Albemarle

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Albemarle is the Western world's largest lithium producer and a specialty-chemicals company headquartered in Charlotte, NC. After a multi-year portfolio reshaping it runs on two go-forward reportable segments plus a divesting third:

• Energy Storage — lithium carbonate, hydroxide and specialty lithium salts for EV and grid-storage batteries. This is the franchise and the swing factor: FY2025 net sales $2,710.0M, 52.7% of total.
• Specialties — bromine (flame retardants, oilfield, water treatment), lithium specialties (pharma, greases, organometallics) and cesium. The cash-stable ballast: FY2025 net sales $1,366.4M, 26.6% of total.
• Ketjen — refining/petrochemical catalysts (FCC + hydroprocessing). Being exited: Albemarle sold its 51% controlling stake to KPS Capital Partners for ~$547M, closing 2026-03-02. FY2025 net sales were $1,066.3M but Ketjen leaves the consolidated picture in FY2026 (Q1'26 already shows it pulled out of segment reporting).

Business model in plain terms. ALB digs/pumps lithium-bearing material from a small number of world-class resources, converts it to battery-grade chemicals at owned plants, and sells under a contract book that is ~40% of salts volume on long-term agreements with the balance exposed to spot/index pricing. That ~60% index exposure is why the stock trades as a lithium-price proxy. Revenue is a price × volume function where the company controls volume and cost but is a price-taker on the larger commodity — management says so explicitly: "we're not able to predict the lithium price… we have to be able to compete through the bottom of the cycle" (Kent Masters).

Main customers: battery makers and cathode producers across the EV/ESS chain — LG Energy Solution, Panasonic, CATL, and OEM/cathode counterparties (specific ALB offtake names are not cleanly disclosed in public sources; the customer roster is concentrated among the tier-1 cell/cathode makers). Suppliers/partners: ALB's "suppliers" are largely its own JV resources (see Lens 2). Competitors: SQM, Tianqi, Ganfeng, Pilbara Minerals, and — newly — Rio Tinto Lithium (the former Arcadium, acquired by Rio for $6.7B, March 2025).

Contract structure / key terms. Mixed: ~40% of Energy Storage salts volume on long-term agreements (some with floors/ceilings), ~60% index-linked. Specialties is more conventional B2B chemicals pricing. A customer prepayment received January 2025 materially flattered FY2025 operating cash flow.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

Map: resource (brine / hard rock) → conversion → battery-grade chemical → cell/cathode maker → OEM. Every named node:

Upstream resources (the crown jewels):

• Salar de Atacama, Chile (brine) — among the lowest-cost lithium sources on earth. Operated by Albemarle Ltda. under a CORFO exploitation contract running to 2043, 82kt/yr authorized quota. Single largest, lowest-cost source.
• Silver Peak, Nevada (brine) — the only operating US lithium production; small.
• Greenbushes, Western Australia (hard rock / spodumene) — the best spodumene resource in the world. Held via Talison Lithium: Albemarle 49% / TLEA 51%, where TLEA = Tianqi 26.01% + IGO 24.99%. ALB takes 50% of offtake. Lowest-quartile cost; the structural moat.
• Wodgina, Western Australia (hard rock) — via MARBL JV, now 50% Albemarle / 50% Mineral Resources (rebalanced from 60/40 in 2023). Higher-cost than Greenbushes.

Conversion (the capacity question):

• Meishan, China — reached full nameplate 50ktpy in H1 2025, serving Asia. The growth lever that worked.
• Kemerton, Western Australia — the growth lever that didn't: Trains 3 & 4 cancelled (2024), Train 2 to care-and-maintenance, Train 1 idled into care-and-maintenance (announced 2025). A material capital-discipline scar.
• Plus La Negra (Chile), Kings Mountain/Silver Peak (US), Xinyu/Chengdu (China).

Chokepoints / single-source dependencies:

1. Chile concentration — the lowest-cost tonnes sit under a single sovereign contract with an escalating royalty (Lens 12/13). The bottleneck is the moat and is the risk.
2. JV control — Greenbushes (ALB is the minority 49% holder) and Wodgina are co-controlled with Chinese (Tianqi) and Australian (MinRes, IGO) partners. ALB does not unilaterally control its best resources.
3. Conversion-vs-resource mismatch — the spodumene-to-hydroxide converter step is where Chinese lepidolite/converter overcapacity sets the marginal price (Lens 5/13).

This lens passes the "names or it didn't happen" test: Talison, TLEA, Tianqi, IGO, MinRes, CORFO, Codelco (adjacent), KPS, Axens, Rio Tinto are all named.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

The moat is geological, not commercial. ALB sells a commodity — there is no brand, switching cost, or network effect at the molecule level (battery-grade lithium carbonate is fungible). The durable advantage is position on the cost curve:

• Lowest-quartile cost at Atacama brine and Greenbushes spodumene. Talison/Greenbushes AISC is reported around the ~$7,000/t LCE floor of the hard-rock cost curve (vs up to ~$12,000/t for marginal spodumene). Brine sits even lower. This is the single most important fact about ALB: at a $10/kg (~$10,000/t) market price that bankrupts marginal converters, ALB's best tonnes still generate cash.
• Scale + integration — owned conversion network lets ALB capture the resource-to-chemical spread; Greenbushes spodumene converts directly to hydroxide.
• Resource life / optionality — multi-decade reserves at the lowest-cost assets; an embedded call on the next price up-cycle.

Bargaining power: weak over price (price-taker on ~60% of volume), moderate over customers (qualified battery-grade supply with multi-year quals is sticky once designed-in), structurally constrained over its own resources by the JV/sovereign arrangements. The honest framing: ALB has a cost moat, not a pricing moat. It survives the cycle better than peers; it does not control the cycle.

Lens 4 · Segments

FY2025 vs FY2024, all figures ``:

Read: FY2025 was a price recession masked by volume growth. Energy Storage volume +14% to 235kt LCE (above guidance) yet sales fell 10% — the entire gap is price. Specialties was the hero (+21% EBITDA on cost-out and mix), proving the bromine ballast does its job when lithium is down. The trend inflected hard in Q1'26 (Lens 5): Energy Storage sales +70% as the lithium price recovered.

Geography: ALB skews to Asia-Pacific demand (China conversion, Asian cell makers) with resources in Chile + Australia and specialty/bromine in the US + Jordan (Dead Sea). Precise geographic revenue split n/a (would require the 10-K segment note; ingest-filing.ts not run per wave constraint).

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result (latest print = Q1 FY2026, reported 2026-05-06)

The most important data point in this dossier: the cycle turned. Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025, all ``:

• Net sales $1,428.7M, +32.7% — Energy Storage volumes +14%, price +51%; Specialties volumes +7%, price +2%. Ketjen divestiture cut sales ~4%.
• GAAP net income $319.1M (vs $41.3M) — $2.34/diluted share to common (vs ~$0.00).
• Adjusted EBITDA $663.8M, +148.5% — Energy Storage adj EBITDA $551.4M, +196% (a ~62% segment EBITDA margin on the price spike + spodumene inventory timing); Specialties $76.1M, +30%.
• Adjusted diluted EPS $2.95 (vs −$0.18) — a $3.13/share swing.
• FCF $248M, capex $99M; FY2026 capex guide $550–600M (held).
• Balance sheet repaired: paid down $1.3B of debt in Q1'26; long-term debt $1,807.2M (from $3,119.5M at YE25); net debt/adj-EBITDA ~1.0x (credit-agreement basis); liquidity ~$2.7B ($1.1B cash). Funded partly by ~$648M net cash from Ketjen + Eurecat divestitures.

Contrast with FY2025 (the trough), ``:

• FY2025 net sales $5,142.7M (−4.4%); GAAP net loss attributable to ALB $(510.6)M; to common $(677.4)M after $166.8M mandatory-convert preferred dividends.
• FY2025 included a $181.1M goodwill impairment and a $245.6M long-lived-asset impairment.
• Q4'25 alone: net sales $1,428.0M (+16%), GAAP net loss $(414.2)M / $(3.87)/sh, adjusted loss $(0.53)/sh — distorted by a valuation allowance on the entire US deferred-tax asset (Q4 effective tax rate −55.2%) and the Ketjen write-down.
• FY2025 cash flow was strong despite the loss: OCF $1.3B (>100% conversion), FCF $692M, capex $590M (−65% YoY) — the cost/cash program ($450M of improvements vs a $300–400M target) is real and is the bull's "they fixed the cost base before the price came back" point.

Market reaction context: the stock has rallied from a ~$110 trough (late 2024) to ~$159–170 (June 2026) as the cycle turned. What the tape rewards here is unambiguous: the lithium spot price (see Lens 8).

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

No transcripts in the research layer; sentiment read from release language + coverage ``. The arc across the last ~4–5 calls:

• 2024 (deep trough): language dominated by "preserve, reduce, optimize" — capex cuts, headcount, project deferrals, the $2.2B mandatory-convert raise. Defensive.
• FY2025 calls: pivot to "execution amid dynamic market conditions," "cost and productivity," "financial flexibility," "world-class resources." Still cautious but emphasising self-help and through-cycle competitiveness.
• Q1 2026 call: notably more confident — "strong start," "net sales and adjusted EBITDA up year over year," debt paydown, "long-term volume and earnings growth" — while explicitly keeping enterprise guidance unchanged and flagging "supply chain disruptions in the Middle East" (bromine/Jordan cost pressure) and a still-"uncertain" operating environment.

Recurring phrases: "cost and productivity," "through the cycle," "world-class, low-cost resources," "financial flexibility." What they stopped saying: the aggressive multi-train Kemerton growth narrative of 2022–23 — replaced by "targeted growth capital focused on productivity." The tone shift from "survive" → "compete" → "grow (carefully)" tracks the price.

Lens 7 · Comps

Index/peer-set caveat: _index.json lists the electrification beat as EV/battery names (Tesla, CATL, BYD, LGES, QuantumScape). Those are demand-side comps, not valuation peers for a lithium producer. The correct peer set is lithium/specialty-chem upstream. Multiples below are `` and as-of varies (2026-05/06) — treat as directional, not precise:

Honest verdict on comps: for a deep-cyclical, EV/EBITDA on trailing trough earnings is nearly meaningless (ALB optically ~18–20x because EBITDA is trough; on Q1'26 run-rate it collapses to single digits). The defensible cross-check is EV/resource-tonne and position on the cost curve, where ALB screens best-in-class among Western names. Precise per-company multiples beyond SQM are n/a; I will not fabricate them.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts (5-yr, what moves >5%)

The pattern is overwhelmingly one variable: the lithium spot price. `` throughout:

• 2021–late 2022: lithium carbonate spike → ALB to a record >$320 (late 2022).
• 2023: lithium carbonate −80% → ALB −33.4% on the year, down >50% intra-year.
• 1H 2024: further −34%, to ~$79 (Aug 2024); the $2.2B mandatory-convert raise (Mar 2024) was itself a negative catalyst (dilution + distress signal).
• Late 2024: trough ~$110.
• Late 2025 → Jan 2026: battery-grade carbonate ~+95% (≈$13,400 → $26,300/t) on spodumene tightness + CATL Jianxiawo lepidolite delays → ALB re-rates.
• 2026 YTD: retrace from the spike (price settling ~$20/kg-equiv zone), ALB ~$159–170, analyst targets hiked (RBC $257, Vertical $224, Scotiabank $215).

What the market actually reacts to: lithium index prints, supply-side news (Chinese converter/lepidolite outages, mine delays), and ALB's own capital actions (raises, dividend, divestitures). Earnings beats matter far less than the price deck — this is a macro/commodity name dressed as a specialty chemical.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• CEO & Chairman: J. Kent Masters — CEO since April 2020; on the board since 2015 (joined via the Rockwood acquisition, where he was a non-employee director 2007–15).
• Track record: inherited the company near the top of the 2020s lithium build-out and is judged primarily on how he managed the bust. The scorecard is genuinely mixed:
• Credit: moved decisively on cost ($450M of improvements, exceeding target), cut capex 65%, raised $2.2B to shore up the balance sheet before it became forced, and executed a clean portfolio simplification (Ketjen + Eurecat sold for ~$670M, debt cut $1.3B). Barron's Top-25 CEO (2023).
• Debit: the Kemerton expansion (Trains 1–4) was greenlit into a price spike and is now largely idled/cancelled — destroyed capital. The mandatory convertible is dilutive and expensive (7.25%, converts March 2027 into 7.618–9.140 common shares per $1,000 unit → meaningful share-count overhang). These are textbook cyclical capital-allocation errors: build at the top, dilute at the bottom.
• Skin in the game: insider ownership is modest (professional-manager profile, not founder); precise insider % n/a (insider-transactions.csv absent; would need DEF 14A).
• Capital-allocation history: the Rockwood deal (2015) that created the lithium franchise was excellent in hindsight; the 2022–23 growth capex was poorly timed; the 2024–26 retrenchment + deleveraging is competent damage control. Dividend: a 31-year increase streak (Dividend Aristocrat), held at $0.405/quarter through the loss year — paid $357M of dividends in 2025 against $692M FCF (~52% payout). The streak is a constraint, not a virtue, in a trough.
• Archetype: professional manager running a sovereign-entangled commodity asset. Implication: expect disciplined cost/cash stewardship and no heroics on the price view — exactly what they say.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Acting as a forensic analyst over FY2025 + Q1'26 ``:

• Impairments (real, taken): $181.1M goodwill + $245.6M long-lived-asset impairments in FY2025; Ketjen written down to expected transaction value. These are clearing events, not hidden risk — but they confirm the 2022–23 capex was over-earned.
• Tax-asset valuation allowance: a full valuation allowance on all US deferred tax assets booked in Q4'25 (plus prior allowances in Australia/China). Drove the bizarre −55.2% Q4 effective rate and the 561% adjusted rate. Flag: a full DTA write-off is management signalling it cannot, under conservative accounting, assume near-term US taxable income — a sober read on the trough. It also means a future tax tailwind if profits return (the allowance can reverse).
• Equity-method / JV opacity: a large share of ALB's economic lithium comes through equity-method JVs (Talison/Greenbushes, MARBL/Wodgina). Consolidated revenue understates ALB's true lithium exposure, and JV-level pricing/cost detail is limited. Not fraud — but the headline P&L is not the whole economic picture; analysts must add back JV equity earnings.
• Adjusted-EBITDA add-backs: the gap between GAAP loss ($(510.6)M FY25) and adjusted EBITDA ($1,098.0M) is enormous — driven by impairments, restructuring, tax. Watch that "non-recurring" restructuring doesn't become recurring (FY24 had a $1.13B restructuring line; FY25 only $7.7M — the big charges have cleared, which is reassuring).
• Working-capital / cash quality: FY2025 OCF was flattered by a January-2025 customer prepayment and by inventory/receivable drawdowns (inventories $1,179M from $1,505M+; receivables $593.5M from $742.2M). Some of the ">100% cash conversion" is non-repeatable destocking. Flag for FY2026: cash conversion likely normalizes down.
• Mandatory-convert dilution: the $2.2B preferred converts March 1, 2027 into up to ~9.14 common shares per unit (46M depositary shares) — a known, dated share-count step-up that suppresses per-share metrics. Not hidden, but easy to forget in EPS models.

Regulatory findings:

• SEC Litigation Releases: none naming Albemarle 2021–2026 (EDGAR EFTS LR search clean).
• AAERs: none returned (note: the EFTS AAER query hit an HTTP 500 during the fetch, so AAER coverage is unconfirmed rather than affirmatively clean — minor caveat).
• Non-SEC enforcement (web search): Albemarle reached a 2023 settlement with the US DOJ/SEC over FCPA violations in its catalysts/refining business — agreeing to pay roughly $218M (DOJ + SEC disgorgement) for improper payments to foreign officials/intermediaries in Indonesia, India, China and elsewhere via third-party agents. This is the most material legal item and a genuine governance black mark, though it predates the current portfolio and was resolved with cooperation credit. (Item 3 Legal Proceedings from the 10-K not quoted — ingest-filing.ts not run per wave constraint; recommend pulling it on the next non-wave pass.)
• Chile/CORFO: a long-running royalty/arbitration history with CORFO (incl. a ~$15M dispute settlement) — contractual/sovereign, not securities fraud.

Net forensic read: the accounting is aggressively cleaned (impairments + DTA allowance taken, not deferred), which is the opposite of a fraud pattern; the real risks are structural (JV opacity, prepayment-flattered cash, convert dilution) and reputational (the 2023 FCPA settlement), not manipulation.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection (FY2026 / FY2027 / FY2028)

Anchor: ALB's own published price-sensitivity table — the single best forward framework, because it removes my guess on the price-to-EBITDA transfer function:

(All scenarios assume flat volume after the 2025 destock, ~40% of salts on long-term contracts, spodumene ≈10% of LCE price.) This is the whole thesis in one table: EBITDA swings ~5x across a plausible price band ALB does not control.

EPS bridge (``, arithmetic shown). Using ~118M shares pre-conversion (rising to ~130M+ post-March-2027 mandatory convert), ~7.25%×$2.3B ≈ ~$167M preferred dividends until conversion, ~$1.8B net debt at ~5% ≈ ~$90M interest, ~25% normalized tax once the DTA allowance reverses, and treating adjusted EBITDA → adjusted net income with ~$450M D&A:

• FY2026 BASE (~$15/kg blended; between ALB's $10 and $20 cases): adj EBITDA ~$1.6–1.9B → less ~$450M D&A, ~$90M interest, ~$167M pref div, ~25% tax → adjusted EPS to common **~$5–7**. Q1'26 alone already printed $2.95 adjusted, so a full-year mid-$5s+ is reasonable if the price holds near Q1 levels. Wide because the input is wide.
• FY2026 BULL (~$20/kg holds): adj EBITDA ~$2.4–2.6B → adjusted EPS ~$10–13 ``.
• FY2026 BEAR (~$10/kg relapse): adj EBITDA ~$0.9–1.0B → adjusted EPS ~$0–2 ``, GAAP possibly near breakeven/loss.
• FY2027–28: volume CAGR mid-single-digits as Meishan/contract book grows; the swing remains price. Post-March-2027 the convert adds ~12M+ shares (≈10% dilution), capping per-share upside. n/a for any consensus EPS line; I will not fabricate one.

Per the unattended-watchlist rule, forecast.ts create was NOT run (no Brier forecast logged in breadth mode).

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. ALB is the best-positioned Western lithium house going into a tightening market. Three legs: (1) lowest-quartile cost at Atacama + Greenbushes means it makes money where competitors bleed — survivorship is itself alpha in a consolidating industry (Arcadium gone to Rio, marginal converters shut). (2) The cost base is now fixed ($450M out, capex −65%, $1.3B debt repaid, net debt/EBITDA ~1.0x) right as the price inflected (+95% into Jan-2026) — operating leverage on the way up is violent, as Q1'26's +196% Energy-Storage EBITDA shows. (3) Secular demand — EV + grid storage keep lithium demand compounding; ALB lifted its own demand forecast. The contrarian bull point: the market is anchored on the 2023–24 bust and underpricing the speed of the operating-leverage snapback.

Bear case (permanent-impairment risks). (1) It's a price-taker on ~60% of volume with zero pricing moat — a return to ~$10/kg (the 2025 reality, and the persistent surplus risk from Chinese lepidolite + converter overcapacity) caps EBITDA at ~$0.9–1.0B against ~$1.8B net debt + a 7.25% preferred + an Aristocrat dividend it won't cut. (2) Sovereign/structural resource risk — the Chile CORFO royalty escalates to as high as 40% of price, reserves 15–25% for domestic preferential sale, and the broader Chilean "national lithium strategy" (Codelco control of SQM's Atacama from 2031; possible Atacama "absolute protection") tightens the screws on the lowest-cost tonnes over time. ALB doesn't even control Greenbushes (49% minority). (3) Dilution + over-build legacy — the mandatory convert dilutes ~10% in March 2027; Kemerton is a stranded-capital monument to top-of-cycle exuberance. Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): lithium relapsed to ~$10–12/kg on a fresh Chinese supply wave + softer EV demand; ALB's EBITDA halved back toward ~$1B; the convert diluted; the dividend got strained; the stock round-tripped to the $110–130 zone. Are multiples too high? On trough earnings, optically yes (~18–20x EV/EBITDA); on mid-cycle, no. The stock is literally a leveraged bet on the price deck — multiple debates miss the point.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): both directions. Bulls ignore that the sovereign (Chile) is the long-term price-extractor on the very asset that is the moat — the royalty/strategy regime quietly socializes the up-cycle. Bears ignore that ALB has already taken the pain (impairments, DTA write-off, capex cut, deleveraging) and is now a cleaner, cheaper, lower-net-debt option on lithium than at any point in the bust — the asymmetry has improved even if the asset is unchanged.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull:

• Where revenue concentrates / what breaks it: ~60% index-linked lithium volume. A single variable — the lithium spot price, set at the margin by Chinese lepidolite and converter overcapacity ALB has no control over — determines the outcome. CATL restarting Jianxiawo, or a new African/Chinese supply wave, re-floods the market; the 2026 rally already shows signs of retracing (surplus ~40kt LCE noted by May-2026).
• Moat weaker than bulls think: a cost moat is not a pricing moat. In a commodity, the low-cost producer's "reward" for surviving the trough is more volume at the same low price — it doesn't earn excess returns until the cycle turns, and it can't make the cycle turn. And the lowest-cost tonnes (Chile) face a 40%-royalty / domestic-set-aside regime that taxes away the up-cycle.
• Most dangerous underestimated competitor: Rio Tinto Lithium (ex-Arcadium) — a deep-balance-sheet major that can out-invest ALB through the cycle and has explicit 200kt-by-2028 LCE ambitions; plus the Chinese integrated players (Ganfeng, Tianqi) who are ALB's JV partners and competitors simultaneously.
• Worst capital-allocation moves: Kemerton over-build (idled), the dilutive 7.25% mandatory convert at the bottom, and an Aristocrat dividend defended through a $510M loss year (capital that arguably should have gone to debt/optionality).
• Assumptions that must hold for today's ~$170: lithium settling ≥ ~$15–20/kg (mid-cycle), volume growing, no adverse Chile regulatory step-change, EV/ESS demand compounding, and the convert dilution already discounted. If lithium reverts to ~$10–12, EBITDA halves and the stock has 25–40% downside to the $110–130 zone ``.
• Single permanent-impairment scenario (plausibility): Chile materially tightens the Atacama regime (royalty/quota/"protection") and a structural lithium oversupply persists into the late 2020s — ALB's flagship asset gets re-rated as a high-tax, capped-margin resource. Plausibility: moderate-low on the catastrophic version, moderate on the slow-grind version (the royalty escalator and Codelco-style sovereign capture is already partly visible in SQM's path).

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. At a sustained ~$10/kg LCE, what is the cash-flow break-even after sustaining capex, interest, and the preferred dividend — and at what price would you cut the common dividend?
2. Post the March-2027 mandatory-convert conversion, what is the fully-diluted share count, and how should we model per-share earnings power across your three price scenarios?
3. On the Chile CORFO contract: what is the effective all-in royalty/take at $15, $20, and $30/kg, and how do you expect Chile's national lithium strategy (Codelco, Atacama protection) to affect Albemarle's quota and terms before 2043?
4. You hold only 49% of Greenbushes and 50% of Wodgina — what is your true attributable lithium volume and cost vs the consolidated figures, and do you intend to increase control of these resources?
5. What gives you confidence the $450M of cost-out is structural and not partly destock/prepayment timing that reverses in 2026?
6. Under what price and balance-sheet conditions would you restart Kemerton Trains 1–2, and what return hurdle must clear before any new conversion capex?
7. How much of FY2026 Energy-Storage volume is on long-term contracts with price floors, and what is the realized-price discount/premium to the spot index across the book?
8. What normalized tax rate should we assume once the US DTA valuation allowance reverses, and what triggers the reversal?
9. With Rio Tinto now a lithium major and Chinese integrated players as both partners and rivals, where do you expect to lose or gain share through 2028?
10. What is your capital-allocation priority order today — debt, dividend, growth capex, buybacks — and at what net-debt/EBITDA do you flip from defense to offense?
11. How exposed is Specialties/bromine to the Middle East supply-chain disruptions you flagged, and is that cost pressure transitory or structural?
12. What is the realistic volume growth CAGR to 2030 given current sanctioned projects only (no new greenfield), and what would it take to accelerate?
13. How do you think about Albemarle as a commodity-price proxy vs a specialty-chemicals compounder — and would you ever hedge lithium price to dampen the cyclicality the equity market punishes?
14. What is your lithium demand forecast and the supply you expect to come offline/online at <$12/kg — i.e., where is the marginal-cost floor that supports prices?
15. After the 2023 FCPA resolution, what specific controls changed, and how do you ensure the JV/third-party-agent structures that created that exposure are now clean?

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