Auto / EV / Battery

Tonight on Happy Hour, Ira Joseph, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Energy Policy, Columbia University. Former Head of Global Generating Fuels & Electric Power Pricing and Research at S&P Global Platts. Former Head of Global Gas and Power PIRA Energy Group. Former Editor in Chief Energy Intelligence. The man has 30 years form in energy expertise. Ira was recommended by Sankey Research friend Jay Saunders, long term natural resource Portfolio Manager at Jennison, and connoisseur […]

Greetings from Texas, The world’s biggest mangrove company kindly invited Paty & me to the Austin Formula One Grand Prix (F1). Cars running E10 are screaming behind me on four source power trains; (V6 1.8 liter, one electric exhaust powered, one electric latent braking powered, and a turbocharger). The world’s biggest mangrove company is Aramco, F1 primary sponsors for this race. I think the sponsorship is genius in increasing the popularity of the world’s greatest […]

This evening! Premium Event! Steve Levine on Happy Hour tonight at 5pm ET re: batteries and electric vehicles, he is a world expert. Biography was emailed to you yesterday, impressive. Steve is now Editor of The Electric, a new, exclusive premium publication at The Information on batteries and EVs. Steve Levine 5pm Thursday 29th Sept: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtduuvrDMqEta4M3eKkusntGrE1nVV2HoK ~ Watching the NASDAQ below its 200 weekly moving average for the first time in 13 years “The West” […]

Brooklyn Cop at 844th Precinct accuses innocent Sankey of being “weird-looking” “They” got caught speeding yesterday: fast unwind of long natgas / short refining trade Terrific Happy Hour with Jay Saunders and a couple of other hitters last night; introducing Scope 4 Jennison portfolio manager (PM) Jay Saunders is very popular in the market, you can tell that by the players that dialled in to participate in his call yesterday. He co-runs the Jennison Natural […]

It was a week that started with the Queen accepting a new British Prime Minister, and ended a new King Charles III and the always-somber 9-11. It is a miserable late summer day in New York, drizzle from a windless grey sky. With due respect, there is not a lot in those events directly relevant to oil/energy, and no doubt the last thing you need is more coverage from me. Rather, there is lots of […]

Observations on the “Inflation Reduction Act”: We read all 730 pages, with 198 being on healthcare, and conclude that, rather than calculate an “Excel told me” analysis, but rather, because of the surprise announcement of the Bill, the stock market provides an early indicator of the Bill’s likely impact: we show you key stock price performance since the Bill was shock-announced by Senators Manchin & Schumer on June 27th: We temper this market reaction. We […]

So we made it to the Wall Street’s vacation week, the last week in August. What’s the first rule of Wall Street? Keep your seat. We got through another year. Congratulations. Three observations about what the market might be missing: Is Putin’s EU squeeze a pre-cursor to him suing for peace/settlement in Ukraine? European energy prices are insane, but the futures strip is self-defeating Drought in China is epic – the scale may be under-appreciated […]

Sincere thanks to research partner Greg Bordelon, who has been firing company reports at me while I stumble across Mexico in the quest to Morelia. Sorry for the invconvience, but if you would just request the company-specific notes, that would save me doing a ton of cut-and-paste into what would be a monster drone of a note. So email me and I will forward, on these companies: Key points: will we get restructuring at Baker […]

Canada from the top rope with the 100bps interest rate rise. US with the 9.1% inflation print. Here’s US inflation since 1914. We argued that the 2020’s have nothing like the set up of the “Roaring 20’s”, in our note written in 2020 “The Cliché-Myth of the Roaring 2020s”. For one, the stock market to start the 1920s had been essentially in a bear market for 15 years, hammered by WWI and Spanish Flu. Not […]

Libya down by 1mb/d, maybe President Biden should visit? APA (Apache Oil) duster in Suriname is unfortunate for the marginal mega-bull case BP – like Shell, the non-alcoholic beer of big oils – sells out of Canadian Oil Sands but increases exposure to Western Canada offshore OKLAHOMA CITY, June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR) today announced that its board of directors (the “Board”) has received a non-binding proposal letter, dated June […]

We have postulated, for example in our note on Dr Copper (Sweet Chile & Mines, Jan 2022), that China’s total dominance of global primary commodity processing, would eventually force the US and Europe to re-domicile supply chains and manufacturing industry. Having massively and excessively out-sourced energy and commodity-intense industry to China over the past 15 years, the world, not least the US & EU governments, are now recognizing the need to re-domicile core production, back […]

Some real time gasoline demand price elasticity data was given on today’s Casey’s call, and we thought it was worth sharing verbatim, with a little extra cheese. In case you missed it, Casey’s is a huge “convenience store“/gasoline station operator. Some 55% of revenue comes from fuel sales, of $8.7bn, generating 32% of gross profit of $2.4bn. Casey’s, is not just the 3rd largest convenience store in the USA, it is the US’ 5th biggest […]

June, A beautiful day here in Brooklyn Heights, I wish you a wonderful Sunday. I always maintain that if you ignored the media, you would think it’s a wonderful world. And it is! That said, I am enjoying the mass media coverage of the Jubilee. BREAKING NEWS: QUEEN WAVES FROM BALCONY. Headline on my screen here. And we are kicking ourselves for not being in London, given my mother lives right on Hyde Park, in […]

Glad tidings, A long weekend in the US, a four day weekend in the UK for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, seventy years as Monarch. Quite the rein. Go easy on your temperamental French executive chef today as he crashes around in a fury having to stoop to make your requested Memorial weekend hot dogs and chicken nuggets. The fact that you intend to slug super-chilled Napa Screaming Eagle Sauvignon blanc is only upsetting him more.  […]

Owing to a COVID protocol in Dubai, our guest today on Happy Hour has been delayed. I will open the Zoom at 5pm tonight for chat, and encourage a couple of top money managers to join. Call it a therapy session, how to stay long your winners and cut your losers. Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodO6rqz4uHNQ7LrjcpfaRoLZPrNGXSy-g That’s the bad news, no star guest today. However save the date for next week with Tourmaline […]

There were two SPAC deals that we had looked at over the past year, in expanding coverage towards energy transition, in the quest to find value in a market packed with dodgy and highly valued SPACs. First was Li-Cycle battery re-cycling, second was Embark Autonomous trucks. Both have been subject to short-seller reports, today we update on Embark. We wrote at length on the subject of Embark $EMBK autonomous trucks in September last year while […]

Happy Sunday in May, Never a bad thing. Fog this morning has lifted. Aramco results this morning rounded out a week when it became the largest stock in the world by market capitalization, surpassing Apple (not by free float, the Saudi government owns 94%). It  generated an enormous profit in a quarter when Brent averaged just about $100/bbl (actually $99.53/bbl Q1 average).   Refining earnings, as well as continued huge upstream earnings, will be even […]

Few, As they say on the internet. Today we have a PORTFOLIO MANAGER SPECIAL in the presentation, which includes a full glorious ppt on the largest stocks in the market, and for bonus, a Sankey Recommendation on each stock. The oils look great on these charts. The recommendations on names like Google (BUY) or Disney (SELL) are purely quanatitive interpretation of charts, we do not cover non-energy related stocks fundamentally. So this is quantitative analysis, […]

Thanks to those of you – Chuck Yates; and the classiest guy on Wall St, Mr Sully at Goldman – who called me regarding the Brooklyn subway incident/terrorism/whatever this morning; Patricia takes the subway all the time. She’s flying back from London right now, so totally safe. Very classy to call, thanks. Hope you too are all safe. Of course needless to say, my breezy offer to run any stock in the S&P500 earnings share […]

This Thursday 7th April, Strategy Session with PBF Senior Management 5pm – RSVP Tonight – ConocoPhillips senior management in town for informal sellside drinks Tomorrow, DC hearing, House Energy and Commerce “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” In oil, the excitement this morning is New York jet fuel prices going off the scale, part of the theme we talked about over the past couple of weeks, especially after […]

Well, that was quite the Q1 2022! But we got it in the books. I think the low point of Q1 for me was the evening of Thursday 3rd March, shortly after the 24th February Russia-Ukraine invasion, when the largest nuclear plant in Europe, Zaporizhzhia, appeared to be under direct attack and burning, right as I had a one-hour briefing with the State Dept, and my contact told me that surviving a nuclear attack is […]

Up bright and early this morning, I will miss “the clocks going forward” now that, as the world ponders World War III, the US Congress has addressed the urgent issue of daylight savings time. The big picture remains that the Democrats are headed for a shelacking in the November 2022 mid-terms and the legislative potential for a major offset victory for the Biden Administration before then is getting very tight. Kudos to Biden for the […]

What’s going on the market? The Intelligent Investor is back from extended sabbatical and he/she/they is furious. Key current trading ideas: Long Shell into results tomorrow. Long Suncor into results tonight. Stock has lagged CNQ badly, one month, three months, six months, one year. We had strong downstream chat from Suncor’s EVP of downstream Kris Smith on our refining conference, which continues tomorrow with Joe Gorder’s Valero, RSVP. SU has key differentiation from CNQ in […]

Before we argue that Big Cap tech can stabilise the market here, on a fast & personal take of last week’s and next week’s earnings, in recognition that we need to focus on mega-themes, the latest population data from China is extremely important. NYT January 17th, 2022: China announced on Monday that its birthrate plummeted for a fifth straight year in 2021, moving the world’s most populous country closer to the potentially seismic moment when […]

Strategy Session “Happy Hour” tonight 5pm, special guest is William Su, Director of Research/Head of Energy at Blackrock in New York. One of my jokes about “Happy Hour” is that we don’t have a quorum to start until we have a trillion dollars on the line, with Will we get $10trn in one go, as Blackrock reported this week assets in excess of that number assets under management. Obviously we want colour on CEO Larry […]

Stunning revelation: bullish copper. The genesis of this note was taking a look at Chile, given the very interesting political developments there. Electing a left-wing President (Gabriel Boric) in late December 2021, just two months old enough to be a candidate aged 35, was one thing, but the complete re-write of the constitution that is currently undergoing, with a due date of July 5th, is pretty fascinating from a global historical perspective, although rest assured, […]

Not talking about COVID, just to say I am feeling 100% fine. This Omicron will hopefully be the largest and fast mass vaccination programme in history, whether by God or Government. Nice chart this morning from Greg Wachsteter, who kindly said I could publish. No more comment on COVID, I think the conclusion here is pretty obvious; this chart is therefore bullish S&P Energy. Sankey-Laffer curves. The presentation attached today, made me think what a […]

A client wrote to me yesterday after the Morning Note negative Sunrun positive EQT, which mentioned in passing yesterday’s announcement of a new partnership announcement from Li-Cycle: “Wish that $LICY news was as positive as your initial read.  Their Capex increased from $175m to $485m for the Hub, so even accounting for the 40% capacity increase that’s a double in cost at least. I was expecting a cost increase in this environment but that’s pretty […]

Long EQT short Sunrun this morning. Mega-theme, the ESG backlash, as energy reality intrudes on excessive alternate ambition Highlighted: a major positive announcement from Li-Cycle $LICY today regarding a $50m equity investment by LG, as part of a commercial agreement that will expand their Rochester Hub by 40% of 35,000 tonnes, equivalent to 90,000tonnes of lithium ion batteries annually. I am speaking to the company today, through newly appointed IR Nahla Azmy. More after that! […]

The entire fiasco at Jurassic Park could have been avoided by hiring more than one IT guy. Every mocking online reply to a crypto bro is an NFT, because it’s a digital record of them being owned. Anti-stalking – learning another person’s routine in order to avoid them. Bonus information: what is being ratioed? It is when a searing response to your idiotic post gets more likes and re-tweets etc than the original. Hence ratioed. […]

Good day, Pretty mixed, at best, Q4 so far for oil & gas and “old energy”; but thrilled to see our new energy plays,  Li-Cycle and Embark trucks, catching a bid. Oil & Gas are clinging on to our 2021 market leadership. More of that in the attached presentation. Also in the ppt, I ran a whole load of valuation tables, and performance tables. Beautiful day here, although darkness has fallen as I am late […]

Quick note today as I have two events. One of my favourite parties, this morning an NY Marathon party in Carroll Gardens adjacent to the running route, which starts at 9am. It is the only party I know of that starts at 9am on a Sunday. And then to the NY Giants game playing the Raiders at Meadowlands 1pm. You can get there easily, getting out involves multiple trains. It is a family tradition to […]

Hess results look in line. We argue that as the market prices oil terminal value back in, on the failing energy transition, Hess’ Guyana position will re-value higher. Structurally bullish Hess. Range $RRC increases 2022 hedges d’oh. “Wake me up at the end of 2022 on this one”. Negative. Short Neste and long Equinor, both reported – two companies at opposite ends of the valuation spectrum Well, for a highly anticipated week of quarterly results, […]

Huge week for earnings on deck this week, just about 50% of the market cap of the S&P500 reports,  and to celebrate, the traditional Sunday Sankey is back with a full presentation attached. Sample slide: Bloomberg lists Kuwait’s oil production capacity as 3.08mb/d. In the slide shown in the Sunday Sankey presentation today from the authoritative MEES, Kuwait’s production capacity has dropped by more than 500,000 b/d over the past three years to just 2.63mn […]

In Iran, everyone is terrified of spiders, but apparently in Iraq no phobia. The bible says “he who lies with a man as with a woman must be stoned” (Leviticus 20:13). Fortunately, both are legal in Canada. I once met an Olympic athlete. I asked him – Are you a pole vaulter? He replied – No, I’m German, but how did you know my name is Walter? We met former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission head […]

Today as your Sunday treat, we attach a focus note on Embark Autonomous Trucks, as part of our thematic research on the energy transition. Extending attention into the autonomous truck sector has been a fascinating ride, quite literally when I rode in an autonomous tractor trailer hauling 26,000lbs of sand through the traffic jams of Oakland, this September just past. The thing worked amazingly, through all the challenges of modern traffic. Imagine an asset-light company […]

Tonight: Gordon Shearer, world LNG expert, on Happy Hour 5pm ET. Email me for link [email protected] Gordon fits brilliantly with the world energy crisis, discussed at length by Putin yesterday. This morning I took the time – and it took a good while, given simultaneous translation, etc – to transcribe what President Putin said at the Russia Energy Week Summit yesterday. This early morning effort was made: Because Putin is seen as holding a major […]

Jolly Sunday to you, Global energy crisis: Having written at length about this eight days ago in the note “Germany & UK vs the USA”, all week I have been reading about the global energy crisis led by the UK and Germany. Everyone makes the same points, last year cold global winter leading to low natgas storage, lack of wind in Europe, nuclear shutdowns, Asia squeeze, Russia squeeze etc. The one I talked about in […]

Certain cities, like New York, London, and Paris, are an experience, like being in a movie, so strong is their identity. The same goes for San Francisco, the very name a romantic invocation of California and the Pacific, Gold Rush. The beauty of the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge. Beautiful physically, and host to massive tech companies such as Uber and Twitter, with huge property prices, there are some major problems, the greatest of which, […]

Quick Sunday Sankey today. If you want to read more, yesterday there was a long email on Europe vs US energy transition dynamics with a focus on two leaders: UK and Germany. Emailed yesterday on the web at www.sankeyresearch.com It has occurred to me that we may just enter a long, grinding, bear market, as stretched valuations and lack of new marginal buyers slowly erode the market. I mean like a 1970s multi-year market deflation. […]

Greetings from London, You live in the UK and have avoided death by COVID? FT: In the UK, 4m households were unable to afford to adequately heat their homes even before the latest energy price crisis. Some 10,000 deaths a year are linked to living in a cold home, according to the charity National Energy Action. If that represents around 100 deaths per day over the average of four winter months, high energy prices are […]

In this note, natgas hedging exposure (oops) and a China focus. My S&P500 sentiment Twitter survey yielded a result that is spectacularly unhelpful, lol. Pretty much 50:50 bullish/bearish. All I can say is that it seems I got the categories right, given an almost exact balance between the four choices. One observation made by a major market maker to me this past Friday was that the market absorbed a ton of paper last week, between […]

Good news and bad news at Li-Cycle – the stock is getting hurt, but there is no specific issue. Clients have asked me regarding the weakness, disappointing since the company started trading under the ticker $LICY. The questions are from top shelf investors, who seem surely to be long – clients evidently believe in this story, as we do. The personal account/discord group stuff I get tends to be around Tellurian $TELL. There, the market […]

The US has negative unemployment, by one measure. The confirmation of that on Friday led to an interesting market reaction. The data point on negative unemployment released before the market was that there are 8.6 million people considered out of work in the US and nearly 10 million job openings. This could be a moot point in the EU where movement of labour is much more challenged by language and culture, but in the US, […]

China: no Totalitarian regime has ever survived long term, much less thrived. Ex-China, just about the one remaining global totalitarian state is North Korea, which is maintained by China as a buffer. It stands in contrast to South Korea as a testimony to totalitarianism vs democracy. North Korean GDP per capita is $1,300, vs South Korea at $31,000. So the question is, when will China collapse on itself? Certainly, its demography is weak, and we […]

Greetings, It is all about the presentation this week; please click on the attached file for a look at what is in store for the week ahead – earnings; OPEC chat; what to buy when US natgas prices hit $4/mmbtu, which they did this past week; factor performance disconnection; and our only solution since we wrote The Renaissance Thesis of US E&P in 2017, namely hard cash return to shareholders. These oils have to bribe […]

They say, if you are the manager of a rock band, and the drummer comes to you and says “…I’ve been thinking…”, It’s over. Yes, with a week off in Mexico, I’ve been thinking. One thing that helped me think, I deleted the Twitter app from my iPhone. It was a great move, so that rather than only increasing the constant noise that we face covering markets, when I would instinctively check my phone, my […]

Belated good morning from Mexico. There will be Happy Hour this evening at 5pm ET. Kathleen Kelley, OPEC expert is kindly joining, we have an invitation to another top oil market analyst pending. Register here. Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocuuprTooG9SqNZxj9rgUjl9KZxTOEHAJ One reason I am late today, other than being on vacation, is that I just caught up with Ajay Kochhar, Founder and CEO of Lithium battery recycling play Li-Cycle that we featured a few months back. The […]

Happy Father’s Day, Markets are roiling on Fed comments, and how we get off the heroin of money printing to stimulate the economy. It will be very hard, and markets clearly will not like it. We hosted Steve Levine on Happy Hour this past week, he’s excellent. He does not support my argument made on Thursday last week in the morning note, that EV adoption by consumers will be slow. He asserts that EVs will […]

Tonight Happy Hour 5pm we are delighted to host Steve LeVine, world battery expert and author of “Powerhouse, America, China and the Great Battery War”, editor at large, Medium, “covering the turbulence all around us, electric vehicles, batteries, social trends”. He writes for The Mobilist, and is ex-Axios, Quartz, WSJ, NYT. 5pm ET tonight, https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtc-2vqz8jGtxwSq3R416BOuVoJD9v1vnE Steve and the debate that follows will allow me to finish my thematic “Electric Vehicles, not so fast”. The fact […]