LibertyStream (LIB.V) has been belted in the last month.

From C$0.98 on October 1 to C$0.57 on November 3. Down roughly 40% in a month, market cap cut by more than a third, 50 day average left behind at C$0.81. Frankly, it’s a shit show.

But LibertyStream didn’t do anything to deserve it.

To be fair, lithium as a global commodity has had a proper fall. Battery grade carbonate in China started October around RMB 120k a tonne and finished it around RMB 90,000 to 97,000. Guangzhou futures, from a May peak above RMB 209k, were in the high RMB 80,000s by October 29. Fastmarkets had carbonate into China, Japan and Korea at US$12.80 to US$15.00 a kilo on October 27, down from US$24.50 to US$25.80 in May.

That is a halving in five months. To be clear, that’s brutal.

What I am questioning is what it has to do with LibertyStream, in the way the market is pretending it does.

What actually fell

This was not, for the most part, a response to a company shortcoming, nor a global physical glut. It was an expectations trade.

Inventories in China did not build. They actually fell, from about 203k tonnes in early June to about 113k tonnes by end September. Down 44% while everyone was supposedly drowning in the stuff.

What changed was the 2027 story looking forward.

On October 12, Guangzhou futures fell 11.8% in a day, after Brussels moved to cap Chinese hybrid imports and chatter ran that CATL had cut production. The cap limits Chinese hybrids to about 350,000 cars a year against a run rate nearer 650,000. To be fair, that’s huge for the industry and will take some time to settle. If your job today is selling lithium, it’s a bad time to be doing it.

But Canaccord puts EU plug-in hybrid demand at less than 2% of total lithium demand out to 2035, so good luck keeping that door bolted shut over the long haul;.

Then came the mine restarts that have not quite restarted. CATL’s Jianxiawo mine is 4 to 5% of global supply, shut since August 2025, and on October 8 the approval process to bring it back resumed.

Resumed. Not approved, not producing, not shipping.

Market sold everything anyway. Add Bald Hill and Finniss restarting in Australia, more ore from Zimbabwe, softer Chinese EV sales, a soft CATL quarter, and a cut to China’s NEV export rebate from April 2027, and you have a perfect pile on.

Demand at the edges did soften, and peak season disappointed, but the actual tonnes have not gone away. Canaccord still has demand growing 29% in 2026 and 16% in 2027, and more than doubling to 3.9 million tonnes LCE by 2035, with storage doing a lot of the work.

That is the market LibertyStream is building into. Not last Tuesday’s futures print.

Now translate that for LibertyStream

LibertyStream makes no revenue today. First deliveries from its Freedom 1 facility (not project, we’ll get into the difference later) are now targeted for Q2 2027.

So an October 2026 spot fall does not cut into a cheque they were never going to receive anyway.

LIB’s one signed customer is insulated anyway. The definitive offtake deal they signed, good for 600 tonnes a year starting in 2027, in 150 tonne quarterly shipments, has pricing set for the first two years.

Set in stone. For two years.

That is 60% of Freedom 1’s 1,000 tonne capacity, advance sold at a price agreed before this new commodity selloff. The market is marking LIB down on a price it does not actually take, for most of its first plant, for its first two years.

Even if it did take spot, do the math; LibertyStream estimates all in operating costs at about US$6,200 a tonne at steady state, including royalties to their oilfield partner, Select Water Solutions. Fastmarkets at US$12,800 to US$15,000 a tonne, the crashed price, is still roughly double that cost. On their numbers it is still cash positive at plant level. Very different to a high cost miner who needs US$20,000 to breathe.

No mine helps too. Recall where I called Freedom 1 a facility and not a project?

That’s because LibertyStream pulls lithium from oilfield produced water in Howard County, Texas, using direct lithium extraction plugged into existing infrastructure Select already runs. No pit, no spodumene to ship to China. Feedstock arrives whether futures are up or down, because oilfields pump water anyway.

The wastewater goes through LIB’s system, the lithium gets pulled out, and the water goes back cleaner than it started. If lithium prices halved from here, an event that would turn the entire industry into care and maintenance mode, LIB is basically breakeven. Anything above that sort of disaster and it’s yeeting profit.

While the stock fell, the business did not stand still

On October 16, in the middle of the commodity slide, the company said Freedom 1 construction is under way and all major process equipment has been purchased. LibertyStream is in talks with seven prospective customers, with indicated demand of 9,100 tonnes a year in 2028, potentially growing to 20,000 tonnes.

Three thousand tonnes of industrial demand is at definitive document stage, another 500 at term sheet, and battery demand sits across signed MOUs and an RFP. Product has gone to a US battery maker serving defense customers, and to the University of North Dakota for military drone work.

On November 2 it added a European distribution deal with that same partner, covering the EU plus the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Turkey, for non battery uses like glass, ceramics and metallurgy.

To be on the conservative side, none of that is a purchase order. The European deal has no minimums. The 9,100 tonnes is indicated, non binding, and would need far more than Freedom 1 and Freedom 2, at 1,000 tonnes each, plus financing to build the rest. It is not contracted.

What it is, is a queue, forming around a product already made at 99.7% purity or better on every full certificate of analysis from May 14 to August 14, to customer specs. Most DLE names still cannot say that. LibertyStream can.

And a date in law makes US made product worth more than a China spot print. From October 1, 2027, the US Department of Defense cannot procure batteries from CATL, BYD and other named Chinese makers under Section 154 of the FY2024 defense law.

That lands right as Freedom 1 is supposed to be delivering. A domestic source, in Texas, from US oilfield water, is not just a commodity in that world. It is a compliance solution, and those get paid differently.

The real risks are not lithium prices

If you sold on the balance sheet, I get it. That argument was there at C$0.98 too. Fill your boots, by all means.

No revenue yet, a cash burn, a working capital deficiency at June 30, and in September C$15 million of 12% senior secured notes to Pathfinder, due September 2027, with 3,061,224 bonus shares priced off that same C$0.98 close. Expensive, short runway money. We keep things non-hyped here.

The non binding Endurance term sheet for up to US$95 million for Freedom 1, Freedom 2 and more sites had exclusivity extended only to November 14, which is ten days from now. If that deal does not turn definitive, the funding question comes straight back. If Freedom 1 slips past its end of December commissioning target, it gets louder.

Those are the risks. Financing, execution, an unnamed anchor customer, scale. Price those, by all means.

But pricing it as if it were a producing Chinese converter selling unhedged into a price drop at spot is just lazy basket selling. Never mind that LIB does not sell lithium yet, does not take spot on its main contract, and costs about US$6,200 a tonne on its own estimate.

Markets do this every cycle. They sell the future producer hardest when the present price scares the great unwashed, right before it either commissions and re rates, or fails on execution and deserves to be sold for a real reason. We will know in weeks, not years, which game we’re playing going forward.

But selling LIB here, for this reason, is short sighted and, for mine, a buying oportunity.

— Chris Parry

Disclosure: LibertyStream is not a client. Provisional research from company releases to November 2, 2026, exchange prices to November 3 to 4, and SMM, Fastmarkets and SunSirs assessments for October 2026. Check filings on SEDAR+ before you act. This is not financial advice. The author holds a position in LIB and may buy or sell without warning.