Australian Strategic Materials Ltd (ASM.AX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'm Ian Gandel, the Chair of Australian Strategic Materials, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the 2025 Annual General Meeting of our company. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians on the land on which we're meeting and pay my respect to Elders past and present. I also extend my respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here today. I'm joined today by my fellow Board members, Rowena Smith; Gavin Smith and Dominic Heaton. Unfortunately, Kerry Gleeson is unable to join us for personal reasons. Also in attendance are Annaliese Eames, the Chief Legal and External Affairs Officer and Company Secretary; and Stephen Motteram, ASM's CFO. Auditor Ian Campbell of PwC is also in attendance. The formalities of today will follow the common format for general meetings. Voting will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business, and the polling card should have been provided to you on entry today. If you have lodged your vote by submitting a proxy voting form prior to the proxy cutoff time and you would like your proxy vote to stand, you do not need to take any further action. Completed polling cards will be collected by the representatives of Automic share registry at the conclusion of the meeting. Those shareholders in attendance that are entitled to vote on the poll are all shareholders, representatives and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders who hold yellow voting cards. If you are attending in more than one of those capacities, you will have been issued as many voting cards as you have separate capacity. If anybody believes they are entitled to vote on this poll in any capacity and does not have a yellow voting card, please raise your hand now and a member of our share registry team will assist you. Looks like we're right. At the appropriate time, I will ask you to mark your vote for the resolution on the yellow voting card. If you are a shareholder and wish to cast all your votes for a resolution, please place a mark in either the for, against or abstain box next to that resolution. If you wish to split your votes, please write the number or the proportion of votes you wish to cast in the corresponding for, against or abstain boxes. Please note that the sum of all of the split votes must not exceed your total holding. If you're a proxy holder, a summary of the votes to which you are entitled has been attached to your voting card. If the summary of votes includes discretionary votes, these are yours to cast at your discretion. If you wish to cast discretionary votes, please place a mark in the corresponding for, against or abstain boxes. If your summary of votes does not have any of the discretionary votes, you do not need to mark your voting card and will simply need to hand it into the returning officer at the end of the resolutions. After all the resolutions have been read and voted upon, please place it in one of the ballot boxes that will be circulated in the room. Are there any questions in relation to the voting processes? Thank you. There will be an opportunity to ask questions on today's business after all resolutions have been put to the meeting. I will address any written questions submitted by e-mail from those who are unable to be present today during question time. I will either deal with these questions personally or ask someone who is better placed to respond. We will do our best to answer any relevant question raised. I ask that you keep your questions short and to the point so that as many shareholders as possible have the opportunity to ask a question. All questions will be addressed prior to the conduct of the poll. Voting results will be posted on the ASX announcement platform later today. As a quorum is present, I declare the meeting open. Proxies have been inspected, and all those validly lodged have been accepted. The proxies received for each item of business are now displayed on the screen, and I declare that as the Chair of the meeting, I will be voting any available open proxies in favor of each resolution. Further, I inform shareholders that the minutes of last year's AGM have been adopted as a correct record of the proceedings at that meeting. The minutes of the previous Annual General Meeting are available for inspection should any shareholders wish to do so. Please contact me after the meeting. I'll now move to the business of the meeting. The first item of business is consideration of the financial report for the year ended 30th of June 2025, which is now tabled. The auditor, Ian Campbell of PricewaterhouseCoopers is available to respond to any questions on the financial report or the audit and they'll be addressed later in the meeting during the allocated question time. We'll now proceed to consider the proposed resolutions on today's agenda. The first resolution is the adoption of the remuneration report. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and is displayed on the screen along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the second resolution. The second resolution is the reelection of Gavin Smith as a Director of the company. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the third resolution. The third resolution is the reelection of Kerry Gleeson as Director of the company. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the fourth resolution. The fourth resolution is the election of Dominic Heaton as a Director of the company. This resolution is set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and then move to the fifth resolution. I refer you to resolution 6 regarding the performance -- the grant of 787,097 financial year '26 short-term incentive performance rights to Mrs. Smith. This resolution is set out in the notice of meeting and as displayed on the screen, along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the sixth resolution. I refer you to the resolution 7 regarding the grant of 787,097 financial year long-term incentive performance rights to Mrs. Smith. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the seventh resolution. I refer you to resolution 7, which is a special resolution. Resolution 7 regards approval for the company to have the additional capacity to issue equity securities totaling up to 10% of the issued capital of the company. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. I put that resolution to the meeting and move to the final resolution. I refer you to resolution 8, which is a special resolution. Resolution 8 regards -- relates to approval for the company to renew the proportional takeover provisions in the constitution for a period of a further 3 years. This resolution is as set out in the Notice of Meeting and as displayed on the screen along with the proxy votes received on this resolution. As that covers all of the business for this meeting, I will now put all those resolutions to the meeting and open up the floor for questions. To those present in the room, are there any questions of the Board on any item of business or of the auditor on the financial statements or the conduct of the audit? No? No questions. Thank you. So if there are no further questions from those present, Annaliese, have we received any questions from -- written questions from shareholders? No, thank you. With that case, all any questions would have been answered have been answered, and we can now conduct the poll. As mentioned earlier in the meeting, if you'd like your proxy votes to stand, you need not take any further action. If you have not lodged a proxy vote and wish to have your vote counted or if you're in the room and wish to amend a proxy vote already lodged, please complete your polling card and hand it to the Automic share registry staff acting as a returning officer for today's meeting. [Voting]

Okay. Thank you all. I now declare the formal part of today's meeting closed, and thank you for your participation. The results of the meeting will be released to the ASX later today. I now hand over to ASM's very capable Managing Director, Rowena Smith, to provide an update on the company's results for the year and an insight into what we can expect in the year to come. At the conclusion of Rowena's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask further questions.

Thanks very much, Ian. And again, thank you to all that have made the effort to be in the room with us here today and also everybody who is joining us on the webinar. It's very, very pleasing to be here today. Now I can't see the slides just at the moment. We're going to start. I nearly forgot. We're going to start with a video festival that's just a summary of the year that was for ASM. Thanks very much. [Presentation]

Right. So that's just a little snapshot of the year that was. If we can just move through a couple of slides, that's our disclaimer. At ASM, we're building a rare earth and critical minerals business and what an exciting environment we have that we're doing that in at the moment. The world really has shifted this year. I know those of you who have been following this with me through the year have heard me talk about it many times. But really, we saw it from Liberation Day, 1st of April there in the U.S., where the U.S. indicated its new tariff policy. We have seen since then really just wave of wave of impact for the industry. It's been very volatile. With that volatility has come an enormous amount of opportunity but also uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainty that we're navigating here in this environment. One of the key themes, though, through all of that uncertainty has been very consistent and very strong. And that is that the U.S. wants to see a domestic supply chain for rare earths. They want that established with urgency and they are giving that strategic priority. And they are also very clearly saying that they want to do that in partnership with their allies. So what we've seen since that liberation Day with the turbulence that has started there with the tariff policy and then the reciprocal restrictions that then came in from China, particularly focused on the heavy rare earths that's been really impactful but also more broadly they have added layers of restrictions on the technologies, on the staff, the sort of technical experts on the raw materials, on the consumables. So we've seen really them tightening up and broadening their restrictions to really try to disrupt the efforts that are being made in the sort of allied nations to establish this alternative supply chain. And what that has then meant is that then those allied countries really recognize we can't do this aligned. We have to do this together. And so we've seen in recent months very strong framework agreement started to come into place to really formalize these alliances and government-to-government policy alignment. And one of the most important ones for us is the Australian government's framework agreement that they announced with the U.S. earlier this year, where they have talked about doing joint funding. We've had, for some time, the export credit agencies working together across these jurisdictions, but this is a really important point where they're starting to talk about jointly working with equity investments into these businesses. They're talking about national offtakes for these businesses. They're talking about back-to-back arrangements. So these products are going to flow across the supply chain across these jurisdictional boundaries. And they are talking about very strong commitment to see this alternate supply chain establish itself in its first 10 years where they know that there will be a vulnerability in the beginning of this alternate supply chain to the ongoing impact of restrictions from the established supply chain in China. So that environment for us is perfect. We have been anticipating this moment for some time, and that is why we have a mine to metal strategy. And as far as we're concerned, this moment in time is one we've been preparing for, for a long time, and this is a really exciting opportunity for ASM. We have got our project in Dubbo where we have really advanced project to a point where we can sit at the table and talk to people about being construction ready and able to bring online production, particularly now of those rare earths that are very strongly the focus for these alliance frameworks. We have got the ability not just to show that we can take it from mine all the way through to oxide here in Australia, but we also have the next piece in the supply chain, a piece of the supply chain that is largely missing at the moment outside of China. And that is taking those oxides from -- through to metal and then through to the specialist alloys that are the feedstock for the magnet producers that are now emerging in these allied nations. And in addition to the metals plant that we already have built and it's already in production in Korea, we are well advanced in looking at replicating that capability in other jurisdictions. We've been talking in the U.S. and Europe for some time, but what we've really seen in the last 12 months is real traction with our planning for replicating that in the U.S. One of the things that, that really enables for ASM is a point of differentiation in the market because where there are a number of businesses that are looking to enter the supply chain at the upstream, either as a concentrate or as a carbonate, there are some others that are looking to do what we're looking to do in Dubbo and taking that through to an oxide, so doing the value add here in Australia. But when you look at the rare earth businesses that are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, we are the only one that has got established capability in that metals and alloying step of the supply chain. And so at this moment in time, uniquely positioned to be a solution for those that are urgently looking to establish this production. So let's have a look at what we delivered this year because with all of this momentum, our focus is to really deliver. That's -- this moment in time is an opportunity for us to start ramping up the facility that we have in Korea and to be able to take advantage of all the prep work that we've been doing in recent years. So you've heard me talk before about the fact that we have been working with the emerging Western magnet producers. These 4 are the 4 that I would list as the strongest of the emerging producers outside of the established Chinese supply chain today. The first of those is Noveon. We've been working with them for a long time as they have been establishing their capability in Texas. They, in the last 12 months have really started to have momentum. They have announced an offtake agreement with Nidec. They have announced one with GM. They've announced one with ABB. And very excitedly, we're now starting to see the orders coming through Noveon through to ourselves. We had 100-tonne agreement that we signed with them some time that we've been waiting for them to be able to commence deliveries against. And we saw those first deliveries dispatched last quarter, and we are in conversation with them about what that ramp-up looks like over the next 12 to 24 months. Vacuumschmelze is an established German magnet producer. And so in addition to the products that they have been making there in Europe, they have also just recently commissioned their first magnet facility in the U.S. in South Carolina. And in fact, they had scopes on site just last month, and they just put out an announcement just in the last 1.5 weeks about the first magnet coming off their line there in South Carolina, so again, an exciting emerging magnet producer in both Europe and the U.S. USA Rare Earths, we have got a framework agreement in place with them, a binding agreement for a 5-year supply for 60% of their supply needs, again, an exciting developing magnet producer in the U.S. They are just working on commissioning their facility in Oklahoma. And indeed, we've just supplied them with 5 tonne. I was in the plant last week. I saw it all packaged up ready to go. So it's the 5 tonne of product that's going to USA Rare Earths to support them in their commissioning that they'll be doing through the coming months. And Neo, we announced an MOU with during the year, again, really exciting. We've been supplying them now with light rare earth metal for 12 months. And we have more recently had them as our inaugural customer for our heavy rare earth metal and working closely with them as we build up our heavy rare earth capacity. So what I really am emphasizing here is that these magnet producers themselves are emerging. They are establishing their capability. They're working through their product validation processes with their customers, but we have been working with them hand in hand and very excited about what we're going to see going forward as they grow and the orders then flow through to ourselves. We've been working on the light rare earth and the alloy products, but in addition to that, we've been working on broadening our product mix. So the other exciting development for the Korean metals plant through this year has been the confirmation of commercial production of the dysprosium and terbium metal through our pilot facility. So last calendar year, we had success with the technology that we were developing at the lab scale. We committed this year to piloting it in order to confirm what the commercial design for that facility would look like. We've been working through that this year. We had the first commercial quality production through the pilot facility in the second quarter of this calendar year and announced, as I said before, the first of the product, small volumes but an important milestone for us that the first commercial dysprosium and terbium metal was dispatched to Neo performance. And in fact, that was going to their new facility that they have just opened. They had a big grand opening in Estonia just in recent months, and I was lucky enough to be there for -- on the day and the staff there were very proudly showing me the ASM materials that were there and talking about how pleased they were to be receiving these heavy rare earths from our Korean metals plant to go into their first European magnets that they were so excited about. What you can see on the right is a quarter-by-quarter what our production dispatched has been. And we do report this on a quarterly basis, but I thought it was good just to show an aggregate because what we were doing last year is we were doing all of this prep work on the alloys with these magnet producers. We were working with them as they were going through their commissioning and going through their discussions with their customers and as I said before, delivering to Neo on the light rare earth metals. But what we saw post Liberation Day and then with the activation of the industry is they really started to recognize they cannot afford to have all of their material coming from one source. It is too vulnerable to disruption. They need to have some redundancy. They need to invest in working with this emerging supply chain and starting to get volume through it. What we saw immediately that the Chinese restrictions were announced, immediately the customers started walking through the magnet facility to start talking to them about accelerating this process. And you can see there an immediate jump up in the product dispatched last quarter. What we hope that we will be able to show quarter-on-quarter as we go forward is that we will see growth in the alloy. So what we're anticipating is that we will see growth quarter-on-quarter on the dispatched alloy from the facility but that we will see a reduction in the metal because, really, the margin on the metal is not as large as the margin on alloy. So we would much rather have the alloy product be the primary product that is being dispatched from this facility. And so what we will see and we will report this in our quarterlies going forward, so it's transparent for everybody. What we will see is that the orange part of that bar will continue to grow, and we will see less of the metal being sold as that first product. And through the next year, we will also start to see some of the heavy rare earths, which I will come back to. The other area that we've been really focused on through this year has been really delivering a transformational approach for the Dubbo project. We've been working on the Dubbo project for a long time. We are very confident around the technology development work that we have done for Dubbo in order to liberate a full suite of products. It's fully permitted. We've got advanced engineering work done on it. And we really are genuinely ready to go. The challenge for us has been that when you're doing all of the products in one step, it does mean that the initial capital hurdle is significant. In $21, that was AUD 1.67 billion. And so that is a challenge for being able to fund it, particularly with all of the uncertainty that is there in the market as there is. So what we changed ourselves now just 18 months ago is could we segment this into steps. What was the opportunity to be able to tackle the rare earth piece of it first as first phase, have a lower capital first step and be able to move this more swiftly into production for the rare earths and then build on that in a second phase once that's in operation using the revenue from the first phase to then be able to fund the second phase and the rest of the process flow shape? So very excited to have had that work culminate in the scoping study that we released in July of this year that demonstrates that in today's dollars, relative to $21, but in today's dollars, we can do the rare earth part of this circuit for $740 million, so less than half of the initial capital outlay. We've got a much simpler flow sheet. We've got a flow sheet that not only has lower capital but delivers first quartile or the lowest quartile costs, which means that this is going to be competitive not just in the initial investment discussions but competitive through its life. We are working on extending the reserve to underpin the life of this project. And importantly, we are still taking the product all the way through to separated oxides for 3 discrete products. The [indiscernible] or [ prasidenium ] metal or the light metal oxide as well as a dysprosium oxide and a terbium oxide. So when I was talking before about the restrictions, the Chinese restrictions have been very focused on the heavy rare earth in particular. And I know that the work we're doing at the moment to source those materials to be able to support the ramp-up in Korea is really one of our challenges. And what we're seeing is the market is a way to this. The market understands that projects that have got a high proportion of rare earths, like the Dubbo project are critical for establishing a foundation for this emerging supply chain for them to be able to deliver in a sustained way over the next 2 decades. So we've got significant interest in investing in the Dubbo project in this more practical execution plan that we've developed. And lastly, we have been working very strongly in the last 12 months to leverage the momentum that is there in the U.S. to really accelerate our expansion of our metalization capability in that jurisdiction. We have been, again, giving updates on this throughout the year, but we have identified, about 12 months ago, our priority states. There were 6 states. You can see them there on the map there. We select them, in part, because of who else is located in those states. So you can get a sense of that. We're looking at Utah. Why Utah? Well, there is energy fuels are there in Utah, a very significant opportunity for partnering for feed for the metals plant going forward. We are looking at Texas. Why Texas? Well, that's where Noveon are establishing there or have established their magnet facility. And also where Lynas are talking about doing their heavy rare earth separation, so again, opportunities for partnering as we go forward. We're looking at South Carolina. South Carolina is where Vacuumschmelze have got their magnet facility established. We're looking at Oklahoma. Oklahoma is where USA Rare Earths have got their magnet facility established. And you can see their photos of us with the governors, with various different commercial representatives from the companies. We have been working very hard with both government and potential partner organizations in these jurisdictions to pursue what do we think is the best location for our plant. We had intended that we would have finalized this decision this quarter and that we would then be finalizing the actual site within the state next year in the first quarter or first half of next year. But what we've actually found is there's so much competition between the states and so much interest in partnering that actually choosing the site and choosing the state concurrently makes better sense. So we're aligning that decision for early next year as we continue with the discussions that we're having at federal levels. So we've got a request in with the Department of War for funding support for this facility in America as well as the discussions that we have underway at state level. There are significant state incentives and some of the states here are incredibly competitive as well as with the potential partners that we would work with in the states. So that's what we've been working on in the year past and so really, really excited about how we're positioned for the year ahead. And of all of the things that we're excited about, one of the key enablers that we're really excited about is that we're actually funded to be able to pursue this growth. So we did go to market just in the last few months. If I could just have the next slide. Yes. We did go to market just for -- in the last few months and raised AUD 80 million. And what that means is despite all of the volatility in the market at the moment, we can just consistently focus on delivery of growth in each of these assets to pursue the opportunity that is a very unique opportunity in time. So our Korean metals plant expansion, we currently have 4 furnaces installed for those who are paying attention. You would know that slide earlier in the year had 3. So we have just installed another 1 just in recent months. So we've been quietly working on expanding the capability there. Three furnaces was now moved to 4 furnaces and 1 strip caster. What our Phase 2 expansion plan is, is to take that to 18 furnaces and a second strip caster. And that expansion is now fully funded. What we're doing at the moment is we're talking to providers of the equipment because some of that equipment, particularly the strip caster has quite a long lead time. We've been told historically 18 months. We're just working through with the providers because the restrictions are impacting. The restrictions from China, quite often equipment, if not, the actual equipment being manufactured in China even if it's a non-Chinese supplier, they will often source some of their componentry from providers in China. So they're working through at the moment what the impact is for them on their time lines. But what we're anticipating is that in the next couple of months, we will have finalized the order for the second strip caster and the additional furnaces for that facility, which will then have us on track for being able to install that additional capability in sort of 18 months' time. We've also got preparation in the same facility using -- leveraging the existing infrastructure that we have there in Korea for a Phase 3, and the Phase 3 would then take it for another 12 furnaces and another strip caster. One of the opportunities for us is to contemplate whether or not we actually put a deposit at the moment on 2 strip casters rather than 1, which will give us flexibility, either depending on how the market develops. We could either go very rapidly through Phase 2 into a Phase 3 expansion here in Korea or we could have 1 furnace coming in -- sorry, one strip caster coming in here for Korea and the other 1 being the first strip caster for the American facility. So again, all things that are being in discussion at the moment but exciting conversations for us to be having. The other areas that I spoke about before that we are really excited about is growing this product suite. So the terbium and dysprosium is an area that we have got an enormous amount of interest as we're talking with potential partners. This capability is extremely unique and highly valued. So as I said before, we did a lot of work last year in developing with our R&D team the technology and proving it up at lab scale. And we've been working hard at piloting that now at commercial scale. We completed the first pilot in the first half of this year and have demonstrated that we can make that quality product. What we've been doing with the pilot facility in the second half of this year is continuing to do small-scale production. So what -- again, you'll see in the quarterlies, as we report, you will see that we've got ongoing dysprosium production going through to our existing customers from that pilot facility. But we do have a lot of learnings in that pilot facility. There are enhancements that we want to make to that facility to improve its operability. And also, we want to scale it up to be larger in order for it to be more cost efficient as we move from the pilot through to commercial scale. And rather than taking that in one step, we've decided to do a second pilot to test the operational improvements as well as to take another half step in the resizing of the furnace. And so we will be -- that equipment has been ordered already, and we're anticipating that will come in, in late quarter 1. And so through that middle part of the year, we will be conducting that second pilot for the terbium and dysprosium metalization, finalizing the commercial design so that we can then start moving into the commercial installation in the second half of this year and meanwhile, continuing to produce through our pilot facility for the customers that we are working closely with. We've also been looking at making a ferro dysprosium product. So the first sort of R&D focus on developing the dysprosium and the terbium purity metals and they are used -- usually used for treating the magnets after you have -- you start with the alloy, but then you do a treatment of it in the magnet facility itself with the high purity metals in order to improve its performance. But the metals themselves, the alloys, you do want dysprosium within them, and it's more cost effective for that to go in as a ferro dysprosium rather than a high-purity dysprosium. So the third product that we are working on the technology development in parallel with doing the piloting of the purity metals is we're doing the development of the technology and doing the lab scale test work at the moment for the ferro dysprosium. And that will then be the next product that will then come in behind as we continue to build our product range for our facility in Korea. And when we do replicate this in the states, the intention is that this full broad product range will all then be able to go directly immediately into the states so that we've got the full suite of products available for our customers in that jurisdiction. These are the estimated financials for the Korean metals plant when it is at the end of Phase 2. So obviously, at Phase 3, it would be higher again. But this is just to give an indication of what we're anticipating that we will see there with Phase 2. And now that we are funded and we are well progressed in the discussions for ordering the long lead items, we can be confident that we will be in '27 in the position where we've got installed capacity for the 3,600 tonne. We have already commenced recruitment work to support the ramp-up of the facility from where we are today through to the -- fully utilizing the current installed capacity of 1,300 tonne per annum. And really, we're well positioned at this point with our training programs and with our equipment to be able to then work very closely with the emerging magnet industry as they ramp up to be able to ramp up rapidly for them. The constraint in the short term that everyone is really challenged by is actually accessing the heavy rare earth oxides. And so one of the discussions that we're having with our magnet partners is what's the right alloy so that they can provide the products to the customers but I guess not waste the dysprosium and terbium that is available at the moment to the market. So there's a lot of discussion about optimizing the alloys to be able to make best use of the dysprosium and terbium. But there is a very, very, very strong desire to bring more dysprosium and terbium oxide into the supply chain as rapidly as possible, and so the time could not be better for us to have come with a transformed approach to our Dubbo project. So what we've got with our first phase development is we've got a project now that is simple, is a lower capital cost and provides that full suite of [indiscernible], prasidenium, terbium and dysprosium. We are doing the PFS work on that at the moment. The labs here in Australia are really under quite a lot of pressure, workload pressure, and so we are seeing that the turnarounds on the common leach test work that we're doing and some of the optimization we're doing on the flow sheet is going slower than we had desired just because the labs themselves are busy. But what we are still anticipating, I had hoped that we would have finished this work before Easter, I think what we're going to see is that it's after Easter. So we're saying we'll get that PFS out in first half of next year. But regardless of where it comes out, what we are excited about is that the conversations that are happening with partners and not just about the metalization capability, the conversations are, all right, how do we also secure the feed from Dubbo to be able to come through and feed that growing metals business that we can see you're developing. Also, what's been really pleasing is that there is recognition that this is just the first phase. What we're talking about here is rapidly bringing on the dysprosium, terbium and [ nidium ], prosidenium, but we've still got so much more in this double ore body. We've got the zirconia. We've got the hafnium. We've got the niobium. We've got yttrium, which there's an enormous amount of interest about. When we're talking in the U.S., the zirconia, hafnium, and the yttrium are very strong focus of the conversation. And of course, we've done many, many years' work in developing the technology to be able to separate these products. And we've got test work that can demonstrate that we know we can make these products as high-quality products that can go on into the downstream. And I think the other thing that is also important to remember, as the Chinese have been broadening the restrictions on the heavy rare earths, every time they've put out another restriction, there's another 2 of the heavy rare earths that are sort of added to the list. And that list is getting longer and longer of materials that we have got an abundance of in our orebody in Dubbo. So again, a lot of opportunity beyond this first phase for many generations of value from the Dubbo project. So a lot of conversations happening in the U.S. but not just in the U.S. because what we have seen is partly, I think, FOMO, as people are starting to realize that the U.S. are moving and they're moving fast. That is triggering other jurisdictions to realize they're going to need to move more quickly. So we've definitely seen Japan, Korea and Europe moving faster in the last 3 or 4 months than we had seen previously, which is pleasing but also the alliances creating that as well because now they're wanting to work together. And if you want to work with the U.S., you have to work fast. So that is also meaning people are really looking at what do we need to do to be able to change our processes so that we can move through this more rapidly. So a lot of exciting conversations happening at the moment. It's keeping the team very busy, but it's work that we've worked a long time to position ourselves for these discussions. We are uniquely positioned in these discussions relative to others because we have substance that we are bringing to the table. We have got projects that are genuinely advanced and ready to be able to deliver value from. And so these next 6 to 12 months for us is a really important time, exciting time. The American metals plant, we have given guidance that the financials will look similar to the financials that I put out earlier in the [ Pac 4 ] Korea. We're thinking that first phase for the American metals plant will be 2,000 tonnes, but it will be modular, the same as we have done in Korea. So the infrastructure will be sized to support the second phase from the outset. So it's an easy, rapid implementation to take it up to 4,000 tonne when the market supports it. And as I said before, what we've got with the opportunity now with the funding that we've secured is that we can compress the original time line that we had by doing some of the long lead items earlier, which will mean that when we've gone through site selection and the permitting process and start construction, which at the moment, we're anticipating we're targeting for that to be mid next -- mid '27 then it's quite a short process for us from that point to then be able to start to have first production. It's absolutely credible that we could have first production from this facility by the end of '27. So that's an opportunity that is very interesting to a number of the parties that we're talking about at the moment. So again, conversations over the next 6 months as we work through which location, where are we going to partner. One of the considerations between the different states is also what the permitting requirements are. So some of the states have got land that is already in an industrial zone. It's already got a building that is brand new, that is 90% built already that you just need to come out and do the final refitting in. And so all of those things will speed up this time line if that's what our partners desire. So again, the work we've been doing over the last 12 months to really properly interrogate where the opportunities are and what actually is going to be the most enabling, I think, is setting us up for a really exciting 2026. So ASM mine to metals strategy. We've been preparing for this moment in time to be able to move from all of this planning, all of this preparation to harness the momentum that is now happening in that external environment to move to delivery. And the catalyst for growth that we're really focused on at the moment are firstly, increasing that Korean metals plant sales, working really closely with the customers. I named a number of them there earlier in the pack, but that is not the whole list. There are emerging magnet producers in Korea, in Europe and in the U.S. that we are working with as well, really playing our part to help to establish this alternate supply chain but importantly, positioning the Korean metals plant as vertically integrated into as many of these magnet producers as possible. So that will continue to be a focus, and we will report quarter-by-quarter on what our dispatch sales are. The expansion of that facility so that we are ready for ramp-up beyond Phase 1 is an important focus for us as well. And then that selection of the American mills plant location, both state and site as well as where are we partnering. One of the conversations that's really come up in recent months is the framework agreement with the Australian government, what might that enable and where we were initially talking mostly to Department of War for federal funding support potentially for that American metals plant, what that's broadened out now is that the ECAs are also expressing interest to discuss with us the potential to participate in funding for that project. And we've got a significant number of parties that would like to joint venture into that facility with us. So again, I think that as a catalyst for growth as those conversations continue, that's going to be an exciting milestone for us in the coming year and feeds into those strategic partnerships because there are a lot of players in the rare earth sector at the moment. And some of them are hard-working projects with real substance facing into the challenges. This is a challenging sector. There's no doubt about it. No one is getting an easy ride. I had the opportunity to be at Lynas at their 15 years celebration just in recent weeks, and they were talking about their journey over the last 15 years to get to where they are. And they are, by far, the most established non-China supplier that we have in the sector. And yet you could hear still how hard they work for that and how many challenges they're still facing into. So we mustn't be cavalier about what it is that we're actually aspiring to do here. And I look at the suite of rare earth projects PAUSE are out there. There are a number of them, I would certainly class ourselves as one, that are working hard in creating something of real substance. There are another growth that I think have got genuine intention and good opportunity but still a lot of work ahead. And then there's another group that there's just a lot of puffery. There's -- it's a concern because I don't see the substance that supports the thesis. And so for us, what's really important as we're in discussions around strategic partnerships is we want to take advantage of this moment in time to partner with those of substance. We want to make sure that the relationships that we are building at the moment are foundational growth relationships. And that is with the companies themselves but also with the jurisdictions, which are the right government funding vehicles to lean into, which are the right offtake agreements to lean into that are really going to set us up for the trajectory of growth that we've worked so hard today deliver. So that is what we are working on and focused on in ASM. I'd be delighted to answer any questions after from anybody in the room. Similarly, anybody who is on the webinar, I hope you know that you're always welcome to reach out, and I'm happy to take a call with you as a follow-up from this presentation today. Thanks very much for your support over the last 12 months. It has been a wild ride and I know that, and I'm very, very grateful for the support that we get from our shareholders. And I am really looking forward to transitioning into some really significant delivery over the next 12 months. Thanks very much.

Thanks for that, Rowena. So this concludes the Annual General Meeting of Australian Strategic Materials. I'd like to thank everybody for attending this AGM and for your continued support. In addition -- sorry, this is off the scrip, but I got to say. I would like to thank Rowena and the team in Australia for the unbelievable commitment that they have put in, the Korean team, our auditors, the Australian and Korean government for the support, all other stakeholders, the potential U.S. partners Department of War, CAs, the U.S. states that we're talking to, the magnet manufacturers in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Korea. It's, as Rowena Smith said, a wild ride, but this is our opportunity. Now is the time. So thank you very much for your support and commitment. And I'd invite everybody to join us for tea and coffee to be served just at the back of the room. Thank you.