What happened
For the third time in just over a week, Wall Street analysts are telling investors to buy shares of rechargeable battery recycler Li-Cycle Holdings (LICY 8.54%).
Following new ratings from Morgan Stanley last week and Wedbush on Monday, on Thursday, analysts at Swiss bank UBS announced that they have begun covering Li-Cycle Holdings with a buy rating and a $15 price target on the stock. Li-Cycle shares were up 11.7% to around $11.40 as of 1 p.m. EDT.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
"Li-Cycle offers investors exposure to the rapidly expanding need for battery recycling capacity" as electric cars become more and more common on American roads, UBS said in Thursday's note, which was covered by StreetInsider.com.
"This is an early stage, high risk/reward opportunity," the analysts asserted, saying they believe that Li-Cycle could potentially grow its revenues "100x" over the next four years, to as much as $700 million.
Now what
Granted, "early stage, high risk/reward" often seems lately to be Wall Street-speak for "this company has no earnings." But in UBS's view, investors will be focusing on seeing "capacity ramp execution, not earnings" at Li-Cycle -- because apparently nobody cares about earnings anymore.
At least not in the short term. Right now, UBS is focused on how it expects the stock to perform in the absence of earnings over the next year. But longer term, the analysts argue that Li-Cycle could in fact earn some profits if given a few years to grow the business, and say that the stock's current $1.8 billion market capitalization values the shares "attractively" at "5.0x 2025E EV/EBITDA."
I guess we'll just have to tune back in to Li-Cycle in 2025 to see if it hits those numbers.
