All right. Well, we're gonna switch gears a little bit, and we're gonna now have a conversation with James Litinsky, founder, chairman, and CEO of MP Materials. Clearly a very fascinating discussion what we have been having here this morning, but nothing will really work in a way without the raw material, the critical raw materials, going to all the technologies and cars and phones. Thank you for being here, Jim.
Thanks, Carlos. Good to be here. Nice to be at the conference.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
All right. By the way, this I understand that this discussion will be webcast, and you can find that in MP Materials' website. Why don't we start to keep this you know, conversational and quite kind of casual. If there is any questions from the audience, you know, given probably a new audience for you and for the company, why don't you tell us a little bit about MP?
Sure.
Since it's an exciting company, maybe at the right time, the right, the right place, and definitely executing well. Why don't you tell us a little bit about the company and the story of it and the mission?
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Carlos, and thanks, everyone. I guess right time, right place is a long time coming. But for those who don't know our story, we own and operate Mountain Pass, which is the premier rare earth mining and refining site in the world. We currently represent 15% of global rare earth content produced. Just a quick background on our business, I led a team that purchased the asset in 2017. At the time, the site of Mountain Pass had been shut down and was in care maintenance. We turned around the site and have got it really humming to date to where we have a three-stage piece of our business.
The first stage, which we've done over the last number of years, was to relaunch this. We are doing that. We are very nicely cash flow positive and have a lot of success on that front, and happy to answer questions on that. The second stage, which we are now in the process of completing, we'll talk about our Stage II, is where we'll be taking the concentrated rare earths that we currently send that are refined and then made into magnets in China, to we will be refining ourselves at Mountain Pass. This third stage is we'll be making the magnets ourselves. We announced the deal last year. December of 2021.
2023 now, where GM will be the foundational customer of our magnetics facility in Fort Worth, Texas. For those of you who follow us on Twitter, you'll see that that facility, the shell is done. We broke ground on that in April. We really have a, you know, sort of two exciting parallel projects ongoing to complete our mission, which is to restore the full rare earth supply chain to the United States of America. You know, we have an incredible owner-operator culture and, you know, a fortress balance sheet, which is a very beautiful form of blanket in this environment. That is us in a nutshell.
Yeah, great. The rare earths obviously is, it sounds very interactive, but it's a broad definition. Your mine is a high grade, high productive. It has a lot of rare earths, but there is particularly focused on NdPr or neodymium praseodymium, which have a big application for what you do in technologies and. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about NdPrs?
Yeah.
specific, the supply and demand conditions, and how you see that maybe evolving?
There are 17 rare earth elements. Our primary revenue product is NdPr, neodymium praseodymium. The key use case for NdPr is for magnetics. When we think about the way the world is moving today, anything with electrified motion typically needs ultra-high powered, efficient magnets that perform well. A rare earth magnet is the best way to do that, and we can talk about some of that. When we think about electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, robots, you know, that is the growth case for rare earth magnetics. The analogy I like to give, and again, maybe we can get more in depth there.
Sure.
I do view the magnetic space to be. It's a similar analogy to, and now it's a much smaller one, but it's a similar analogy to the way semiconductors were in 1970, where you could see the world was, you know, gonna be taken over by computers. You didn't know that, you know, you might not have thought you were gonna have a computer in every home, but you knew that computers were enormous. You know, I happen to think we're gonna have a robot in every home. I think electrified motion is an enormous multi-decade secular trend that really is just getting started and, you know, we're certainly, you know, creating the Western champion in the space.
There have been a lot of questioning about the differences and contrast between lithium cobalt, nickel...
Yeah.
NdPr. How would you describe that debate, or how would you address that debate and what the concerns would be about, you know, the trends for permanent magnets versus the batteries and then efficient use of them?
Sure. Well, the really important thing to remember when it comes to rare earths and magnetics is that we are totally agnostic to battery technology. When we think about, you know, one of the big things that's happening in batteries today is sort of evolution of chemistry. You know, are nickel cobalt chemistries gonna be the future? Is it LFP? You know, certainly there's a strong case that lithium will be part of the solution, and some of the others are moving around. Who knows? Evolution of LB. That all said, I'm very bullish. We are at the beginning stages of all this, so I'm sure all of those have great growth cases.
What's great about rare earth magnetics is that we're agnostic, so we, you know, we like to believe we're a picks and shovels play on this theme of electrification because however that energy, you know, if you think of a battery as producing that energy that's gonna go to make motion to a motor, that's gonna make motion. However that energy is gonna get to that motor, that motor is very likely to have, or, you know, 90-plus % chance, in today's world, a rare earth magnet that's gonna cause that motion. We think we're in a very unique space.
Lastly, what I would say on that, you know, one of the key considerations with respect to lithium and cobalt and some of these other materials is that we have, we have a significant challenge in the West to get a lot of the supply online and in a way that is satisfactory environmentally, geopolitically. Each one of these commodities has sort of their own puts and takes with respect to those challenges. What we're really proud of at MP is that, you know, our site is actually about a 45-minute drive from here. It's just down the road on I-15, so thank you for having us spend here. You know, we actually operate in the state of California. We have a dry tailings process. We can talk about that.
We are. There are no other rare earth operations in the world that operate with a dry tailings process. 95% of the water we currently utilize is reclaimed, recycled. We're very proud of the fact that we can be one of the key suppliers to this industry and also be a sort of a someone to hopefully admire on an environmental operational standpoint.
All right. Maybe before we dig into some of the company specifics, any questions on, from sort of the broader rare earth, NdPr permanent magnet, discussions?
I got a couple. The processing of the rare earth is done in China for now.
For now, yeah.
Walk us through what the kind of cost differential would be once it's, you know, in a. If I made the simple example, if you had to do it all processing on shore or near shore, what would that do to the cost of an electric motor? What are the challenges to vertically integrating some of those? I presume there's a really good reasons why it's done in China in terms of either labor or emissions or energy or all the above. How do you kind of get a. What barriers or impediments do you need to overcome in terms of permitting emissions and other environmental considerations to create that.
It's a great question. Interesting fact for you, Adam. These are not our numbers, this is third party research. CRU, which I don't think is a direct competitor, but I'll cite them, put out a report. You can find any report. I know you guys have, you know, have these numbers. We are actually, if not the one of the, but I believe the low cost producer in the world in the rare concentrate that we produce. We actually are competing successfully against the Chinese producers from the standpoint of our Stage I output. You know, which when you think about the rare earth process, and again, I know there's a lot of people who know very, you know, varying levels of complexity of the story, but rare earths are not that rare.
What is rare is the ability to do it economically. You have to have a high enough concentration to be able to do that. What we call our Stage I, getting it concentrated to then be refined is a key piece of the cost structure. We've actually shown now, and obviously you can see in our financials, that we've been able to be very profitable just in the Stage I business. In our Stage II business, and we, for those who are newer, we said in our September call, we've begun commissioning the Stage II, which is the refining. That's where we'll take a concentrated product. We will then break that into the components.
In this case, NdPr oxide being the, you know, the primary, the primary revenue product for magnetics. We've begun that commissioning process, and, you know, to date, we've seen no showstoppers on that front and we, you know, feel really good that we're moving that forward. You know, we really learned a lot of lessons in the 2018, 2019 period as we were ramping up production. You know, when we took on this site, I think you know, there were very few that believed we'd be able to be competitive. We've obviously shown, you know, that we can be. We've really got it. We're battle tested on that front. We've had a lot of those lessons.
You know, we feel we're really well on track to, you know, hitting our run rate targets this year. I'll break a little news today for you. You know, we're currently producing and packaging roasted concentrate today in Mountain Pass. You know, we've made a lot of progress on that front. We still have a ways to go, but, you know, we, you know, we feel really good. For those of you who don't know this, Once you have a refined rare earth, you still then need to make it into a magnet. If you have not solved the supply chain challenge until you've done all three of these pieces.
You've got to concentrate it, you've got to refine it, and then turn it into a magnet.
Well, let's say that the DOE.
Yeah.
Let's say Treasury, the DPA, whatever, wanted to make sure that China was completely excluded from that process, or at least we had some ability to do the entire value chain of permanent magnet in the United States. How much would that cost versus the current system?
When you say how much... I mean, I'd love to answer your question, but it's...
I know.
You mean the entire-
I mean, again, I'm just trying to think of Putting aside environmental permitting issues, which are probably real...
Yeah.
What would be the cost differential in your estimation?
Well, really, well, you know, rare earth production matters, as I was saying, you know, it matters the percentage in the ore bodies. You have to start in the rare earth front. You have to start with an economic ore body. If you look around the world today, we don't have those. Even if you had the ore body today, you had all the capital, you had all of the human capital, you're still talking 3-5 years to bring online, you know, for example, another Mountain Pass that exists in North America.
No, I know.
So-
Yeah, if I'm not being clear.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah. Your ore body.
Yes.
The way it's currently done with China involved in the processing, refining, and the formation of the permanent magnet, if it was done in the United States with your Mountain Pass ore body, what are the costs?
Yeah. Well, we believe that we are over time gonna be cost competitive. What I was trying to say, and maybe I can say this more clearly. In our Stage I output, we are a low-cost producer to the world. We have, you know, every reason to believe that we will be able to continue that progression. What I would tell you is that there's certainly, when it comes to magnetics, there's a J curve, right? We are entering a new business, and you know, the very first year or two of production, we're not necessarily gonna be the low-cost producer.
This is a business of scale, and if you have the feedstock going into that, you know, we certainly believe that we'll be able to be competitive on that front, if that's what you're getting at. Just to actually, maybe this will be helpful. Our, you know, what we've sort of stated is our run rate target at Mountain Pass is north of 6,000 tons, metric tons of NdPr. That's roughly, just to give you a feel, that is roughly enough, depending on the size of the motor, enough for about 6 million-10 million EVs.
Okay.
And that's Mountain Pass. Think of that, think of a global OEM market, and that would be just in EVs, how many more Mountain Passes we need if we're gonna electrify, the, you know, depending on your SAR, I guess we were running 16 now, maybe we're around 13. Just in the U.S., if you think about how many we need in the world, we need a lot more NdPr. It's hard to answer your question on what will a magnet cost, because my belief is that a magnet 3- 5 years from now will be substantially higher than it is today because of the supply and demand dynamics in the commodity. Obviously a lot of this is, you know, sort of circular and reflexive.
Understood.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Well, congrats, definitely on this milestone of.
Thank you.
having the roasted concentrate back in and saying that is a very important milestone. Maybe sticking with this story about the evolution of the company into Stage II and Stage III and fully developed, the permanent magnet supply chain in the US, what else can you tell us as to how Stage II is going? Any views on as to when you're gonna get to the full capacity or the ramp up? How long will it take? Then any comments on that later stage, which will complete your mission in a way, at least, you know?
Yeah.
The first step into completing that mission. How's Stage III going? You alluded to.
Yeah, alluded to in the-
-in the comments. Any further details you can give us in terms of Stage III and how long that ramp up would take? Maybe this will help to some extent the question that Adam had. What is the expected improvement in profitability for MP as you become a fully integrated permanent magnet producer in the U.S.?
Got it. Okay. Lots to chew up there. On Stage II, as I referenced in the prior answer, but just to reiterate that because I think it's, you know, it's important and you asked. In our last call, we noted that we had begun commissioning Stage II. Again, our Stage II is actually refining the rare earth at Mountain Pass. You know, that process is underway. I hope that we did a good job conveying to The Street. You know, when you're doing real stuff, when you're making real things, you know, these are challenging, complex processes.
Standing up a plant, you know, what is not a greenfield, 'cause this is a, you know, a functioning facility, is, you know, challenging. There's fits and starts and I think we, you know, we, you know, certainly experienced that the first time around, when we were getting Stage I going. So I think we hopefully conveyed a healthy balance of our appreciation for those challenges. That said, as I, you know, previously said, we've seen no show stoppers.
I was pleased to break some news that we're now, you know, producing and packaging roasted concentrate, which for, you know, for those who are newer, what that means is that is sort of a key step along the way to refining because you know, at Mountain Pass, we're going to take a concentrated barrel of product, we roast it, and then you know, there are a number of steps, but then we extract the rare earth into, you know, the different rare earth NdPr oxide again being the key one.
A number of the other stages we've begun on the commissioning process, and our run rate target that we've, you know, stated is that we'll produce north of 6,000 tons of NdPr this year, and we believe we're on track to do so. Simultaneous to that is our Stage III business, which is our magnetics business. We will take the separated rare earths from Mountain Pass. We will send them to our facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Again, if you go on Twitter, you can actually see this for yourself. We've sent out a picture. We broke ground on that facility in April. The shell is done, and we're working on the insides. Now we have a deal with GM, where they'll be the foundational customer of that facility.
You know, we said that we'll be making magnets for them in 2025, but we still have quite a ways to go on long lead equipment and some of the other things that have to happen inside that building. These are two processes that are going in parallel. Certainly our, you know, our expectation, our deal with GM is not exclusive. The output at Fort Worth, if we send all the material to that facility that we've stated as the capacity of that facility, that would represent a single-digit percentage of our output at Mountain Pass. We think we have quite a ways to go as far as growth opportunity in the magnetics business.
I've, Carlos, as you know, I've publicly stated also that in the magnetics business, you know, I think that ultimately our business can be bigger than what our current expected output is upstream, because this is, you know, this is an enormous amount of supply chain that needs to get built for electrification, and there is no champion in the West. Just, you know, for example, this morning, I don't even know if you saw, but Dell announced that they're gonna after 2024, they do not want to be buying any chips from China. I think that there's obviously, you know, the semiconductor analogy is there, but we certainly are all aware of the deglobalization aspects.
This supply chain, I think it's less about the short term, you know, next year or two, where will we be cost-wise? Over the longer term, as the scale happens, can we be competitive? We think absolutely. We already are competitive in our existing business, so we think absolutely we can be competitive over time. I know you asked me one more question, and I forgot.
Yeah. If you could maybe walk us through the expected improvements in profitability as you become a fully integrated producer, and maybe, you know, go a little bit into the specifics of the realized price, you know, as you move...
Yeah.
From concentrate to oxide and then eventually permanent magnet.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, we sell currently a concentrated product where we don't get the full value for the basket of the commodities in the concentrate. Once we are selling the individual products, we will get the full value for those products. Now, if you sell into China, you still have to pay VAT. To the extent that there are tariffs or other things like that where the Chinese are taking advantage, then, you know, we are subject to that. To the extent that we are selling outside of China, we should be able to achieve market price. If you can, you can do the math. Actually, the easiest way to follow the NdPr price is on Bloomberg.
Just go to the Schrapnok's Index, and you can see, and you can do the math on if you take our concentrate and what is the rough mix. really, you'll get 90-plus % of the way there if you just look at the price of NdPr because that's the lion's share of our basket. Keep it simple and just look at the price of NdPr. We actually, if you go back about a year over a year ago now on one of our calls, we stated that we laid out some of those economics about the uplift in our business that we believed would go from Stage I to II to III.
NdPr was at a different level. You can kind of take some of those numbers and play around, and I'll let people... We've never really given guidance, so I wanna be helpful and guide you to an area where you could probably figure out some things. I would look back at that call and kind of, you can kind of extrapolate from there what the Stage II and Stage III uplift would be, but it is quite significant. You know, again, as an aside, you didn't ask this, but I think what's really important is, you know, we are profitable today. We have a very good business today just selling a concentrated product.
You know, the fact that we have the balance sheet and the existing business, particularly in an environment, you know, Adam, as you noted in the beginning of how challenging this environment is, you know, we think we're very unique in that we are, you know, we have this enormous growth opportunity in this vertical. You know, there's, you know, for lack of a better analogy, there's no gun to our head on time. You know, we'll get there over time.
Maybe, what can you tell us about the work and What more can you tell us about the contract that you have with GM? There is certain stages to it. At the beginning, you're gonna be supplying alloy and metal and then permanent magnets later on. Can you give us a little bit more detail as to what extent they are working with you and understanding that maybe you are not gonna offer the most competitive product early on? You know, as you just alluded to, you need to have experience of some economies of scale to ramp up and then bring the cost down and be much more competitive. You know, what were the discussions like? What were the key concerns that they had that you were able to address?
You know, when can we potentially hear about other contracts with other OEMs?
Yeah. One important I'll get into GM as much as I can, which isn't much, but I can be helpful there. One thing to really note that I think is important that maybe goes unnoticed is that the magnetics industry today, as it's done in China, this is not you know, ultra high tech, sort of state-of-the-art manufacturing, from the standpoint of where there are no efficiencies to squeeze out. I think it's certainly fair to say metal making and magnet making in China is not, you know, as sort of safety and ESG focused as I think many Western OEMs would like to see. There actually is an enormous opportunity to make a leap ahead from a scale standpoint.
Again, I go back to the semiconductor analogy where you think Intel started out as a memory company in 1970. There were technological breakthroughs, but actually the name of the game in that business was about understanding supply chain and understanding scale and having efficient processes to produce not just something that was sort of a technological move forward, but also at scale and cost effectively. The magnetics business hasn't really been thought of that way. It's very different. I mean, there's obviously, I'm not making the direct sort of full comparison, but I think it's sort of a cousin of that in the sense that we're at the beginning stages.
There's-- when you do the math of how much needs to be produced, that-- and the capital required to do this stuff, that there's gonna be a handful of leaders. I think getting to GM, I think what-- and again, I would prefer they speak for themselves, but I'll, you know, sort of say what I've publicly said, which is what I think they see. I think that they've been very thoughtful and, you know, sort of visionary on this front. If we think about just take the rare earth space in particular, you know, there was a fear in the rare earth space a little over a decade ago about the Chinese cutting off supply.
You know, there was an incident in 2010, then you know, people freaked out, then everyone references that incident. Fast-forward to today, you know, this morning in the FT, there was an article about BYD launching, two luxury EVs in Europe to compete directly against BMW and Mercedes and Audi, and the cars look spectacular. The Chinese OEMs have moved downstream. So in industry like rare earths and some of this upstream supply chain that was historically considered, you know, a strategic... The, the fear was there'd be an instant cutoff, then what do you do, and the prices could spike. Actually what has happened is this industry has been utilized. Again, this is just one.
The semiconductor is the same thing, and there are others, but I think this analogy is broad and important, is this industry has been utilized to go downstream for that GDP and those jobs. Actually, I think what they see, and I think I've pretty good reason to say this, if you will. I think what they see is that over the next decade or two, the winners in this space are gonna understand that analogy and understand that there is a bit of musical chairs with respect to this upstream supply chain.
I think that when people think about this, they're, you know, what does a battery cost and, you know, all that, is maybe they're not fully appreciating, well, if auto production in many parts of the world is effectively a state-backed industry, you know, Germany will have an auto industry, Korea will have an auto industry, you know, the Japanese will have an auto industry, we'll have an auto industry, and the Chinese will have an auto industry.
What that means is that if we're at the beginning stages of an area where there's going to be production, but then the key to success is going to be the upstream, well, you better have deals to get this stuff, and you better have deals that even if you foresee that there's a lot of potential supply coming, you better make sure that you've got supply that, you know, is not a strategic exposure vis-a-vis your competitors. You may enter a scenario , three, five years from now where, you know, it's not like there's a freak out where you can't get something, although that may be something, but it may just be that you're significantly competitively disadvantaged vis-a-vis some of these other OEMs. You know, I think that was some of what was a driver for them.
I think that the key thing for us at MP is there are, you know, this is a once in a generation lifetime opportunity that there's an entire supply chain being created from scratch. There'll be a handful of producers, and I think they recognize someone needs to do this. We are years and billions ahead on the way to being able to do it. You know, now we have the opportunity to do it, which means we have to execute, right? We have to get our Stage II and III done effectively, and then we have to significantly expand our Stage III business.
If you look at the alternative to us, the alternative is 100% reliance on a Chinese supply chain, and that coupled with reliance on a producer that doesn't even have the upstream to be in the game, so to speak. That puts us years and billions ahead, now, you know, the, the burden is on us to deliver.
Any questions from the audience?
Yeah, I have a question.
Sure.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you for coming today. I don't know that much about mining, so my question may be completely wrong and ridiculous, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. I'm kind of interested on two vectors: one, the economics and costs of what you do, and two, the environmental impact of what you do. As you get to this scaled up, better unit economic platform or however you wanna think about it, how much of that is kind of well-known cost curves around physics, right? We're doing physical things to physical things, and we know how that plays out. How much of it could come, you know, in the future from applying things like AI or machine learning at various points in the process, you know, to become significantly more efficient at what you do?
Sure. Well, in our I'm trying to lean in, and I think it was a little loud. Sorry. In our space, in every, you know, don't overly extrapolate rare earths to all the other commodities because every commodity has, you know, if you're shale, that shale oil comes online in six months, and it's kinda pretty easy. You know, there's pretty much a price floor and a price ceiling, and it's a different dynamic than. I wanna preface it, but in rare earths. The key thing, and I go back to this point, if you remember nothing else, just remember they are not rare. If you have a backyard, you have a rare earth mine. What is rare is having enough of that concentrated in it to make it economic to process it.
The better way to think about it is, it's like a specialty chemical, right? If you look at the pictures on our website, you can, you know, see the video and, you know, drive by, whatever. You'll see that these are much closer. They look a lot like oil refineries, right? These are multi-billion dollar facilities because it is, you know, when these things come together very closely on the periodic table, they are very expensive and difficult to separate. What that means, to answer your question from an environmental standpoint, is when you have elements that are close together and difficult to separate, there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of water utilized, there's a lot of these things. To the extent that you're depending on what you're mining, the lower the concentration, the more the tailings or the waste.
The higher the concentration of the stuff that you start with, the less waste there is, the less energy, the less, you know, water and all these other things that impact the environment. What's great about Mountain Pass is we have, you know, we have north of a 6% ore body. Just, you know, to kind of balance this, most sites in China typically have, like, a 1%-2%. There are others. There's one site in Australia that's around, you know, similar to ours. And then pretty much everywhere else in the world, they're like 1%, 2%. Then there's, you know, some of these others that are hope poor projects, they're typically 1% or 2%. We start with an enormous advantage with that. That also means all the way downstream.
From all of those environmental aspects, you know, that advantage is really enormous because if you think about what you have to process versus if you're 6% versus 1%, you can do the math on how different that is. Also, we have a Bastnaesite ore body at Mountain Pass, which you're not a geologist, I know that won't mean anything to you, but suffice to say, what that means for us is that we don't have some of the radioactive issues that some of the other sites have. We don't have those issues. At Mountain Pass, we have again, a dry tailings process, which effectively means.
You may have heard Tesla's battery day two years ago, they talked about one day the fantasy of being able to mine lithium, take it out of the ground, and send everything else back to the ground exactly as it came. I don't know if you remember that. We actually do that at Mountain Pass and Merax. We mine it out of the ground, we take everything else out. Most of the water that is utilized is reclaimed back into the process. Think of it as like a closed loop. You know, everything else kind of goes back into the ground into a lined impoundment. You know, there's obviously, if you have a liquid tailing, there's risk to the water supply. There's a lot more risk.
That is very unique. Typically, I wanna say it's about 5% of mining and processing operations in the world utilize that because it's more expensive. It's there's more challenges associated with it. There are none in Merax. We have an enormous advantage economically at Mountain Pass. We have an enormous advantage that we have this ore body that doesn't have some of the other issues that other folks might have. Also we sort of, you know, hopefully are making the investments to do so, in an environmentally friendly way. Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah. Oh, no, I wanna answer your question on AI because I think that's important. When you think about a rare earth and then down to a magnet, these are really tight. I mean, these are scale as a business. Again, I go back to that semiconductor analogy. I don't think it's I don't I can't I mean, I'm, you know, there's probably people out there selling a story about how they're gonna use AI in mining and, or, you know, and, you know... I think that that's maybe that was more of like a 2021 theme, I think that's really tough.
I do think what I where I think you will see sort of ultra-high tech applied is that going back to that analogy I told Adam about magnetics being like 1970 semiconductors. you know, look at the movies and you see these cool electrified, you know, machines going around, or magnetic weapons, and, or robot dogs dancing around or, you know...
Rocky IV had the robot.
Rocky IV. Yeah.
Had the robot. Yeah.
Yeah. The mechanical actuators, that will be specialized magnetics that make that motion possible. I do think, and we are, by the way, at Fort Worth, we're building, we are the center, you know, frankly, for lack of an alternative option, but we're building an incredible team. We've hired, you know, a lot of people, and we have a research lab that will be at our facility that will be the center of magnetics, we believe, in the Western world, where we're gonna be, you know, working on a lot of this stuff.
I do think though that the high tech, you know, I don't know if it's AI, maybe it'll be AI, and we'll be able to look at, you know, sort of graphical re-representations of different magnets that we see to come up with advancements. I do think over the next 20 or 30 years, you will see enormous advances in magnetics that will bring to life these things that you've seen in the movies. That won't be done by somebody in a garage. It'll be done by just like the semiconductor industry. It will be done by people who have the resources and the scale to both see that, make those long-term investments, and then bring it to scale. That's our vision for the company. That's my vision.
Somebody like WEG Group in Brazil, are they a customer someday or a competitor?
Sorry, I'm not familiar.
They make motors.
Oh.
Right?
I don't know them well. You mean like a Bosch or somebody who's like a motor supplier? Got it. Okay. Well, we don't make motors. They would be a customer of ours. I think what you're gonna see, I think you're gonna see in the early years, I think you're gonna see, you will see the motor makers feeding into the EV supply chain, what we've seen from a lot of them is that they realize how competitive this is, they're gonna make them themselves. You know, you can see kind of some of them who are making them, some who aren't. I think that over the next 5-10 years, the OEMs are moving upstream.
The kind of the legacy motor makers will be challenged, but maybe one of them will emerge and. But I think our customers will be both in the short term, and then in the longer term, I think it'll be the OEMs.
Maybe, since we're coming out, you know, at the end of the presentation, what can you tell us about the how do you see the IRA impacting?
Yeah.
The EV, the rare earth, the permanent magnet domestic industries, and in particular, any potential benefits, for MP?
Yeah. IRA, obviously the macro backdrop is very bullish for electrification and, you know, battery materials and all of the things that go into the supply chain. For us specifically, there are two key things. There's 45X, which is a 10%, and this is a perpetual tax credit of the operating expenses for critical materials. For our Stage I and Stage II businesses, we will get a 10% tax credit in perpetuity for those annual operating expenses, which is, you know, quite an enormous amount of money, and that's great. The regs are still being finalized, so it's unknown, there'll be 48C, which is a 30% investment tax credit for new supply chain.
In theory, and again, this is still unknown, as to kind of exactly how it'll be implemented, but in theory, if you're building a billion-dollar facility to make magnets, you'd get a 30% tax credit that's $300 million back to you from, you know, straight to you from the government, and those are saleable credits. That's, you know, effectively, as good as cash. I do think also those are the two things for us directly, and then I think as this incentivizes further investment, just in general, the fact that more supply chain is being localized means that there's more confidence and stuff becomes reflexive on itself. It obviously makes it, you know, easier for any kind of upstream producers.
We think we'll benefit from that both directly and indirectly.
Any final questions from the audience? Well, if not, Jim, thank you very much for joining us today.
Thanks a lot.
All the best in this transition year for you.
Thank you.