The investment was to spur creation of magnet production. Can you first walk us through how we should think about the timeline and or what types of announcements we should expect in terms of winning new customers? Sure. Yeah, I think one of the fundamental pieces of our agreements with the Department of Defense was obviously to move, you know, in a warp speed mentality to bring needed magnet capacity back to the United States. You know, with our Independence facility in Fort Worth, Texas, obviously our foundational customer is General Motors. We announced pretty quickly after our announcement of our DoD transactions. It was more of a coincidence than anything else from a timing perspective, but that Apple would be the next customer to take the majority of the expansion capacity of that facility. The 10X facility, you know, which sometimes is accused of being a misnomer since it's really a seven thousand ton facility. I'll preface that 7,000 tons of finished magnets is often 10,000 tons of block, so you know, it makes some sense. You know, the way the contract is structured is DoD has a 100% offtake, with a minimum guaranteed EBITDA for the company, and there is the opportunity for us to commercially syndicate that volume. The stage that we're in right now is we're in detailed site selection conversations. You know, we are moving as quickly as we can with a target of being in production in this facility at the end of 2028. Given that time frame, given the contract structure that we have, and given obviously that Independence is pretty well spoken for, we have no gun to our head here from a customer announcement perspective. We get a lot of questions, though, about, you know, if, you know, relations cool or they are cooling, you know, between, you know, China and the U.S., and if things get easier, you know, how is that impacting customer conversations? And, you know, I think Jim, our CEO, put it really well actually in the Q1 call, which was, you know, the rare earth Humpty Dumpty is not getting put back together. What we saw in April was what had been always a theoretical threat from access to magnets from the Chinese market became real. And, you know, you almost have to act as a, you know, supply chain manager. You have to act to be able to bring at least some of your capacity, you know, into, you know, friendlier nations. And I think we see absolutely no slowdown in the pace of conversations over the last several months. And so, you know, I think we have shown that we will be thorough and opportunistic, and we won't announce deals just to announce deals. And so I can't put an exact timeline on it. You know, when we announce something, you'll know that, you know, it was done and approached from the same perspective that we've approached all of our major customer announcements from a partnership perspective, where we can have a win-win, and that it's the right deal, you know, most importantly, for our stakeholders. And so can you also walk through the types of end market applications you want to target and why? And I'm specifically thinking about some markets you have more reformulation you have shorter SKU life. Yep. There's proliferation of SKUs. That means proliferation of scientists. Can you just walk through a little bit the gives and takes there- Sure and how you're prioritizing? Yeah. You know, I think what you've seen from us so far, obviously, a major automotive OEM and then, you know, the consumer electronics company. You know, I think both of those markets continue to have a significant amount of growth within them. And then when you think about what I just mentioned a moment ago in terms of reevaluation of supply chains, I think certainly the pace of growth and the opportunity set for us in the United States is, you know, far greater than what the overall market growth would be. I think there are a lot of opportunities, also in sort of, you know, growth in physical AI. I mean, we lose zero sleep on size of the market and market growth, just given everything that we've seen. You know, whether it's, you know, humanoid robotics, general industrial, you know, eVTOL, drones, et cetera. You know, you think about what we're seeing in the market today, you know, the Ukraine conflict is. You know, think about the number of drones there, and the scary part, you know, for them is that supply chain runs predominantly through China today. I think part of the reason, you know, the Department of Defense was willing to lean forward and ensure that the supply chain is secure, is the future of warfare really depends on the magnet supply chain. And so, you know, there are a whole host of really exciting market opportunities for us. You know, you mentioned, you know, proliferation of SKUs, proliferation of sizes, things like that. Certainly the way we've and, like, to my earlier point on choosing our customers, we've tried to choose customers to ensure the lowest risk and highest likelihood of rapid success in how we've developed, you know, our customer contracts to date. And so, you know, General Motors has done an excellent job of standardizing their magnet SKUs across their electric vehicle supply chain. You know, I think a lot of companies are looking at that type of standardization, and you've seen them do it in batteries and other things as well in order to drive costs down, you know, in their bill of materials. And so that accrues to us as well. You know, it makes it much simpler. You know, there are other end uses that have, you know, a proliferation of different part numbers and specs and things like that, but what we're starting to see actually, and this is, I think, a really interesting trend and something that I think, you know, really has the opportunity to change the magnet industry positively, and is a huge opportunity for us, is as companies are reevaluating the location of their supply chain, they're also trying to understand and are doing a much better job of understanding where the magnets are in their products, where they've left that issue to Tier 1s, 2s, 3s, and then what types of magnets and why are they spec'd the way that they are? You know, we've seen, you know, OEMs, not just automotive, but A&D, you know, give us a list and say, "You know, okay, here's all my magnet specifications. There's this magnet in this part." And, you know, we'll look at it and say, "Okay, this one has, you know, 3% heavies in it, and it's spec'd to do, you know, max operating temperature of 200 Celsius. Like, does it ever actually see 200 C? Most of the time the answer is, "No, it never goes above 110." "Okay, why is it spec'd that way?" "Well, it's always been done that way because it's been freely available in China and sold at less than the cost of goods." And now that that paradigm is shifting, it's a huge opportunity for OEMs and then for magnet manufacturers to simplify, you know, the magnet space, and I think that is the trend that we're seeing. And so even in industries where historically it's a lot more difficult, I think it's getting easier, actually. And then actually, on the issue of building out the scientific talent or the R&D side of the expense. Does the DoD contract basically give you a cost pass-through on that, so the profit is, the EBITDA is guaranteed? Or is the EBITDA before those research costs? No, the minimum EBITDA is guaranteed. And, you know, there's a lot of detail, you know, that was filed publicly with our transaction agreements. But, you know, in the framework of qualifying costs, certainly, you know, all of the R&D work that would be done to, you know, bring those magnets to bear are eligible costs from the cost-plus perspective. And then lastly, when you think about the commercialization hurdles remaining at Independence. A nd it's always hard when you have a limited number of customers. Every question becomes about a customer. Yep. But how much more do you have in terms of qualification trials, points of failure? Sure In the ramp? Yeah, I would say, without getting into a ton of specifics, to your point, on our customer interactions, you know, we have been progressing, you know, qualification of magnets from our new product introduction line, which is sort of like our factory within a factory, which has enabled us to do very rapid prototyping and sort of scale our product and process development in a way that is much more efficient. So we are really pleased with the engagement that we have with our customers on that, and we're really pleased with the progress that we've made, you know, from a product quality perspective in terms of hitting specifications, hitting EV traction motor specifications, you know, to our customer specs. Our target for production is to have the commercial facilities online at the end of this year. With any automotive PPAP process, generally, you have to qualify the actual machines that you are producing the product on. But the great part of the way we've you know set this up is various steps of the production process are in various stages of commissioning as we speak. So obviously, we're in production on metal making. We're selling that product. From a you know strip cast perspective, you know, our strip casters are in service. They're making flake. Our powder production facilities are in various stages of making powder, coarse and fine powder. You know, presses are in place, the sintering furnaces are in place, and so we're able to really spend the rest of the year on those major pieces, dialing in the process to get it to specification so that the qualification should be smooth, right? If the magnet, you know, coming off the commercial line looks pretty much the same as the magnet coming off the NPI line, you know, then our job is done, and so, you know, if we're in production at the very end of this year, you know, we'll start to sell product at the beginning of next year. There will be a process over, you know, several month timeframe, but, you know, this is not a long, drawn-out process, given all of the work that we've put in already, and you know, the engagement has been excellent. There's a dedicated, you know, greenfield facility team from our customer that spends, you know, a significant amount of time in the plant already, and so we're well on our way. And both the partnership agreements have been unusual in the sense of, on one, you got repaid early, for the CapEx, and on the other, you're getting prepaid for the CapEx ahead of production. Given that, your balance sheet and the funding you have in place is it fair to expect that going forward, you won't need similar terms on other contracts? I'm certainly not gonna negotiate against myself in a public forum on, you know, prepayments with customers. But, you know, look, I think the fundamental thing that we think about, you know, from bringing new customers onto the platform is thinking about it from a partnership perspective, right? I think there are a whole host of things that certain companies can bring to the table that look, you know, different than what we'd bring to the table. You know, with the Apple agreement, obviously, you know, it was thinking about what is the total risk-adjusted return on invested capital? And certainly, timing of cash flows can play a real role In looking at, you know, cash-on-cash returns. And so, you know, from our perspective, you know, I think we would think about that in any deal, regardless of what our balance sheet looks like, is what are the cash-on-cash returns of doing this, you know, versus doing something else? And so, you know, I wouldn't rule out certainly, you know, structures like that. Is it an absolute necessity? You know, depends on the rest of the deal. But, I think fundamentally, the great part about the way we've positioned the business is we've also positioned the balance sheet in a very strong place, as you mentioned. And so we've got the flexibility to entertain all sorts of different arrangements and just pick the one that makes the most sense for all of our stakeholders. And so can you lay out your strategy on recycling? You know, is it fit to use? Or do you want to have excess supply on recycling, so as material comes available, you can then arbitrage the recycling market Sure Against the virgin market? Yeah, look, I think for us, one of the very exciting aspects of the Apple agreement was having them as the foundational customer in the recycling business for us, which I think, you know, to your question, should scale well beyond just Apple over time. You know, there are certain customers that are focused on pure segregated, you know, never co-mingles with mined materials, and there are some customers that are perfectly happy to have a mix of primary and recycled feedstock. And so, you know, that, you know, tolerance will certainly impact, you know, how we look at the business over time. But I think recycling will end up being a very significant component of the business over time. It's something that's not built into sort of the high-level guidance that we provided after the DoD arrangement, mostly because Apple hadn't been announced yet, but you know, I think that if you think about the benefits of vertical integration, this is one of the things that just sticks out so clearly that gives us so much confidence in the strategy that we've pursued, is, you know, we worked with Apple behind the scenes on magnet recycling for over five years. You know, so this was born out of a great technical collaboration with them and allows us to do things that, you know, if you're a standalone magnet manufacturer, you can't do. You're subject to, you know, buying products at market spec and then, you know, selling or disposing of your swarf or figuring out a way to have a third party deal with it, and this allows us to really close that loop and benefit from, you know, the vertical integration that we've built out, and so we're very excited about the recycling business. Switching over to the NdPr side, can you just give an update on progress ramping NdPr production? Sure. What do you see as the reasonable timeframe for getting to the 6,000-ton target? Sure. You know, we talked about in our last quarterly call, you know, running at roughly 50% of targeted throughput. You know, and Michael gave guidance for, I believe, about 20% sequential growth. You know, what you've seen historically from us is since entering production, commercial production on the refining facilities, if you just sort of average out, I keep calling it a CAGR. It's a compound quarterly growth rate, not annual growth rate, and you look at sort of how we've compounded, it's basically been not in a straight line, but the average is about 20%. And so, you know, you see 20% again this coming quarter from our guidance on the last call. You know, if you just run that math out, you'd get to where you need to get in four-to-six quarters. Anything more precise than that, you know, I'd be lying to you, right? The nature of debottlenecking is a ctually, at the point that we're at right now, we have a very good sense of the items that need to be addressed to do debottlenecking. But the nature of debottlenecking is, you find things that, you know, you weren't exactly sure how it was gonna shake out, but you had a decent idea. The great thing about where we sit right now is these are imminently solvable things. Switching out pump sizes, switching out heat exchangers, you know, things that are relatively easy to do. The process itself, the chemistry, the yields, the potential throughput as we dial in, you know, all the ancillary support infrastructure, gives us, you know, a significant amount of confidence in hitting that target. And so can you also then characterize what that translates into where you are on your production costs? C ompared to the roughly $40 per kilo target- Yeah And what you need to do to get there? They are inextricably linked, really. And so the good part from my perspective about where we are on the cost curve of bringing down, you know, costs, is the vast majority of the move from where we are, you know, in the 60s range to the 40s range, is fixed cost absorption. If you think about, you know, the overall staffing levels, the overall maintenance cost, frankly, is probably elevated right now, given a lot of the fixes that we're doing require supplemental labor support. You know, or items that we're replacing that don't meet the capitalization threshold and are running through the P&L. You know, those things will taper off while the denominator is going to double. And so, you know, you run that math out, and we actually put a slide together in our Q1 call that sort of showed that walk of fixed versus variable and how much volume really matters to that calculation. And so I think we'll get, you know, the vast, vast, vast majority of the way there purely on driving volume. So, you know, that is, that is the focus for us. If you think about the progress on debottlenecking since you bought Mountain Pass, you know, all the process changes you've done, how much more is there to do? And will you have the bandwidth to do it- Sure While doing everything on the magnet side? Sure. Yeah, I think all of the work that we've done, and obviously we've approached this from a methodical perspective of dialing in the Stage I business, the concentrate production, and you know, as you know, with Upstream 60,000 and some of the other initiatives, we still have a lot of focus on that business. But it's to a point where, you know, it's very mature and some of the improvements that we're doing there. You know, we have a dedicated team that's focused just on improving mill performance, you know, improving grind size, things like that. And so that's a dedicated team that continues to do their work there. You know, similar situation on Stage II, in ramping, refining. We have a dedicated team that is focused on the debottlenecking initiative, and so, you know, that bandwidth is not being, you know, stolen to do recycling or something like that. And so, you know, particularly given how much we've progressed in that debottlenecking initiative, and given the visibility we have to what the bottlenecks are gonna be when we go from 50-75. Like, at this point, we have a very good idea on what the bottleneck will be at 75, when m aybe when we were at 25, we weren't exactly sure what the bottleneck was gonna be at 50. And so it, it's sort of a different paradigm for us that gives us- You know, the level of confidence that we have in eventually hitting that number. And so, you know, while eventually, at the end of the day, we have a lot of things to execute, we have built a team and continue to build out, you know, a really robust team to support each of these initiatives. Is there enough obvious debottlenecks or obvious bottlenecks to fix, however you wanna look at it, to double capacity again over seven, 10 years? Or is that sort of, at some point, you have to start thinking about a much more dramatic investment to increase the size of Mountain Pass? Yeah, it's a great question, and it's one that we've been getting a lot lately, given, you know, the progress that we've made. It's sort of, you know, how big can this get? And, you know, we've been very careful not to promise you more than 6,000 tons of NdPr, despite promising you 60,000 tons of concentrate Which, you know, when you do that math, certainly we could refine, you know, that delta. You probably need 45-ish thousand tons of REO to get to 6,000, so that delta is available. What I would tell you is that certainly... You know, Michael addressed this on the last call. He said it's not unlimited, right? You know, flat land is at a premium, you know, in the mountain range where we are in the middle of the Mojave. However, there are a tremendous number of very clear and relatively near-term upside levers to that 6,000 tons that, you know, we're not gonna give you a date and a number, but if you think about the recycling initiative, right? You know, that is independent in some parts portions of the value chain and will drive incremental volume above and beyond what we're targeting in the main plant. There's also the concept of the third-party feedstock that we will bring in to supplement our heavy rare earth feed stream for our heavy rare separation capacity. You know, the target had always been to bring in third-party feedstock, and as part of the DoD arrangements, you know, we have them as our partner in targeting, bringing, you know, generally mixed, you know, mixed rare earth carbonate, mixed rare earth oxide, you know, other products where, you know, third-party plants probably don't have the economics or the scale to justify their own refinery, and so they would lean on us as a refinery of choice in the Western world. You know, as we bring in those feedstocks, despite a lot of, you know, junior miners liking to pretend like, "Oh, I'm a heavy rare earth deposit," like, that doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a heavy rare earth deposit. Anytime you find heavy rare earths, you always will find more lights than you will heavies in that deposit. And so from our perspective, it's great because, you know, we bring in a feedstock that's 3%-4% heavies or whatever it is. It's probably, you know, 18%-25% NdPr. And, you know, that NdPr will get refined at Mountain Pass and will be beyond what we're talking about from, you know, our own feed streams. So there are lots of levers, you know, in the, in the relatively near and medium term to, to drive volume. And so, you know, we'll see where that takes us. So if you wanted to take your REO capacity up by 50% or double from your target. O r if you wanted to take the NdPr up to 10,000 tons or 15,000 tons, does the capital intensity of those steps come in lower than what you've already seen, or is it gonna be higher because it's a, you know, different configurations of facilities, new-? Sure You know, new complexities? I mean, without commenting on those specific numbers, I think, like, in general, what you would see with Mountain Pass, one of the reasons we're able to be very capital efficient in the recycling initiative, for example, is the significant amount of shared infrastructure, right? We have our own power plant. We have our own water treatment plant. You know, we can operate as an island without the grid, or we do operate, you know, without the grid. We, of course, could bring the grid back on for, you know, expanding other, you know, potential power users and things like that. So undoubtedly, when you've got, you know, a brownfield site, there are always economies of scale when you're building new capacity. And then, do you expect the recycled material to be lower or higher cost than the mined capacity at Mountain Pass? Well, so it at the end of the day, it really depends on what you pay for the feedstock, right? And so, you know, a lot of the process steps of going from, you know, a mixed product or, you know, a feedstock, whether it's, you know, a end-of-life magnet or, you know, crushed ore, like, the downstream of that is very similar. And so at the end of the day, it really depends on what you pay for the feedstock. But I think in certain instances there'll be opportunities where recycling will be lower cost. You know, if there are areas where we, you know, we really need to, you know, there's a specific type of feedstock that we want, that we have to, you know, pay up for or whatever, maybe it's slightly different, but that, that's really what would end up being the driver. Mm-hmm. Can you talk a little bit about kind of the broader vision that MP has? I think kind of the phrase you used at one point was, you know, viewing yourselves as a national champion. You know, we touched on the last earnings call a little bit about the Saudi negotiation. Sure. Can you unpack that? Sure. You know, was the Saudi negotiation done in the context of the DoD negotiation, or does one basically scotch the other? Yeah. They were completely independent, and one doesn't necessarily, you know, change the other. I think, you know, Ma'aden has been pretty open about the process that they ran. You know, given they, they do have an initial resource base, I think they're very interested in, you know, growing as a refining hub, you know, globally, you know, arguably beyond their existing resource. And I think, you know, given the nature of the, the market in Saudi Arabia, that makes a lot of sense. And so, you know, they ran a competitive process to speak to, you know, everyone in the industry and, you know, ultimately decided to work with us, given our technical capabilities across all pieces of the value chain, you know, be able to help them on the upstream, on the refining, on magnet making as well. You know, they have a real pointed initiative on, you know, EV manufacturing and things like that, and so a lot of users of permanent magnets are starting to bring manufacturing into the Kingdom, and so I think that's where their focus is. I think undoubtedly, you know, our DoD agreements have us very focused from a capital perspective on investing capital in the United States. You know, we have an important job to do, and we are focused on doing that. So I think, you know, primarily from a capital perspective, I would expect, you know, our approach to international, you know, to be more capital light until we are, you know, finished, you know, growing our platform in the United States. It doesn't necessarily mean, you know, we won't continue to pursue other opportunities globally. I think there are very, very few people. I mean, even in the Chinese market, there is not a single entity that does all pieces of the value chain. You know, they're generally split, you know, among various entities. They may all have cross-shareholdings, as you know how it works over there. But you know, really, I think we bring something very, very unique to the table for global industry. You know, your comment on, you know, our positioning as national champion, I think the reality of this industry is if you look at, you know, the unequal playing field that we were forced to compete on for a very long time versus China, where they have their own national champions that they have subsidized and that they have forced to consolidate over time. You know, when you have a mercantilist approach, and you're trying to combat it from a purely capitalist perspective, without some way to level the playing field, it ends up with the results that had happened in the past. I think what has changed now is, given the requirement for scale, in order for this industry to grow, you know, we are in a position to be able to support some of these point solutions that are out there now that we've been able to really drive this scale. And so if you're just a metal maker or you're just a refiner or just a recycler, like, you had no chance of survival under the old paradigm. I think the great thing is, the way we're approaching this is, like, a more vibrant industry with a lot of players in it is good for them. It's good for us. And so as we grow the business, there are gonna be parts of the supply chain that we say, "Hey, we should bring a partner in to do X, Y, and Z." and so the. I think really the only way you allow them to have the scale is by having a true scaled national champion that can compete on the global stage. And when you look at, again, bandwidth or interest, if there are projects elsewhere, Latin America or in Europe, I think there's a magnet capacity coming on stream in Europe currently, or there's various magnet projects in Southeast Asia. If there are partnerships available, should we expect you to be engaging in bidding? Because, you know, you have a unique position, and you have some things you can bring that other people can't. Sure. Or should we expect, you know, you have a lot on your plate? Yeah And that is just not a priority? Yep. Look, I think you've always seen us be very opportunistic, and we've always kind of had a lot on our plate, right? We started the magnet business before, you know, before we were done with, you know, building out Stage II CapEx, right? So I think we've always been, you know, thoughtful about making sure we don't bite off more than we can chew but really wanting to push the strategy forward as rapidly as possible. I think given the criticality of our industry, which was laid bare in April, you know, we're gonna continue to invest in the business, invest in our capabilities, and so I think it's hard to sort of have a blanket statement of, we will or we won't. I think we. You know, I spend a lot of time evaluating lots of opportunities, and so, you know, we'll never. It's what's the phrase? You know, you stop looking when you're dead. I think that's also a lot of companies that are in kind of mining or, you know, particular minerals, kind of they focus on the mineral. You know, you moved quickly downstream. Have you moved far enough downstream? I mean, are you interested in engaging, finding some other related adjacencies downstream that might be more capital light higher, you know, faster payback periods you a bit of visibility on the end market? It's a great question. You know, we've seen, you know, opportunity sets where we work with customers, where we see, you know, a significant amount of benefit of being able to, you know, implement a rotor design with thoughtfulness around the magnet design in that rotor. We've seen, you know, bottlenecks for our customers where, you know, if we could give them a timeline for magnet manufacturing, they couldn't get a timeline out of an actuator manufacturer, and so it's sort of like, okay, I've got the, you know, the pick and the shovel, but I don't have the other thing. You know, so it's something that we... You know, again, never say never. We, again, will pursue that from a purely opportunistic perspective. But, you know, there are, when you look at some of these things from a systems-level perspective, there are efficiencies that we're starting to see even without, you know, going further downstream. But I think the efficiencies that we see, that we've been able to bring to bear going vertical so far, very likely would extend, you know, further downstream. And then taking that a step further, do you see pockets of skill sets, process know-how that are currently in the hands of customers, potential partners downstream, where it would make sense to consolidate that and have that all be under one roof, like build an actual magnet, magnet-processing know-how in one place? Yeah. I mean, I think from a magnet-processing perspective, you know, I think we are already really building kind of, you know, the center of excellence in the United States. I mean, one of the major benefits, obviously, in working with a company like Apple is, you know, their materials science group is, you know, extraordinary, and so, you know, being able to have a technical collaboration with them and pursue things on sort of a different timescale. It's like, you know, number one focus is, you know, make the magnets, but, you know, a separate project of really thinking much longer- term on you know, does this metal need to be molten and then, you know, cooled off again into solid form and then molten again? You know, like, things like that, you know, you can really rethink, you know, the overall process. And so I think we already are building that capability, and I think we are working with one of the most sophisticated magnet consumers in the world to help us, you know, along the way. And so I think we're really laying the foundation of, you know, domestic magnet IP in a big way already. And just lastly, can you give us any perspective on the margin that is embedded in the DoD contract, how you see that benchmarking against a standalone magnet business and what normalized economics should be? Sure. Yeah, what we laid out when we, you know, announced this transaction is, you know, there was obviously a lot of puts and takes in the DoD agreement. You know, with the 10X facility, our ability to have full visibility into 100% offtake with a minimum guaranteed EBITDA, you know, for 10 years from SOP, was pretty powerful for us to be able to go and invest that capital at a rapid pace. The reality, though, is, you know, if you look at that minimum guaranteed EBITDA, that $140 that compounds at 2%, you know, that is not, I think, the ultimate opportunity, to your point, of what, you know, the economics would support in a facility of that scale. And so we did lay out, you know, on the transaction documents and in the slides that we announced, you know, the deal with. We laid out, you know, "Here's the minimum," and, you know, to the right of that, "What could sort of the four-wall EBITDA look like, and then what would that mean for us?" And I think if you look at the pricing out in the market for certain types of magnets, you've got to make a lot of assumptions on what- Type of magnet we're talking about, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, it's much closer to, you know, high 300 of EBITDA, nearly 400 of EBITDA, where our share, given we have an upside sharing mechanism with DoD, you know, would be north of $100 million higher than that minimum guarantee. And so I think there is a pretty significant amount of upside, you know, embedded within that contract. And given the way we structured it, you know, there are incentives on both sides to go and-