Anthony Milewski: 2018 Is Going to be the Year of Grid Storage
Anthony discusses Cobalt 27 and how they did well this past year. 2017 was the breakout year for the electric vehicle market, and it is accelerating faster than most analysts anticipated. He thinks a new story will emerge this year that will shape the market.
This story is the concept of grid storage which involves attaching large battery banks to the electric grid. All power grids globally have demand for this technology. Tesla’s grid solution in Australia has demonstrated how this technology can dramatically improve electrical systems.
Grid storage applications will require a sizeable quantity of lithium ion-based batteries and will likely move towards vanadium based batteries that are in development. Vanadium is an interesting technology, but there are risks. If you are looking at vanadium, you may want a small speculative investment.
E.V sales have continued to impress analysts. The coming quarters will likely continue to show an increasing demand for them. The nickel sector is going to be a sleeper as the market has not yet priced in this potential.
He feels the broader equity markets will show the most gains during the first half of the year with the second half driven by quantitative easing concerns. We are still well below the peak of the last commodity supercycle. Ultimately money will flow into commodities. As a result, he thinks copper equities will have a big year.
Automakers have a different view of the transportation market. They see Electric Vehicles as a means to bring autonomous vehicles to the marketplace. They are looking at how to get cars to drive and park themselves.
Talking Points From This Week’s Episode
• Copper equities will likely do well in 2018
• The market has not considered the coming nickel demand from E.V.
• Automakers are looking towards autonomous vehicle solutions.
• Grid storage solutions will likely be adopted.
Anthony Milewski is the Chairman of Cobalt 27 and an MD at Pala Investments. He has spent his career in various aspects of the mining industry, including as a company director, advisor, founder, and investor. In particular, he has been active in the battery metals commodities including investing in nickel, lithium, and cobalt and actively trading physical cobalt. In 2016, one of the industry’s leading publications, “The Mining Journal,” named him as a Future Mining Leader.
Mr. Milewski has managed numerous mining investments at various stages of development, including exploration, development, production and turnaround situations, and across a broad range of commodities. He has served as a director of both public and private companies. Mr. Milewski is a member of the investment team at Pala Investments Limited, and prior to joining Pala Investments, he worked at Firebird Management LLC.
Mr. Milewski previously worked at Renaissance Capital and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Moscow, where he focused on advisory and transactional work in metals & mining and oil & gas sectors. He has lived and worked in Africa and Russia, including a year as a Fulbright scholar, and has spent considerable time in Central Asia. Mr. Milewski holds a B.A. in Russian history from Brigham Young University, an M.A. in Russian and Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington, and a J.D. from the University of Washington. He holds an LLM from the Russian Academy of Sciences.