Doug Goodwille from Kayne Anderson speaks to Drew Meredith from The Inside Network on market thinkers.
While a surging gold price is on hold as the world adjusts to a Trump presidency, all the factors that saw its price rise more than 50 per during his first term in office – trade disputes, fiscal deficits and geopolitical tensions – are almost certainly guaranteed the second time around.
Iron ore – just the beginning, or beginning of the end?
“Iron ore remains a commodity that polarises the market,” according to Ausbil’s local investment team. Among the stable of strategies it runs is the Ausbil Global Resources Fund which, as the name suggests, must have a strong view on almost every major commodity.
2021 has been dominated by talk of another commodity super-cycle. Buoyed by massive Chinese steel production, the price of iron ore exceeded US$200 a tonne on multiple occasions. Such has been the strength of the sector that the likes of BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue became large holdings in many income-focused strategies.
BHP’s announcement this week has seen a swift sell-off in the stock, now exceeding 10 per cent in just a few days, however, this has taken the attention away from what has been the story of the last few years. Iron ore continues to contribute about 80 per cent of BHP’s earnings and even more for Rio Tinto and Fortescue, yet the views on the commodity are continuing to diverge.
In a recent white paper, Ausbil put forward its views on the factors driving the market, whether these will sustain and ultimately, an update on where the opportunities lie.
There are no doubts about where the strength in the iron ore price has been coming from; it has been both demand and supply-driven. On the one hand, the Chinese government pivoted back towards its traditional stimulus programs during the pandemic, at least once lockdowns ceased, with property, infrastructure and manufacturing taking centre stage again.
This saw massive steel demand in the latter half of 2020. It is, however, becoming clear, says Ausbil, that a number of policy changes will see this demand ease in latter 2021. On the supply side, one of the world’s biggest producers, Vale, continues to struggle in getting its operations back up to speed following dam failures. More recently labour shortages and COVID-19 outbreaks are likely to see production well below previous years.
Whilst this is likely to support prices in the very short-term, as production ramps up, prices will no doubt begin to taper, says Ausbil. It is forecasting a ‘tapering’ towards US$170 per tonne in the second half of 2021, and $140 in 2022. The firm’s long-term expectation now remains around $70 per tonne.
On a headline level, these may seem quite pessimistic given the recent strength, however, they actually lie at the more positive end of price expectations for the commodity. This is put down to a number of issues, but predominantly a “quirk in how the market predicts earnings.”
They suggest that commodity price forecasts consistently predict backwardation, i.e. that prices by their nature will fall over time, as opposed to contango, in which the opposite occurs. This overly simplistic view can result in many investors missing “clear and definable drivers of multi-year compound earnings growth.”
While Ausbil is more positive than its competitors on the outlook for iron ore prices, its issue is valuation, given the incredible run of the “big three” miners. The result is that “based on relative value, and a softening outlook for iron ore, results in a current net-short position on the commodity.”
Ausbil prefers more battery material-focused commodities, including copper and nickel, along with oil and gas, that should benefit from an economic recovery.
