a decrease in the average sales price of the Group's major lithium products during the reporting period compared to the same period last year.

The main reason for the profit and loss change is that due to fluctuations in the lithium product market, the sales price of the company's lithium products fell sharply compared to the same period last year, and the gross profit of lithium products fell sharply. Affected by a time cycle mismatch between the pricing mechanism of the company's holding subsidiary Thalison chemical grade lithium concentrate and the company's lithium chemical product sales pricing mechanism, the company's operating performance experienced phased losses during the reporting period. However, in the first half of 2024, the market price of chemical-grade lithium concentrate dropped. As the company gradually stored low-price lithium concentrate newly purchased from Thalison and gradually digested existing lithium concentrate stocks, the shipping costs of chemical-grade lithium concentrate at the company's production sites gradually became close to the latest purchase prices, and the phased mismatch of the lithium concentrate pricing mechanism gradually weakened, and the company's losses decreased sequentially in the second quarter of 2024. At the same time, production and sales of lithium compounds and derivatives achieved year-on-year and month-on-month growth in the first half of 2024 and the second quarter of 2024 due to the positive impact of the smooth climbing of in-house production plants and outsourced processing. Among them, sales of lithium compounds and derivatives increased 30.13% year-on-year from January to June 2024, and sales in the second quarter of 2024 increased 46.18% month-on-month compared with sales in the first quarter.

Furthermore, SQM's performance for the six months ended June 30, 2024 declined sharply year over year. SQM revealed in its 2024 first quarter results report that the Santiago de Chile court ruled on its tax lawsuit for the 2017 and 2018 tax years in April 2024, annulling the tax and customs court's ruling on the case on November 7, 2022, which led it to confirm income tax expenses of about 1.1 billion US dollars and reduce net profit by about 1.1 billion US dollars accordingly. As a result, the profit attributable to the associated company as confirmed by the company in this reporting period fell sharply compared to the same period in 2023.