Good morning. It's a small audience, I think. Ryan, thanks for being with us.
Sure.
Ryan Corbett, the CFO at MP Materials. I think we're just going to kick it in. I think this is webcast as well, I'm sure people know relatively well the company. Big topic for investor right now is Stage II.
Sure.
Ramp up, the timing, maybe some of the challenges as well that, you're facing or that could come along later this year.
Sure.
Then maybe cost profile. I think it's a big topic for people.
Sure. Yeah, happy to cover that. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here in person and virtually. I'm happy to start off with Stage II, undoubtedly a big focus. It's something we've been working at for quite some time, and we're really in the throes of commissioning as we speak. Our Chief Operating Officer gave, I think, a pretty good rundown on exactly where we are in the last call, and there's not a ton of updates from that call. What we talked about there is, you know, certainly we've made a whole host of progress on, the most upstream piece of it, the drying and calcining, roasting circuit. We've moved into the leach circuit and are doing leach reactions.
We intend in the quarter to be further downstream into separations, which leaves, you know, the back half of the year to continue dialing in all of those processes and then the downstream finishing process, which is super critical. You know, the way I think about kind of progress and how we measure it, how we think about it, is, you know, the downstream process, the Stage II process, you know, particularly vis-à-vis Stage I, Stage I is kind of art and science, right? Making a high quality, low cost mineral concentrate is extremely difficult. I think it speaks to, you know, the quality of our team and our ability to execute the fact that we've been able to make the strides that we have on that piece of the business.
Obviously, you know, leveraging that now for Stage II. The Stage II, the chemistry is the chemistry, right? It's sort of pure science at that point. So the way I think about measuring success is looking at, right now, the chemistry results versus what are the mechanical results. The chemistry results that we see so far are extremely encouraging. We obviously laid out, you know, when we went public in 2020, sort of a profile to think about the business. Commodity prices have changed both to the up and down side, you know, many times since then. But hopefully it gave a little bit of a framework for how we thought about our run rate production profile and cost profile.
I think the very good news, kind of hitting on both the progress question and the cost question, is what we've seen from our initial commissioning is the chemistry is doing what we thought it would do, which is, you know, I think the critical piece.
Mm-hmm.
The mechanical stuff is, you know, always difficult and occupies a ton of our time trying to get it right, but it's imminently fixable, you know, as we run into issues. A lot of times we get pushed pretty hard on timing. The reality is, when you sort of separate that, now that we, you know, we continue to feel good on the chemistry side, if I told you exactly how the mechanical side was going to go, I'd be lying, because you don't know, you know, what's broken until it's broken. Launching and commissioning and recommissioning a site of the scale that we are, you're always going to run into those issues.
You know, so far we've been able to manage through them in the circuits that we've sort of, you know, ticked through as we continue to move downstream. I think our team is gonna continue to keep pushing and working hard to work out all those kinks that we possibly can. You know, we've talked about our goal to get to run rate by the end of the year, and we're gonna continue working as hard as we can to get to that goal. I think the interesting thing, obviously, you know, commodity prices have changed quite a bit, and so it's one of those things where, you know, the nice part is, as anything goes... If and when anything goes slower, we've got, you know, our Stage I business obviously generating significant cash flow even at these prices.
You know, what we want to do is make sure as we execute on this, we are focused on the long term. We're not gonna hit volumes just to say we hit volumes and then, you know, come back down.
Mm-hmm.
You know, particularly with prices where they are, we're going to be thoughtful. We're going to execute, you know, thoughtfully to get the business set up for success and for, you know, long-term production and long-term production growth and to come down the cost curve. Talking more specifically on your, on your cost question, I think, you know, we'll see what we see. I think that one of the most critical elements to the cost structure is sort of exactly what I laid out before, chemistry. If we're getting the yields of NdPr in solution, we're getting the rejection of cerium that we expect, those are gonna be the most critical elements or some of the most critical elements of driving the cost structure.
When we laid out sort of how things, theoretically would look in 2020, you know, a lot has changed since then, not just in our commodity, but in the commodities that we consume-
Mm-hmm.
commodity reagents. That's a big one that we obviously need to keep an eye on, that has an impact to the cost structure of the business. Energy is a big piece, you know, that's gone up and come back down. You know, we luckily have a lot of energy infrastructure, our own combined heat and power plant on site. Those are sort of the puts and takes. You know, our hope, as we've been able to do with Stage I, is can we continue to even get better than what we laid out? You know, as we have on Stage I with what our yields are and what that means for the plant.
You know, hopefully, yes, over time, and hopefully there's that push and pull on the cost structure of, you know, reagents are gonna do what they do, energy is gonna do what it does. We don't have control over that, but the parts that we do theoretically, hopefully have control over are the other pieces.
Makes sense. Without pushing you too much on the timeline, I think you had mentioned by the end of the year, right, for Stage II?
Mm-hmm.
which give you a little bit of room for flexibility.
Yeah.
What would be your best case scenario? Like, do you think you could reach, like, a full ramp up by September and October, if really everything align and goes well, or?
I would say for timeline, you know, what we laid out in the call was getting into separation this quarter, right? you know, we're coming to the end of this quarter. We'll obviously update you guys as we go. We'll update you on the next call, of course. you know, what that leaves is six months to get all the finishing dialed in, and then obviously dial in the rest of the plant. again, trying to bracket it is difficult, right? particularly when what we're dealing with is, on the finishing side, a lot of brand new assets.
You know, again, we're gonna be very methodical and, you know, we are just as aligned and focused as investors are on getting this up and running as quickly as we can. You know, we will, we'll keep you guys updated as we go.
Makes sense. Just to rebound on the cost, because I think investors focus a lot on it.
Sure.
on a quarterly basis, right?
Sure.
Even as we go into two Q and three Q.
Mm-hmm.
What do you expect to see? Some, like, a structure that is, or a profile that is similar than what you saw in one Q,
Mm-hmm.
I think, like most of the hiring, like, staff.
Sure
Has been done, right?
Yep. Yeah, so from a cost structure perspective, particularly when we're looking at kind of the Stage I business, what you've been able to see is if you, if you strip out the investments that we've made in the cost structure to prepare for Stage II, we've had a pretty stable production cost profile. You have seen those costs for Stage II continue to flow in, as we get closer and closer to oxide production. I do expect those Stage II-related costs to continue to slightly tick up ahead of actually producing that product and sort of, you know, attaching it to the oxides. I would expect that to tick up a little bit. Other than that, there are not, you know, massive changes.
You know, generally, the world is still seeing some level of inflation. We're not immune to that. We still do see a little bit of that impact, so I'd expect Stage II costs to continue to flow in. The one thing to think about from a quarterly basis, obviously, is we talk about our biannual plant shutdowns.
Mm-hmm
... which drive some incremental costs in the period, both from a denominator effect of often lower sales and production, on top of that, you know, the incremental cost of doing the turnaround. That is something to think about coming into this quarter. As we, you know, we did that. We had a very successful, probably our-- one of our most successful turnarounds in the mill and flotation plant, and tailings plant. Those are sort of the puts and takes in the near term.
Makes sense. You talk about energy costs, right? Obviously being up, do you have any hedge, like, a hedge solution in place to kind of protect you or?
Yeah, we've talked a little bit about these. We do have some hedges on for natural gas. Since we have our own combined heat and power plant, you know, we have hedged some of that exposure. Those are some of them are longer dated, and it's only a hedge for part of our consumption profile. As we bring Stage II on, consumption of power and therefore consumption of natural gas, will continue to tick up. The proportion of our business that's hedged will.
Sure
... will actually come down a little bit, which frankly, with prices where they are right now, is not necessarily a bad thing.
Makes sense. That's Stage II. You guys are now going to go to Stage III, right?
Yes.
Which is already started and ongoing. How confident are you to be able to have, say, a smooth transition, right?
Sure.
It's a very different business model.
Mm-hmm
being upstream and being a miner-
Yes
than being fully integrated and tapping into the downstream part of it.
I would put our move into the downstream in context of sort of what we originally saw in. We went public in 2020. We said, you know, Stage III, very exciting. The magnetics opportunity is clearly there. It's a 2025+ event. Here we are in 2023, and we've got, you know.
Mm-hmm
- plus 1,000 sq ft facility basically built and, you know, long-lead equipment on order, and we've built a world-class team. We're, you know, we're getting geared up and ready to go. To your point, it has come very fast and furious. The reason we did that is because we saw this market opportunity. You know, it's sort of like, you know, the legs of a stool in terms of building out the supply chain in the United States. We have always been clear, you know, even when we thought magnetics was a little bit farther off, that our goal is to bring all legs of the stool back to the United States-
Mm-hmm
... so that we have a secure, sustainable, growing rare earth industry here. You know, and I think we've also been clear, you know, we don't need to be the only piece of the stool. I think, you know, what we hope to see is a growing magnetics business, broadly in the United States. So, you know, this is sort of our first step into that. The way we've approached this initial investment at our facility in Dallas-Fort Worth, is frankly similar to how we approached our Stage I and II strategy. You know, we got a lot of questions in the very early days of, you know, "Why, why make a mineral concentrate and-
Mm
- you know, sell it to China?" It's like, well, that's the only place you can sell it, and that's how you generate free cash flow, learn, you know, dial in your processes, don't make bad investments, and methodically, you know, approach entering into the separated products business. We're doing the same thing here, where, you know, we're taking somewhat of a bite-sized approach, where, you know, this facility, the design capacity that we've talked about is 1,000 metric tons. You know, that's a very small minority of our upstream capacity, we want to be able to take this facility, learn from it and be able to make investments in the future that are informed by our progress on this initial facility.
You know, with the team that we've built, you know, pretty methodically over the last 2 years, we feel very good about, you know, the progress that we've made to date and being able to execute on what we've laid out, the vision that we've laid out. Hopefully that's just the beginning of a pretty exciting opportunity.
Are you saying that, plants that can offer-- not a demo plant, because it will be up and running, but as kind of trying plant to kind of go on?
It's certainly bigger than a trial. No, look, I think that there are opportunities for us within this existing plant to, you know, get to, you know, world-class operations and, you know, specific, you know, pieces of the magnetic supply chain. You know, we talk about it in broad brush strokes of going, okay, oxides, magnets. There's a lot of steps in between there. You know, you need to take it, you need to go through an electrowinning process to make an NdPr metal . You need to do strip casting to get to an alloy flake. You need to take that press, sinter, finish .
There's a whole host of steps in between, and so I think the reality is, it's not like, you know, doing a small solvent extraction plant, you know, and then scaling it up.
Mm-hmm.
There are a lot of different ways that you can approach those various process steps. you know, I think that we will be very significant commercial scale. I mean, thinking about it, yes, 1,000 tons in the context of nearly 200,000 tons of the industry, small potatoes, but in terms of what's present in the Western world, it's massive.
Mm-hmm.
You know, from that perspective, you know, it's in some ways a big bite, but it's a bite. You know, we will continue to learn from that facility and find ways to grow our footprint downstream. Our focus, you know, in everything that we do, is risk-adjusted return on capital. In going into a new industry, you know, per se, higher risk. We are very focused on, you know, approaching the structure of our commercial arrangements, the way we do business, to control those risks.
you know, from that perspective, I think the very exciting thing is, even with that, and also being very clear that we're not going out there and saying, in this facility that is, you know, subscale versus some of the Chinese plants out there, we're not trying to tell anybody we're gonna beat China on pricing. That's not the goal.
Mm-hmm.
The goal is to get into this business, and, you know, continue to find ways to scale, just like in the upstream. Scale to get scale, and scale is the way that you unlock, some of the economics of the business. That's one thing that we'll be focused on over time.
That's interesting. You mentioned, obviously, growing the footprint, like the downstream footprint. Can you expand at this facility, or would you have to build other plant or look at further opportunities?
Given the fact that this is a greenfield site, we have been clear, the initial design capacity is 1,000 tons. There's room to expand it. We haven't put color around that, and that's mostly just because there are a lot of different ways to expand. You know, that is something that we look at quite a bit. You know, given the fact that, we've talked a little bit about this before, even in our current state of operation, sort of, you know, before being in commercial production, we absolutely are supply constrained, not demand constrained.
It's clear, you know, the demand is out there for our product, a fully domestic, you know, ability to trace source material all the way, you know, to the mine site, you know, through all the production steps, you know, in a rule of law jurisdiction. You know, that has a lot of appeal to, a whole host of industries. You know, we absolutely see a very clear market opportunity. We wanna, of course, not be short-sighted and assume that, you know, this exact market opportunity lasts forever. We wanna be globally competitive. You know, that's how we inform our capital allocation decisions on how, when, where to scale up or not.
Okay. That makes sense. I want to shift maybe a little bit, the focus from your operation to go more into competition with China.
Sure.
Maybe as where the industry, we see you mentioned the pricing and the spot pricing, that has fluctuated quite a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Let's start with the competition. China had mentioned a few months ago about potentially banning the export of knowledge, right?
Sure. Yep.
How do you view that? Do you already see it as a threat or or no?
I think frankly, it speaks to the criticality of what we're doing. You know, the rare earth industry, in a lot of ways, started at Mountain Pass. You know, the site was discovered in the late 1940s, started, you know, producing in the 1950s, and it's been in production in some way, shape, or form since then. A lot of what's done in rare earths, you know, originally was learned at Mountain Pass, and like many of our industries, sort of, you know, found its way over to China, and they've been perfecting it for the last several decades. You know, the way I think about what's happening in our space, you have to put it in global and geopolitical context. China just became the largest exporter of vehicles. That is a huge sea change.
Mm-hmm.
you know, if you told that to Japan a few years ago or the US, I mean, that's crazy. you know, with the EV revolution, you know, coming fast and furious, this has been part of the central plan for the last 25 years plus. I think rare earths are just the tip of the spear for that. What I expect to happen is Chinese industry will focus on Chinese industry. In order to ensure that BYD, XPeng, you know, NIO, their OEMs have the requisite amount of rare earth materials to continue to gain market share in electric vehicles, Chinese industry will focus on themselves and making sure that they've got that security of supply for themselves.
I think overall, that's actually probably bullish for pricing because this stuff is not free. It doesn't grow on trees. The cost curve is, you know, sloping upward in China, certainly. You know, with, you know, to their credit, you know, more focus on environmental control and pollution control and things like that, you know, that's certainly been the upward pressure that we've seen. If the overall goal is to ensure that Chinese the Chinese market is sort of protecting the much bigger dollars that are at stake downstream, that really means that the rare earth industry needs to focus on thoughtful, profitable growth.
Again, I think that's, you know, to the extent we continue to be indexed to those prices, given the, you know, preponderance of production and consumption occurring in that country, I think overall, for the medium to long term, that actually bodes quite well. Certainly, commodities do a whole host of things in the short term, you know, with a very concentrated market and a spot market that is, you know, not financialized in any way and is relatively, you know, thin, small gyrations in supply and demand tend to have outsized impacts on pricing in the short term. We've certainly seen a little bit of that recently, but, you know, I think obviously the focus more on medium and long term, I think the incentives are clear.
Makes sense. We'll come back to the pricing. I'll keep it for every day. I know it's not your favorite question.
Yes.
substitution risk. two part of the question, adoption of rare earth magnets. I mean, we saw Tesla mentioning a few months ago.
Yes
that they would move away. I think there was a little bit of a panic news, right, from investor on this.
Yeah.
Do you believe that's a real risk, or do you think it was just more like, you know, maybe a one-off in the industry?
Look, I think that if you, again, put that comment in context, of what was said, what was said was: "Demand for these materials is skyrocketing. Supply is limited. We're concerned." That was the real comment.
Mm.
The other comment was: "We haven't invented a new magnet." If there's a permanent magnet that, you know, doesn't use rare earths, there's really one type I can think of. I think what that gets back to is every OEM needs to be thinking about this, and there are sort of two ways to approach it: Focus on ensuring you've got the supply, or focus on insurance policies in case you can't get it.
Mm-hmm.
You know, those are sort of the options that all OEMs are exploring, as they should. I think the other thing to think is, you know, we've talked about on some of our prior calls, if you look at demand growth. This demand growth, you know, has embedded in the calculations an assumption that there is some substitution. To be clear, you know, I don't think anyone's out there saying every single, you know, electric vehicle out there is gonna have a rare permanent magnet in it, 'cause it's not. The point that I'm trying to make is it can't. If you look at the numbers that we had laid out, I think it's something like, you know, demand tripling through 2030, something like that. There is no chance supply is tripling through 2030. There's no chance.
What does that mean? Supply and demand have to meet somewhere.
Mm.
Again, bodes well for medium to long-term pricing, but it also means that there needs to be some substitution to pull demand back in, you know, given the reality of adding supply in this business. I mean, you cover the lithium space. The supply-demand dynamic is a little bit different, particularly on the supply side. It is incredibly difficult. Not saying it's easy to add lithium supply, but I think from the perspective of bringing a scaled source of rare earth materials online is outrageously difficult. You know, I see that this substitution is absolutely healthy, you know, if it comes to pass.
I think the last comment I'd make on that is, you know, with those elements of potential substitution, there are always going to be trade-offs that are being made as it relates to motor technology. That's always been the case. It will always be the case. you know, a lot of them are economic, some of them are supply-driven, some of them are geopolitical. but there are always going to be trade-offs in terms of what functionality can and can't I get, what are the levels of efficiency, things like that. For an electric vehicle, that is basically sort of a, you know, big piece of industrial equipment, you know, kind of a big robot with a massive battery, you can make those trade-offs in certain instances. For drones, for robotics, certain other applications-
Mm
... where the space constraint is much more intense, there is not that opportunity. There is no way to achieve what needs to be achieved with a different magnet technology. You know, I think that's important context to remember is: Yes, a lot of the growth is coming from electric vehicles, but again, I think the most recent data I saw was still north of 90%, I think it was 91% or 94% of kilowatt-hours in the last quarter of EV motors were rare earth permanent magnet motor s.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that is exceptional, and that speaks to the obvious advantage of the technology. There are always going to be decisions on, do I make trade-offs with that type of technology? I don't expect it to be north of 90 forever. Again, I think that's the right and healthy answer.
Yeah, that's very interesting. I was going to try to find maybe the mix between, you know, you have the demand from EV, for wind.
Yep.
- wind turbine, traditional market or application, you know, your phone, your mic also. How do you see that evolving by next, let's say, 2030? To kind of give like a.
Sure
... medium-term range.
Yeah. There's, I mean, lots of data out there for folks that spend, you know, all of their time focused on just this. If you think about the proportion of the market today that is not EV and wind-
Mm-hmm
... 80% of the market. You know, a lot of people are, you know, which is in a lot of ways, good things, I think, where else they think electric vehicles, great. They see the recent pricing dynamic, and they say: "Wait a minute, you know, rare earth or electric vehicle volumes are still up 70% year-over-year. Like, what's going on?" The reality is, but we have the other 80% still. That proportion is going to rapidly shrink, not because this pie is shrinking, but because the EV and the wind side is growing so rapidly. That 80 goes to 50 very quickly.
I think then you start to sort of, you know, you reach the tipping point, probably around that point of time, where then the majority of the demand is electric vehicles, wind turbines, things like that. That's not too far off, but it's not today.
Mm-hmm.
When you see some of these, you know, moves in prices and, you know, the seeming disconnect between what you're seeing on, you know, the electric vehicle uptake side, it actually makes some sense.
Let's talk about pricing now.
Okay.
I mean, as you mentioned, right, since 2020, that you're in operation, you have seen, like, few cycle, right? I know it came off on the call last quarter. How do you see the current environment, or does it make you rethink maybe some of your opportunity or expansion plan going forward?
Well, I think the unique position that MP occupies is, we have the benefit of billions of dollars of invested capital in the site that were not our investors' dollars. I think most new projects out there need a certain incentive price, of course, to be able to justify the likely billions of dollars of investment that's required to get to separated oxides. We don't have that problem. We don't have to really rethink that much. I mean, of course, what we're always doing and looking at expansion opportunities is trying to understand the ROI, but we're looking at that across a range of, you know, potential price scenarios to ensure that we're gonna earn a fair return regardless of the commodity price.
Are we gonna look like geniuses when the commodity price is up? Sure. You know, less so, when it's lower, sure. We're always going to control for that when we make capital allocation decisions, for sure. You know, I think the other thing is that it's not just about, you know, the incentive price. I think this volatility, it has changed the cost of capital in the industry. I mean, you've seen our stock prices change. Our cost of capital, it's, it certainly changed the cost of capital for developers as well. You know, from that perspective, you always have to take that into account. You know, these markets are volatile. You know, maybe folks were booted into thinking that they weren't, but they are.
I think the fact that we have set up our business from an operational perspective, and importantly, from a balance sheet perspective, uniquely versus some other, you know, maybe mining businesses out there, is we've positioned the company to benefit from the upswing in prices when that occurs, and to be able to weather the storm when they go the other direction. That was incredibly important to us from the outset. You know, we have nearly $1,200,000,000 of cash on our balance sheet. You know, we raised a convertible note in March of 2021, and, you know, immediately following, a lot of people were asking us: "What are you guys doing?" We said: Look, this is part of a long-term strategy. We view that as, you know, significant optionality for us.
Mm-hmm.
we've always been very clear, and Jim, our CEO, says this very eloquently, you know, the, the leverage belongs in the price, not on the balance sheet. you know, this is sort of a feature, not a bug, if you will.
Okay. For some other commodities, so you mentioned lithium from the port, I think there is the thought that we might see shorter cycle...
Sure
... maybe going forward, and that's really related to the EV demand actually.
Mm-hmm
... probably macro. Do you expect that as well, like seeing more like up and down movements, like maybe not 12 months or 18 months cycle?
Right
... you know, one or two quarter?
It's really hard to know. I think, you know, if I was able to predict that, I'd probably.
Would be on my team.
On the banking side, yeah. You know, I think certainly as we talked about in terms of the mix of demand and how that's changing, that will change how the cycles play out, right? I mean, I think what we're seeing right now, certainly, you know, I talked about 80% of, you know, end use right now is non-EV wind. There's certainly a lot of growing things in there, and there are a lot of things in there that are not growing so fast.
Mm-hmm.
hard disk drives, not doing great right now. You know, things like that, you know, are part of that overall mix. You know, I think it's just a matter of, the exciting thing for us is the demand growth in electric vehicles, drones, robots, wind, is secular, it's not cyclical. You know, there are cyclical elements to it on a, on an overall secular trend. You know, I think that that's very exciting. Look, I think that we're very focused on that, and that's gonna become a much bigger piece of the pie going forward. If we're sitting here in five years, you ask me, "Okay, what are you excited about next?" Again, there's this whole next leg of incremental growth, I think, as well, that are beyond just EVs and wind.
You know, magnetics is really the key to industrial motion. As the world electrifies and automates, there are so many new application areas that are coming out that I think folks really just are not paying attention to. This is not purely an EV play.
Mm, mm.
-if you will. You know, we are a picks and shovels provider to that EV revolution, but it's to the overall electrification and automation revolution and all of those end-use cases that are, you know, growing because of that.
Yeah, I think that's a very good point, because definitely I think investors focus mainly on EVs...
Sure.
you know, similar to lithium. I think that's kind of your major-
Yep
buckets, market for growth, right?
Yeah.
There is some elsewhere that could, not take over, but significantly improve in there.
Yeah, that's why I think, you know, certainly we get shown, you know, opportunities to look at, you know, other spaces all the time and, that are related to EVs, and say, "Oh, this is related to EVs...
Mm.
- you know, why don't you guys get into this business?" The reality is that the magnetics business is incredibly unique. The supply-demand, you know, forecast and sort of the how essential this is to sort of some of these forward-looking technologies is, again, I think, not super well understood. I think it's. You know, again, cars are, you know, big driving batteries, and absolutely essential. It, you know, we get bucketed, which sometimes is a good thing, sometimes is a bad thing. It, it is different. It's very unique. I think that, you know, we, as a management team, have been so focused on this opportunity and ensuring that we execute it thoughtfully to be prepared for these, you know, next levels of growth.
Yeah
-that we see coming, not just five years, not just 10 years. You know, we're here for the long term, and we think it's an incredibly exciting opportunity.
Great. We have just a couple of minutes left, but maybe like capital deployment and strategy.
Mm.
Seems like you're more looking into, like, organic growth or, like, further growing. What about share buyback or like? Just trying to understand.
Sure. Yeah, I think, you know, we touched on this a bit in our last earnings call, I think, you know, Jim did a nice job kind of giving his psychology and our psychology on this. As I mentioned before, we view our balance sheet, as, you know, a major source of optionality for us, you know, through cycle. We, we absolutely believe, you know, sitting here today, the opportunities I just talked about, you know, everything that I just said, you know, if I believe it, then our company is gonna be worth a whole lot more in the future than it is right now, and we absolutely believe that.
The reality is, we live in a world of probabilities, not certainties, and so we need to make sure that we're positioning the business for being able to say when prices are 60 or 50 or 40, whatever they are, that we've got this fortress balance sheet to withstand it. Obviously, the business is changing over time. We're moving downstream. We're bringing in other streams of earnings that are, you know, less commodity sensitive, potentially, and so that, you know, that obviously will factor into our calculus. I think the other important thing I'd add on this is, we don't want to do something just to do a token, this, that, or the other thing to say, "We've checked this capital allocation box." You know, we are, as a management team...
You know, Jim is the largest individual owner of this company.
Yeah.
He owns almost 11% of the company. you know, Michael, myself, we're large owners, we live, eat, sleep, breathe capital allocation and ensuring that we're driving value for shareholders. you know, if we do something, we're gonna do it for real. We're not gonna do, you know, a token. Everything is always on the table for us. We are completely opportunistic, you know, we'll continue to use that framework to decide how to allocate capital.
Great. Thank you. That's.
Sure
... very helpful. I think that's concluded our time.
Appreciate that.
I appreciate you being here with us.