Core ideas:
Join hands with Zijin Mining Group to speed up the development of lithium extraction from salt lake, "adsorption + membrane process" has a bright future. The company announced the signing of the "Strategic Cooperation Agreement" with Zijin Mining Group, which will provide technical support such as adsorption materials, lithium extraction process and process package design for Zijin Mining Group's lithium salt lake resources project, lithium resources deep processing project, mine liquid treatment and metal resource utilization, industrial water treatment project, etc., and the agreement is valid for five years.
Zijin Mining Group is rich in salt lake resources at home and abroad, and the company has technical and technological advantages. With the combination of the two, the pace of lithium extraction from salt lake is expected to be accelerated.
Zijin Mining Group is rich in lithium salt lake resources, and the "adsorption + membrane method" is preferred in the Laguocuo Salt Lake in Tibet with a capacity of 50,000 tons per year. Since October 2021, Zijin Mining Group has successively acquired two high-grade salt lakes, 3Q in Argentina and Laguosuo in Tibet. It is expected that Laguocuo Salt Lake will adopt the "adsorption + membrane" process, and the production capacity of Phase I + Phase II will be increased to 50,000 tons / year. In addition, the production capacity of the first phase of superimposed 3Q Salt Lake is expected to be put into production in 2023, and it can be increased to 40-60,000 tons / year in the long term. At present, Zijin Mining Group has a total lithium carbonate reserves of more than 9 million tons of LCE.
The first layout of the company is "adsorption + membrane method" to extract lithium and develop titanium series adsorbents. In 2018, the company won the bid for Minmetals Salt Lake 10,000 tons / year lithium carbonate project, successfully stuck in the salt lake lithium extraction core process package (adsorption + membrane method). In January 2022, we raised an additional 103 million yuan from specific targets through a summary procedure (mainly for three pilot projects of lithium extraction from salt lakes), and successively signed Zabuye 100 tons / year lithium hydroxide pilot project and Jinhai lithium industry 1000 tons / year lithium chloride project. According to the investor relations activity record table in March 2022, the company's self-developed adsorbent pilot line has been completed, and it is expected to form an industrial production capacity of about 2000 tons per year this year to consolidate the layout of lithium extraction from salt lakes.
Profit forecast and investment advice. It is estimated that the return net profit of the company from 2022 to 2024 is 1.02 billion yuan, respectively, and the PE corresponding to the latest closing price is 21.56 times. Card position lithium extraction core process package, various areas of emerging downstream joint efforts, give the company 2022 50 times PE valuation, corresponding to 41.56 yuan / share reasonable value, maintain the "buy" rating.
Risk hint. The progress of the pilot test of lithium extraction from salt lake is not as expected, and the progress of multi-field layout is not as expected.