Chris Berry: Can Electric Vehicles Drive Vanadium Demand?

By The Gold Report, on September 7th, 2011

Chris Berry Solar and wind can’t produce power when there is no sun or turbulence in the air. That is why energy storage will be vital for offsetting and balancing use of traditional baseload power sources during peak and off-peak periods. House Mountain Partners founder Chris Berry is making a bet on the unfamiliar element vanadium, which will be required in large quantities for mass storage batteries. In an exclusive Critical Metals Report interview, Chris has identified several vanadium names that could power investor portfolios and simultaneously provide broader diversification.

The Critical Metals Report: Chris, could you discuss the uses of vanadium?

Chris Berry: Vanadium is an element that is pervasive, but a lot of people haven’t realized just how pervasive it is. Vanadium is used in varying degrees in several applications. One is as a strengthener of steel and an alloy with titanium. It is also used in the emerging field of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for electric vehicles (EVs), both the four-wheel or two-wheel type. I think this usage is one that shouldn’t be relied upon in the near term. Vanadium has also come to be used in what’s known as the vanadium redox battery (VRB)—a large-scale battery used for alternative energy storage.

Over 90% of vanadium produced today is used as a steel strengthener. In 2010, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 56,000 tons of vanadium were produced globally (U.S. figures are not reported), so obviously the majority of this is used in the buildout of infrastructure that is occurring disproportionately in countries such as China. One company in particular, Denison Mines Corp. (TSX:DML; NYSE.A:DNN), which is thought of as a uranium producer, produced about 1,000 tons of vanadium last year as a coproduct of its uranium mining in the western United States. Aside from that, vanadium is mined mainly in China, Russia and South Africa.

The use of vanadium in LIBs for EVs is not significant yet, but could eventually become important as the transportation sector electrifies. One of the real challenges surrounding LIBs is settling on the most effective battery chemistry. In other words, what battery chemistry allows for the greatest number of charge recycles, depletes its charge the slowest and allows us to recharge the fastest? Today, based on my research, lithium-vanadium-phosphate batteries appear to offer the highest charge and the fastest recharge cycle. It seems that the lithium-vanadium-phosphate battery holds a great deal of promise, offering a blend of substantial power and reliability. I am watching for advances in battery chemistry here with great interest.

I am actually reading a book now titled “Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy” by Seth Fletcher. The debate over the “best” or “optimal” battery is not a new one and the book discusses the history of this argument well.

In our research at House Mountain, we focus on several macro themes, one being accessibility to cheap and reliable energy. It’s no secret that increasing GDP and access to cheap energy go hand-in-hand. Energy storage is going to become more and more important and this is where the VRB can play a significant role. I wouldn’t call VRBs an emerging technology because they were actually developed in the late 1980s, so the idea of using vanadium to store electricity has been around for a number of years. VRBs just haven’t been in mass, widespread use. Growing economies in countries like China and India and even in continents like South America are becoming accustomed to an increase in the quality of life. In my opinion, to maintain and increase that quality of life, you need access to energy—cheap and reliable energy. The electricity grid has been described as the only supply chain without storage capacity. VRBs can address this.

TCMR: To alleviate the stress on baseload power.

CB: Exactly. Baseload power from utilities will be generated from a number of different sources—renewables, coal, oil and gas, for example. VRBs allow for the smooth transition of electricity into the grid at times of peak demand. Renewable sources of energy such as wind turbines generate electricity that can be stored by a VRB and released at peak times. This ability to effectively store electricity and manage the flow of this electricity into the grid as the demand for electricity ebbs and flows promises to become critical and offers an additional avenue for future vanadium demand.

TCMR: You said VRB technology has been around for a while. Is this market going to grow?

CB: I think it will, based on my comments above. VRBs are being used commercially in a couple of different places, though they have not been adopted widely on a commercial scale. As demand for electricity increases, VRBs will definitely play a role. You can’t have countries like China with its emerging middle class even approach Western living standards (and the electricity demand that comes along with that) without the ability to put affordable electricity into the grid on demand. You can’t have a global population of 7 billion citizens many who want a higher quality of life—a population projected to grow to 10 billion by the year 2085 based on estimates in The Economist—without that ability. It just can’t happen.

TCMR: In a research report, you referenced Byron Capital Markets’ estimate of how much storage would be required for 1 megawatt of energy. You wrote that it would require 50,000 liters of electrolyte which equates to 10.1 tons of vanadium. But as you said, in 2010 only 57,000 tons of vanadium were produced globally. So looking at numbers like that, I’m thinking that even a small amount of growth could exponentially increase the amount of vanadium needed.

CB: That’s exactly right, and that’s the key. One of the things that I like about vanadium is that you have a couple of different, but potentially significant, demand drivers. You have the fact that vanadium is used as a steel strengthener. So that’s a play on emerging market growth. I don’t think that China is going to continue to grow at 9–10% indefinitely, but there are other countries that are experiencing significant growth rates themselves that are behind the curve. India is an example. It has a huge need for infrastructure, and increases in vanadium-based steel production will be a part of that. As another avenue of demand, renewable energy will continue to be a minority of the energy produced globally, but, again, even if a fraction of the vanadium produced had to be diverted to energy storage, you are looking at a potentially significant supply-demand imbalance.

Another significance of vanadium is that it is very rarely mined alone; it’s typically mined as a byproduct of other metals, uranium being one of them. Two of the three largest producers of vanadium in the world right now are Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium Ltd. (JSE:EHS), based in Russia, and Panzhihua New Steel & Vanadium Co. Ltd. (SZSE: 000629) in China. At both of these companies, vanadium is a byproduct of steel slag production. If, for whatever reason, they cannot increase capacity to produce more steel, or if steel demand slows, they would be looking at producing less vanadium. There appears to be a direct relationship between the amount of steel they produce and the amount of vanadium they produce. If there is any sort of a hiccup there, again, you could potentially be looking at an interesting supply-demand imbalance in the vanadium market. I’m not predicting that this will happen. I am just pointing out that much of the vanadium produced is dependent on production of other metals.

TCMR: Are there any producing vanadium mines in Canada or in the U.S.?

CB: The only one that I know is Denison’s White Mesa project in Utah. It is mining uranium in the U.S. and is producing about 1,000 tons of vanadium per year as a coproduct. After this, however, the question becomes, where are the near-term producers? In other words, who is next? In North and South America, there are several. The one that I have focused on most closely is American Vanadium Corp. (TSX.V:AVC). It owns the Gibellini deposit in eastern Nevada and has an NI 43-101 resource estimate of 18 million tons (Mt.) of vanadium pentoxide, grading 0.33% on the deposit. There are several other properties the company owns in the immediate vicinity of Gibellini that are not included in this resource estimate, so there exists the potential for expansion of this resource based on additional discovery. The company has a stated plan to be in production of vanadium pentoxide by 2013 and also has the potential to produce vanadium electrolyte which is used in VRBs. Producing two products provides potentially two revenue streams, which I like to see in a project.

This project is unique in that it will be an open-pit, heap-leach operation with a low capital expenditure. As I mentioned before, vanadium is usually found with other minerals, which requires metallurgical and separation expertise and can complicate the mining process and drive up costs. According to the company, only trace amounts of uranium appear in this deposit. It seems to be pretty clean. If vanadium pentoxide currently trades in the market for $7/lb., American Vanadium believes that it will be able to produce at a cost of $2.96/lb. based on an independent preliminary economic assessment the company had completed. When production really ramps up, the goal is to be producing 14 million pounds of vanadium pentoxide per year. The grade of the deposit is low, but you can do the math. If you are selling at $7/lb. and mining and producing at a cash cost of $3/lb., that is a $4/lb. margin on a resource that is growing in size.

TCMR: Any near-term catalysts?

CB: The immediate catalyst for this company will be to release an updated resource estimate and also a prefeasibility study, which I anticipate before the end of the year. They also recently announced that they have produced both vanadium pentoxide and vanadium electrolyte on a pilot scale.

TCMR: The size of the vanadium market is not easy to discern currently, is it?

CB: It’s really not and this is a challenge for all junior vanadium exploration companies. Most people default to what the USGS says on the size of the vanadium market, so we say it is 56,000 tons currently. There are a number of different end products created from vanadium ore like vanadium pentoxide, electrolyte or ferrovanadium, which cloud the true demand in this market in my opinion. The market for vanadium is currently in balance from a supply and demand perspective, but this could change on the back of increased demand from the applications we mentioned above.

Many of these minor metals like vanadium and lithium have a real issue with price transparency and hence volatility. It’s easy to look at a metal like copper or gold—where there is a futures market and a spot market—and get an accurate price, but it’s not the same with vanadium or lithium. These are all negotiated contracts between supplier and end-user. Vanadium pentoxide is worth $7/lb. currently, but this is can change more drastically than other metals based on the relatively small size of the market, fluctuations in demand from end-users and supply restrictions from other countries.

TCMR: It could be $10/lb. in one transaction and $5/lb. in another.

CB: And the price volatility, in particular with vanadium, is one thing that I think has kept more people away from the metal. Vanadium is definitely about as good as it gets as a strengthener of steel. But there are substitutes. For example, niobium has very similar qualities when alloyed with steel, but is only a viable substitute for vanadium when vanadium is at a much higher price per pound. Vanadium at $7–$8/lb. is economic, and you really get a lot of bang for the buck. However, if that spikes, then as an end-user you start looking at substitutes.

TCMR: Sounds like you are very positive on American Vanadium.

CB: I think it has a chance. For a lot of these juniors, that is all you can ask for in the tough markets we’re seeing these days. I have visited the Gibellini deposit, met with management and can see how the project could succeed. Despite the fact that the vanadium market is roughly in balance from a supply-demand perspective, and, based on my projections, it looks like for the next year or two it’s going to stay that way, I still think there is room for a company like American Vanadium as much of the supply of vanadium used in the United States comes from overseas. Based on work we’re doing in Washington D.C., it appears that our political leaders are waking up to the issues surrounding resource dependence on metals such as lithium and vanadium. American Vanadium is positioning itself to benefit from this newfound concern regarding domestic supply chains.

TCMR: Chris, are there any other vanadium companies that you are talking about?

CB: The vanadium space, such that it exists, is quite small in terms of the companies that are producing. You have Evraz, Panzhihua New Steel and Vanadium Co. and Xstrata PLC (LSE:XTA), and they control production in the vanadium market. They produce the overwhelming majority of the 57,000 tons. Another company that is particularly interesting is Largo Resources Ltd. (TSX.V:LGO). This is a Canadian company that has two different vanadium deposits in Brazil. The company’s Maracas project contains the highest grades of vanadium I’ve seen in North or South America at roughly 1.27%. It’s also a deposit of size with ample potential to expand, so here you’re combining good grades with tonnage. Another important factor I haven’t mentioned is an offtake agreement. Largo negotiated an offtake agreement with Glencore International for a term of six years. This is a huge credibility boost for Largo, in my opinion. The fact that Largo has a high-grade vanadium deposit as well as other metal deposits in the Americas makes the potential for this company quite strong going forward.

TCMR: Another one?

CB: Another one I follow is EMC Metals Corp. (TSX:EMC). It is not a pure play on vanadium. This is a company that has a couple of different assets. Its main asset is actually a scandium deposit hosted in laterite located in New South Wales, Australia. EMC is engaged in a 50/50 joint venture on the scandium deposit (called Nyngan Gilgai) with an Australian company called Jervois Mining. EMC also has a prospective vanadium deposit not terribly far from American Vanadium’s asset in Nevada called the Carlin deposit which has a resource of 25 Mt. grading 0.51% vanadium pentoxide. To be sure, there are other companies with vanadium deposits, but these are three that I’m really focused on.

So there are a number of near-term producers of vanadium, and while the market is currently balanced, I like the prospects for the metal going forward based on forecast global steel demand and potential for vanadium’s critical use in energy storage applications—two diverse sources of demand.

TCMR: I have enjoyed speaking with you very much.

CB: Thank you very much.

With a lifelong interest in geopolitics and the financial issues that emerge from these relationships, Chris Berry founded House Mountain Partners in 2010. House Mountain firmly believes that the emerging quality-of-life cycle emanating from Asia is a “game-changer” that will affect everyone throughout the world for decades. With that in mind, the firm focuses on the intersection of three topics: 1) The evolving geopolitical relationship between emerging and developed economies; 2) The commodity space; and 3) Junior mining and resource stocks are positioned to benefit from this phenomenon. Chris spent 14 years working across various roles in sales and brokerage on Wall Street before founding House Mountain Partners. He holds an MBA in finance with an international focus from Fordham University and a BA in international studies from the Virginia Military Institute. Chris is also a member of the Canadian American Business Council. He invites readers to receive a complimentary subscription to Morning Notes, which provides analyses of emerging geopolitical, technological and economic trends. Go to www.discoveryinvesting.com.

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The reversal of reforms on the New Pension System?

By Ajay Shah, on September 7th, 2011
In December 2002, the NDA made a very big move in pension reforms. They decided that from 1/1/2004 onwards, all new staff recruited into the government would be switched out of the traditional defined-benefit pension and instead placed into a new individual-account defined contribution pension system. This was one of the major achievements of the economic reforms of that period. For a conceptual picture of the New Pension System (NPS), see this article, and for a story of that period, see this article.

An essential feature of the NPS was that it was a defined contribution system. India has a long history with getting into trouble with guaranteed returns. UTI’s assured return schemes turned into a problem for the exchequer. EPS, run by EPFO, is bankrupt. When pension promises are made, they require peering into many decades into the future and arriving at estimates of longevity and asset returns. In the best of times, it is hard to make such estimates; honest mistakes are possible. In addition, when governance is weak, there are political pressures to make extravagant promises, which will look popular right now but generate staggering costs for the government in the future. As an example, rough calculations show that the implicit pension debt on account of the traditional civil servants pension in India (the one which was replaced by the NPS) stand at roughly 70% of GDP. This is a very big price to pay, for a tiny sliver of the workforce.

The NDA did the unpopular work of switching new recruits out of the defined benefit pensions. But the UPA did not follow through appropriately. At first, many years were lost in hoping that the CPI(M) would come on board the reform. After that, the legal engineering was put into place in order to get an NPS up and running without requiring the legislation. This process was slower than what one might have desired, but it has been making inexorable progress.

But now, a new existential threat seems to have come up : the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance seems to be saying that the fundamental idea of the NPS — defined contributions — should be scrapped. This would amount to a major reversal of India’s economic reforms.

On this subject, see:

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Random Shots - No Light at the End of the Tunnel?

By Claus Vistesen, on September 7th, 2011

One of the stories that caught my attention this week was the Bloomberg piece about how banks in London and New York are starting to jump ship on the old finance hubs due to fear of effects from planned regulatory tightening.

Quote Bloomberg

Banks in Europe are exploring ways to cut costs by routing more of their trades and other business through overseas subsidiaries, a plan that may shift tax revenue away from London and loosen European regulators’ influence over the lenders.Nomura Holdings Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and UBS AG (UBSN) are among lenders preparing plans to book as much business as possible through legal entities in jurisdictions where tax rates are lower and rules on capital and liquidity are less onerous, the banks and lawyers and accountants working with them say.

(…)

Banks could record as much as 30 percent of the value of their trades through Hong Kong, Singapore and other jurisdictions instead of hubs such as London and New York without running into trouble with regulators, Matten said. Such a move would hurt traditional hubs such as London because assets are treated for tax and regulatory purposes in the country where they are booked. It would also allow banks to sidestep the U.K. bank levy, introduced last year to raise 2.5 billion pounds ($4.1 billion) from lenders operating in Britain, as well as any financial transaction tax imposed by the European Union.

Perhaps this is a sign of the times in the sense that both banks and market participants seem to be looking increasingly outside the boundaries of the developed world for growth, profit and eventually prosperity. Having just moved to the Big Smoke I would not necessarily lament a downsizing of the finance sector even if it is the pond that I also do my fishing for the daily meal ticket. Perhaps, if fast moving financiers chose to go to Singapore instead of London, the residents of the latter would not have to endure paying 300.000 GBP for a studio flat in Canary Wharf [1].

Of course, it may all be a red herring but it could also be part of a number of tentative signs that the locus of global activity on a variety of fronts is moving to new epicentres. Let us hope they do not travel entirely in our foot steps.

More generally, we just put out our monthly report and the outlook is very much wishy-washy. Surely, our leading indicators are pointing down, but after the market puke in August it seems to me that the end of the world had almost been priced in as the S&P500 hit the 1100 marker. In this sense, do not be surprised to see it ticking towards 1250 even if the recent job data were abysmal, but beware. The old range has been broken and we are finding a new lower one. Market prices have a tendency to become “normal” after a period and with global economic activity visibly slowing the fundamentals are not really on the bulls’ side even if they point to the merits of chasing a counter trend rally after a 10% drawdown.

More generally as I noted before, the divergence between respectable analysts is widening which always makes me take a few steps back. On the one hand I see both buy side and sell side analysts rather stubbornly sticking to their year-end S&P500 targets of 1300-1400 while other independent analysts put the fair value of the index at 900-1000. Both will obviously have an axe (or maybe even a book) to grind, but part of my job is to synthesize the consensus into a fairly straight road map for our clients, and it is getting difficult.

I tend to side with the pessimists if only because I find it difficult to see how US corporates can continue to operate as efficiently as they have been doing so far. Gerald Minack had some excellent points on this in his latest report;

A big medium-term uncertainty for DM equity investors is the sustainability of earnings. A decade ago, the big uncertainty was whether valuations could be sustained. They weren’t . The de-rating may have further to go, but clearly valuation is less of a headwind now than at the TMT-inspired peak. Earnings, on the other hand, are very high. Profits are now near an all-time high as a share of global GDP, and the real return on equity has followed . What’s not able, however, is not the cycle rebound, but the elevated level of earnings (and real returns) over the past decade. The forward-looking issue is whether those elevated returns can be sustained. At a global level, the answer may be ‘yes’ – for the simple reason it’s now possible to make profits in places where previously it was not. What’s not clear is the sustainability of high earnings in the developed world.

In particular, I would would point to the contradiction between continuing ultra low unit labour costs and the need to now see growth moving from cost cutting to topline growth. Something does not add up.

Real unit labour costs are now at 60-year lows. This matches the decline in wage share of GDP to a 50-year low. Arithmetically, this is the most important support for high profits. As I’ve discussed in prior reports, it’s not clear how long households can support consumer spending at near 70% of GDP with labour income at multi-decade lows. That’s been possible recently due to massive transfers from the public sector, but that support appears unsustainable.

In my opinion, this is big elephant in the room in relation to the US stock market. It will be difficult for earnings (and margins) to stay at current levels going forward. It follows naturally from the fact that if all companies cut costs and this improves margins this will only work for a limited period time as there are decreasing returns if everyone follows this strategy at the same time. Now we need to see topline sales growth for margins to be sustained, but this is obviously difficult with the current macroeconomic backdrop, so something has to give.

Globally, coincident data is already slowing visibly across the globe with headline PMI readings and trade data coming in steadily lower. In that sense we are up against the wall again only so shortly after the shock of 2008/09 and this time, the ability of policy makers to respond is limited.

However, I would be weary about calling this another 2008. One of the effects of experiencing a balance sheet recession with subsequent deleveraging is that trend growth falls and thus that the economy becomes liable to more frequent recessions. This applies to the US in particular but essentially also to the whole of OECD. This means that we will see more frequent but also essentially shallower recessions. The only qualifier here is really that some parts of Europe are now stuck in a depression locked in a vice of dysfunctional institutions and a lack of willingness and political capability to deal with the problems.

As such, within Europe also lies the potential source a Lehman like shock should the crisis prompt a rapid and violent default of one or more sovereigns and/or financial institutions. Certainly, euro area banks are feeling the pinch as USD funding is getting cut off and if anything it seems to me that the EURUSD is looking a bit too strong for its own good given the backdrop of the mess in the euro zone. As cash levels at euro zone banks are drawn down the currency will adjust to fundamentals not to mention of course the fact that the ECB is slowly but steadily being pushed into full blown QE and monetisation of peripheral debt.

The latest G&F provides a good summary;

(…) The risk of a dollar rally against the euro in coming months is growing. This is because, sooner or later, the ECB will have to reverse its recent insane monetary tightening. Trichet made a start in this direction this week in his usual ponderous manner. Thus, he told the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday that “risks to the medium-term outlook for price developments are under study in the context of the ECB staff projections that will be released early September.” The issue here is whether markets will allow Trichet to save face and not performs an abrupt U-turn before his scheduled departure from the scene on 31 October.

More generally, the recent comments from the IMF that euro zone banks need additional capital is once more a case of stating the almost obviously obvious. The transmission mechanism here is very simple. The market is now effectively pricing in a default of Greece and possibly other peripheral economies and this means that the attention must now turn to the losses that creditors will bear or, alternatively, the size of the bailout if we stick to the old mantra of no losses. As a good friend of mine pointed out recently,

All trough last month’s banking shares’ collapse, I have been thinking that perhaps, equity investors are worried that the recapitalization will be different this time, with either the taxpayer (wrong solution) or the bondholder (rightly, through a bond-for-equity swap), massively diluting the shareholder. Politicians obviously do not have the stomach, nor the muscle for new bailouts.

Or to put it differently, there are no easy solutions left. One solution is the Brady Bond plan which is currently being floated in the case of Greece. The problem as I see is that it is fudged precisely when it comes to the current valuation of the bonds. Basically, there has to be pain today for the creditors, otherwise we are just kicking the proverbial can down the road as recapitalisation is avoided today but made worse for tomorrow. A solution for recapitalising banks today would naturally be for their creditors to accept a swap for equity and thus being moved into the frontline to absorb any losses that the banks would bear on sovereign debt, but that is not popular. Essentially, being degraded to equity holder in a bank with known sovereign assets in the European periphery is equal to taking a haircut on your initial investment, but all this then leaves the inevitable question of who and when someone will step up to take the lead in the debt restructuring.

Of course, the idea of substituting debt for equity is the same principle applied in the case of Greece posting domestic assets (islands, utility companies etc) as collateral for credit. We can then think about this collateral as Greek sovereign equity and as with creditors of banks, it is all good in theory but in practice, not so well.

Elsewhere, the game of Old Maid in global currency markets continue with the SNB still in the spotlight despite already having taken desperate measures to stop the appreciation of the CHF;

Quote Bloomberg

While the Swiss National Bank has so far avoided currency purchases in its latest bid to keep a lid on the franc, it may soon have no alternative but to follow through on its threat to intervene, economists and strategists said.

But what really caught my attention was comments by Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega that lowering interest rates represents an effective antidote against an appreciating currency.

Quote Bloomberg

For “the next two or three years, the conditions will be there for rates to keep falling,” Mantega told reporters in Sao Paulo today. “Falling rates are a good antidote for the gains in the real.”

Allow me to quote myself from the post linked above;

Old Maid is a card game where the simple task is to avoid holding a given card (often the queen of spades) at the end of the game. Even in the company of good friends however, holding Old Maid at the end is not fun. Often, you have to buy the drinks, drop a piece of clothes, or endure other travails. And as it turns out, the global FX market is not unlike this good old game of cards where the Old Maid is proxied by having a strong currency on whose shoulders the correction of global macroeconomic imbalances must invariably fall. In this way, and although one sometimes get the feeling that everyone believes that everybody may actually export their way out of their current misery, buying one country’s currency means selling another and thus, someone (be it an individual economy or a group/basket of economies) must end up holding Old Maid.

The easy investment advice here is naturally to buy the Old Maid which means that just as the global financial punditry searching for clues as to what lies ahead for the global economy and the looming slowdown the SNB et al may have to skint yet awhile for light at the end of the tunnel.

—

[1] – No my dear reader, I am renting and I would never touch these things but they are there and they are being sold.

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Economic Events on September 7, 2011

By B.P.T., on September 7th, 2011

The Mortgage Bankers’ Association purchase index will be released at 7:00 AM EDT, providing an update on the quantity of new mortgages and refinancings closed in the last week.

At 7:45 AM EDT, the weekly ICSC-Goldman Store Sales report will be released, giving an update on the health of the consumer through this analysis of retail sales.

At 8:55 AM EDT, the weekly Redbook report will be released, giving us more information about consumer spending.

At 2:00 PM EDT, the Beige Book report will be released, giving us more information about economic conditions in each Federal Reserve district in advance of the next Fed meeting.

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