The organisers of the BMO Metals and Mining conference added a new age metals stream to its annual event in Florida, US, this year and it ended up standing out from the crowd.
The bulk of presentations in the diversified, gold, silver, base metals and diamond streams were packed with mentions of shareholder returns, free cash flow and (at a push) brownfield expansions, but growth and investment were front and centre of the battery raw materials space.
This was especially so on the lithium development and production side, with "essentially every company … in the middle of, or looking for funding to drive new capacity as the industry looks to satiate large expected demand increases", the bank's analysts said.
Only FMC were up on stage presenting at the Florida conference, so we're guessing there were a few more companies in the crowd.
Unsurprisingly given the recent Morgan Stanley report that has recently been gaining attention, the big lithium debate gripping the conference was "whether the magnitude
