Graphite One’s Pentagon Boost Fails to Ignite Flagging Shares as Permitting Clock Ticks

Graphite One's stock sinks to new lows while winning Pentagon support and a $2B+ EXIM Bank commitment, highlighting a gap between policy cheer and market reality.

Graphite One finds itself caught in a curious disconnect: the loudest cheers from Washington are coming just as its stock sinks to new lows. The company’s strategy of building a fully domestic battery-supply chain has won powerful backing from the Pentagon and a tentative $2 billion-plus commitment from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, yet the market’s response has been a sustained sell-off.

The heart of the tension lies in timing. A new Pentagon report, published in early June, explicitly recommends tax credits, a co-investment fund, and a licensing framework to boost U.S. production of advanced battery equipment – exactly the kind of policy windfall Graphite One needs. But as chief executive Anthony Huston noted in a statement, political endorsement does not automatically translate into funding or permits. The company’s own communications included a clear caveat: there is no guarantee that project financing will be secured, that necessary equipment will be available on schedule, or that all permits for the planned Ohio processing plant will be granted.

That caution was reflected in the share price. By Friday’s close, Graphite One’s stock stood at €0.68, down 2.72% on the day and 4.63% for the week. Since the start of the year the equity has tumbled 42.13%, trading well below its 200-day moving average of €0.84 and also under the 50-day line of €0.73. The relative strength index of 38.8 signals weak momentum, while an annualized 30-day volatility of 49.58% leaves the shares acutely sensitive to any headline about policy or project milestones.

The Pentagon’s June 4 report zeroed in on a specific bottleneck that Graphite One’s model aims to solve. Asian suppliers currently control roughly 92% of the global market for battery manufacturing equipment, a concentration the Defense Department deems a critical vulnerability for military vehicles, drones and AI data centres. The proposed U.S. incentives would target exactly the kind of high-temperature graphitization, purification and processing machinery that Graphite One needs for its anode-material factory in Ohio – a facility that last month secured a site but still depends on financing, construction permits, power agreements and equipment procurement.

The largest piece of public backing so far comes from the Export-Import Bank, which issued non-binding letters of intent for more than $2 billion. That follows earlier grants from the Pentagon in the tens of millions. Yet the letters remain non-binding, and the company has warned that converting them into hard funding depends on a series of regulatory and operational steps.

The most concrete deadline on the horizon is the permitting decision for the Graphite Creek deposit in Alaska, the largest known graphite resource in the United States. The project is enrolled in the FAST-41 programme, which accelerates federal reviews. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has targeted a final decision by September 2026 – a date that, if met, would make Graphit Creek the first Alaska mining project to complete the federal permitting dashboard. For investors, that is both a potential catalyst and a long wait.

Until then, the stock is caught between policy tailwinds and execution risk. The market needs more than a supportive Pentagon report or a non-binding bank letter. The next clear signals will come in tangible form: a formal lease for the Ohio site, actual orders for processing equipment, or offtake agreements with battery makers. Without those, the gap between Washington ambition and Wall Street reality will only widen.