I'll say good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're logging in from today. I think there's at least 10 time zones represented today, so thanks everybody for joining me. I have with me today Paul Weibel, CEO of 5E Advanced Materials, to discuss the company's recently published pre-feasibility technical report. Paul, how are you?
I'm great. Good to be here.
Awesome. Here's how today's going to work for the folks in the room. I've got some questions today for Paul, but this is an interactive event, so the chat button on the bottom right of your screen, please do feel free to ask questions at any point during today's event. We'll try to get to all of them. If for whatever reason we don't, I'll make sure that Paul and the 5E team get those questions over email, with your contact information, so we can get back to you at his leisure. Today's event is also being recorded and will be available for replay probably early tomorrow morning, Eastern Time. It'll pop right up in your inbox. It'll also be available on our YouTube page and likely soon thereafter on the 5E web page. Let me jump right into the details of the program for today, Paul.
I know before we get into the nitty-gritty of the PFS, I'd love if you just share your general thoughts and impressions on the report, your initial feedback, and reception for the market.
Yeah, happy to. There's been about 18 months of mining data, 14 months, 15 months of chemical plant data that has gone into this report that really, we believe it's an outstanding report. Definitely need to thank all the QPs, as well as our third-party engineering partners for myosine, our partners out in Chile, and our internal owners team that really put all their contributions into the report. I think it's probably table 18.2 in the technical report. It really gets into the differences on a traditional class IV estimate and what we delivered. It started with, we have a plot plan. We know where our wellfield is going to start, where the header is. We are able to do material takeoffs. We have actual true PLS data that was sent to Cameco. We have our own independent lab, have been doing tests on that 10x over.
Ultimately, the mass and energy balance that was derived was true bottoms up based on real PLS. For a, yes, it's a PFS, but we think it's much better than that. We know it's much better than that. I think table 18.4 highlights that, and it's a quality report. We put out the PEA almost a little over two years ago. We were bound by S-K 1300 standards, so that was mining guide seven change. It took us a little bit of time to get that out. There was a lot of assumptions at that point in time. That's all changed now because it's all done on real data, and we've demonstrated that we can mine this. We have the team that can do it. Pleased, I think the market has liked it. It's a 40-year mine life, and that's 41% of the resource.
There's an exploration target, and it does not include additional load claims we've staked in file, which is about another third of the resource that'll get included with the feasibility study. A very, very large multigenerational resource, and we're quite pleased.
Great. Let me get right into the details then. At $554.80 all-in sustaining cash costs versus that $1,355 average boric acid pricing, you're looking at $800 per ton in operating margin. With 130,000 tons annually, that's what, $100 million in operating cash flow. What's driving this kind of remarkable margin profile, and how sustainable is that price?
Yeah, I think the first topic on that is the cost structure. We knew over the last two years that this project needed to be tackled hands down on the cost side. I think that, and we'll talk about the flow sheet later, but we've changed it up a little bit. We've optimized. It's chilled crystallization today. That's why we're at that, you know, five in change. That also includes our logistics costs of about $113, $114 a ton that we're assuming today. Some of these technical reports, it's a bit of a modeling exercise based on assumptions. We're assuming we bear all that cost. You strip that out and you're closer to like $450 for all-in sustaining cash costs. It takes a little bit of time to get to that because you've got to ramp up.
Additionally, the calcium chloride's on a little bit of a lag because we use the ponds to get there in solution. That's where we'll be, and it's quite competitive. Additionally, we got there on the fixed cost side by going a little bit bigger and spreading more fixed costs over additional tonnage. When we took a look at the permits, it's super permitted for borates. We got clarification from the lead agency that borate can be defined as boron oxide or oxide equivalent, which basically gives us permits for 160,000 tons of boric acid. That really was how we tackled it on the cost side. On the price side, I think our first, gosh, 12 quarters- 16 quarters, it's an average boric acid price of $1,250. Remember, our costs are in there, so that's really a net back price of closer to $1,140, $1,130.
My commercial team would tell me I'm being too conservative because there's supply and demand that really justifies it being at those levels. I think to succinctly answer the question, it was really driven off of the variable costs. I do believe pricing is sustainable as this market's in an oligopoly where demand's growing.
Sure. We'll get more to the market again in a bit, but I just wanted to stick to the details for a second. That proposed $435 million initial capital investment generates, according to the report, $3.75 billion in free cash flow over the mine life. It's up 8.6% cash on cash return. I'm curious if you could break down for everybody that's in the room what's included in the CapEx and how it differs from previous reports.
Sure, that's cash flow only converting 41% of the resource.
Sure.
Yeah, major differences are that the PFS dramatically improved CapEx clarity in that it includes cogen. There was an assumption in the PEA that we would basically procure power at run-of-the-mill everyday rates from an electricity perspective, and someone would ultimately finance that cogen. That's still a very viable option that can come out of the CapEx . We can put together a long-term power agreement in exchange for someone powering the cogen. The cogen with the contingency was about $53 million. That could be stripped out of the CapEx . That's optionality. That sits in capital today. On the wellfield side, the other big difference is that phase one on an apples-to-apples basis included 160 vertical wells. Today's mine plan is 27 horizontal wells. We had really good data from the 1980s that showed, based on the porosity and permeability of colmanite, where solution would migrate and when.
That was firmed up by these tilt meters that basically can track where our solution's moving at any given point in time from above ground. It aligned with what was in the 1980s. We looked at this and, if you look at the area of the deposit, 160 wells for where we wanted to mine was a lot of wells. If you go into larger phases, it's 2x or 3x the quantity of wells. We're fortunate in that our geology really is homogeneous in that it's about 200 ft thick. There are four mineralized horizons, with the major mineralized horizon being 130 ft- 50 ft. We have really high-grade colmanite. Directionally, I've been saying this for maybe 10 months, we're taking pages out of the playbook of oil and gas because there's one thing this country is very good at, and that is drilling for oil and gas.
All of our major vendors that we're using on the drilling side have operations out of Bakersfield, California, and a bunch of them tend to be headquartered down in Texas. Implementing, and we'll talk about this, some of the initial results we're getting out of these horizontal wells, they're very good. The last major difference on the CapEx and some of the difference is ultimately how we changed crystallization. The PEA included evaporative crystallization. That's how the small-scale facility was actually designed. Given the real high performance we've had with head grade, we've been able to change that and go to a chilled methodology. Just from an OpEx perspective, that's actually decreased. I think the PEA had 20 BTUs for a short ton, and we're now at 7 BTUs. A material decrease in natural gas usage.
Also, you're getting the benefit of that in that steam and that gas is also being used to generate electricity. It's a win-win. To summarize, cogen is now included. The wellfield has gotten significantly skinnier and more efficient, and we've optimized OpEx by changing the flow sheet and crystallization strategy.
Great. I got one last question that's right in the numbers here because I just want to put in perspective folks in the room. The PFS shows that you're going to recover the entire $435 million CapEx in under six years and then generate just free cash flow for 33+ years. My question is, given these cash flow characteristics, I know there's investors that love those long-duration predictable cash flow assets. Are you getting any interest from infrastructure funds, yield-focused investors, any of those guys?
Yeah, we do have a line out the door of some of the most reputable private equity funds. They've been knocking on the door for the past six to eight weeks, have known this is coming. We were hoping we could get this out in late June. These technical reports are quite a bit of a laborious process that you have multiple groups all incorporating in from geo to process specialists at Fluor to their CapEx team. You overlay the wellfield, and all this was going on while we were drilling 3,000 feet of directional wells. It was a pretty busy time. This project has a ton of interest just because of its strategic importance. The boron supply-demand dynamic is really interesting. I've gotten pulled on a couple market studies, and it's definitely one of those very unique markets in that demand's growing, but supply's not keeping pace.
From my longer duration, long-term investment underpinned by a very large multigenerational resource, there's interest.
Great. I do want to talk about 5E market position for a second. My understanding is that you'll be producing approximately 11% of boric acid demand from just this single project. What does that mean to you in terms of how it positions the company for pricing power, contract negotiations, et cetera?
Yeah, so that's 11% of the market today. We continue to grow, so that number shrinks when we come online at commercial. I think we did have a really, and that was another piece of the puzzle that was coming in there, was the market study that Klein led, but they engaged former members of the oligopoly. I think at the table we had, and with their collaboration, 130 years of borate sales experience across North America, Asia, South America, the LATAM region, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. We basically covered the globe. We had some kind of core base assumptions that Eti in Turkey will expand in incremental 60,000 tons. What we're seeing very much in the market today is supply and demand are at parity. I'll cite a couple instances here where one of the larger players has exited Vietnam. They've also exited India.
The market's short, cannot get supply. That's led to some really interesting pricing numbers, like $1,400 a ton. Distributors are calling us and like, we can't get it. I talked to a U.S. customer. The other market that has been tight has been the U.S., and that's been driven off of, I call it tariff arbitrage, where obviously the second largest global producer, U.S.-based, there's tariffs and reciprocal tariffs that any U.S. producer would be dealing with. Ultimately, Turkey has decided to let's just sell boron where the U.S. producer can go ultimately where they have to sell at higher prices. Let's go also sell that capacity into China so we can get higher net backs. In the interim, U.S. warehouses have been short. I talked to a producer, this was probably maybe six weeks ago, and they had to buy product from a Canadian distributor at $1,300 a ton.
The long-term market, like this market is contracted based on offtake. If you're not in those offtakes and the market starts to get tight, the spot market can be a really great place to add additional margin. Also, just tying back to supply and demand, we think that's at parity today. We've also assumed that there's the two other permitted projects, 5E being one of them, are going to come online when it's publicly stated, which is about the 2028, 2029 timeline. You look at that and you're like, okay, there's only five or six sizable boron deposits in the globe. Two have permits. Three of those are in the exploration stage. You can assume 60,000 tons from Eti, 5E and Riley come online when they say they're going to do, and the market's still in the deficit.
I think, you know, you have the ability where we have our piece and we can start to segment across the various customers, which is how we've already signed up 14 global customers and passed their process.
Great. You already touched on it a bit, but I know that boron has been designated critical infrastructure by Homeland Security, American Defense, etc. I'm curious, in the era of tariffs and Buy American, how do you think the domestic supply advantage translates into competitive positioning for 5E ?
Yeah, so there's definitely interest in securing all aspects of the supply chain from the upstream to midstream and downstream. There was one of the first executive orders that mining was now included in the industrial base. You're going to definitely see additional projects that could pass. It's coming online. Perpetua is making a go at it. I think there's an emphasis here. In this next four-year window, I think Biden was all about the green side and clean energy, and Trump's all about like, we need to bolster up the industrial base. We talked about how the U.S. warehouses have been out of stock. There's, you know, and I think that just speaks on those three markets, which is U.S., India, and Vietnam, how susceptible prices are to supply, demand, and utilization, which is really one of the big drivers in Klein's pricing model.
What we've done is we've ultimately partnered with different companies that are working to bolster up domestic supply chains. One side of that has been on the carbide side, where 85% of boron carbide is out of China. There's different groups that we've been working with where we can produce that domestically. Given, you know, what does carbide go into? It's deadly tank armor and it's the third hardest material on planet Earth. This is just one example of how 5E is kind of playing its part in bolstering up the domestic side supply chains and ultimately providing the upstream feedstock. Ultimately, this is the boron carbide market for U.S. defense is no longer a market that the Chinese can dominate.
I appreciate that. It's just interesting context. I know you've got 14 customers already qualified through the small-scale facility you've got up. I'd love if you could just share insights into what the value-add proposition is for 5E to securing these agreements.
Sure. I think you can use those 14 as a canary in the coal mine or the leading indicator to indicate that, hey, there needs to be incremental supply because our phones are ringing. It's definitely concerning, I think the customer is concerned because supply and demand is tight. I think the first proposition is quality of raw material. We've demonstrated that we can meet the highest specification in the market, which is LCD glass. If you read section 10 of the PFS, you can see that we actually partnered with Cameco. We sent them mine solution, and we know exactly what we need to do to achieve our sulfate chloride spec and impurity profiles on the finished product. There are actually really good pictures in there that detail the boric acid coming out of first-stage crystallization and then a redissolve and the second step of crystallization. It looks awesome.
I think achieving product quality is of utmost importance. Second is that we can be a reliable long-term supplier. I think this resource is massive. It's really of high quality, of strategic importance to national security, and it'll be here for many, many generations to come. We've really done a great job focusing on this in the PFS, and it's where we'll continue to focus our efforts, on the cost curve. That's tackling variable cost. Ultimately, our goal is to be second on that cost curve. It's a cost curve of two.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, I think there are a couple other smaller boric acid producers, but we hear time and time again from various customers and market candidates that they struggle with the quality side. That's where we'll provide the value.
Appreciate that. I want to get into the operations and scalability for a second. One thing I found interesting in the PFS is that the in-situ leaching approach, where you're achieving 81.9% recovery with really minimal surface disturbance. I'm curious if you could just give your take on how this tech, the tech advantage, translates into cost savings and environmental benefits compared to the more traditional approaches.
Sure, it definitely comes back to colmanite and the geology. I think that you have the four different types of ore most common where borates are found: colmanite, ulexite, tincal, and kernite. Colmanite is, I describe as the Mercedes-Benz of mineralization for boron. It's a calcium-based boron mineral, and it's just really easy to leach. We saw that in the lab in 2018, and we've seen that real-time in the plant. Having that is really how we can get that 81.9% recovery. Additionally, from an environmental perspective, we're low touch. There's no open pit, there's no tailings dams, just a 6 in borehole and a mill.
Yeah, there you go. I want to talk a bit more about those horizontal wells, because the conversion of those intercepting 3,000 ft of that colmanite is obviously an operational breakthrough. I'm curious, how does it, and I got to ask you about timing, how does it impact your confidence in that production ramp up to get to that 130,000 tons annually, I believe, by late 2028?
Yeah, there was definitely some reconciliation that needed to occur between what's the anticipated feed rate that the plant's going to achieve and what is the quantity of wells on a gallons per minute basis that will ultimately need to be established to feed that chemical plant. We'll use this as an opportunity to talk about the horizontal wells. We have four injection recovery wells today, and our mineralized zone is about 200 ft. We're coming into contact with approximately 800 ft of pay zone. We took two of those wells, and let's talk cost. Each of those wells was about $900,000. It was $3.6 million to install those four vertical wells. We get the benefit of actually utilizing the vertical piece where we've sidetracked off of those two wells. That still took a decent amount of time because it was a complex drilling program.
Your initial hole and breakthrough of your vertical well needs to be larger because you're going to put a flexible casing through that. It needs to be wider, and it actually takes a decent amount of time to drill. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's close. $1.5 million we've now outlaid, and we now, instead of having, well, it's two wells, so 400 ft of mineralization, we now have 3,400 ft of mineralization. On a how much more bang for your buck does your drilling dollars get you? Also to note that we're able to do logs along, geological logs along the way and be looking at our, you know, what's actually coming out of the ground. One of those wells is like a perfect 10 out of 10 score and is in a high-grade colmanite the whole entire way.
It's definitely the way this deposit needs to be mined. I think we've known that has been the case, and we really have like ourselves all amped up out of the gate, and we're probably like a little bit too bullish. We expect instant gratification when we started to recover PLS. Right away, I think, we've just completed today our, we're almost done our fourth cycle. We're very much in the early stages of this. I think after two cycles, our boron PPM was about 3,000. Just for simplistic calculations, you take 3,000 divided by 10,000, and then you multiply that by approximately six, and that'll give you sort of an indication of what your head grade is. At 3,000 divided by 10 x six, we were at a 1.8% head grade, which isn't good. I was like, the team, we're all like, what's going on?
We did cycle three, and it just clicked, and we got 20,000 gal out, 6.5% head grade, 11,700 PPMs boron, 91 degrees. There is temperature that we can use to our advantage too. It was just really good. We're on our fourth cycle, and we're not all the way done yet. We're kind of mid to high 5%s, so really, really good initial results. We'll continue to operate this. More customers want products, so that facility will operate. Ultimately, as we think about the debt diligence, we need to run this wellfield so there are no questions left unanswered when we go through the project finance diligence process.
Yeah, I know. Appreciate that. I know the technical report only covers phase 1. I'm curious if you can give the folks in the room a sense of the expansion potential. I'm talking the additional tonnage, but also the value-add boron derivative. What does it mean for the investors in the room?
Sure. We're definitely ahead of the curve on this one because we've been able to actually incorporate some of our testing to this, or incorporate some vendor testing while we were kind of going through the pre-feed process. Customers, it's well known, they'll pay, so boric acid is 56% B2O3. Customers pay a premium for more B2O3. That's the boron component, and that's what gives glass its higher strength, and you know, its heat resistance. That's where the premium chemical properties of boron lie. We're looking at product mixes with higher B2O3 content, which would drive you ultimately up to oxide. There's potentially a blend, a metaboric acid, which would be 80% B2O3, that customers will pay much more than the regular price of boric acid. There's also a value proposition there if we could deliver that.
That's not included in phase 1, but that's something that the team has bandwidth to be working on in parallel. Additionally, we can go bigger. This is a very, very large resource. Again, 40-year mine life, 41% of the resource, we can go 2x - 3x larger, and the resource has the capacity. I think really good economics with phase 1 and we can go bigger once we deliver phase 1.
Great. I do have some questions on risk management, but I just fall around the topic. Tate Sullivan from the chat asks, what are the next steps in the project finance diligence process?
We need offtakes. That's like front and center right now. We have 18 supersacks that are going out probably end of this month, early September, for a five-week trial for glass tank testing. The next phase was like we needed to get these capital and OpEx numbers so we can really know how much debt we can take on and ultimately set the table for offtakes so we can demonstrate that we, to a lender's perspective, can pay back all of our cash costs, clear margin, and pay back principal and interest. That's really the priority here on the go forward basis, the offtakes need to come.
Great. One question. I know you've been operating that small-scale facility since April of last year. It's given you real operational data for the pre-fees. What have been the learnings you've had so far, and how do they give you confidence to scaling up to that real heavy commercial production?
Sure. Shout out to our lab. Our chemist, David, has done a great job because we've tested so many different aspects of the plant. It started at, and the lab data really kind of tells the story of all the lessons learned. Out of the gate, 18 months ago, it was all about the wellfield. Hey, do we get that baseline head grade that aligns with what they saw in the 1980s? Yes, it does. The wellfield got put together and came along, and all the data very much aligned. It was 30 to 60 days to condition. Obviously, horizontal wells demonstrating that can happen a little bit sooner. Right around May, when the plant turned on, it became all about how do we get on spec. That was a finicky process. It took a little bit of time, but we got there.
There was a period where it was all about gypsum. We realized we needed to put more sulfuric acid into the calcium stream to precipitate out more gypsum. I can say that all that data was kind of reinforced by our OEM testing we did in conjunction with pre-feed engineering, which is another reason why that PFS is bigger and better than an ordinary PFS because a lot of companies do their vendor testing in the feed stage, and feed costs more money. That is how you get projects that go over budget, what they anticipated, because they do not do that vendor testing. We did that vendor testing in line, and I can say the flow sheet's not going to change now. We know what it's going to be. We can close the book on chapter one, and chapter two is all about horizontal wells.
I think we're going to be able to reduce them. We'll be able to optimize them, and it's the commercial agreements for the offtake. That's where we're going. I think one of the biggest learning lessons too has been materials of construction do matter, especially when you are dealing in an acidic environment. One other change to the flow sheet we made was we actually neutralized the stream. Once we get out of the wellfield, before we actually, first step, acid concentration needs to be fully neutralized, and that actually has helped us with materials and construction. One of the reasons we've been able to toggle down the CapEx.
Great. I want to talk about permitting real quick because I know with the existing permits you already have in place, they'll have up to 160,000 short tons of boric acid production. It looks very well positioned regulatory-wise. Curious if you could share with the folks in the room, what are the remaining permitting regulatory milestones between now and that commercial production? What's still to come?
Sure. We had initial capital numbers in February, and when we got the capital, we were able to isolate that there was about $40 million- $45 million of CapEx attributable to sodium and calcium removal. The calcium is what drives the gypsum, and the sodium, all that's salt, right? Sodium may be $20 a ton. Gypsum, USGS, basically from a mined FOB basis, USGS publishes prices. It's about $36 a ton. They are not value-added byproducts. We did incorporate calcium chloride into that design. That is a little bit more of a value-added product. We'll produce now up to 57,000 tons of liquid solution, or I'll say we have optionality too. You can toggle kind of between the two. One of the ways we cut CAPEX was we incorporated some additional ponds into the design, about 34 ac.
What needs to be kind of noted is that we have about 8 ac or 9 ac of ponds that sit on our site today. We're going to close them down because actually the plant's going to be built where those ponds sit. We'll need a WDR, which is a waste discharge permit for those ponds. It's a really unique situation because that's happening on the back end of the plant. They're on ponds. They are water, calcium, sodium predominantly. There are other companies out there that have ponds that are a bit contentious. They have arsenic. This is not what it is. This was just purely a value engineering. The trade-off was good. The ponds were about $5 million. We saved about $40 million in CapEx by incorporating this.
We're one of the few geological areas, us and Atacama Desert, where we let mother nature do the heavy lifting and evaporate any of the excess water to create the finished product. What's coming out of those ponds is actually a sellable product.
There you go. I want to talk about generally the boron market for a second because obviously looking at your sensitivity analysis, boric acid is the key value driver. It's the star of the show. You mentioned earlier you think that market's going to grow. Tell me more. What do you think is going to drive that demand outlook for boron?
Yeah, I think it's a great question. I use the analogy of diversification. If you look at the boron market, it goes into over 300 applications. As we did the market study, glass is growing kind of in line with ordinary inflation. Some of the glass applications are a little bit more, but let's assume that's about a third of the market, and that's the 3%- 3.5%. Non-glass, which is fertilizer, ceramics, construction materials, flame retardants, is growing about 4.5%. The big driver of how you get up there is specialty borons. Carbides are north of 5%. Permanent magnets, which require the ferroboron and EVs, those taggers are closer to mid-teens. You can kind of break out glass, non-glass, specialties into kind of a third, a third, a third.
When you have 3.5%, 4.5%, and kind of on average for all specialties, it's about 8%, but with ferroboron, which is a decent chunk and in size off of magnets growing at 15%, 16%, you kind of wrap your head around how this market's going to grow at 5.5%. What's really interesting is that when you look at what boron does for each of those different applications, you can't make glass without boron, sand, or silica and boron. It is a micronutrient, and so that gets best to put into blends. Insulation, boron's the main ingredient that gives insulation its fire efficacy. On the permanent magnets, yes, like, and I use the analogy, and mining.com did a great article on this, Rare Earths, no doubt, star of the show. They won the Oscar. Tom Hanks and Forrest Gump, that's it. Trust it.
The borates, like you can't make that magnet, and that magnet is not what it is without boron. We get the Oscar for best supporting actor. The point being is that there's value in use, and there's very little substitutability, which really kind of speaks to the criticality of what boron provides.
Great. I appreciate that. One thing, just zooming out, I'd love if beyond the boron market opportunity, you could just give folks in the room, you know, their perspective and existing investors, a couple of reasons why to invest in 5E specifically compared, let's say, to other critical minerals companies.
Sure. I think it's a world-class resource that we've mined and we've been processing for 18 months. We can achieve commercial production, and we do expect to achieve commercial production at scale. On a DCF basis and just phase one, and we all know the stock market's forward-looking, it's a $700 million MPV. If you just take basic math and divide the 20 million shares outstanding, that's a $30 share price. Obviously, there's discount rates, and we do risk this over time, but I do think where we are today, it doesn't justify valuation. The third being we have a strong management team and a highly engaged board. We have the know-how. We've been doing it for the 18 months. If you look at the board, you can follow the flow sheet on the mining side. You have Bryn, who knows solution mining inside and out.
On that flow sheet, that mining feeds a chemical plant where Graham lends his expertise. You need funds to do that. That's where Barry comes in. Ultimately, we need cheap agency debt, which is where Kirk comes in on the policy side.
There you go. Cool. I have one question. With the technical report complete, you're moving towards that definitive feasibility feed engineering. What should investors who are new to the story, or have been around a long time, what should they expect to come next? What are the next milestones of the next year and a half?
Yep. We talked a little bit about the 18 super stacks that's going to come. We've had really good conversations with the XM Josh and I both spoke with the XM team last Friday. The U.S. Export-Import Bank has what's called an engineering multiplier program where they can loan for feed engineering. If you look at the funds we need, about $8.5 million, or like 40% of our cash flow requirements, is actually for feed engineering. We can get a loan for that. We have no debt today. We've cleaned up the balance sheet, all common stock. At some point in time, we are going to add debt through project finance. XM has an engineering multiplier program that's really good, cheap paper, putting five to seven-year term treasury rates plus 100 basis points. It can be refined into a broader project finance facility.
It's truly non-dilutive. You can be paying that down along with project finance when you're cash flowing. There's line of sight on that. I got the application Friday. I know the XM is jam-packed because Uncle Sam's fiscal year ends September 30th, so they're mandated. They have to get a bunch of loans done before then. I believe we have to get the application in now. It'll be senior secured, and we have the collateral. We have 400 ac of rental property with billions of dollars of boron in the ground. There will be a collateral package, but it's great, low-cost, cheap capital today. We're going to apply for that. The market will love us getting a smaller loan. There's a two-part benefit of that because, one, you have multiple different debt packages that you can get. You have commercial banks.
They tend to be a little bit more expensive, but they can move a little bit faster. You have private capital that tends to be most expensive but can move fast. In turn, you have agency debt, which tends to end up being a little bit slower, but it's the lowest form of capital to get. This is a great way to immediately get this application in, start off to take a bit off, like a bite off of your liquidity that you need. It gets their diligence team looking at the project and comfortable with us and demonstrating, hey, we have a really good bottoms-up budget on what the feed costs will be, what the actual, all the additional testing that needs to be done. We now know how to make the product and what's our crystallization strategy.
Now we got to go out for bid for basic engineering processes. We need to do two because, listen, that's our largest piece of kit. You got to keep the crystallization vendors honest, otherwise, you know, that's when costs go up. We need to keep it competitive. I think that'll be a major catalyst. We're working on the offtake. We made a really solid pitch to the Deputy Secretary of Interior on why boron has its place on the critical minerals list. That list is coming out this fall. I do not know if we're on the initial list, but I do believe that I know the path we must take through the public comment process, which will be backed up with customer letters validating why they're concerned. USGS cannot ignore the industrial base.
When the customers are saying they're concerned about boron, boron, I think, can get flagged on here this type, this go around. I think if you look at that and that happens, there's like one or two ways to get exposure to boron in the stock market. We are the only pure play. That would be very good for, and that opens up additional cheaper agency options. I'm not going to rest till we get it on the list, but you know, that's the plan. We have made and we will continue to make the pitch.
Great. I got one last question on kind of the future before I'll jump to the questions that are in chat and one that came in over email. I know given this project alone can generate, will generate substantial cash flows. How are you thinking about capital allocation once you're operational with commercial production? Is it returning cash to shareholders, funding expansion phases? You're looking for new projects. What's up next?
It'd be expansion for the Vigo derivatives. Listen, we're a young company and we're probably not dividends out of the gate because we want to take that capital, reinvest it back into the business, and the market needs to tell us that that's what we need to do. Supply and demand, when I say market, it's not stock market, it's supply and demand market, saying that there's a need. We see it on the boron side, there's a ton of opportunity in those derivatives. We'll have the upstream feedstock and we can really have a competitive advantage going downstream and building out a derivative pipeline. I think that would be my, that's my expectation.
Great. I appreciate that. One question that came in over email. It's a quick one. Are you still planning to extract lithium?
It's interesting. We're blessed that we're dealing in aqueous chemistries, so everything is in solution and we are pipes and valves at every junction in the plant. What's interesting is initial ICP analysis shows an uptake in lithium with the horizontal wells, which makes sense because you're coming into a much larger contact of mineralization. We're closer to 65 PPM in solution now. This is not a, there's a decent sized lithium resource there, but on a tonnage perspective, we have 130,000 tons of boric acid to think through the logistics and about 57,000 liquid tons of calcium chloride and 130,000 tons of gypsum. Those are serious tonnages out of the gate. On the lithium side, it's a much smaller piece. The benefit is that can play catch-up at some point in time and it could be a bolt-on process along the way and it's there. There's no question.
Lithium's in the solution, and that as well as some of the metals. Today, the assumption is that we're paying the metals to be removed. There's catalyst business that needs magnesium, aluminum, and iron in hydroxide form that would probably just at least not, they would come pick it up for free. It would not be a cost and that's included, and it adds about two or three tenths of a pecentage point to IRR. We will bolt-on process and the priority was focusing on the big things out of the gate. That's included in the base economics. We didn't take credit for anything else. There is no lithium byproduct credit today in this PFS, nor is there anything on the metals, but that's all would be additional creative aspects to the economics.
Great. A couple of questions from the chat that I'll run through, just a couple of quick ones. S. Egan asked, can you explain what cogen facility process you're planning on using?
The Mojave, Kinder Morgan's Mojave natural gas pipeline is right along Interstate 40 and it's 2 mi from site. We would tie in with a metering station right off of the main trunk. That is actually in our record of decision, so it's permitted today. The two miles of pipeline to the facility is there. We would use the gas to ultimately run a turbine and to generate electricity and then also for the boiling of the water. We got three budgetary bids as part of our process. One was way too big because that was our lowest size. We had two other really good competitive bids from actually tier one OEMs that made sense. One is actually manufactured here in San Diego, which is the one we went with. That's an option. The other option is we're commissioning a method of service study, which is with SoCal Edison.
That'll take a little bit of time to work through, but there's trade-off and we have a megawatt of shore power today.
Great. P. Muir from the chat, he just wants a reminder of the cap structure of 5E.
Today it's all clean common stock. I often get asked, is there warrants? There is $20 million worth of warrants struck at $3.55 per share. You have about 5.6 million shares in warrants at $3.55. Those warrants are set to, they were one-year warrants. I think February they expire, so maybe another six or seven months. There's another set of warrants up at $18 a share. Everything else is ultimately the management incentive plan, which basically myself and the team, options were restruck at the conversion price where lenders converted to equity, which is $6.74 a share. They're both very sophisticated investors. Basically, all parties are now aligned. Listen, I think we're all motivated. Listen, we're all here. We like the upside, but we also want to demonstrate, we want to see this project built.
Sure. The last question I'll throw at you just to close this off today is Heiko from HCW. It says, obviously, shares have been quite well the last few days. Wants to know, what have you been saying to investors who have asked if you feel like the PFS came in better than expected?
Yeah, it's interesting. I think Friday the share price was decent. Then these technical reports, it's 120 pages. It takes some time to digest. I think the release was well received. Over the weekend, people had a chance to digest it, talk to a handful of people. I think one person said they were concerned after the PEA. There was, and what this has demonstrated is we've tackled this on the cost side. Listen, these are our mass and energy balance and CapEx numbers that Schorer is signing off on. It's the Greenville, South Carolina corporate headquarters group that's behind this, and it's very real. I think the reserve kind of speaks to it. 40-year mine life, it's a multi-generational resource, and it's 41% of reserves. So of the resource is converted into reserves.
That can go up because the SEC only lets you incorporate into your reserves what's in your mine plan. Our mine plan is a little different than open pit in that we're wells. If we incorporate additional wells, we can convert more resource to reserve. I think people have been pleased. It is a very good technical report. I don't know if you were able to kind of dial in in the early part, but table 18.2 in the technical report really speaks to Forbes' work product. They specifically cite a typical class four estimate has this level of, it's a factored estimate for these things and or this and that. For what we've done, like 60% of it might have been material takeoffs on actual measurements of piping. We're able to drill down and get that more of a quality estimate.
I also think that it's another look on the market. I think on the back of what you see occurring in D.C. and very much shoring of supply chains, people are like, oh, what's this unforgotten element boron? Say what? There's been a lot of good media that has picked this up. We were also prepared. We've had a lot of time to think about this. We wanted to really get the story out because I spent a lot of my day educating. The more I can use a catalyst like this release to kind of give us tailwinds, it makes my job a little bit easier.
Nope, makes sense. One last question from the chat, and then we'll jump today. Newberry Springs asked, what's the expected water draw for the project?
I'd have to really get into Forbes' basis on that. What's really interesting is that when you look, the deposit's bound by faults. The resource sits in between two faults where there's no water, and it's really ideal for solution mining. Outside of those two faults, there are water wells on each side. What's interesting is people, and I've had people ask about, what about drinking water and it's California and it's the desert? Newberry Springs is a town of 40 people. Also, the water we have is non-potable and it's not a drinking water. It's actually a closed basin, so the groundwater flows collapse. It doesn't go anywhere. It is ideal. We have one of the wells that is 650 gal a minute, and the other one, the well that's in the plan of operation, is 150,000 gal a day.
We have not seen subsidence or anything of that nature. I think that's a question we often get, and it's clearly addressed in the technical report because we actually give some real good data on it.
Awesome. Paul, we're close to the end of the hour. Thanks so much for getting into the nitty-gritty with me and looking towards the future of 5E . Everybody joined, thanks so much for joining us. I know it's early in the morning for some of you and in the evening for the rest of you. I do appreciate you joining us. The replay will be available probably tomorrow morning. I'll pass along any additional questions through to Paul and the team at 5E . Paul, thank you so much. Hope you have a great Tuesday afternoon.
Have a great day. See you. Cheers.