Nog een stukje:
Arun Viswanathan -- RBC Capital Markets -- Analyst
Great. Thanks. Just had a question, I guess, on the guidance construct and the pricing. Obviously, when you move to more index-based contracts last year, definitely was a positive on the cash flow and balance sheet statement point of view.
And Scott, you just kind of reiterated some of those benefits and competitive advantages. But obviously, we've also experienced quite a bit of volatility on the lithium price front. So I know it's not necessarily easy to forecast prices there, but that is a little bit more part of the Albemarle operating model now at this point, the lithium spot price environment. So I mean, is that an accurate statement? And how do you feel about providing guidance now with this volatility that we've experienced? So I guess, my concern would be prices again go back down to that $25,000 to $30,000 per ton level.
Would you be required to kind of lower your guidance at that point? How do you just think about philosophically about the guidance construct at this point?
Kent Masters -- Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Right. So I mean, there's a couple of things in there. One, so we have pivoted to be more index based. I mean we still have typically long-term contract that they're referenced to a market index, so we're going to move with the market.
And so with that move, we decided to do our guidance by not forecasting lithium prices, but by basically take the -- whatever the market is today and we forecast it for the balance of the year. And that's the methodology that we're going to use for the foreseeable future, the near term. Ultimately, our goal is that we get to where we can forecast lithium price, and we feel confident in that. We don't feel confident in that today, so it feels prudent to -- we tried to give you the tools to adjust based on your view of that market, and that's kind of how we do guide at the moment.
Ultimately, we would like to be able to forecast and feel good about that, but that's not in the near term.
Scott Tozier -- Chief Financial Officer
The other thing just to remember is given our low-cost resources, our low-cost operations, it allows us to earn throughout the cycle. So we're going to have reasonable margins throughout the cycle, no matter where that price goes. And so I think that gives us more confidence in being able to take this guidance approach as well.
Zelfde als wat onze grote vriend Heinz meldde.