Sociedad Quimica y Minera is harvesting a lithium rebound inside a franchise that Chile has already recut. The second-quarter print shows volume and price moving together again after a two-year slump, yet the company now operates the Salar de Atacama through Nova Andino Litio, the joint company with state copper champion Codelco. Control stays with SQM only through the end of the decade. After that the state partner appoints the majority of directors, and a fresh environmental permit is required just to keep pumping brine. The equity is a claim on the harvest window, not a perpetual claim on the cheapest brine on earth.
Lithium and derivatives supplied most of first-half gross profit, so the rebound is not a side story. Novandino realized about $22 per kilogram in the second quarter, a sharp lift from the prior quarter and more than a double from a year earlier. Battery-storage demand filled the gap left by slower electric-vehicle growth. Iodine still posted a record price near $73 per kilogram and remains the ballast that kept the franchise solvent when lithium collapsed. The Chilean State accrued more than a billion and a half in taxes, Corfo lease payments, and the Codelco dividend in the first half, which is the cash price of staying on the salar.
First-half sales reached $4 billion, more than double the year-ago half. Net income crossed $1 billion as the rebound showed up in earnings, not just shipments. Minority interest jumped as the joint-company economics began to appear on the income statement. The next several quarters resolve whether realized prices hold near current levels as new supply arrives, and whether the July Salar Futuro filing advances toward a post-decade permit. If prices fade and the permit stalls, the multiple is paying for a cycle peak that the state already taxes heavily.