AMG Sells Lithium Below Zero Cost — and Still Can't Get Bitterfeld Qualified

A 22% EBITDA jump, guidance lifted to ~$280 million, a byproduct credit doing the heavy lifting, and a European refinery still waiting on its customers

AMG.AS · Earnings Call · 2026-11-06

The quarter where the mine paid you to take the lithium

AMG's third quarter produced a number that ought to be impossible in a commodity business: adjusted EBITDA of $78 million, up 22% year over year from $64 million, alongside a lithium cost per ton of negative $62 per dry metric ton CIF China. The company did not sell lithium at a profit. It mined an ore body and let the byproducts pay for the privilege. The Mibra mine in Brazil is the engine here. Recovering lithium and tantalum from the same rock means the tantalum credit lands directly on the lithium cost line, and with tantalum prices running at roughly 2.5x last year's level the maths turns upside down. “This outstanding cost result was achieved in part due to the ongoing strong demand for tantalum in electronic applications, which, in the face of the limited supply reaction continues to elevate prices to 2.5x higher than last year.” — Heinz Schimmelbusch, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-11-06 That is tantalum prices doing what a structurally short market does — and it is a durable competitive moat that no pure-play lithium producer can replicate, however loudly they talk about the cost curve. The segment arithmetic is stark. Lithium adjusted EBITDA went from $3 million to $37 million year over year: “Q3 '26 adjusted EBITDA was $37 million compared to $3 million in Q3 '25.” — Jackson Dunckel, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-11-06 Management lifted full-year 2026 guidance to approximately $280 million from a prior $230-250 million range, and still expects positive free cash flow for the year despite $6 million of cash used in the quarter on seasonal working capital.

The promise that keeps sliding right

Strip out the Brazilian triumph and the story is a European refinery that has been perpetually one quarter away from qualification. On the July call, management was explicit about Bitterfeld's battery-grade lithium hydroxide: qualifications would begin “starting next quarter” — Michael Connor, Unknown · 2026-07-30, with the plant expected to run at full capacity in 2027. On this call, the timetable is no longer AMG's to give.

There has been very public announcements around the delays of our customers. Obviously, that impacts us in the time line of qualifications... the qualifications will be defined by our customers and not by simply our progress.
Michael Connor, Chief Commercial Officer · 2026-11-06

The culprit is upstream of AMG: delayed commissioning at customer cathode active material plants, with Beijing Easpring and EcoPro named by analysts as the moving parts. So unqualified battery-grade lithium keeps being produced and sold — a phrase that has now appeared in AMG's keyword set across four separate quarters — and the CFO was cagey about when the refinery even enters reported EBITDA, deferring to February guidance. For a company that just had its Bitterfeld and Zinnwald projects designated Critical Raw Materials Act strategic projects by the European Commission, the policy endorsement is arriving faster than the customer sign-offs.

Chrome: the next "always sold out" franchise

The genuinely new inflection is in the alloys complex. Q3 was the first full quarter for the new Chrome metal plant in Pittsburgh, and the CEO's framing was unusually blunt about what that means for pricing power:

Critical materials has one particular feature, and you're always sold out. And that's happening now in particular ways in chrome.
Heinz Schimmelbusch, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-11-06

Note this is a re-tread of a claim made a year ago, when the same executive told analysts there was "no cannibalization" because the business was sold out. What is new is the demand vector. Alongside structural aerospace sector growth, management now points to power generation as an emerging chrome demand pool — a notably contrarian pitch, given the market's power-hungry infrastructure complex has been de-rating over the last 90 days (data center power names are down double digits on the tape). AMG frames it instead as gas-turbine alloys, and it is spending accordingly: spare U.K. capacity utilization first, then a Pittsburgh plant built to double quickly, all at what management repeatedly calls low CapEx with fast payback. Behind chrome sits molybdenum and then tungsten, both built on the Aura acquisition's high-purity recycling technology — the same platform, engineered once in Europe and replicated in the U.S. And behind that, ALD Engineering, which signed $85 million of orders in the quarter and carries a $366 million strong order backlog, with a U.S. assembly center flagged as a high-priority project to serve the aerospace value chain locally.

What stopped being discussed

The loudest signal is an absence. A year ago, antimony was the franchise that carried the whole company — Q3 2025 Technologies EBITDA of $41 million on soaring antimony prices — and management defended it vigorously against any suggestion it was non-core: “antimony was never a non-core business in AMG, but always a very contributive, steady and part of our portfolio.” — Heinz Schimmelbusch, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer · 2025-11-06 This quarter Technologies EBITDA fell to $25 million on revenue down 29%, driven by exactly that: lower antimony prices. Antimony has vanished entirely from AMG's keyword set. The hero of 2025 is now the drag of 2026, and the honest read is that AMG's earnings mix has rotated from a policy-driven trading windfall back to mined-and-manufactured materials. Vanadium added $16 million of EBITDA, down $3.5 million, with the New Castle ramp not contributing until 2027. When asked directly about the vanadium supply situation for spent catalysts, the CEO's answer was a single sentence about it being "robust" — conspicuously shorter than the multi-paragraph expansions of prior quarters. Cash remains the soft spot. Net debt of $469 million against $350 million of cash and $550 million of total liquidity is comfortable, and the $20 million-a-year Section 45X credit is expected to finally land with a multiyear catch-up in Q4: “It's running at roughly, depending on capacity utilization, running at roughly $20 million a year.” — Jackson Dunckel, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-11-06 Management leans on the same seasonal script it used a year ago — “the fourth quarter is very strong from an operating cash flow basis” — Jackson Dunckel, Chief Financial Officer · 2025-11-06 — which has been true, but it is now the third consecutive year the annual free cash flow promise rests on a Q4 working-capital release.

The bottom line

AMG is a sub-$1 billion company that just raised guidance 18% at the midpoint, is short of nothing in the ground, and has a byproduct structure that lets it print cash while lithium spot prices wobble. Asked to explain the gap between frantic physical demand and soft Chinese spot quotes, the CEO offered the most honest line of the call: “We don't know.” — Heinz Schimmelbusch, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer · 2026-11-06 Fair enough. The real question is Bitterfeld — a strategic asset, government-blessed, contract-covered and still not qualified — where the timetable has quietly migrated from AMG's control to its customers'. Until that resolves, the market is paying for a Brazilian mine and a Pittsburgh chrome plant, and getting a European refinery option for free.