Seth Goldstein, Morningstar Research Equity Analyst
Seth Goldstein, CFA, is an Equity Strategist, AM Resources, for Morningstar Research Services.
He covers agriculture, chemicals, lithium, ingredients, and electric vehicle companies on the resources team.
Mr. Goldstein is also the chair of Morningstar’s electric vehicle committee and is a member of Morningstar’s Economic Moat committee.
Before joining Morningstar in 2016, Mr. Goldstein was a senior financial analyst for Oasis Financial, and a financial analyst for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and a field operations supervisor for the U.S. Census Bureau.
Prior to assuming the equity analyst role in 2017, Mr. Goldstein was an associate equity analyst covering the basic materials sector.
His previous financial analyst roles largely focused on mergers and acquisitions valuation.
Mr. Goldstein holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism. He also holds a Master of Business Administration, with a concentration in finance, from the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
Seth Goldstein is a big believer in the value of Lithium mines.
“Lithium stocks are all significantly undervalued.
Albemarle (NYSE:ALB) is one of my top stock picks.
Albemarle is a dividend aristocrat and is in the S&P 500.
Albemarle has three of the lowest cost lithium resources already in production and should be well positioned to benefit from a lithium price rebound, as their lithium operations are still profitable, even at the lower prices of today.
Then if we look at agriculture, I like Corteva (NYSE:CTVA) and FMC Corp. (NYSE:FMC) as two of my top picks.
Corteva is probably the highest quality company in agriculture that I cover.
Their seeds business is number two to Bayer (OTCMKTS:BAYRY), and they are continuing to roll out their own proprietary genetically modified soybean seed, which is the first true challenger to Bayer (OTCMKTS:BAYRY) and Bayer-acquired Monsanto.
That sets Corteva as a formidable number two in the genetically modified seed market.
Corteva also has a very strong biological business. They’re the world leader in biologicals and are growing that business, benefiting from increased demand, as we discussed. They’re developing a very nice complementary crop chemicals business as well.
Similarly, FMC is a crop chemicals pure play.
They’re investing heavily in biologicals, but also developing products that have new modes of action to help farmers fight difficult to kill weeds, insects, and fungi.
We think those will be increasingly needed in the coming years.
That should lead their strong pipeline to generate revenue growth and profit growth that’s above industry rates.
Finally, I’d highlight Nutrien (NYSE:NTR) as another top agriculture pick.
They are, most notably, one of the largest potash producers in the world. Fertilizer prices hit record highs in 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict started.
We think they’re at cyclical lows right now, especially potash.
And we think Nutrien, which has some of the lowest cost potash mines in the world, that creates the cost advantage.
They will benefit from higher potash prices in the years to come.”
Stephen Croskrey, CEO, Danimer Scientific, NYSE:DNMR
Stephen E. Croskrey has served as chief executive officer of Danimer Scientific, Inc. (NYSE:DNMR) and as a member of its board of directors since February 2016.
Mr. Croskrey is a business leader with over 30 years of experience in overseeing the strategic direction and operations of companies that manufacture and market a variety of products such as industrial lubricants, fibers, and law-enforcement gear.
From 1999 to 2005, Mr. Croskrey served as the president and chief executive officer of Armor Holdings Products, LLC, a major manufacturer of military, law enforcement, and personnel safety equipment.
Mr. Croskrey has also held senior executive positions at Allied Signal and Mobil Oil.
Mr. Croskrey received an MBA degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
He also received a bachelor of science degree in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point where he was also commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army and served as a company commander, attaining the rank of captain during his six years of active duty.
Stephen Croskrey is delivering a new form of biodegradable plastic to the US food industry.
“We believe the Holy Grail of plastic to be PHA, which is polyhydroxyalkanoate.
PHA occurs in nature and the best way to explain it is what happens with trees.
The tree captures carbon from the sun and the atmosphere.
If a leaf falls from the tree, it dies.
There’s carbon in that leaf. The leaf will degrade and go away.
The process is due to a bacteria that changes the structure of the carbon in the leaf enzymatically to another form of carbon called PHA.
And then the bacteria basically eats the PHA.
It uses the PHA for its own metabolic processes, and so it’s nature’s natural recycling method of carbon.
The bacteria then releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere and water, and the leaf itself is gone.
We have replicated that process in an industrial facility through fermentation.
We feed vegetable oil to bacteria to kind of fatten them up.
Then we extract the PHA, because the bacteria store PHA in the cell wall just like humans would store fat.
We extract that PHA and that is the plastic resin.
You see how it will naturally degrade in the environment if it leaks into nature.
What we’re really solving for is plastic waste that escapes into nature.
There’s no other material on the market that can do that other than cellulose, usually in the form of paper.
But most paper in the world today is coated with plastic.
People don’t realize that.
PHA is a tremendous product when you’re concerned about plastic pollution.”
The specific end use cases are developing rapidly.
“Our business isn’t really driven specifically by consumer demand.
It’s really driven by the brand owners reacting to either consumer pressure or industry group pressure or legislative pressure and/or in some cases just wanting to do the right thing.
You know, when we landed Starbucks (NASD:SBUX), they never wanted to do a press release, and that was exactly what they told us: “We’re just doing the right thing, we don’t want to make a big deal of it.”
And so, if you think about what we sell, you know, the consumer isn’t going into a grocery store or a restaurant and trying to buy snack food packaging or a straw.
They want to buy a Pepsi or they want to buy Doritos, and so you don’t really market the materials to the consumer at this stage anyway.
You know, you’re right about the kind of uneducated viewpoint that bamboo is better than plastic and this is plastic, so there’s an education process.
But these big brands have sophisticated R&D teams and they understand polymers and they get what the consumer might not get.
I will tell you that the QSRs get plenty of feedback about paper straws.
Nobody likes paper straws.
I don’t really have to explain that.
When they trial our straw or when they roll it out, they get great feedback from their restaurant managers and up through the chain.
Everybody’s really excited about our version of a straw versus paper.
The fact that it goes away is really all they care about.
The consumer is not coming into the restaurant, pitching a fit because they got a plastic straw.
Especially in a drive-thru situation, they’re happy to have a straw that works.”
Get more detail on all of these stocks, and many others, exclusively in the new Construction, Chemicals and Waste Management Report.
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