Albemarle Corp ( ALB ) shares are trading lower Tuesday after the company announced a proposed public offering.

What To Know: After the market close on Monday, Albemarle commenced an offering of $1.75 billion of depositary shares in an underwritten registered public offering. The company said it plans to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional $262.5 million of its depositary shares.

Albemarle expects to use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may include funding growth capital expenditures, such as the construction and expansion of lithium operations in Australia and China, and repaying the company's outstanding commercial paper.

Albemarle reported fourth-quarter financial results a couple of weeks ago. The company said it had approximately $1.9 billion in liquidity, including $889.9 million in cash and cash equivalents as of Dec. 31.

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How To Buy ALB Stock

By now you're likely curious about how to participate in the market for Albemarle – be it to purchase shares, or even attempt to bet against the company.

Buying shares is typically done through a brokerage account. You can find a list of possible trading platforms here. Many will allow you to buy ‘fractional shares,' which allows you to own portions of stock without buying an entire share. For example, some stock, like Berkshire Hathaway, or Amazon.com, can cost thousands of dollars to own just one share. However, if you only want to invest a fraction of that, brokerages will allow you to do so.

In the case of Albemarle, which is trading at $119.10 as of publishing time, $100 would buy you 0.84 shares of stock.

If you're looking to bet against a company, the process is more complex. You'll need access to an options trading platform, or a broker who will allow you to ‘go short' a share of stock by lending you the shares to sell. The process of shorting a stock can be found at this resource. Otherwise, if your broker allows you to trade options, you can either buy a put option, or sell a call option at a strike price above where shares are currently trading – either way it allows you to profit off of the share price decline.

ALB Price Action: Albemarle shares were down 12.4% at $116.70 at the time of writing, according to Benzinga Pro.

This illustration was generated using artificial intelligence via MidJourney.