Lithium miners dominate top 10 best-performing stocks in past financial year

The green revolution was only going to allow the battery metals stocks to be ignored for so long.

Lithium miner Pilbara Minerals racked up a 523 per cent gain for the financial year. Picture: Bloomberg

A few of the best performances in the 2020-21 financial year came from companies that became relatively “unloved” during the early stages of the Covid crisis.

But in many cases the best performers from the previous year managed to do it again.

Lithium miners certainly had become out of favour in a relative sense when they were left behind by the surging overall market through much of 2020.

But the green revolution was only going to allow the battery metals stocks to be ignored for so long. That theme was turbocharged by the election of Joe Biden to the White House.

Several of Australia’s prominent lithium miners made it into the top 10 best performers in the past financial year.

Pilbara Minerals went from being the seventh worst performing ASX 200 stock in 2019-20 to second best in 2020-21 with a massive 523 per cent gain for the financial year.

It was only beaten by Chalice Mining, which remarkably topped the winners for a second year running with an outstanding 646 per cent gain after doing 729 per cent in 2019-20.

In fact the lithium miners dominated the winners list, with Orocobre scoring a 180 per cent gain and Mineral Resources doing 154 per cent. But whereas Orocobre was coming off a 17 per cent fall the previous year, Mineral Resources was adding to a solid 39 per cent gain the previous year.

Hub24 was the third best performer with a 207 per cent rise as the investment manager generated stronger than expected inflows after a 23 per cent fall in 2019-20.

Rare earths producer Lynas was one that simply got too cheap relative to its fundamentals when it hit $1 a share during the Covid sell-off in March 2020, particularly with China’s increasing hostility towards the West increasing the strategic importance of the company.

After falling 25 per cent in 2019-20, Lynas shares trebled in value during 2020-21.

PointsBet Holdings surged 159 per cent amid its rapid expansion in the US.

Reece, Codan and Eagers Automotive also more than doubled in price for the year.

Reece was a beneficiary of the housing boom in the US and Australia, as well as M&A speculation.

Gold miners were among the worst performers, with Northern Star, St Barbara and Regis Resources all down sharply in the period as the Australian dollar gold price lost almost 10 per cent.

Worst off was A2 Milk which dived 68 per cent as it struggled to hold onto its market share in China.

Appen dived 60 per cent after multiple profit warnings and Nuix proved to be the year’s worst IPO falling 58 per cent after rapidly falling behind its prospectus guidance, while AGL, AMP, Mesoblast and TPG rounded out the 10 worst performing stocks for the year.