(Bloomberg) -- After a 22-year career in banking that took her from Sao Paulo to New York, London and Johannesburg, Ana Cabral was ready to regain control of her schedule, spend time with her children and become an investor.
Twelve years later, her travel is more intense than ever and she’s become one of the most prominent female chief executive officers in the mining industry after taking over the company she backed through her private equity firm.
Even as Sigma Lithium Corp. weathers a collapse in the silvery-white metal’s price, she’s vowing to stay the course and even triple production with a message for rivals and naysayers: She’s finally figured this thing out.
“The joke in the industry is I’m the longest serving temporary CEO because it’s so brutal,” Cabral said in an interview in Sao Paulo. “My peers from that vintage are gone. They retired, they’re moving elsewhere, they’re doing other things.”
While Sigma is finally producing and shipping lithium to key markets like China, Cabral is grappling with a lack of premium for her product, what she sees as “illegal” competition from players who don’t uphold similar human rights and safety protocols, and the need to secure long-term capital.
Lofty statements
The fast-talking executive, who’s in her early 50s, is prone to lofty statements, including her claim to produce no-waste, “quintuple-zero green lithium” and having the most “water-efficient operation in the world.”
Sigma’s mining activities have altered the landscape of the impoverished area in Minas Gerais state, but she insists the community is supportive and better off because of the jobs, investment and social programs that have helped offset the dust and noise from controlled explosions.
Sigma wasn’t the first lithium producer in Brazil, but it’s helped propel the country’s industry. And Cabral is the biggest flag waver working to drum up support from regulators, government officials and lawmakers.
On LinkedIn she frequently posts glass-half-full comments about the industry, commending both government officials and rival companies. The feed is full of clips and photos from her dizzying agenda of events and panel discussions around the world.
While praised by Brazil’s mining industry, whose image has been tarnished by two fatal dam disasters, Cabral has her critics.
“There’s nothing special about the plant,” said Klemens Laschefski, a geographer and professor at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, who visited Sigma’s operations in Aracuai and made a documentary. Sigma seems to be “a speculative product that they want to sell at a higher price. That’s why they’re marketing with ESG, everything that the modern investor wants to hear.”
A Sigma spokesperson said that A10 Investimentos, the private equity firm Cabral helped found, has owned the company for more than a decade, which hardly makes it a “speculative” investment.
As Brazil prepares to host the UN Climate Change Conference next year, Cabral’s mission complements President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s attempts to position the country at the forefront of energy transition and climate solutions while refusing to pick sides between global superpowers.
A sign of the government’s support came several months ago in the form of a 16-year, 487 million-real ($84 million) loan from the BNDES development bank’s climate fund to finance Sigma’s expansion. The backing is essential, Cabral insists, to help them compete.
Winding path
Cabral’s path from equity capital markets banker at places like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse to lithium CEO wasn’t linear.
A Rio de Janeiro native, she worked at billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann’s former investment bank Banco Garantia in the early 1990s before moving to rival Pactual. She then spent more than a decade based in New York and London before returning home.
“You start thinking about where you’re going next,” she said. “It’s sort of a pyramid, right? So it was clear to me that I was not gonna be the CEO of Goldman Sachs.”
She founded A10 Investimentos in Sao Paulo with long-time friend and finance veteran Marcelo Paiva in 2013. After initially focusing on M&A advisory, they identified lithium as a promising investment.
Her former husband and ex-co-CEO Calvyn Gardner had a mining background while she brought financial expertise. Around the time they were looking for other investors and capital for the project, a tailings dam operated by iron ore giant Vale SA burst, unleashing a deadly environmental disaster that drastically affected the appetite to support mining activities at the time.
Undaunted, Cabral recalls asking her mother to watch her kids for a few weeks in 2016 while she went to Australia and China to study the industry. She ended up staying nine weeks and came back more convinced than ever.
‘Greatest thing’
“I told the investment committee, ‘This is really gonna be the greatest thing we do or I must be blind,’” she said. “Because in Asia it’s like they’re living in a future that hasn’t arrived here yet.”
After listing Sigma in Canada in 2018 and later on Nasdaq, the company’s shares were supercharged during the pandemic. The stock surged more than 5,000%, giving it a peak market capitalization of $4.5 billion in May 2023. At that level, her stake would have made her a billionaire.
After years of geological and feasibility studies, the Grota do Cirilo mine was gearing up to finally begin production. Around that time, Sigma hired Bank of America Corp. to carry out a strategic review, with the firm saying it had fielded interest from companies in the energy, auto and batteries industries.
As expectation of a sale heightened, the shares churned higher.
At the same time, Cabral’s marriage to Gardner had unraveled and what began as a private divorce proceeding became increasingly public. Gardner left as co-CEO in January 2023, and Cabral said the separation has been difficult on a personal level but has had no impact on the business.
As the metal’s price started to plunge in 2023, Sigma shares followed and no deal for the company emerged. Lithium stocks have continued to languish as a supply glut overwhelmed demand from battery manufacturers amid slower electric-vehicle sales. Analysts expect the market for the metal to remain in a surplus for the next few years.
Cost escalation
Sigma this month posted its fourth straight quarterly loss as revenue fell short of analysts’ estimates even as production increased. The company’s shares have tumbled about 56% this year, including a nearly 6% drop on Friday.
BMO Capital Markets analyst Joel Jackson said completion of the mine’s next two phases could take longer than expected with potential cost escalation. He also sees no real price benefit for the company’s efforts to push its green credentials and traceability aspects of the product.
“Sigma’s very proud of its product quality and the different sustainability metrics it cites its product offers,” said Jackson, who has an outperform recommendation on the stock. “But we don’t yet see any premium in the market right now for those metrics.”
In its 2023 report, the US Geological Survey ranked Brazil fifth globally in lithium production, with output jumping 86% from a year earlier, largely due to Sigma. It ranks seventh in reserves.
In March, Cabral accepted an award in Brazil for being an “exponential” woman in business. Billionaire Rubens Ometto, who owns ethanol and logistics giant Cosan SA and is a former client from her banking days, presented the award. Part of her speech cited references from the Barbie film to highlight challenges she and other women in business face.
“We need to be pretty but not too pretty. We can be bosses but can’t be too hard,” she said at the award ceremony. “Even though we’re successful, we’re constantly underestimated by people who don’t know us. It’s literally impossible to meet the expectations put on us as women.”
Cabral said that by 2027, when the mine expansion should be completed, she could see herself staying on as an investor but not necessarily leading the company. When asked if running Sigma has been easier than her hectic life as an investment banker, Cabral scoffed.
“Definitely not,” she said. “Do I plan to spend the next 10 years like this? Well, I don’t think I’ll be able to. I think I’ll collapse somehow. But does it mean I have to sell the company? Absolutely not.”