Liontown Resources (ASX:LTR) has largely had shareholders bullish today, if the HotCopper announcement threads are anything to go by. A 10.7% jump in shares as of 11.40am Sydney time doesn’t hurt either.

But in the enthusiasm for a strong quarterly result – production is up (so is cash burn) – it can be easy to overlook relativity to a longer-term assessment here.

And that’s why Liontown remains a heavily wounded survivor of tanking lithium prices.

But survived it has. The company shipped 81,341tn of spodumene concentrate in the December quarter with net cash from operating activities of around $17M – bringing total cash to just shy of $200M.

Again, that’s a good thing, and a testament to its development of the Kathleen Valley project (which was enough to garner Gina Rinehart’s interest, as well as U.S.-based Albemarle.)

“Notably, the company generated positive net cash from operations in the first full quarter since we commenced production, in July 2024,” LTR CEO Tony Ottaviano said.

“Our performance this quarter reinforces that Liontown is firmly on track to achieve its ambition of becoming an established world-class producer in the lithium sector.

“We are now a fully operational producer, having shipped over 100,000 wet metric tonnes of spodumene concentrate to customers since the commencement of production at the end of July 2024.”

And that’s all well and good – but the question is whether Liontown can ever see its share price return to where it was before it became a producer when the battery metal thematic and plague-borne supply chain issues combined to send commodity prices soaring.

On a commodity price basis, there’s no reason to think that could happen anytime soon. BMI has long anticipated lithium prices to recover around 2028 – but the market has since changed.

Key EV rebates are gone, China has clearly won the EV wars where affordability is concerned, and the entire world is now flush with mines producing the feedstock.

LTR last traded at 67cps.

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