PLS share price in focus
Pilbara Minerals is a leading ASX-listed lithium company, owning 100% of the world’s largest, independent hard-rock lithium operation, Pilgangoora, which it acquired in 2014.
Pilbara’s primary business is to find, process, and sell spodumene concentrate (basically rocks with lithium in them). It sells its concentrate through “offtake” agreements and spot sales on the Battery Material Exchange (BMX) platform. A good example of an offtake partner is Great Wall (the Chinese car company) or POSCO, a South Korean steelmaker.
Demand for lithium has grown steadily in recent years on the back of developments in electric vehicles and renewable energy technology. Some investors would call Pilbara a ‘pure play’ investment in demand for green tech given their direct involvement with lithium. However, as a commodities producer, its revenue is still at the mercy of (sometimes dramatic) fluctuations in the price of spodumene in the global market.
The key metrics
If you’ve ever tried reading a company’s income statement on the annual report, you’ll know just how complex it can get. While there are any number of ways you could slice up the statement, three key figures are revenue, gross margin, and profit.
Revenue is important for obvious reasons – everything else (profit, margins, return on equity etc.) is downstream of a company’s ability to generate sales and revenue. What we’re looking for is not so much the absolute number, but the trend. PLS last reported an annual revenue of $1,254m with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the last 3 years of 92.5% per year.
The next thing we’ll want to consider is the gross margin. The gross margin tells us how profitable the core products/services are – before you take into account all the overhead costs, how much money does the company make from selling $100 worth of goods and services? PLS’s latest reported gross margin was 42.2%.
Finally, we get to profit, the real headline number. Last financial year Pilbara Minerals Ltd reported a profit of $257m. That compares to 3 years ago when they made a loss of -$51m, so it’s positive to see how profits have recovered.
Financial health of PLS shares
Next, we could consider the capital health of the company. What we’re trying to work out is whether the company is generating a reasonable return on their equity (the total shareholder value) and whether they have a good safety buffer. One important measure to consider is net debt. This is simply the total debt minus the company’s cash holdings.
In the case of PLS, the current net debt sits at -$1,071m. A high number here means that a company has a lot of debt which potentially means higher interest payments, greater instability, and higher sensitivity to interest rates. A negative value on the other hand indicates the company has more cash than debt, which can be seen as good (a big safety buffer) or bad (inefficient capital allocation).
A metric that might be more valuable to us is the debt/equity percentage. This tells us how much debt the company has relative to shareholder ownership. In other words, how leveraged is the company? Pilbara Minerals Ltd has a debt/equity ratio of 17.1%, which means they have more equity than debt.
Finally, we can look at the return on equity (ROE). The ROE tells us how much profit a company is generating as a percentage of its total equity – high numbers indicate the company is allocating capital efficiently and generating value, while a low number suggests that company growth may be starting to slow. PLS generated an ROE of 7.7% in FY24.
What to make of PLS shares?
As a growth company, one way to put a general prediction on the PLS share price could be to compare its price-to-sales multiple over time. Currently, Pilbara Minerals Ltd shares have a price-sales ratio of 5.24x, compared to its 5-year average of 20.35x, meaning its shares are trading below their historical average. This could mean that the share price has fallen, or sales have increased, or both. In the case of PLS, revenue has been growing over the last 3 years. Please keep in mind that context is important – and this is just one valuation technique. Investment decisions can’t just be based on one metric.
The Rask websites offer free online investing courses, created by analysts explaining things like Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and Dividend Discount Models (DDM). They even include free valuation spreadsheets! Both of these models would be a better way to value the PLS share price.
