Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Lynas. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome to the Lynas Rare Earths investor briefing for the quarter ending 31 March 2026. Today's briefing will be presented by Amanda Lacaze, CEO and Managing Director. Joining Amanda on the call today are Gaudenz Sturzenegger, CFO, Pol Le Roux, COO, Daniel Havas, VP Strategy and Investor Relations, Chris Jenney, VP Sales and Market Development, and Sarah Leonard, General Counsel and Company Secretary. Over to Amanda to commence the briefing. Please go ahead, Amanda.
Thank you, Jen. Thank you everyone for joining us again this morning. Jen tells me that we've had people registered to ask questions since about quarter to midday. On that basis, I will keep my comments to a minimum so we have plenty of time to deal with the questions. Just as a few general comments. I often say that we've had a very busy quarter, and guess what? We just had a really busy quarter, actually, maybe busier than most. We were very pleased with our progress during the March quarter. When we put in place a number of initiatives which will provide foundations for the future success of the business and improved resilience, and also ran an operationally good business in the meantime in terms of continuing to be the only non-Chinese producer at scale of both NdPr of lights and heavies.
During the quarter, I think most people have observed that the price of NdPr has progressively firmed over the year. We certainly saw the benefits of that, and we recorded one of our top three ever quarters in terms of revenue. It does appear that the market settings remain positive for the fourth quarter of this financial year. Out of interest, I sort of looked back on the very first quarterly that I ever delivered, and this puts into stark contrast the difference between maybe businesses at the start of their journey in Rare Earths and where they may be some years later. The first quarterly that I delivered was 445 tonnes of NdPr. Well, we delivered 2,000 tonnes this quarter, AUD 31 million in revenue versus AUD 265 million in revenue this quarter.
It's I think a reminder of just the various steps that we have taken over that period of time to consolidate our position as the global leader outside China. Our production is not quite at our 10,500 tonnes per year run rate, but it is moving towards it. During the quarter, we have continued to ramp up the final parts of the Mount Weld expansion, and I am delighted to say that we have that ramp up so far is at or above a McNulty 1 ramp-up curve. I think that's a first in Rare Earths. Even with that, there are still some challenges as we've brought that facility online, ensuring that, like in the early stages, con grade was lower than it had been in our nice, mature, little old plant. The team has been working on that, and they've lifted that up.
That did give us a few challenges downstream. We've had a few logistics challenges, but I'm sure that any of you on this call who have listened to any sort of results call would recognize that logistics has its own set of challenges at present. Heavy Rare Earths production, that's really the performance during this quarter just reflects the batch processing nature of our heavies at this stage. For those of you who've been up to the lab, you will have seen that we're packaging this in 25 kg drums and you will have seen the small furnace that we use. We accumulate material, we run it through on a batch process, and so therefore there's a bit more lumpiness in our production outcomes.
However, suffice to say that within our sales process with respect to the heavies, we are having a great deal of success in being able to place those carefully and leverage full benefit from those sales. Of course, our sales outcome, the total revenue was very pleasing. I've seen some comments already on the price per kilo, and of course, we aimed to make that clear within the report that reflected primarily product mix with some higher sales of lower value, La and Ce, during the time. The comparison on the NdPr is, of course, that we sell our NdPr on contracts, and with many of those, there's about a one-month lag till we see the price flows through into our revenue due to the nature of the contract.
Costs remain tightly controlled, notwithstanding, we have indicated in this that we would expect that there may be some further influences from the conflict in the Middle East. This will likely reflect those materials which are directly affected by oil and gas, but also just looking at things like, for example, the Fair Work Determination last night on ensuring that transport providers are able to recover increased costs from fuel as a consequence of the Middle East conflict. However, I would point out to you something of which we are enorMoUsly proud, and that is as we have moved to our hybrid renewable power station at Mount Weld, that our diesel use now is virtually only in the mining fleet at the Mount Weld site. The renewable power station is actually delivering significantly more than designed.
We were expecting renewables to be delivering around about 70% of our power requirement, and the average renewable content was 95.7%. That is 870,000 L of diesel saved just during the March quarter. This does put us in a much better position as we're looking at the various global effects at present. It's a pretty exciting quarter in terms of putting together a number of the long-term building blocks for our company. The JARE offtake agreement, which was announced on the 10th of March, is really significant, and I think everybody's read that in some detail by now. Firm offtake with a floor price is really important to us. An upside sharing arrangement, which is, we believe, relatively modest, although beneficial to both parties. We are seeing this as a really solid base for the business as it moves forward.
Follow that up with an MoU on working alongside our Japanese partners on further resource development, either at Mount Weld or other resources. Our work with JARE and JOGMEC on resource development has proven to be very constructive for our company over time, and we look forward to pursuing that further. In addition, we announced a binding letter of intent with the U.S. government, which sees the funding which was previously allocated to Seadrift being reallocated to the purchase of Rare Earth products from our existing and planned facilities. Of course, as we've indicated previously, we are focused on developing strong and constructive partnerships with respect to metal and magnet making. Our key announcements there during the quarter are both related to Korean firms who we see as being potentially extremely good partners technically and also in terms of efficiency and economic outcomes.
LS Cable for metal making at their Vietnam plant and continued work to move to definitive agreements with JS Link for the new magnet facility in Malaysia. All in all, as I said, a very busy quarter, where we focused on running a good business, continuing to take full advantage of the fact that we are the only ones who can take full advantage of the positive market at present. But at the same time ensuring that we're setting ourselves up for success, including with the agreements with both Japan and the U.S. The development of new capability and also within our sales team, ensuring that we're setting up a customer portfolio which will serve us well in the future and ensure that we leverage full benefit from our bundled sales.
Of course, the final and really significant point also, which underpins the ongoing success of the business is the new license, which was renewed in Malaysia. Our operating license was renewed for 10 years from the 3rd of March. We have been advocating for some time for an extended license, rather than the three-year license periods on which we have operated to- date. That required a change to the AELA, the Atomic Energy Licensing Act in Malaysia, which was effected late last year and was then under those varied conditions is the issuance of this 10-year license. Certainly, we're very pleased with that. We remain strongly committed to Malaysia, which has proven, notwithstanding a few twists and turns, to be a very productive environment in which Lynas has operated.
Having got to there, I'm really happy to take any questions now, and Jen, are you the one sorting those out?
No.
Maggie's going to open up for questions now.
Back to you, Maggie, then.
Thank you, Amanda. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please have one question at a time, and if you have more questions, please re-queue the line. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. First question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda and team. Thank you for the call. Appreciate it. Look, my one question would be around Kalgoorlie. If you can please provide a bit of an update in terms of power reliability there? Is that fully remediated now at Kal? And are there any risks into the fourth quarter as we step into that, just in terms of MREC availability? Thanks.
Thanks, Rahul. Since the really very serious situation towards the end of last year, we did engage very effectively, I believe it was Western Power, on a couple of issues that, as it turned out, were probably affecting power availability in a way that they didn't need to. We have had relatively stable power within the ELPS sort of framework through this quarter. It has not had the same effect on operational availability uptimes that we had seen, particularly in the previous quarter. I'm loathe to make a forecast on power in Kalgoorlie because as we have indicated previously, in Kalgoorlie, there is both a problem with sheer, sort of the power available and also with some elements of the distribution network. When everything's going well, this is not an issue, I wouldn't want to be forecasting that everything will remain operating perfectly.
I think everyone will remember the power being taken out by the lightning strikes on the transmission towers. We continue to work on alternatives. We have not taken the step of putting in place a diesel power station, because as I noted in my comments, we're pretty proud to have made some significant savings on diesel at Mount Weld. However, even on the stated plan with respect to the network, we would see that the lead times to really making a significant change in power availability in Kalgoorlie are such that it is prudent for us to consider alternate solutions. Right now, we are not forecasting a problem in this quarter, touch wood, but I'm loathe to make any definitive assertions on that basis.
Okay, I understand. I guess tactically it's quite hard to make a call on availability, but given that needs to be in your plans in terms of having reliable power going forward, is there any timeframe whereby you want to decide that and then flag that to the market so that there's clear visibility in terms of when you're planning to build a power plant?
No, I don't want to make any further comment on it at this stage.
Got it. Okay. No worries. Thank you. That's my one. I'll pass it on.
Thanks.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question. Next we have Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, Amanda and team. I hope you're well. Amanda, good progress for the quarter, as you stated, and Mount Weld ramping up and tracking well. I saw you're on top of the impurity removal at Kalgoorlie, which is fantastic as well. Just a question on potential shortage of chemicals in particular sulfuric acid. Can you talk through your security of supply and maybe some of the cost sensitivities? I'm noting, I think you use somewhere between one to two tons of acid for every ton of concentrate, correct, in leaching?
Yeah. Good question, Paul. One which has our team highly exercised at present. Which I'm sure is the same case with most supply chain teams across the industry. If I start first with Australia. We do not have an issue with supply in Australia at present. We have some options for access locally, which we think is going to ensure that we're in a good position, at least through to the end of the year. The issue becomes more of an issue in Malaysia, not in Australia. Last week I did get a few inquiries when the Chinese put out an announcement that they would not be exporting acid. Well, we don't source any of our acid from China, so that's okay. The market is tight, but we're pretty confident about our ability to get the volume. The effect will be a price effect.
I think as everybody knows, that's a day-to-day event and so, we're managing that. We would expect that sulfuric, alongside some of the other sort of transport cost increases, et cetera, will make it a little more challenging for us in terms of costs in the fourth quarter. We are all over it at present. Once again, I'm sort of loath to give you a forecast because as I think everyone knows, it is changing on a daily basis. We would expect there will be some cost impacts in the fourth quarter.
Okay. Thanks, Amanda. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. Next we have Neal Dingmann from William Blair. Please go ahead.
Morning, Amanda. Thanks for the time. My question is around the MoU you have with JARE. I'm just wondering how should we think about the timing of the mineral exploration around this MoU? I'm also wondering, you didn't mention the release. Is there any update on the MoU around with Noveon Magnetics?
Hi, Neal. Welcome to the call. The MoU, with respect to the development of and the cooperation on other resource development, I would expect that we will be in a position to provide an update on that sometime during this quarter. Notwithstanding that, sort of, definitive agreements are not going to be a bottleneck on that. We have a long trusted relationship. We find, particularly in terms of resource development, geology, metallurgy, that we have highly complementary skills. Yeah, we think that we will be able to give you a little more on that in the coming quarter. I'm sorry, Neal, my brain's just gone to custard. I missed, what was your second side of the question?
Just any update on the Noveon Magnetics MoU, if there's anything going on there?
Look, our teams are engaged there. Noveon did a further, I think during the quarter or maybe late last quarter, did a further capital raise themselves and have a particular. They're sort of completing their own internal business planning. To my understanding, we continue to work with them and particularly on offtake agreements to ensure that we are supplying relevant material for some of their highest priority customers. I'll invite Chris Jenney, who's on the call, to add anything if I've missed anything there.
No, nothing to add, Amanda. Yeah. Obviously there's lots of moving parts in the U.S. market, so we're just working very closely with the team at Noveon to work out the best offtake arrangements, to meet their needs and also obviously to meet our needs. We'll just keep you updated as we progress through that.
Perfect. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Amanda.
Thank you.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next we have Chen Ji ang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Amanda. Or I should say good afternoon, Amanda.
Good afternoon .
I hope this is not the last time we speak to you on the results, analyst call. First question just on this quarter's NdPr production. If I do the run rate or annualize this quarter's NdPr, it gives me roughly 8,000 tons of NdPr or roughly 22 metric tons a day of NdPr. That is like to be 75% of your current NdPr annual capacity of 10.5. I'm just wondering, I think previously you mentioned a run rate of 25 metric tons a day of NdPr. I'm just wondering, what's the best way to think of your production versus capacity? Is 75% utilization rate we should apply or it should be higher? I guess the question I'm just trying to get what kind of production going forward versus your current capacity of 10.5. Thank you, Amanda.
Thanks, Chen. I think as with all of these elements, as we've always indicated, the bottleneck tends to move around. We're a bit different from many mining companies. We have capacity at Mount Weld, at Kalgoorlie, and then also at the LAMP facility, and each can be at a different stage. You're right, the annualized run rate at present is about 8,000 tons per annum. It would be our intention that that lifts again in the coming financial year. The dependencies for that are partly the continued ramp up. Bear in mind that we're only today, six months into the ramp up of a big facility at Mount Weld. As I indicated, we didn't have an issue with the volume of material, but the concentrate grade dropped a bit, which absolutely has an effect on downstream production.
I think that certainly our objective would be to be moving up beyond the 25 tons per day. Maybe we're still sort of another year into consistent ramp up right across the system to deliver that 10,500 tons. Pol, did you want to add anything to that?
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Okay, good. Yeah, it's a good approach to address the nameplate capacity as tons per day. We are way higher than what you can see in our numbers in terms of downstream daily capacity. Then you have two factors to take into account. One is a normal operation. You always face problems from time- to- time. You have what we call OEE, overall equipment efficiency, which is reflective of any failure you can have on equipment. That's an 80%-90% normal ratio. Then you have specific, as Amanda said, specific challenges for us is to adjust, align the ramp-up of Mount Weld, Kalgoorlie, and all the processes here in LAMP. We're moving forward, getting close to having an easier to forecast volume for you, easier to forecast.
The short answer is, Chen, 25 tons a day will be the next stop on the bus route, and then we will keep on moving from there.
Great. You are still ramping up. Okay.
We are still ramping up.
Yeah, got it. Can I have another follow-up of your price realization? By looking at the China NdPr benchmark quarter-over-quarter, it's a significant increase, almost 40%, from AUD 68 /kg average in December quarter to AUD 94 /kg in March quarter, excluding VAT, of course. Lynas NdPr selling price is only up 25% quarter-over-quarter. I'm wondering why or what I'm missing, why Lynas NdPr selling price is not increasing to the same scale to the index pricing in the March quarter. I understand some of your volumes are independent, but the price flow are still higher than index pricing. Is there any lagging or what I'm missing? Thank you very much, Amanda.
Yeah. I did actually try to explain that, Chen. Our largest customers are on contracts which refer to the prior month's pricing. I think we've tried to explain this previously. On the way up it lags, but on the way back down it also lags. Generally about a month's lag by virtue of the fact that we are not selling into the spot market. That's not ever our intention.
Right. Due to lagging. Okay, got it. Thank you very much, Amanda. I'll pass it on.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda and team. Just a follow-up.
On price, basically, or revenue. Can you help us in some way with the mix? You've highlighted quite clearly you did have a lower sales mix of high-value products. Just wondering if in any way you could give us a feel for how big the NdPr inventory build in the period was. Did you sell any DyTb ? Was there any marketing motivation behind the sales mix at all? Thank you.
Okay. No, we didn't build significant inventory. The sort of final numbers on sales often depend upon how many ships sail in the last week of the month. If they didn't go at the end of the month, they've gone in the first week of April, say, for example. No significant inventory build. Yes, more sales of La and Ce, and given that they are high volume, low price, they have an effect on that average selling price. Limited sales of the heavies. We are using our heavies very strategically. We've talked about this previously, but we seek at all times to be in the business of long-term relationships with our customers. We don't sell into the spot market. We also don't sell our heavies just because somebody wants to buy a few heavies from us but don't have a broader relationship with us.
We bundle our heavies with other material. Our heavy sales and inventory management is managed in such a way that we can serve our customers, say, for example, in the magnet market with a magnet ratio of NdPr to DyTb, something like 30:1. The heavies are used strategically, and I think as we've talked previously, yes, they deliver margin in their own right, but it still remains that the light cake is NdPr and the icing is the heavies. We continue to work on that basis.
Okay. Thank you, Amanda.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Reg Spencer from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, Amanda and team. Most of my questions have been answered already. I'm gonna go somewhere where I'm not sure how you'll answer this, but clearly there's been some M&A in the Rare Earth sector overnight, Amanda.
Mm-hmm.
I'm certainly not expecting you guys to provide any comment on what your M&A strategy is. When could we expect some further detail around plans for your Malaysian clay assets or your joint venture?
We are working through the definitive document on the magnet factory with JS Link. Hopefully, we'll be able to provide additional information on that relatively soon. With all of these things, it's always a case of we actually have to, we can only control our position. A negotiation is a negotiation. However, we are comfortable that that project is proceeding, that material, relevant equipment is being ordered, particularly the long lead time equipment. We're feeling very confident about that. With respect to the ionic clay assets, I think that as we work through, right back at the beginning when we were talking about the JARE MoU, we will provide a bit more information on some of that resource work we're doing over the next couple of quarters, I would expect. Yeah, there's lots of happy investment bankers in the world these days, aren't there?
Lots of deals to be done that sort of big numbers are. I just would highlight the fact that we are the only ones bringing 2,000 tonnes of NdPr and Dy and Tb, and now samarium to the market every quarter. We will continue to focus on ensuring that we have a strong position in the rare earth market.
May I ask a cheeky, very quick second question, Amanda? Feel free not to answer it. Do you see increasing competitive tension, given obviously the strategic importance being placed on assets, especially those with enriched heavy contents? Do you see evidence of that in all the conversations I assume you have?
I think that we know the various projects well, and we have a clear understanding of their potential. I think I might leave it at that.
That's more than I was expecting. Thanks, Amanda. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Next, we have Austin Yun from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, Amanda and team. Just one more question on Kalgoorlie. Great to see that you finished the ramp-up of the recent process improvement. I'm just keen to understand, do you have any other process improvement plan for the Kalgoorlie facility, in this calendar year? And also given that the tightness in the chemicals, would you actually raise the ramp-up of Kalgoorlie given the sulfuric acid and other things that the price is going up? I understand there's no supply challenges at the moment. Thank you.
Thanks, Austin. Look, the answer to the first part of your question is we are always improving the process at every facility, right? We are not done with process improvements at Kalgoorlie, not by a long shot. What we are flagging there is that we've done a couple of sort of major improvements in terms of process flow. Some of the actual flow sheet that we've executed and that really has allowed us to step up. We look on a weekly basis. I look at it, sort of what Pol was talking to, which is the operational availability, which is really the reliability question. Then also looking at quality and are we producing the quality which is going to be able to be processed at the LAMP, cost effectively.
As we indicated, sort of early on, we had some issues associated with that, which is perfectly reasonable and to be expected, and we have addressed those issues. We are never going to stop looking for ways to continue to improve both the process and the reliability of that process. We are still assessing what are the implications of some of the price effects from the Mideast conflict. We don't think that sulfuric acid is going to be the pain point in Kalgoorlie. I'm sure many of you would have noted the determination from the Fair Work Commission, last night, which indicated that we need to be working with our suppliers on a fortnightly basis to ensure that costs are being appropriately recovered. At this stage, we are not seeing that this would lead us to make a decision to dial back the Kalgoorlie facility.
We continue to work to actually ramp that up in terms of reliability and delivery to forecast.
Thank you, Amanda.
Thanks, Austin.
Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have Jonathan Sharp from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Amanda and team. My one question, just, as previously mentioned, an acquisition of Sierra Rutile announced overnight. Now there's reporting that there's some offtake of Dy and Tb floor prices, $575 per kilo and just over $2,000 per kilo. This looks like it's about 2x-3x spot. How do you view this floor pricing, from Lynas's perspective, maybe from what you're getting yourself?
There is a reason why we have not specifically disclosed either our floor prices or our achieved prices in this market. We actually think that this is an important part. We think these are appropriate, they're commercial in confidence. The numbers neither surprise nor impress us.
Okay. Thanks, Amanda.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next, we have Dim Ariyasinghe from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Amanda and team. Most of my questions have been asked, but just one on what's to come on the downstream, which I think is pretty exciting. How do you think about metallization again through everything else you're doing with JS Link and then the Vietnam announcement earlier this quarter? Is the plan to continue metallization in Vietnam and build on that? Maybe you could expand a little bit on what that could look like.
Yeah. Hi, Dim. Nice to talk to you. Actually, Chen, yes, this may be my last quarterly report. Hopefully, we will all talk to each other at some time before I shuffle off this mortal coil. D im, yes, I think we've indicated this previously, that we think that metal is a somewhat unloved part of the value chain, but a crucial part of the value chain. We are delighted that LS Cable, which is one of the largest cable manufacturers in the world, still manufacturing metal products in the world, has chosen to enter the Rare Earths market. This reflects encouragement, particularly from the Korean government to improve resilience in Korea, whereas we know the key industries, automotive and electronics both rely on Rare Earths and rare earth magnets. The LS Cable facility into which this plant will be integrated is in Vietnam.
We see that as being very positive in Vietnam. It is a cost environment which is constructive for the production of metals. There is some domestically developed capability there as well. I think that we really see LS Cable as an outstanding partner for further development of metal making. We see Vietnam as really a critical step in the supply chain, not just with LS Cable, but with our current metal maker as well.
Okay. Cool. Thank you.
Thanks, Dim.
Next, we have Matt Hope from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah. Thanks very much. Just my question was, what was the motivation for having the MoU with JARE for exploration? I noticed that in your announcement you even talk about exploration and development of Mount Weld. I was wondering in what way would you want the Japanese actually involved in your key mining asset?
You may recall, or maybe you weren't covering us at the time, but you may recall that actually in some of the work that we've done on the carbonatite, we have had access to some additional and highly skilled resources from JOGMEC in terms of particularly geology and metallurgy. They worked with us to both fund some of the cost of the Mount Weld carbonatite program, but also had on-site working with our team, some real experts in these areas. We have found this to be very helpful for our business, accessing that additional expertise. We have an extremely productive relationship with JARE and JOGMEC and are happy to extend that into additional project work.
It's the expertise that they offer. If I could just sneak one extra one in. I just wanted to know, samarium, it seems that you've had a big priority on developing that at the moment. Is that really about price or is it a strategic rare earth that would allow you to sort of get involved with the U.S. and because this is something that nobody else produces. Is it really about strategy or is it about the price of the samarium presently?
Samarium is an excellent case study of the dysfunction that has existed in the Rare Earths market. We probably could have produced samarium earlier than we have done. We were certainly not motivated to produce samarium earlier because the price has been sitting at basically a couple of dollars a kilo. Likewise lanthanum and cerium, where we sort of produce those these days selectively. At a couple of dollars a kilo, it didn't make sense financially for us to produce that material.
As certain customers of some of these materials have understood all of the things that everyone's wanted to talk about over the last two or three years around supply chain reliability, et cetera, they have actually indicated that, well, yes, they would be prepared to pay a price, which is a reasonable price, that gives us a reasonable return or in fact, a good return on our efforts. Producing samarium to spec and in the volumes that the market requires, bearing in mind that we are not talking with any of these heavies about the same sort of volumes as we get for our lights. Notwithstanding that, we now are in a position where it is commercially sensible for us to produce samarium, so therefore we are producing samarium.
All right. Thanks very much. Sounds great.
Thanks, Matt.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone.
Oh, Maggie, if we run out of questions, we should come into the kill.
One more question, Amanda. One more.
Okay.
We have a follow-up from Austin Yun. Please go ahead.
Hi, Amanda. Just a quick follow-up. A really good news that you provide two offtake agreements updates during this quarter. I'm just keen to understand that given a large portion of your production is now covered in those, is there any intention or interest to further expand your offtake portfolio, both from production perspective, also from your geolocation customer perspective? Conscious that you have Japan and U.S. covered, but there's a big chunk of the world that's not covered yet. Thank you.
Yeah. Good question, Austin. I think the best way to respond is that the sales team has a very clear plan on ensuring that over time we sell our material. We continue to sell it all on a contract basis. We don't engage in the spot market, that we ensure that we have a customer portfolio that ensures that we are capturing the highest value, highest-margin customers. The government contracts are beneficial in terms of setting. The focus on customers and concluding customer-based agreements remains the number one priority for our business. It is way more important than any other mechanism that we might have. Because we're just like every other business, you don't exist without customers. The agreements with governments are really about sending a message with respect to market dynamics.
I think everyone has accepted that this market has been dysfunctional for some time, and I think that the government agreements help to address that. In a manner, we have advocated that these, if we have consistent application across those various agreements, that no government should ever actually have to write a check because the price naturally will move to that level. We have seen some evidence of that. The sales team's focus absolutely is on customers. We have excellent long-term agreements with a number of both magnet makers and magnet buyers, and we will remain focused on doing that with the government agreements, essentially helping to address market dynamics.
Thank you.
Thanks, Austin.
Thank you. We have one more question. Last question, follow-up from Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you very much. No one asking question, I'll take my last chance, Amanda. Thank you. Amanda, as the CEO for Lynas over the last decade, and now we have two and a half months left until the end of the current financial year.
Yeah.
You are going to your next chapter of your life. I'm just wondering, in your view, what kind of CEO quality can lead Lynas to the next level of success, which is Lynas 2030 growth story amid the backdrop of increasing geopolitical risk, supply chain development, trying to decouple from China, whereas remain dependent on China, and Lynas running a fully integrated rare earth mine to oxide operations in Australia and Malaysia. In your view, what the board is looking for and in your view. Thank you.
Okay. I can tell you my view. I can't speak on behalf of the board, and I would encourage you to speak to the chairman to get that. My view is only a view because much as I would love, and those of you who have known me for 12 years would know that I actually love being the final decision maker. In this case, I will not be the final decision-maker. I wish that I was. I wish that I could say to you, "This is the sort of person that we would like to see, and this is who it is." Ultimately, it will not be my decision.
However, my experience of operating in Lynas is that the profile of the person to run an organization like Lynas with its stakeholder complexity, and processing complexity is maybe a little different from many of our other Australian enterprises. Certainly, we operate with more risk in our environment than many Australian businesses who run their operations and sell their materials inside Australia. We operate with real global risk. Of course, I've been quite vocal previously about the fact that I would be delighted to see another woman appointed to this role. I think that we have made great strides in the mining industry in terms of bringing more women into the industry, but we are yet to get to many mining companies have targets of 30% or 40% women within their workforces, but we are yet to see that within the CEO ranks.
I would be very sad if my departure was the departure of at present, the only woman other than Mrs. Gina Rinehart, as the owner, who is running a mining minerals company in Australia. Those are some of the things that I think are important. We are a complex business, and we are subject to external factors that don't necessarily affect all Australian businesses. I think that needs to be taken into account as the board proceeds with the appointment of my successor. I watch it keenly because I've spent 12 years of my life on this, and I'd hate it to fall in a screaming heap. On the other hand, I also recognize that I can't actually control what happens after I leave. It's been great.
I have loved every day of my job, and I still do, but it is time for the transition, and I trust that our chairman will ensure that an excellent appointment is made.
Thank you so much, Amanda, for sharing your views. A great compliment to the stakeholders and processing. Thank you so much, Amanda. I'll pass it on.
Thanks, Chen. Thank you.
Thank you, Amanda. We have no more questions.
Okay. Well, thank you very much. I do look forward to hear. It's not quite the end of the road yet, as Chen said, it's another two and a half months. I expect that I will have a chance during that time to touch base with most of you on this call, and I look forward to doing so. Thank you very much, and talk to you all soon. Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.