Over the past five years, amid tanking profits and rising debt, the lithium production company Albemarle Corporation has shuttered or stalled multiple mining and refinery projects in Australia, Chile, and the US before ever getting them off the ground. Now, with fewer mines in operation, the company disclosed that they’re predicting profits for the first time in a year.
In their third quarter of 2025, Albemarle posted revenue of $1.3 billion USD, down 7% from their $1.4 billion in revenue of their third quarter of 2024. The company reported a diluted loss per share of $1.72 in the third quarter of 2025, though analysts now predict that it will swing to a profit per diluted share of $1.00 by the end of 2026.
After a couple shaky years during the lithium bust, Albemarle is poised to course-correct with predictions of increased profit thanks to their downsizing efforts. But as signs of lithium price increases appear on the horizon, it remains to be seen whether the company went too conservative.
“What we’ve seen historically from Albemarle has been this sort of start/stop, where when we see lithium prices, boom, they have all these growth plans and they’re going to become the biggest lithium producer in the world and grow their lead. But then when we see a lithium market go bust, they pull out, they pull back,” said Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst for Morningstar.
Over the course of the last two years, Albemarle has abandoned plans for two refinery projects. Then in August 2025, the company announced shifts in their corporate structure meant to consolidate redundant operations. In October, they sold their controlling stake in Ketjen and separately sold all of their stake in Eurecat, both companies producing chemicals used in the petrochemical refinery process. All of those closures and deals allowed Albemarle to reduce their capital expenditures for 2025 to about $600 million from roughly $1.7 billion.
The company’s net loss over the nine month period ending in September 2025 sat at about $63 million. While the company isn’t releasing guidance on its expectations for the full year, that figure represents a much smaller loss than the same figure a year earlier, in 2024, when the company was already looking at a loss of $1.2 billion.
Albemarle is predicting revenue of about $5.3 billion for 2026, a 6% increase from the $5 billion they are projecting in 2025.
So far, the response among investors has been largely positive. Albemarle’s stock has risen about 57% year-to-date, currently sitting at about $131 per share. Still, the current share price is down 148% from a record high hit in 2022.
Albemarle’s erratic moves are due to the intense volatility of lithium prices themselves, which can cause extreme fluctuations in the profitability of producer operations quarter to quarter. After demand for lithium skyrocketed alongside subsidies and green energy promises in the early 2020’s, the rapid production of lithium that ensued created a glut of the mineral on the market, ultimately causing prices and profits to crash. In some cases, lithium prices crashed more than 85%.
Raw metals markets are inherently volatile, and even within those markets, lithium is uniquely tricky to predict.
This means that despite the short-term prediction that lithium prices will rise in the near-term, lithium markets tend to ignore medium-term prospects, according to Yves Jégourel, who researches the markets of raw materials as a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South and Professor of Economics at the Conservatoire National des Art et Métiers.
“Despite the current market surplus and the relative availability of the resource, a supply deficit is looming in the medium to long term if mining investments are not stepped up now,” explained Jégourel.
Albemarle did not respond to a request for comment.
Albemarle is not alone in pulling back on their boom promises; Arcadium, Pilbara Minerals, and Mineral Resources are all lithium producers who have either paused or shut down mines entirely in 2025.
In the valley of a bust cycle, the big question for lithium companies is how long they can maintain latent production capacity, so that when the cycle turns, they’re ready to capitalize on higher prices. In a recent call with investors, Albemarle CEO Kent Masters spoke frankly about the new approach that’s been guiding Albemarle’s decision-making.
“Our view is, we’re not able to predict the lithium price, and we’re not going to depend on that. So we have to be able to compete through the bottom of the cycle, which is why you’ve seen us so focused on cost and cash and getting our business in a position to do that. We’re getting there,” said Masters.
Earlier this year, many in the lithium industry were predicting a tightening of supply and therefore higher prices by the end of 2025. That prediction now looks slightly premature, as signs of a tightening market are only now beginning to appear. Estimates of tightening supply in 2026 were enough to cause analysts at UBS, Baird, and other firms to upgrade their recommendations from sell to hold or buy Albemarle stock.
For lithium, demand is already strong, most notably in batteries for electric vehicles, but with speculation as well about its eventual use in rapidly proliferating data centers during the AI boom. Because of that strong demand, investors are keeping their eyes peeled for any signs of a “price fly-up,” a situation in which prices increase rapidly when supply slips below demand. Amidst continued volatility, the question lingering for investors is when, exactly, Albemarle should bring their capital expenditures back up to increase their production.
“We don’t think we’re shorting our assets with the cuts that we’ve made, we’re getting more efficient at it,” said Masters, when he was asked what criteria he would use to decide to grow the company once again.