Core Lithium narrowly beats guidance on FY24 spodumene production but 1Y returns still shattered

Shares in Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) jumped over 15% in the first hour of trades on Monday as the company flagged higher-than-expected FY24 spodumene production.

Through the twelve months to July, the company produced 95,000 dry metric tonnes of spodumene and shipped 97.4Kdmt.

Quarterly sales shipped came in at 33,027dmt – a record for Core.

The stock climbed to 10.5cps at 11am Sydney time on Monday, bringing one week returns to just short of +13%.

Of course, Core remains a heavily embattled stock when it comes to the price of its key commodity crashing in 2022-2023.

One year returns were down -87.6% at the same time on Monday with the company’s once formerly lofty market cap now reading $225M. Core Lithium recently announced an expansion to its existing Finniss mineral resource at Finniss of 58% to 48.2Mt of ore at 1.26% lithium.

The company also flagged on Monday it will now pause Finniss operations “with restart assessments underway.”

Drilling preparations continue at Shoobridge, Finniss and Napperby.

“In FY25, we will be drill testing priority targets around Finniss, potentially adding meaningful life to future lithium mining operations,” Interim CEO Paul Brown said.

“We will also be advancing earlier stage, low multi-commodity exploration activities within our Northern Territory landholding to demonstrate the value in these projects.”

The company has some acreage prospective for copper. Benchmark Minerals Intelligence (BMI) anticipate lithium prices to stage a recovery in 2028 – though, it’s unclear if the commodity will return to the highs we saw through the early 2020’s.

CXO last traded at 10.5cps.