Topic: How To Invest

Q: Pat: What is your advice on buying the speculative stock Nemaska Lithium? Thanks in advance.

Article Excerpt

A: Nemaska Lithium, $1.25 symbol NMX on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 312.8 million; Market cap: $514.6 million; www.nemaskalithium.com), is moving steadily to start up its Whabouchi lithium project in Quebec. Lithium is used in household batteries, glass and ceramics, lubricants, refrigeration, pharmaceuticals, polymers and aluminum production. But the metal mostly goes into lithium-ion and lithium-metal batteries for electric and hybrid-electric cars. The Whabouchi mine site holds a deposit of spodumene, a hard rock that was once the most important lithium source. But most of today’s lithium comes from brine solutions drawn from salt lakes such as the Chabyer in Tibet and the Salar de Atacama in Chile. This is cheaper than producing lithium from spodumene, and the recovered metal is suitable for most uses. However, when manufacturers need the purest lithium, they prefer spodumene because the final product has fewer contaminants. Nemaska plans to ship ore from the mine to a full processing facility it will build in Shawinigan, Quebec. Using a method licensed by…