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Century Aluminum Company CENX

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Century Aluminum sold 26% less metal in the June quarter than a year earlier and collected 67% more per tonne for it.

The price came from a tariff, the volume loss came from a broken transformer, and only one of those is coming back.

Key data

Price, Aug 28 close$46.59
Market value$4.6B
52-week range$20.91 to $70.43
Net debt, Jun 30$136.6M
Capacity vs run rate770,000 tpy vs about 507,000

CENX · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$1$19$37$54$72 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jun '25Jan '26Aug '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Century runs three aluminum smelters, in Kentucky, South Carolina and at Grundartangi in Iceland, plus a 55% interest in a bauxite mine and alumina refinery in Jamaica. A smelter takes alumina and enormous quantities of electricity and turns them into metal, and power is the largest input and the reason smelters sit where they do.

The company sells a commodity priced on the London Metal Exchange, so it controls nothing about its revenue except how many tonnes it ships and what regional premium it collects on top. There is no moat. What there is instead is a policy position: Section 232 tariffs on imported primary aluminum went from 10% to 25% in March 2025 and to 50% in June 2025, and the company says the resulting rise in the Midwest premium has had a material positive effect on its results.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05The shape of the payoff
  6. 06Closing thoughts
  7. 07Methodology

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