5E Advanced Materials, Inc. (FEAM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So thank you for your patience, everyone, and we're going to get started here. I'm just pulling up to march as we speak. Can you just confirm you can see my screen with the presentation?

Me?

Yes. Or anyone in the audience.

Yes.

Perfect. All right. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. This is the inaugural event of 5E Advanced Materials. Sometimes there's hiccups with technology along the way, so thank you for your patience. We appreciate it. The speaker today is J.T. Starzecki, Chief Marketing Officer at 5E, and he will provide a company presentation. And afterwards, we will be answering questions. So you already see, I mentioned a text in the chat, feel free to use the chat, ask questions at any point during the conversation, and we will address them at the end after the presentation. This summit is being recorded and will be available on [indiscernible] to watch afterwards. So without further ado, I'll hand things over to you, JT, to kick things off. Just let me know when I need to switch slides.

Sounds great. Thanks, Kyle. I appreciate that. And thank you, everybody, in the audience for sticking with us. The technical issue was definitely on my end. My laptop ended up crashing, so I had to do a reboot that didn't go as well as planned. But again, thank you for joining us today, and I hope that you'll find the wait being worthwhile. So Kyle, why don't we get through the disclaimer. There's 2 pages to that and let's just go into kicking off the presentation. So for anybody new sort of joining in to hear the story for the first time, for anybody in the audience that is looking for a refresher of the company, let me just walk through a little bit of what the value proposition and sort of the investment thesis is. So at 5E Advanced Materials, what are we doing? We are building the next great thing in the battery materials space and in the clean energy and global energy transition space. So we have built an infrastructure in the Central Mojave Desert in the State of California to produce a product called boron or boric acid. We also have the benefit of the deposit containing lithium. And so we have built an infrastructure that allows us to mine, produce, refine and then sell not only into the domestic but the global market. So as a product coming into the global space, with boric acid, boric acid is right now dominated by 2 main players. There is an aging asset also in California owned by Rio Tinto. The majority of the boric acid supply comes out of Turkey right now, and they also sit on a large amount of the world's deposit. So really, when you think about 5E Advanced Materials and what is the true value in the investment proposition, it's we really are the only upside to exposure for the long-term gain of boron. So there are some South American players that have a different form of borics that they mine. As I mentioned, Rio Tinto's asset is aging and will be sunsetted at some point in the near future. Really, the market is dominated by Turkey and the refinement of those products going into countries like Russia and China. So at 5E, we're really focused on the reshoring of critical materials, focusing in on the decarbonization space, through domestic production, required for products that are really at the forefront of the global energy transition. So we are designated as Critical Infrastructure by the U.S. government. We do have a facility that is fully permitted, has been constructed, commissioning is wrapping up, and we have given market guidance that we will start commercial production here in the month of April. So a very exciting opportunity for those of you that are new to the story or those that are looking for a refresh in the story because we've gotten through, and we are now at a pivot point where we're going to be producing product that will be going into the market. And later, as I talk about the market, I'll also talk about our stage execution process and the value delivery model that we'll be bringing to the market. So let's move to the next slide, and talk just a little bit about our corporate strategy. Really sort of falls into a couple of different buckets, right? So looking to gain broader and continued market support. The equity markets haven't been great for the battery materials in the clean energy sector as of recent. Last year was a very difficult time for not only us at 5E given some challenges around our permitting that we've now gotten through, but also then looking at sort of how the broader equity markets support upstart junior mining companies. We have been working with customers. We've been focused in on broadening our market support within the U.S. government to support energy policies and domestic production. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we do have a domestic resource that will be specifically designed to strengthen U.S. capabilities around defense, energy transition through the production of boron and lithium. Later in the presentation, I'll talk about our 3-stage execution. So we have built a facility that we've sunk $70 million into essentially bringing in a small-scale production. We took time last year while we were working through the final stages of the permitting process to actually refine the operations to allow us to increase our production. As we unlock that growing and scaling production, it allows us to tap into other forms of funding and will ultimately allow us to build Phase 1, Phase 2, there's also a Phase 3 that we've talked about in our S-K 1300 technical report and that all flows back into this production profile, right? So starting with 2,000 tons, giving us the ability to scale up, essentially the ability to look at, do we have the opportunity to scale to 9,000 tons? That's going to unlock a lot of different commercial opportunities. It's going to unlock a lot of different funding opportunities. And then ultimately, we talk about Phase 1 commercial production or large-scale commercial production at 90,000 tons and about 1,100 tons of lithium carbonate. Ultimately, through the process, we've got the ability to unlock large-scale production at a full run rate of 450,000 tons. That still gives us a 31-year mine life, really a long-scale world-class asset, and we're excited about now turning towards the opening stages of that. So let's move through the deck and move to the next slide. A lot of people, when we first start talking about sort of what we do at 5E, there's a fair amount that have a response of what exactly is boron or I've never heard of boron or what is boron used in? So what we've done here is just taking a snapshot of some of the different applications. Today, there are over 300 applications in the market that incorporate boron in some way, shape or form. So if we start over -- if you're looking at the deck, we start over on the righthand side, let's talk about the traditional uses, right? So traditional uses of sort of lower-end glass products, things like ceramics, cleaning agents, detergents, solvents, items like that, that traditionally boric acid has been used as an input. So going all the way back into the early 1920s and '30s, the old Borax laundry detergent. That was really sort of where things kind of started. Now then, as you move from the left to -- sorry, to the -- from the right to the lefthand side of the page, you start to go up the value chain, right? So food security. Boron itself is a micronutrient. In fact, boron as a micronutrient is incorporated in just about every MPK blend on the planet. So regardless of what crop you're farming and what area of the globe, you're applying things like zinc and boron along with your nitrogen, your phosphates, your potassium, your magnesium, calcium and sulfur, right? So even as -- if we look as a macro trend at what the population growth will do, right? We're 8.2 billion, 8.3 billion people on the planet, forecasted to grow over 9 billion by the year 2050. What does that mean? More food. You've got a -- we've got shrinking amounts of arable land. So you've got to get more precise with crop nutrient input. That unlocks an opportunity for boron to play in the food security space. As we go into the green energy transition, right, clean energy and making that clean energy more efficient, you look at things like solar panels, where boric silica glass sits on the outside of the solar panels. Boron is a very resistant, high-tensile strength product. So the better quality glass and you can put on those solar panels with boric acid being an input, you just have to simply look at the growth of solar in the -- the forecasted growth of solar in the next 5, 10, 20 years and you could see the world is going to start to need so much more boron and boric acid to go into those. A really big driver of the boron growth or the forecast of boron growth is in wind turbines. So it goes into a couple of different capacities in a wind turbine. So in the construct of the wind turbine blade itself, the fiber glass that is used in those blades, boric acid is a large input. But predominantly, the permanent magnets that actually turn the motors of the turbine, right, you have ferro boron steel that goes into that permanent magnet, right? So an NdFeB permanent magnet is the most commonly used and commonly consumed permanent magnet on the planet. You essentially have 2 parts, rare earth and 1 part boron. So you see in both today the need for more rare earth. So will follow the need for boron, right? Because that ferro boron steel is ultra important into your incorporation of the magnet technologies. And while we're on topic of ferro boron, ferro boron goes into the chassis for all electric vehicles. It's even being incorporated into gasoline power vehicles because it's lighter, it makes the vehicle more efficient, but also has a higher tensity strength. But then when you go into the EV sector, you look at things like those same permanent magnets. You look at acoustic and sound and heat insulation. You look at the touchscreens and the electronics in all electric vehicles and other gasoline powered vehicles. All of those screens incorporate boric acid in some way, shape or form. So there's just a wide variety of use for boron, boric acid into all of these different applications. And as I mentioned in earlier remarks, boric acid is an input into over 300 products today. So your daily life revolves around having boric acid into some of the products. It's just one of the best kept secrets right now. And that's one of the things we're trying to do here at 5E is get the mainstream to understand just how important boron is. So as we move forward into the deck, we take a look at forecasted growth and the forecasted supply and demand imbalance. So this study that we're quoting here was published by a well-known bank that covers the sector itself. So in today's market or give or take, 2023, the market for boric acid was somewhere between 3.4 million and 3.6 million tons of boric acid equivalent. Well, what this study illustrated was what happens when that number increases. And you can take a view on will that number double? Will that number triple? They did a sort of a bearish and a bullish case, right? So if we look at just having the boric acid market double by 2030, what's most important in the graph on the lefthand side is the shading of the actual graph, right? So the darker shade is what we'll call nondecarbonization applications. So those solvents, those lower-end glass or glass solutions, things like that, that have been historically GDP-style growth drivers. But then as, if you remember, back in the previous slide, as we go up the value chain, things that go into precision agriculture, crop nutrients, clean energy, electric vehicles, that's what's represented in the lighter shades of the graph. So you can take a view, but in reality, the market is going to grow. Because there are very few sources currently of boric acid, it's what leads us into the graph on the righthand side, which is this growing supply and demand imbalance. You've got 2 producers that comprise 85% of the world's global production. You've got one of those producers that controls the global supply or sits on the reserves. It won't take much to show the leap of you've got a growing demand because of decarbonization applications and you have no new projects outside of 5E coming online anytime soon. So ultimately, what we've already started to see is this widening gap in the supply and demand imbalance. So back in 2022 and in early 2023, we had a situation where all the product that was being produced was already being consumed. And now we see a situation where we've got a need for more wind turbines, for more solar farms and more electric vehicles. There's just not enough forecasted right now to go around. What does that typically mean in the supply-demand constrained market? It means that the prices tend to increase. So I recently ran across the study by Boston Consulting Group that showed that the boric acid prices has more than doubled since 2020. Historical price points were always very consistent, but now we've seen a growing price point and a maintaining at that price point level that is more than double than historical levels. It does unlock the ability for a project like ours to come into the market, which really it's just -- it's an absolute opportune time for us to be coming into the market, bringing the Fort Cady Boron Americas complex online here as we are in 2024. So let's keep moving through the deck. We'll talk about the demand profile a little bit. This is just a different way of looking at 2 slides ago, which is on the lefthand side, you've got traditional boron markets, right, things like borosilicate glass, fiberglass, even fiber optics, boric acid is a large input into fiber optics, micronutrients, ceramics, but then it's really that light green wedge that then flows over into the emerging boron markets. And so if you just take a look at things like green energy technology, what is needed for more EVs and sort of the whole global decarbonization model that everything -- every country is moving to, along with the need for more precision agriculture for food security, you're seeing just in those markets alone, an increased demand of 1.6 million tons of boric acid equivalent. So even if we were to immediately turn on and go to full production, which obviously we can't too because we've got to build in phases, we still wouldn't be able to bring in enough product to meet just that simple increased demand. When you then couple that with the fact that Rio Tinto has already talked to the market on how they're shrinking their current production and they have over a course of years. They're going to sunset their mine. We're really in an issue where there's just not going to be physically enough product to go into the market in the next 7 years. So we're excited about the positioning that we have as a domestic leader in boron production. So as we move through, looking at building global market support. So what you see on the righthand side are just a smattering of what we have from an overall market support perspective. We are dual-listed on both the NASDAQ and the ASX. We do have public LOIs and commercial agreements out there with the likes of Corning. We have done a lot of research work over the years to look at how do we maximize the use of boron into cutting-edge technology. I mean, one of the things I haven't touched on is boric acid is used in things like pharmaceutical applications. So there's actual FDA-approved drugs on the market that incorporate it. So the span of which we can use boric acid greatly -- it's a vast market opportunity. We've continued to get market support and covered support from banks like DA Davidson and Baird. We have continued to build our market support in the U.S. government. Everybody likes to chase the shiny Department of Energy and their Loans Programs Office. But really, when you look at the downstream derivative products that boric acid goes into, it has so many defense applications. So boron carbide, you'll know that by the commercial name of Kevlar. So things like body armor, tank armor, things that go into rocket propulsion and flare technology, ammunition, all of those defense applications really are at the focal point and what the U.S. Department of Defense faces today is anywhere -- depending on the product, anywhere from 85% to 100% of those products are refined and processed in places like Russia and China. So we've got a scenario where even when you've got domestic product that is mined in California by Rio Tinto, it gets put on a boat, it gets sent over to some of these other nations for processing and then brought back into the United States. So we have a slide, let's move forward, that shows essentially that strategic advantage that we have. So for those that haven't followed the story to date, we are a solution mining operation, which means we don't have massive surface disturbance. We also minimize safety risk by not having to put personnel and large machinery downhole. What we essentially do is we operate a series of wells in a well field that extract the fluid down and through those same wells extract. So we inject the fluid down and we extract the fluid back up. It goes into our infrastructure for things like drying, for things like crystallization. We do some additives to it to create a lithium carbonate product, but we have it all in the self-contained units. So we're -- we've built the project in the desert. We've got non-human consumption, non-ag aquifers that sit on the outside of the deposit. We don't have an endless draw upon that water. Because we have a closed-loop system, we essentially reutilize anywhere from 96% to 98% of our water. So we don't have an endless draw. Very different from hard rock mining, where you have drill and blast. You have the safety issue with underground caverns. You've got machinery that ultimately gets left underground. And of course, with hard rock and underground mining, you introduce the safety risk for personnel. Where our geographical advantage really comes into play is we've done a very simple outline on the righthand side for what -- how the product is produced today or how products plural are produced today. So product is mined in Turkey. It's then put into some sort of solution or it gets then transported over to China, right? You take that solution, you put it into a processing plant, you have to refine the product, you then have to put it back on a boat and move it back to countries like the United States, where it's ultimately moved to the end customers. And we're here to just very simply simplify that supply chain, right? So we've got a product that already comes out in solution. We can then put it through our process on site. If we decide that we're going to go into a refined downstream product, we have the infrastructure here. Or we have then at the end of the production, so you've got the well field on one side, you've got a crystallizer and a bagging unit on the other side. So from start to finish, it goes into a finished product that can be put on a truck, it can we put in railcar, it can be shipped to a port and then ultimately, delivered to customers all throughout the United States, and then we can also unlock that global market. So we've got strategic advantages, both from an operational and a mining perspective and from a geological perspective. So I talked a little bit about our stage project delivery. This is ultimately done for a couple of reasons is, one, it allows us to manage our CapEx spend as we go into building more commercial tonnage and commercial facility. So let's start on the lefthand side of this graph, right? So ultimately, in a mining project, you've got to define a resource which we spent -- essentially, the company spent the years of kind of 2018, 2019, all the way through 2021. The company then decided that it was going to move into -- more than a pilot facility, we do refer to it as a small-scale facility. It is a 70 million piece -- $70 million piece of infrastructure that's going to allow us to produce multiple thousands of tons on an annual basic of boric acid. It's also going to allow us to produce in hundreds of tons of lithium carbonate. It shows the broader market that we can mine the ore body, that we can operate the well field very efficiently. We know the downhole chemistry. We know what it's going to take to process the product. And then ultimately, we've got a facility where we can get that product then moved out to customers for technical validation. It allows us to then take our own product to spec, negotiate things like customer financing, offtake agreements, which then will ultimately play into us moving into what we call commercial Phase 1, which will bring on 90,000 tons of boric acid. It's going to bring on 1,100 tons of lithium carbonate. We can build that infrastructure all in for circa USD 390 million inflation adjusted. But most importantly, that's a very cash flow positive business, right, at market prices that are contained in our S-K 1300. You can look at a business that is netting about $101 million of EBITDA. So very enticing business that then also has the infrastructure that's already built. It's going to allow us to go downstream. It's going to allow us to then expand into things like Phase 2, which brings on yet another 180,000 tons, an additional 2,200 tons of lithium carbonate and gives us a very enticing $350 million, $360 million EBITDA number. So this stage project delivery is going to allow us to manage CapEx, grow into the market and ultimately, deliver long-term value to our shareholders. This is an aerial shot of the facility and what it looks like. This is, again, not a laboratory, not a bench scale, not a couple of different outbuildings, but this is a fully functioning well field operation boric acid producing facility. We've spent the first quarter finishing off on things like electrical work. We've finished the commissioning. We're very excited that we're going to be bringing an operational update to the broader market in the very near future. And we're excited the fact that we are the next producer of commercial grade boric acid in the United States. And ultimately, that brings us kind of to the pivot point. You can go ahead and yes -- brings us to sort of a pivot point where hopefully, that's given people a bit of an update, a bit of a refresher, those that are new to the story can sort of get you a little bit enticed that we are really -- if you like the thematics and you like the global market and you like the green energy transition, we are really the opportunity to invest in the upside of the boron market and what it's going to bring. So I think at that point, Kyle, I'm going to pivot, turn it back to you, open up the floor for questions. Whatever I can do to answer, the floor is yours.

Excellent. Thank you, JT. Excellent presentation. [Operator Instructions] You might have seen me looking down, I was taking notes during the presentation. What I've noticed about boron is I've seen a lot of similarities with an element or metal that I was looking into before because this is the first time I'm listening to anything about boron. And I see a lot of parallels to phosphate. In regards to supply constraints, in terms of phosphate, I believe it's Morocco. In this term, it's Turkey. And you said 85%, sorry, I have a little bit of a cold here. Excuse me. You said 85% from 2 producers. Could you elaborate a little further on that breakdown? Who are they? Is one American and one Turkey?

Sure. Absolutely I can. And I'm happy to also draw parallels on a couple of different other materials that are probably similar. I will also comment on phosphate. I spent 12 years in the specialty fertilizer sector. So I understand that market probably better than the average person out there. So yes, 2 producers essentially dominate the market right now. So Rio Tinto has, call it, 22%, 23% of the borate production today. That is a mine that they've been operating in excess of 100 years. It isn't a core part of their business, right? So a lot of times, we get a question, well, if Rio was only 80 miles from me, does it make sense for them to come in and acquire you? This really -- this has been a historical asset. They're not in the boron business per se, right? If you're iron ore, if you're copper, if you've got 2 centuries of a mine life, that's more the size and really what a large company like Rio Tinto looks for. I spent a little bit of time in Anglo American, which is also a large global miner. So I understand the portfolio and sort of the profile of what they look for. So we really aren't an acquisition target for Rio. There's a Turkish government-owned entity called Eti Maden. Again, it's a government-owned entity, so there's no investment opportunity there. They do operate 5 different mines that are at capacity right now. They do sit on 72% of the world's reserves, but for them to bring more product into the market is going to require infrastructure investment, right? And so there is a building in a growing theory that even if they do decide to bring on more capacity, where the most likely expansion is going to be into the advanced derivatives market, right? So the boron oxides, the boron carbides, the boron nitrites. Margins are much better there. They do already have an established portfolio. So feeding the spot market probably doesn't make a lot of sense for them. So that's what the current market looks like. Phosphates, very similar. One of the things I didn't mention that I have mentioned in previous presentations is there's not a lot of boron deposits out there. There's only 6 overall identified junior projects. And of those 6, 5 of them have -- either don't have fully permitted or have been rejected from a technical processing rationale. So when you look at new capacity, there is one place to look. That's 5E. Phosphate is no different, right? Phosphates are essentially a product of dried up seabeds, fossils that have transformed over a period of year -- centuries, millennials, if you will, right? So you typically will find a phosphate deposit on the edge of an ocean or at some part of a seabed. The boron deposits are even that much more geologically complex. You also need to have outside of an [ elaborate ] basin. You need to have volcanic activity. You also need to have a fault basin that sits in and essentially traps that product so that it can form over centuries. And so I would argue that we're even that much more scarce than the phosphates, the phosphates sector because of all the other geological challenges you have and then you mix in, but there's different types of borates. You've got calcium and salt-based borates, which is what we're mining, much more easier to process versus a silica or a sand-based salt-borate deposit, which is where a lot of the new deposits actually sit in. So there are some similarities. You can also look back 10 years ago at what lithium -- when lithium sort of got -- became in vogue. Rare earths are now sort of the sexy thing in the battery materials space. But all of that stuff has another input to make those products run and that's boron. So you can look and you can draw a pretty simple conclusion that the likelihood of us following some of those patterns is pretty high.

Interesting. Yes, so with phosphate, as to my knowledge, there's only 3 publicly traded investment vehicles and maybe a couple more. And for boron, it's really Rio Tinto and 5E. Is there are no other -- no other publicly listed players out there?

Well, I would challenge that an investment in Rio isn't an investment in boron; it's an investment iron ore and copper. So if -- again, if you like the global thematics, where the energy transition is going, you understand the inputs needed for permanent magnets and electric vehicles, we are truly the investment of choice for boron. Any other upstart potential boron project, and there is one other identified project in North America that doesn't -- isn't permanent, but it's really a lithium project that has boron as a co-product. We're in reverse. We do have lithium as a co-product of what we're doing, but we are the -- we are the place to invest if you want to invest in the upside at boron.

Great. Excellent. So I'm going to tie into one more supply-demand question here. I see in 2026, it looks like to 2028, there's going to be a little bit of growth, both in the United States and Turkey. You said that Turkey is at full capacity, though. So interested to hear about these projections. And just a second question to tie on from the chat here [ Rock ] was asking. He was just reading that boron, used in oil and gas industry, is on the decline. Do you agree? Will this decline offset the growth of boron needed in the EV world?

So it does have an application in the oil and gas industry, and I'm not going to pretend to be an oil and gas expert. It also does have applications in things like coal refining, right? And there are some studies that you can find out there that says that if you coat brown coal or you incorporate boron into the processing of coal, it actually will burn and be able to be processed at a lower temperature, thus drawing the conclusion that emissions will be lower. So there is an application there. It's something that you'd have to study. You have to get into the coal refining and scrubbers. So you'd have to look at that. A lot of the -- what you see in that supply-demand imbalance, anything for sort of Turkey, we would forecast that, that demand, and I should say, this is a Credit Suisse study, and I didn't mention the bank before, but this is actually an information that comes from a Credit Suisse study, you will more than likely see a little bit of incremental, I would say, maybe production. But in all reality, where you're going to see any growth coming out of Turkey will be in the advanced materials space. So I would offer that we aren't tied so much to the petroleum industry, to the oil and gas sector, even to the coal sector. Really where I think investors that are considering looking at adding us to the portfolio, you really want to look at the green energy transition. And you want to look at things like permanent magnets specifically, the growth of wind turbines, the need for more wind farms, solar farms. And you have to take a view on EVs, but there's 6 or 7 applications in every electric vehicle. Whether that's going to grow domestically will depend on things like the power grid. It certainly will grow globally and the need for the product sort of speaks for itself. One of the comments I have made in other presentations that I didn't make in this presentation is, right now, there's no known substitute for boron. So you take the demand, you take the need for more of those green technologies, and you need boron just to keep up with the growth of those products.

Thank you for that. We do have questions piling up, so this looks great. I'm going to just go in order for now. [ Adrian's ] asking, any more detail on 2025 Critical Mineral designation? How optimistic are we that boron will make the list?

It's certainly something that we're excited about. We -- about 1.5 months ago, we released something to the market that essentially showcased that we had 10 representatives or members of Congress pen a letter to the USGS encouraging them to add boron to the Critical Minerals list. Boran is one of those elements that are -- it's just really -- it's right on the cusp. Almost made the list the last go around. We've increased our lobby support. Also, I would also add that last year, we were able to put out another release that said that boron itself is now listed in the appropriations language. Essentially what that is, is when the Department of Defense goes for their military budget on an annual basis, now by law, they have to identify where their boron is coming from and they have to -- and they have it identified as a single point of failure in the supply chain based on its reliance for countries like China and Russia. So we have moved the needle. We have raised the profile very much so in the U.S. government. The USGS list falls underneath the Department of the Interior. We did have members of all forms, DoD, USGS and the DOE come out and do a site visit last year. We have made the offer to have them come out now that the plant is going operational. So I think we're doing everything we possibly can to move that needle. I do like our chances. We are talking about a government body, which won't move as fast as most of our shareholders and stakeholders would like. But we're in the ring, and we're continuing to make progress. We're continuing to raise the profile. We brief the steering committee on a quarterly basis that ultimately make the decision. So we like the position that we put the company in to make that list.

Thank you. [ Canyon's ] asking, what sort of indicators or catalysts, both intra 5E and externally, should investors be looking to going forward in the near term?

So if you're referring to catalysts within the organization -- so I'll answer it both ways, just so I can cover the basis. So if you're looking at catalysts internally or from an execution perspective, certainly turning the plant on in a commercial capacity, getting boric acid out, getting it crystallized, getting it to spec, that's a massive catalyst. We can then take that product. We can get it out to customers for technical validation, right, because we're going to be offering a technical-grade product, which means then the customers will put it through their internal labyrinth, test it with their own products. That's going to lead to things like offtake agreements, customer financing opportunities. That will be a catalyst. Certainly, we've got a few different things from the government that we're working on. You mentioned one previously with the Critical Minerals list. That decision will be made in 2024. It will go into effect obviously, in the turn of the new calendar year. But we're going through that process now. We've also made a lot of progress in the areas of advancing opportunities for government finance, both from a DOE perspective and a DoD perspective. We will give more of an update here in the coming weeks, specifically around government progress as we've got a couple of milestones or things that we're just checking off the list here in March. So those are internal catalysts that will fall into an opportunity, so operationally, commercially and government. Externally, you can look at sort of everything I've been talking about in the market, right? So bringing on more green technology, looking for more ways to incorporate the product. There's so many different cutting-edge things that are out there in the pharmaceutical space, in sort of the advanced technology space. And we're going to -- just going to continue to feed the market and support the market where we can, right? Opportunities to get third-party publications covering the boric acid space in the boron market. Those are opportunities. So there's really a lot of things that are out there externally. We can't really control that. What we can control is the execution, right? We're not a story company anymore. We're an execution company. We've built a facility. We need to operate the facility. We need to look for ways to operationalize and rightsize and become as efficient as we possibly can. We've got to get product out to the market. We've got to sell product. So those are things that we can control and that we'll execute on. The global thematics will take care of themselves because we do see a lot of similarities between where boron is today, where lithium was 8 years ago, where rare earths were 4 years ago.

Thank you. Given the length of time, I don't think I need to ask [ DJR's ] question, it's pretty much the internal catalysts, and you essentially stated, yes, you're an execution story. So I'm going to pass on that, [ DJR ], but feel free to rephrase it if you think he didn't cover it well enough in that question. But this individual...

Yeah, go ahead, my e-mail, so if there's anything else that is needed, I'm happy to answer it.

Yes, I can find that there. Lots of press recently about lower demand for electric vehicles and that the auto companies will be scaling back plans for EV production. How will this affect 5E plans?

Well, I'm going to go back to a couple of different key points, right? And so it was one of the slides where I talked about the military applications, specifically. Yes, you can go back -- I would just go back to maybe the -- yes, that's fine. It's fine. So let's start with military applications. Let's start with the fact that regardless on who occupies Congress, who occupies the White House, there are 2 bills that get funded every year, the defense bill and the farm bill, right? And so because there are so many applications for boron into military products. And again, I covered them, from body armor, to vehicle armor, to flare, propulsion, ammunition and we're all dependent, the U.S. government is completely dependent on China and Russia for those products. So that demand alone, so the need to reshore, right, and that's one thematic we haven't really talked about is the U.S. government's desire to reshore critical materials. We are listed as a critical material for the Department of Defense, right? We have had boron written into the Advanced Appropriations bill, right? We've raised the profile dramatically in the Department of Defense. That's super important. That's also a mitigation into whatever happens with the electric vehicle forecast, right? Because we're not just -- I would be more -- and the lowering of the demand for electric vehicles probably has a lot to do with what has happened to the lithium price in the last 12 months. We are insulated from that because we have so many more broad uses. Those 300 uses I talked about. A good -- not a majority, but a good chunk of those sitting in the defense space, the fact that there is no substitute for ferro boron permanent magnets, the need for more wind turbines or silica glass going in the solar panels. So look at our opportunity as a very wide range of opportunities, not tied to just one. Eventually, will the forecast change? Will more electric vehicles be brought online, not just domestically but globally? Yes, absolutely. So if you take a long-term view, if you take a 5- or a 7- or 10-year view, that will come back again. But in the interim, defense, wind, solar, that's more than enough for our product to find a home.

Any update on a royalty deal or offtake agreements?

We will update the market in time. This is probably not the right forum. We are going to address those items in the next operations update. As always, those are material information. So upon the completion of those items, we certainly wouldn't be sitting back on any of that news flow, but we do plan to address it here in the next company update.

Mike's question is a little over my head, so I'm going to read it verbatim, but maybe it's worth elaborating on what is SOP. He says, "SOP was previously mentioned as a co-product at [ featuring Cady ], what the status of K recovery?"

Okay. So SOP is essentially sulfate of potash. So there's 2 main forms of potassium that go into NPK blends or crop nutrients. You've got MOP, which is muriate of potash, which is a potassium-bearing mineral that contains chloride. SOP is the mineral that strips out those chlorides and delivers a cleaner version of SOP -- or, sorry, of potassium. SOP is a premium version. Now if you go back to 2017/2018, ABR, which was the predecessor company to 5E Advanced Materials, did have SOP as a potential product that they built a PFS around, right? And so the theory was this. You take -- you input MLP, so you buy domestic MOP, you then take sulfuric acid, you mix it with the MOP and you burn off those chlorides. One of the byproducts of that process in a Mannheim furnace is hydrochloric acid. The theory then being that the hydrochloric acid would be diluted down and used in the mining of the borates. So that's where that is coming from. That's pretty dated information. The strategy has changed certainly in the last 5 years, and we've been very, I think, transparent with the market. So that is an ABR historical part to the business strategy that I would say, back in 2020, probably 2021 is more accurate, the business really pivoted. They made that -- it predates me, but that was -- it was done for a couple of different reasons. One, not needing as much hydrochloric acid, but also having a costly input at that time, MOP spiked pretty dramatically off the -- coming off the back of COVID and supply chain issues. And so all of a sudden, you've got a really expensive input coming in to be processed to create a much cheaper input that was needed ultimately for your boron mining and development. So that's the background on it. I hope it wasn't too long winded. But that's really where that has come from, the business itself has pivoted years ago from that.

Excellent. Last question on the chat here. So we're timing this perfectly. [ T Sullivan ] says, "I believe you mentioned Rio Tinto has talked before about lower boron production from their mine in California. Is Turkey ready to meaningfully increase boron production?"

I mean, I can't speak on behalf of the Turkish government. All we can really look at is production and capacity coming out of those mines that really sort of illustrate that there's not meaningful production that they can bring into the market without infrastructure investment. I don't -- I'm not going to comment on whether the Turkish government feels like they want to make that infrastructure investment. More product coming out of the market gives them more control of the market, which means more control of the price points. So is there a need to bring on more production when in all likelihood prices, even in a down cycle have maintained and in all likelihood in the medium and long term are going to increase pretty dramatically. Why upset the apple cart? I mean -- and Rio has very openly and through their annual reports have shown that their production has decreased quite a bit. Their production has decreased because they're at the edge of the deposit. They're also getting into processing issues, meaning that there's less pure ore that they're mining. So their processing costs have increased, and they've done that because it's either going to cost them a heck of a lot more to produce an equivalent amount of 3 years ago or they take what pure ore they can get and they sell it into the market. So Rio isn't lowering production because the market doesn't need it. Rio is lowering production because they don't have the resource anymore. They know it. They've been very open about it. We interact with the mining community quite a bit, obviously, as an upstart new miner into that region. And the numbers speak for itself. So whether Turkey decides that they're going to make a long-term infrastructure investment to increase capacity, either way, you look at the growth numbers, the growth far out -- the forecasted growth far outweighs current production capabilities.

JT, do you have a meeting right on the hour? Or are you okay to answer a couple of more questions?

I'm okay to answer whatever is asked.

Okay. Excellent. [ Adrian's ] asking "Boron's spot prices seem pretty hard to pin down. Where are they at the moment? Are they trending as predicted?" And if you don't mind, I've actually added a second question to that, is all boron created equal? Is that why it might be hard to pin down a spot price? Or is there different levels of quality of boron?

Okay. I'm going to try and capture it all. So the boron prices have been very consistent in -- at the back half of 2023 and 2024. It is a very opaque market, although you can get a hold of some regularly published Chinese spot pricing. There are a couple of well-known publications that have approached us to help educate them on the market with the ultimate intention for them to cover boron's spot price. We're somewhere consistently in the neighborhood of $1,100 to $1,200 a ton. And I think what's important when you look at that price isn't the concept that the price hasn't increased; it's that things like lithium have decreased pretty dramatically. So in what we'll call a leveling off of the commodity cycle, the boric acid prices has remained very consistent, which, by the way, is all-time high and has been all-time highs for the last 4 years, right? So if you looked at a graph, you'd have a very consistent decade-over-decade price, and then you would see this significant uptick to the point where it's more than double -- or it's double historic prices over the last 4 years. And even in a down commodity cycle, we've leveled off. As more and more manufacturing comes online, more and more production comes out of the market, you can see a very easy scenario where that price point will go on another growth trajectory again. So that's the price point, and that's -- the person that asked the question, correct. It is an opaque price market. It's a little bit tougher, although you can scratch below the surface and you can get pretty reliable data. What was the second part of the question?

I had just added on if all boron is created equal or if there's different levels and spot prices or anything like that?

Great question. So not all boron is created equal. When you convert the borates into different products, you have different quality levels. In this perspective, I'm going to just talk about boric acid. So to get to a technical-grade boric acid, you have to have 0.9999, so four 9s, to get to a technical grade. If you are under that technical grade, you will see the opportunity for customers to do a bit of a price adjustment. Now the ability to get to that technical grade does then flow back to the ore body itself. So there are a few different families of what we call borates, right? I mentioned the calcium salt-based borates, which is colemanite and that's what we're mining. That's what the Turks mine. You have other forms like ulexite, right, which have more silica in them. There isn't a large-scale, commercially effective way to process ulexite into refined technical-grade boric acid. So a lot of those borates will go into other lower-value applications. Long-winded answer of not all borates are created equal. It all goes into the refining of those borates. But I think the key takeaway here is our ore body mirrors exactly what the Turks mine. The Turks drive the market. The Turks get the premiums for premium products. So we love our position in the market coming in as an upstart producer.

How is 5E approaching boron advanced materials such as oxides, borates, nitrites and carbides as opposed to boric acid?

So I'll go back to one of the first shareholder calls that we had when Susan Brennan joined us as Chief Executive last April. The strategy hasn't changed. The timing of the strategy has vacillated a little bit in the sense that you can't create advanced materials until you have boric acid out of the ground. So rather than coming out with a grandiose advanced material strategy, which we will do and we will execute on, you need to have your captive supply of boric acid. And so at that point in time, right, when she joined us and we communicated to the market, it was very simply, let's get it out of the ground. Let's get the POS out of the ground. Let's produce technical-grade boric acid. Let's produce commercial-grade lithium carbonate. And then, once we do that, right, then we can look at what are the advanced materials that make the most sense. Now one of the advancements that we have had is the U.S. Department of Defense has approached us in a couple of different capacities asking us about our ability to produce specifically 2 advanced materials. I'm not going to identify to the broader audience what those are, but it's done out of a need for a domestic product. It's done out of a need for a very short stockpile life, and it's going to provide us with a great opportunity. We'll get to that point where there's funding or commercial agreements that are shored up, we will then communicate that to the market. But you got to walk before you run. And that's essentially what we've worked on is getting ourselves in a position to lock. We're at that point now, right? We get product out of the ground. We operationalize and we get the facility very efficient, right. Keep our costs in check, then we can look at what are the most -- what advanced materials make the most sense for us as a business. But we are going to be in the advanced materials business. It's not a if, it's a when and a what.

Excellent. Thank you, JT, and you addressed everyone's questions. A little bit of a shaky start, but it turned out to be a really interesting presentation. It was really, really excellent. Any closing remarks before we close things off? And just before that quick reminder, this has been recorded, so it will be available to watch afterwards. But if you have any closing remarks, JT?

Nothing from a company perspective. I would offer to those that are either listening in live or that will listen to the replay, we are now planning on doing a lot more of these events on a real-time basis. Our partners at [ Six ] have really shown to be fantastic in sort of how we're going to execute on things. This is just the first of what we believe will be many presentations, panel discussions and opportunities to continue to broaden our reach into stakeholders. And so I would say stay tuned on our social media, stay tuned on our website, stay tuned with following [ Six ] on their different platforms because this is the first of many in the coming weeks, months and years.

Perfect. Thank you so much, JT, and for everyone that attended. Really appreciate it. Great discussion. So thank you.

Thanks, everybody.