Disclaimers, my name is Neil Dingman, research analyst here at William Blair, covers USA Rare Earth, a complete list of the research disclosures or potential conflicts of interest. Please visit our website at WilliamBlair.com. So with that, I talked to Rob, we don't want to do just the boring presentation. I told Rob, let's do maybe kind of state of the nation, make sure people understand. I know Rare Earth has been in the news a lot. We were just talking about our schedules. I mean, He's been all over, not only here in the U.S., but him and Barbara. In fact, Barbara's in France today. Rob is here. They're getting called into D.C. a lot. Maybe, Rob, start with just sort of a kind of state of the company, kind of give us a little background for some of the folks here that are a little bit newer there for a few minutes. And then, again, we can go into a little bit of questions as well.
Thanks, Neil. It's terrific to be here and appreciate the terrific turnout. So to tell you a little bit about our story, we at the company have believed for several years that there was an absolute need to reshore a broad rare earth capability, magnets, metal making, mining, processing, separation, and supplying a range of critical minerals and oxides to the U.S. and global market, given the fact that China essentially has a stranglehold on the market. They control, depending on the math you use, somewhere between 90 and 98 percent of all processing somewhere touches China right now globally. And that's obviously a huge issue for national security, both for national security for military and defense, but also for our industrial security is extremely a big issue. We saw this opportunity. We went public about 14 months ago. At that time, we had about 25 million dollars of cash, a little less than that but we were determined to execute on our plan and we're fortunate to bring several investors along the way with us we were able to raise 75 million dollars last spring we then set about with that to stand up our our capability so we began investing in our magnet making capability in Stillwater Oklahoma with initial plans of somewhere between three to five thousand metric tons we were current we are in the process of developing our deposit and switching to solvent extraction from continuous ion exchange and working through that with that over last summer we developed a strategy as we saw given that we sort of had the barbells we had a deposit and we had magnets but we didn't have anything in between and we needed to stand up that market and we knew we needed to stand it up quickly so we immediately executed upon the LCM transaction giving us metal making capability the ability to take oxides and turning them into metal a capability that also virtually was gone outside of China and then began to raise more money and recognizing that we needed to not only stand up additional capability but work with the U.S. government quickly got to the announcement of our LOI with the Department of Commerce in January. We raised a billion and a half dollars with that transaction and then began to complete other elements of what we now call our value chain. So we announced the agreement to acquire Texas Mineral Resources Corp, our 20% joint venture partner. We announced a 12.5% investment in Karastir, which is a very unique light and, in particular, heavy rare earth processing capability in France, one of the leading technologists in the category in the world. And then we announced the Cerro Verde transaction, which is an outstanding deposit, very unique, has both lights and heavies in South America, and they will be selling their product. I say they, we will be selling that product into an SPV that's already been stood up and is supported by the U.S. government and private capital and so where we are today is moving from that small company with a plan of three to five thousand metric tons of magnets to a company now that's planning to produce domestically over 10,000 metric tons of oxides once we fully stand up our processing capability here 10,000 metric tons of metal in the United States and 10,000 metric tons at magnets and we're going to do the metal making and magnet making at two different facilities. We just announced today our second facility, which is going to house a little bit more than 50 percent of our metal and magnet making in Blacksburg, South Carolina. So we are doing this with two facilities to increase the certainty and to provide us with business continuity with two locations going
forward. So that's where we are today. Perfect. Well, maybe it starts with, again, And back up, make sure everybody understands here, you know, you think about the mind to magnet strategy, again, in my oil and gas days, you know, I still call it sort of upstream to downstream. When you look at that business, and again, you've mentioned kind of everything you've kind of added along the way. Could you talk about, do you see a bigger bottleneck as it sits today? I know, you know, I see Gary over there with U.S. Antimony. I feel like whether it's antimony, I figure whether it's rare earth, whether it's critical minerals. With now China's stranglehold, do you see the bottleneck all the way from upstream in the mining all the way down to downstream of the magnet? Or maybe talk about where you see the biggest bottlenecks.
So all these components still need to be stood up. So right now what we have is capacity planned and capability. So we have both of those pieces. At the mining level, it's kind of twofold. It's Sara Verde scaling into production, full production, run rate production of 6,400 metric tons per annum of TRIO. That'll happen over the course of the next six months or so as that business comes online. It's Round Top moving from where it is today as a deposit and into our definitive feasibility study and having that capability stood up, which will take place through the second half of 2028. At the metal, it's taking the capability we have at LCM and bringing that to the United States and that capability will be stood up over the next two and a half years. And then similarly with magnets over the course of the next three years. The point being is there is no, the bottleneck is everything getting stood up. So it is literally growing the business. The capability is here, the capacity is here, the capital is here, it's just all about execution.
And then speaking of the capital, do you know, again, you all have been very involved with the government, you know, again, from the moment Barbara's, you know, sort of hit the ground, her DC roots, that I mean, can you talk about, sounds like you and I were talking about here before we just started, you know, continued visits, continued conversations with the US government. So again, do you anticipate the government continuing to partner with you all? I mean, I guess maybe even step back and make sure everybody here understands how much the government you've already done with the government.
The governments are involved with us. So the United States government is involved with this through the Department of War, through the DFA, through Sierra Verde, with about a $565 million, essentially a project finance facility, which fully funds Sierra Verde into run rate production. The Department of Commerce, we're finalizing our definitive agreement with them, which is imminent. That should take place shortly, and that is a $1.6 billion funding package to support our growth here domestically in the United States. The Department of Energy has issued us grants to be able to continue to develop our continuous ion exchange. And then we have incentive packages from the state of Texas, $14 million under the CHIPS Act. We have an incentive package from South Carolina for our Blacksburg facility. We have smaller incentives from the state of Oklahoma, which we've disclosed. And then we also have an expression of interest from the government of France. that's where our CEO is today speaking with with President Macron about funding our lock rare earth metal and magnet making capacity alongside Karastr in
that government will help even the France government will help fund that as well yes that's right so do you anticipate so you look right now if you start upstream you have of course Cerro Verde which you recently purchased you have Round Top then you start moving you know get up the chain again with Carister, you have the processing, then you have LCM with the metal making, then you of course, you have, you know, where I've been several times in Stillwater. Will all of those be simultaneously now funded? Like, do you under, is it planned to grow one over the other? I mean, do you try to grow all of it at the same time? What's the plan?
I mean, it truly is a value chain. The goal is to grow it all at the same time. And if we can bring Round Top up and running faster, we would, that would be, but Round Top's still just going to take two and a half years to get that stood up but essentially think of the actual manufacturing process as being stood up in sequence meaning metal making will be stood up about three to six months in advance of the of the related magnet making capability in the U.S. we will be feeding um be feeding that with third-party feedstock through LCM and through Carister as well as third-party sources and then over time Sara Verde feedstock will be going into that as as well as round-top feedstock will be going into that.
And for off-take, it seems like, again, there's always folks. I know, as I said, I've been to your plant now several times, and every time I'm there, there's somebody coming in, coming out, customers coming in, coming out. Maybe talk a little bit about potential off-take agreements, things. Is it ball in your court? You're waiting for, again, somebody asked me the other day, you and the team are so bullish to the group, And my comment is always, I've never seen where you see this kind of insatiable demand. And so I guess two questions.
Yeah, I mean, the hardest part our team has is, you know, they're trying to stand up a factory, but they also need to meet with customers. And so we have a lot of people coming through because the way the customer process works, the first thing they want to do is they want to see if you're real and if you have the capability. And U.S. companies, defense, non-defense, industrial, are very interested in getting capacity outside of China. They want to get it here. And so what they're doing is coming back, coming to us to get to know us, coming back again and again to see how we're standing up that facility over time. The way our agreements are going to work will be, frankly, they're going to be multifaceted over time. Initially, they'll probably be shorter-term purchase agreements, so short-term POs for trials with a particular part. Think of a magnet as a complex part. And then over time, as we prove our ability to perform and capacity, that's when you start getting offtakes. When people know that capacity, when you think of an offtake, you're thinking about large-scale supply over time. We only have 600 metric tons per annum commission, which is relatively small. But if you're thinking about an automotive company, they're going to want several thousand metric tons. And so they're only going to order it once they have confidence that you can produce.
yeah and and so you know maybe starting upstream a little bit could you talk about you you have Cerro Verde now um again I know you talked about an optic that's already locked in on that how will that you balance that in Round Top to organically build out Round Top while now having Cerro Verde how do the two sort of play together yeah I mean they are two
completely different teams first and foremost so the team at Cerro Verde has been working on that project some of them as long as it's been in existence which is about 12 years so that is a full team down there that is an ionic clay deposit which has a particular type of extraction they use continuous ion exchange today which is a different technique than we're using at round top at round top we're going to use leach into a solvent extraction process what cereverde produces today is an intermediate stage product called an mrec mixed rare earth carbonate at cereverde Sorry, at Cerebronate. So that still requires processing into oxide, which we will plan to do here in the United States. But with the SPV, we can deliver mixed-rare carbonate to it, we can deliver oxides, and we can deliver anything all the way up to magnets to the SPV.
So for Round Top, again, we hear about the H-A system, and again, it seems to be the one that's been around the most. You know, maybe talk about timing of what you all are projected sort of for timing. And then with that, are we waiting on feasibility study? What are we waiting on now to see sort of steps for Roundtop?
Yeah, so Roundtop, we're already up and running with, you know, all of our larger scale pilots. Those are already running right now. We've got our demo facility that's being finalized right now. And then we're planning on finishing our internal work on our DFS by year end and publishing an SK-1300 by Q1 of next year. So that is the current plan. And that is consistent with the plan that we've outlined for the Department of Commerce.
And you will, at that facility, you will also process, or will that be strictly just mining and separation? What's sort of the plan in Texas?
Yeah, so at Round Top, we're going to be doing the mining and the process of separation for Round Top. We will also have another facility location to be determined that will also do processing and separation for essentially third-party feedstock, think Cerro Verde, and also our own SWARF and recycling. So we'll have essentially two processing facilities in the United States.
And the composition, again, we hear about from a lot of these. Again, MPs have been around a long time. The problem, of course, at Mount Pass, they just don't have a lot of the heavies. maybe talk a bit about the composition what I know it's early but what what you can produce at or what what you what they have been producing that Sara Verde versus the expectation again when you think about it I mean is it just the
heavies is it NDPR is that you know what should we expect so Sara Verde is about you know run rates about 6400 metric tons per annum about 30% little under 30%, 28, 29% is NDPR. The heavies, the magnetic heavies are somewhere between two and four percent of that basket. And the rest of it, they've got a lot of yttrium, similar size as the NDPR and other rare earths that we can separate out and process. But that's kind of what their their basket looks like, that differentiates versus Round Top, which is not producing any light rare earths. So we're not going to separate and process that. Those will all get kicked into our tailings. And that mine is really focused on gallium, hafnium, zirconium, a heavy rare earth concentrate product, dysprosium, turbium, and gadolinium. Got it. Okay. And what, I know
you all put it, when you bought it, maybe talk about what's the mine life or how, what are you suggesting, I mean, again, is there an issue, I mean, is it 20, I forget, 10 years, 20 years? Yeah, I mean, it's Cerro Verde first, and then I don't know, Round Top.
Yeah, we haven't published Round Top, but it's north, and, you know, we'll say what the mine life is when we come out with our SK-1300, but it's a north of 20-year mine life at Round Top. Cerro Verde is essentially a 15 to 20-year mine life with their first phase, and their second phase is a similar mine life. Got it, okay.
And can you talk maybe more color? I think the deal with Carister is very interesting because again I you know as you said there's bottlenecks all around but to me the processing is just such extreme right now yeah so to pull something like that maybe let everybody know I mean again how that sort of came to be what the position is how you're going to work with this company again for y'all a lot of it don't know obviously I think those guys came from Linus back in the day I think is that or Solvay I'm sorry
so outside of China the only remaining real heavy rare earth or light and heavy rare processor was Solvay. And the Karaster team came out of Solvay and was working on heavy rare earth processing and also recycling. So the ability to take recycled magnets and turn them back into oxides. And so that was a unique capability. And when we were doing our work last summer, we saw them as a standout with that capability. So we became very interested in working with them. What's unique about what they do is they have the ability to work with mines and create a custom intermediate product that they can process in france that's really interesting so essentially they can franchise processing what's not well known is that most processing facilities are generally somewhat bespoke for the mine that they're processing for so like our round top process separation and processing facility is for round top it really will not be able to process efficiently other forms of feedstock yeah so what's really cool about charister is they have the capability to work with the mines create a roughly similar product and then process it
into heavies and lights. So do you have the ability, I know you have the 12 and a half percent interest, but will you have the ability as you all start ramping up to continue to use more and
more of their processing or how, what is that? Yeah, so we have a supply and offtake agreement with them. So we supply them with feedstock, we get offtake from them. We also have the ability to process all of our SWARF through them for the next several years and get that back. So that'll be a source of supply for us. And we have the ability to utilize their technology through a licensing arrangement basically wherever we agree with them we can use it and then i know that
carester has what is it over a couple hundred million uh backing from the is the french government i guess from when they come on is is there does that does the government have some sort of first you know a right or anything there that that's just some backing that they know that the
the french government doesn't have any commercial arrangements with them with regard to their off take the french government is just very interested in bringing back this capability to france Okay. So and that's kind of what kind of what you're seeing in this arrangement. So in Locke there'll be a separation and processing facility which is Carister. We'll have LCM which is metal making and then you've already seen in our announcement on Monday that we're talking about the prospect of magnet making in the south of France. South France okay yeah and maybe talk
we didn't hit today what in in Colorado and Wheat Ridge you know you have a pretty unique facility that that I've seen that maybe talk about how long that's been around what what that you know
the benefits of having that and what you know yeah it's it's a love i love wheatridge wheatridge is our mining lab this is where all of the work regarding processing and separation takes place it's also where we're developing our mine plan as well and it's you know a bunch of folks from university utah colorado school of mines um all the great mining schools in the united states have come together in this uh for lack of a better word our own pirate ship as we call it the people that are just getting after it, developing this capability. And so that's where the laboratory will be. The actual capability, though, will be built out down at Round Top in Sarawakka.
That's right there. And then as we keep moving sort of further downstream, you mentioned with LCM, Less Common Metals. When you bought that, have you already started? I know there's some plans. Maybe talk about you'll expand on-site as well as simultaneously over in France as well. Absolutely.
What are you at now? Yeah, we're expanding, we're ramping up to 2,000 metric tons of capacity right now in the UK. And then in France, what we've already talked about is our first phase of north of 3,000 metric tons of metal making there. We're currently securing a facility in the south of France to build out that ecosystem. But what we're trying to do is put in a facility that's going to be large enough for expansion to meet our needs going forward. And then we're going to basically take their capability from the UK and train people up and bring it to the United States as we start ramping up Stillwater.
And make sure everybody understands here, you know, if you have a facility like that, does that require a very, maybe WACUS as you're starting again from the upstream, does that, and you have something like LCM, does it require a very specific oxide? And then from that, is that turning into a very specific alloy that then finally goes to Stillwater? Maybe if you could kind of connect the bridge between maybe what's coming out of Cerro Verde, what specifically is needed, what then goes through LCM, and then what ultimately ends up in Stillwater? Because there's a lot of, I think, specifications that people don't fully appreciate.
It's a pretty interesting... Yeah. So if you're making heavy rare earth magnets, let's say we're making a thousand tons of of heavy rare earth magnets. Of that, call it 30% will need to be NDPR. And somewhere between one and a half to 6% will need to be dysprosium. And then to the extent you're using terbium, a smaller percentage, maybe like a point of terbium. So let's just use 4% as a measure for dysprosium. And this is a heavy rare earth. So for every 1,000 tons of production, you need about, or every thousand tons, you need about 40 tons of dysprosium for that. It's a lot. It's a lot, okay. It's a lot, and that's for a 4% grade. Now, if you're doing a grain boundary diffusion at one and a half percent, then it's 15 tons. If you're doing something that's super high grade, like a UH magnet, you might need 6% dysprosium, which is 60 tons. So that kind of gives you a sense of the range, but the point being is you need heavies. You need a lot of heavies to be able to do that. A mine like MP will only produce in the tens of tons of dysphrosium a year, so it's not enough to do a 10,000 metric ton facility. Cerro Verde, for example, that mine will produce something on the order of around 150 metric tons of dysphrosium a year, so you can do the math. So it's up to 10,000 metric tons of magnets if you're using grain-bounded infusion or some of the light rare earth formulas and about you know could be a third to half that if you're using super high grades so that's kind of the range and that's why you need something like Round Top up and running which will produce more than twice the volume of dysprosium and terbium that serve very well.
And then again continuing downstream maybe talk a little bit as I said I've been there now several times didn't in Stillwater I think it's a pretty unique facility again how did that facility sort of come to be you know the backing from, it seems like, the city, the state, I mean, you name it, maybe give a little background of how you found the facility, and again, you know, and maybe—
Yeah, they found the facility, it was before my time, they found the facility like seven years ago, and what they were looking for was a facility where they could get incentives, because they were trying to raise money, and they were trying to be as efficient as they could be. So they found a 450,000 square foot Rolling Stone printing facility, is literally what it was printed Rolling Stone magazine and then they bought a set of a Hitachi equipment good for you know about 1200 metric tons and that that equipment was gently used to develop Hitachi's patents and protect Hitachi's patents so they picked that up and essentially where we where we stood 14 months ago was the facility and the equipment but nothing was hooked up yet and so what we've done over the last year to get a commission is really just stand it up and get a commission the city and the state have provided us with fortunately a level of incentives that are helpful they're small but they're but they're helpful but we basically got the building for a song and so that's why we can scale it so efficiently now the building was not purpose-built and so one of the reasons why we're moving to Blacksburg is what we talked about is to increase certainty so we are going to be be able to build a purpose-built building that will allow us to be as timely and efficient as we possibly can be with our next phase.
And maybe talk about both in Stillwater and then if we went back upstream, the equipment that you all have been able, again, what type of backorder, and again, now if I'm trying to find, as you scale either South Carolina, as you scale, I don't care, I mean, you could start with again we can start all the way upstream again at Round Top and as you as you're building that out whether it's on the separation side or other again how tight is is equipment and is most of it coming from China or where
where do you get that yeah domestically we're sourcing all of our equipment outside of China so with our our DOC transaction I mean we can we can actually source from China they just won't pay for it right so but it's it's better if we're going to be ITAR compliant not to use Chinese equipment because it can be bugged and all that kind of stuff so it's going to be all non-China equipment we all we in order to hit our timelines we just have to be able to order the equipment on time some of the equipment does have lead times as much as 12 to 14 months but you know essentially if you build your business plan and you map it all out then you can basically schedule the orders of equipment and we've worked with we work with multiple vendors across every component that of heavy equipment that we utilize at every stage from the from the mine to the metal making to
the magnet making. Okay yeah and remind folks here as you ramp what what's the plans maybe I'll walk back from downstream again but starting with with Stillwater you just mentioned earlier I know you're at half a line I mean 600 metric tons what's the plan and kind of how quickly your intent you believe
that yeah well it goes from it goes basically from 600 to 10,000 metric tons fully commissioned by mid-2029 so I think the second half will be starting to run at full capacity of
10,000 metric tons. And that would be another because you can do what four lines is that right in the existing facility something like that and then you're gonna do I mean so it's still water we're actually gonna do three
lines we're gonna do thirty six hundred metric tons okay we're gonna do five thousand metal making there we'll actually have capacity for metal making beyond that but we'll stick to five thousand right now and then we'll do 5,000 of metal making in Blacksburg along with 6,400 metric tons of magnets okay so it'll be a slightly larger facility it'll also have slightly more capability to be able to finish and cope
at Blacksburg and if you work your way back sort of back upstream as you're ramping up will you have to source any of that from third party or you'll be able to get that from LCM which will to get that from either character somebody or Round Top you'll be able to procure all this yourself as you continue you know as i start upstream and get all the way down to either
blackberg or or in terms of ultimate feedstock correct yeah we'll be able to supply all of our
heavies ourselves yeah okay yeah so is is will will there be i guess to ask it even another way then is you if you look what once round top cranks up once even um lcm is built out even more than others will will you even have excess think about the other side to sell the third party because
I mean, it all comes down to what formulas we're actually selling and what percentage of the heavies we're actually going to use going forward. So if we have a lot of orders for grain boundary diffusion, which might be a 1%, 1.5% dysprosium, we're going to have excess. You will, okay. We'll have some excess. I doubt that's going to happen. I also doubt that we'll be at all 6%, you know, super high-grade magnets either. So it's going to be somewhere in between. So we should have some level of excess, and we already have demand for it. People are already coming to us wanting to buy that.
And can you talk about, you know, Bernard modeling all the time? Again, I know numbers are moving around a bit, but maybe let everybody know here, again, after doing the pipe, after having the government contract, kind of where finances sit today, again, as you see it, you know, again, nothing more than what you've said, of course.
It was 1.75 at quarter end. And once we finish the DOC deal, that'll give us access to another $1.577, $1.6 billion, which puts us in a really good position to be able to execute on our capital plan going forward. So I think we feel really good about where we are.
And from that capital, again, well, most of that, you know, is the higher capex coming from more upstream, from, you do it more from Round Top, or is it sort of equally, I mean, again, as you scale up the lines, even all the way downstream at the Mavon facility, whether that be in Oklahoma or South Carolina, you know, again, do you have ideas of, you know, what kind of capex from each of the
sort of segments? Sure, yeah, I mean, we haven't broken it out for people exactly, but if you look at our total capital plan, it's about, in the United States, it's about a little under 50% is going to be the mine. Oh, it is? Okay. That's domestically.
Just Round Top then, or Cerro Verde as well?
Not Cerro Verde. Oh, I'm sorry. You said just domestically. Yeah, so domestically. Cerro Verde is fully funded. So there is more capex there, but it's all in the capital plan already. So it's completely in their structure, embedded in their structure. So in the United States, it'll be about a little under 50% of our capital. It's going to be for the mine. The rest of it is going to be for metal and magnet making here.
I know you just have a couple minutes. I know we can, again, in the breakout, definitely want to ask you more even on macro. Of course, prices are all over the place. I thought you all had a good slide. I'm trying to think if it was the last one or one before where you showed, again, what your price floors were, what you show Chinese prices were, what you show non-Chinese prices were. And again, whether it's critical minerals, rare earth, you mean, you know, antimony, you name it, they're all over the place. Have we seen any, I guess, sort of my last question today before we, and we can move some of more of this macro sort of rare earth questions to the breakout. Have you, do you think we've seen any stabilization yet? No. You don't think so?
No. No, prices are all over the place. They're actually higher than what we showed in our presentation. And the market, it's not a, it's really important if you're actually trading in this stuff in any volume, it's not a, it's not a liquid market. It's a very bilateral market. That's the problem. Yeah. Think of it, think of it like the swap market. It's literally an agreement. You try to find it and you come up with an agreement, you trade on it. Is that
because still China is still flooding? I know it seems like every time Trump and the Chinese president meet, there's speculation that China is going to help subsidize and then, you know, U.S. government says they are, and the China government doesn't comment it, and then all of a sudden prices go back up. Is that, I mean, sort of last question before we head to the breakout, is that, do you think why we continue to have that kind of pricing market is because of what China is producing behind the scenes? Or, Robert, what is the rationale behind that, do you think?
It's one, restrictions from China, and two, lack of non-China availability. So, I mean, the places where you can get ex-China and non-China feedstock are very, very, very few. Fortunately, we have the connections to get them, but it's a very over-the-counter type of market. People literally don't trade on any of the indexes or anything like that.
Well, good. We'll move it again. We have several more questions, but we'll move that to breakout. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for coming.