It ended up being a rather decent month for the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) and thus most ASX shares over July. Last month saw the ASX 200 add a decent 2.9%. But it was a whole different story for the Lake Resources N.L. (ASX: LKE) share price.
This ASX 200 lithium stock began July going for 30 cents each. But by the close of trading on Monday, the lithium share had fallen to 23 cents. That's a July fall worth 23.33%. Ouch. Double ouch when you consider that Lake Resources also dropped 43% over June as well.
But that's only the latest chapter in what has been a disastrous yearbook for the Lake Resources share price. It was only back in August 2022 that Lake Resources shares were at the company's 52-week high of $1.60 a share. Yep, Lake Resources has lost 77% of its value over the past 12 months and is down more than 87% from that 52-week high of $1.60 a share.
The company is also down by 73% in 2023 so far and by a horrid 91% from its all-time high of over $2.30 a share that we saw back in April 2022. You can see some of this carnage in action below:
But let's not get too bogged down in this not-so-incredible journey.
So why did the Lake Resources share price lose more than a fifth of its value in July alone?
Why did the Lake Resources share price have such a dire July?
Well, it's rather hard to say. The company didn't release any significant ASX news or announcements over July at all.
Thus, we can probably conclude that investor sentiment following some disappointing developments in recent months just continues to fall away.
The more recent selling pressure seems to have accelerated after the Kachi lithium project update that Lake Resources delivered in June. Previously, the company had flagged that this project would be capable of producing 50,000 tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate by 2024.
But the update in June revealed that the company has pushed those projections back hard, to 25,000 tonnes per annum by 2027.
And that's with a capital cost of between US$1.1 billion and US$1.5 billion, up from the previous guidance of US$544 million.
This seems to be one of the primary drivers of the woes that Lake Resources shares have been experiencing in recent months. That's going off of the fact that the Lake Resources share price has dropped by 55% since the day this Kachi update was released.
In some good news, short seller interest in Lake Resources shares appears to be dropping as of late July. So perhaps that is indicating that an end to the bloodletting in Lake Resources shares might be coming soon.
But we'll just have to wait and see. No doubt shareholders are praying that August is a little kinder to this ASX 200 lithium stock than June or July has been.
