It's looking like this Thursday will be another positive session for ASX shares (touch wood). At the time of writing, the All Ordinaries Index (ASX: XAO) has gained a healthy 0.65% and is back over 8,070 points. But let's talk about what's going on with the Core Lithium Ltd (ASX: CXO) share price.
Core Lithium shares are having a stinker. This ASX lithium stock closed at 12.5 cents yesterday afternoon, but today is trading at 11.1 cents at the time of writing, down a horrid 12% so far this session.
What's worse, Core Lithium shares descended as low as a flat 11 cents each earlier this morning, which marks a new 52-week low for the lithium stock. This new 52-week low is just the latest blow for Core's long-suffering shareholders though. Get ready for some sobering numbers.
Over just the past five trading days, the Core Lithium share price has given up more than 17% of its value. Year to date, we've seen 58.5% wiped off the value of this company. Investors are also nursing a loss of 89.6% over the past 12 months.
The Core Lithium share price is down a staggering 94% or so from the company's last all-time highs of over $1.87 a share that we saw back in late 2022. Check all of that out for yourself below:
Just how low can the Core Lithium share price go?
Core Lithium's more recent woes can be put down to a series of unfortunate events. Firstly, lithium prices have decisively come off the boil over the past 12 months or so. This has put pressure on the prices of almost all ASX lithium shares.
But Core Lithium has been dealing with some specific issues as well, which seem to have dented investor confidence.
For one, its flagship Finniss Project suspended lithium production earlier this year as a result of crashing lithium prices.
The company also posted a net loss of $167.6 million for the six months ending 31 December, which didn't exactly help boost sentiment. A more recent quarterly update did nothing to assuage these concerns either.
Back in March, Core also revealed that its CEO Gareth Manderson would abruptly depart. Last month, Core did announce that Paul Brown would take Manderson's place, but this game of musical chairs at the top of the company also seems to have contributed to the investor apathy we see today.
So where are Core shares destined to head from here? Well, it might be prudent to keep legendary investor Benjamin Graham's wise words in mind here. Graham once said, "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine".
Well, investors have been voting the Core Lithium share price down significantly in recent months. But the company doesn't have a lot of good news that might tip the balance of the market's weighing machine.
As such, it's hard to see what might happen next. But until there's some good news out of the company, we might not see much improvement in Core Lithium shares from here.
ASX expert says sell
That's certainly the view of one ASX broker right now. As we covered last month, ASX broker Goldman Sachs doesn't see Core restarting its Finniss mine anytime soon. Goldman gave the Core Lithium share price a sell rating alongside a 12-month share price target of 11 cents per share.
Probably not the news that Core investors want to hear right now, but let's see if this company can prove its detractors wrong.
At the current Core Lithium share price, this ASX lithium stock has a market capitalisation of $267.11 million.
