Battery Metal Rout Set to Force Unprofitable Miners to Cut Costs
A wave of cost cutting and potential consolidation looms for lithium and nickel miners in the year ahead, with no short-term relief in sight for the key battery metals sector after a poor earnings season.
Three Australian-based lithium miners — PLS Ltd. (formerly Pilbara Minerals), IGO Ltd. and Mineral Resources Ltd. — each posted their largest first-half losses in more than six years, and delivered no dividends to their shareholders.
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Yahoo
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- Yahoo
SOLVE FSHD and Modalis Announce Strategic Collaboration to Develop an Innovative CRISPR-Based Epigenome Editing Treatment for Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy
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CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Asian markets set to open higher as investors await Beijing-Washington trade meeting and China data
China Shenzhen Real444 | E+ | Getty Images Asian markets were set to climb Monday as investors awaited trade talks between the U.S. and China later in the day, following accusations between the two over breaching deal terms agreed in Geneva last month. Trade tensions are seemingly easing as China has reportedly granted temporary approvals for the export of rare earths, while jetliner Boeing Co has begun commercial jet deliveries to the Asian superpower. China is also slated to release a slew of data, including its consumer and wholesale inflation readings for May. Economists polled by Reuters expect consumer prices to have fallen by 0.2% year on year, while PPI is forecast to have declined by 3.2% from a year earlier.. Futures for Hong Kong's Hang Seng index stood at 23,801 pointing to a marginally higher open compared to the HSI's last close of 23,792.54. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 was set to open higher, with the futures contract in Chicago at 37,975 while its counterpart in Osaka last traded at 37,980, against the index's Friday close of 37,741.61. Australian markets are closed for a public holiday. U.S. equity futures were mostly flat in early Asian trade. All three key benchmarks on Wall Street jumped last Friday, after the non-farm payrolls data came in better-than-expected. U.S. payrolls climbed 139,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, above the Dow Jones forecast of 125,000 for the month but less than the downwardly revised 147,000 in April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average popped 443.13 points, or 1.05%, to close at 42,762.87. The blue-chip index was up more than 600 points at its highs of the session. Meanwhile, the the broad-based S&P 500 also gained 1.03% — surpassing the 6,000 level for the first time since late February — and settling at 6,000.36, while the Nasdaq Composite rallied 1.20%, to end at 19,529.95. — CNBC's Sean Conlon and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
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Insane amount Aussies could pay for coffee
Coffee may need to reach $12 a cup for Australia to compete with other countries for the sacred beans. Benchmark prices hit an all-time high in April, and industry insiders say Chinese demand for beans is squeezing prices in Australia. '(The) Chinese have very much converted from tea to coffee,' Essential Coffee chief executive Todd Hiscock told the ABC. 'They're buying up unprecedented levels of coffee supplies, often they're taking a whole Brazilian stock load in ways that's never been seen before.' Median prices per cup needed to increase to between $8 to $12, he said. 'We've got to come to the party and pay in a competitive global market,' Hiscock said. Brazil produces more than one-third of the world's coffee beans. The country battled through a drought in 2024 that was capped off with a cold snap. Combined, this slashed the overall harvests. As investors turn away from the volatile US, the Brazilian real has also climbed, disincentivising exports out of Brazil. Vietnam is the second-largest coffee producer. The El Nino weather pattern plunged Vietnam's coffee-growing regions into drought for the past two years, damaging the plants so badly that many will not fully recover for another two years. These international pressures, plus general inflation, are slicing margins at Australian cafes. A large player in the Australian coffee industry, Essential Coffee's wage bill has risen 9 per cent in two years, combined with a 29 per cent increase in rent and a 6 per cent rise in insurance. Mr Hiscock told the ABC the price of wholesale coffee had risen 119 per cent since November 2023. 'It's hard because people are very sensitive to their beloved coffee and when you move the price up, you find not just a lot of negative reaction, you find some very terse expletives,' he said.
