IperionX Limited (IPX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everyone. As we -- as everyone gets settled into the webinar, it's great to be hosting this again. Give a bit of an update post quarterly. As to the progress we've made here in Virginia, I'm sitting in our Virginia team house that's close to our facility. We'll just wait a second or so, while some more participants join. It's great to see, really good turnout already on this update. Last update, we had a very, very strong turnout as well. So it's great to see people from across the world, especially in the U.S. and Australia join. All right, we'll get started. As all of you know, my name is Anastasios Arima -- as most of you know, my name is Anastasios Arima. I am the founder and CEO of IperionX. We are scaling up our titanium production in the United States and also building mineral-to-metal production of not just titanium, but other key critical minerals here in the United States to feed into what is a growing market for critical minerals as many of you on this will be aware. Going forward. So just as a highlight, our key focus is titanium metal products using our proprietary technologies from both scrap today, which is what we're doing and ramping up and eventually from minerals. So reshoring the entire mineral supply chain, but we also are active in scaling upstream supply chains for other critical minerals, especially the heavy rare earths and zirconium and hafnium and some other key products that we'll talk about in the presentation. There is a need for us to scale, especially not just these critical minerals. As many of you are aware, there's been even just today, more talk around both executive orders on sourcing critical minerals from the U.S. Today Lockheed came out with wanting to source even more critical minerals, doing deals to secure their mineral supply. And we believe we're going to see a lot more of this happen as we continue to see the need for secure supply chains for the defense and future industries here in the United States, whether it's defense or whether it's the future of AI, which is going to need its own set of critical minerals. Robotics, we're seeing an increased focus on how these firms that are scaling these new technologies, these systems, these platforms across these industries looking for how they secure their supply chain because that's going to be a key bottleneck going forward. So us, we're focused on titanium metal, but we also participate and we're going to be major supplier of other critical minerals as we'll talk about as well. We already have strong government support that's helped us get to where we are today, where we've proven our technology at commercial scale and now ramping it. This is only the tip of the iceberg. We're going to continue to scale this technology. And for us, this is a long-term solution to the titanium metal supply chain, and the U.S. government sees that as long-term solution as well. So we continue -- as we ramp up we continue to get more and more or be able to work with more and more customer engagements, and we'll talk about that. Right now, we're producing titanium metal products from scrap. Eventually we will also backward integrate to our mineral operations, and this is going to be a key focus for us. We've made a lot of progress this last quarter that just passed in completing the final engineering studies and coming out with our DFS, which showed great economics across the project, but also securing a big opportunity in bringing forth some critical mineral supply in what we're calling the Atlas operation, which is part of the Titan project out there, which is a historic silica sand mine, which was stockpiling its critical minerals that are just sitting there ready to be extracted at relatively low cost. And then longer term, and we see a huge opportunity with our GenX platform that we talked about at the start of the year. That's growing first into operation right now as we speak. We expect this quarter to have some significant updates around GenX, which will see us even further lower the cost of our titanium metal production in the future as we continue to scale that. So a lot of exciting progress that we'll get into. So this quarter, we continued ramp towards 200 metric tons per annum, which is what we're targeting by the end of this year in our initial commercial operations. This is really just the first of many commercial operations or commercial tonnage that we look to come out with. This is just a start. It's just the tip of the iceberg. From here, it's just demonstrating that we have commercial operations and then continue to scale it. And as many of you are aware, we are already funded for Phase II of commercial scale-up with IBAS, with the Department of War, which will more than 7x the production of what we're going to have by the end of this year into at least 7x the capacity in 2027. Now that's for powder production. We're matching that with taking that powder and using our HSPT process or other methods to produce titanium metal products, primarily our HSPT process, and this is across different types of applications, whether it's making bars or fasteners or whether it's going into or 3D-printed products. We're matching the downstream capacity with top of powder capacity we're going to have by the end of the year. And that's a rapidly getting up and running with the first of our HSPT furnaces coming operational now and some key equipment that allows us to make various different green parts that are then able to be sintered and make final titanium metal products. We are using these products with customers that we've already engaged with now, whether it's Department of War or commercial. Of course, we've been funded by the Department of War, and we've got a lot of work going on with the Department of War just given where we are today geopolitically. We're working with U.S. Army. We are working with the U.S. Navy on a range of products. We're starting to work increasingly with commercial aerospace as well, but -- and defense aerospace. We've been working with automotive and those engagements are growing very strongly, and we continue to look at future industries, consumer electronics, robotics, things like that, which gets us very excited for both the near term, but especially the long term. So that's something that we're very focused on and with the increased amount of production, the ramp -- the more we ramp up, the more production we have. The more products we can produce the more engagements we can progress to commercial contracts in the end. And that's all on the titanium metal business. On the critical minerals side, both supplying our upstream eventual supply of titanium minerals to make titanium metal products, but also supplying other key critical metals like the heavy rare earths that are needed for the defense magnets or the hafnium needed for the RAM that's going to be needed for AI and data centers. The Titan-Atlas Project that we have in Tennessee will be a key supplier of those upstream mineral feedstocks, and we're progressing those at pace since we completed our DFS and acquired the Atlas historical mine. And as many of you know, and we have some of our new shareholders on today, I see, we are well funded to continue to march towards scaling up our titanium metal production but also executing on everything we want to do on the Titan and Atlas side. Over this last quarter, both myself, our Chairman and our Board and officers purchased additional stock. We saw opportunities. We had -- we were in a window where we could. And so we also put our money where our mouth is as well. So we're very excited. The quarter has been great. We see the rest of the year ahead of us and the next few years as being extremely exciting, and we'll very -- looking forward to updating the market as we hit some of these milestones. But already, over the last few years, we've done a lot of work. We've got to remind ourselves when we started this business -- when I started this business, we're looking at reshoring the titanium industry. It was just a dream. The last titanium metal sponge plant closed in 2020. And me and my team, we looked at how do we reshore the supply chain from mineral to metal or scrap to metal. And so we started embarking on this journey. We acquired the first few leases and first few surface rights in Tennessee. We secured the technology. We went through a few years of validation of this technology. Some initial small-scale production into high-value sectors, which demonstrated our potential to make titanium metal products. We secured our site, we secured awards for our technologies. We're probably the only ASX-listed company that has R&D 100 award with the HAMR process. We then started building out the site that we have here in Virginia today with funding from the Department of War. We continue to secure additional funding from the Department of War. We proved out the technology is at larger scale. We continue to secure contracts from the Department of War to produce products. And now we're right today, 2026, we're right in the throes of having completely derisked the technology, ramping up our first commercial scale operations and really planning for the future. And we see a very bright future ahead of us with everything that we've done behind us. So we've executed on and we've delivered a lot of milestones already over what is a relatively short space of time in bringing a new technology forward. We've significantly derisked it, and we're now just at the tip of going commercial, looking and ready to expand over the next few years to meet the need for reshoring the titanium metal supply chain. It's gone from a dream to something that we're actually executing on. We're taking titanium metal scrap that was typically destined for either landfill or downstream -- or down cycle into the steel industry. We're able to bring that back into high-quality titanium metal products. We've demonstrated that we can take titanium minerals into these titanium metal products. We've completed the engineering studies that shows that we have significant amount of reserves of these titanium mineral that we can produce into titanium products. And now it's just execution over the coming months and years that will allow us to reshore the titanium industry. The seeds are planted, and we're going to execute on that to come to fruition, our mission, which is to reshore the titanium metal industry. And as a side business, reshore some of these other critical minerals as well. So the reason we're doing this and the reason we started doing this was essentially the map here. And since we started the business, you can see in 2020, china, Russia controlled a little over 250,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge supply. Today, with China's growth in titanium metal sponge capacity is close to 500,000 metric tons and growing. It's only a matter of time before the titanium industry is in the same situation as what the rare earth industry is in today where China, Russia or China, in particular, controls most of the supply chain. Today, the United States imports the majority of its titanium metal sponge needs from Japan. These industries are under a lot of pressure with this increase in Chinese production. We're already seeing Chinese titanium metal products go into the aerospace market, especially into Airbus. And it's only a matter of time. If we don't reshore this titanium metal supply chain, that what we see happening in the rare earth market is going to happen to titanium metal. But we have a unique opportunity to avoid that. And that's why the Department of War has funded us. They understand this issue, and that's why they funded us to reshore the supply chain, and we are delivering on that. So what we do differently is the state here. This is an excellent example of how we change the game for titanium metal production, allowing us to reshore -- not just to reshore the titanium metal supply chain, but to reshore it more efficiently in a way that we can compete with Chinese production. That we can reshore titanium metal supply chain that doesn't need price floors. It doesn't need subsidies to continue to operate in the market in the United States well into the future. Importantly, as well, this is a much more efficient supply chain. Not just efficient from a cost perspective, the cost advantage is huge as we'll go through, but it's also efficient from an energy perspective. And that's something that I think a lot of a lot of investors, a lot of stakeholders, whether it's government, whether it's customers, are going to be increasingly focused on. We all hear -- if you're watching the news you all hear about what's happening with AI and the data centers and the need for additional power. This need for additional power is going to make power one of the critical bottlenecks in the future for industries. And so more efficient, more energy efficient supply chains are going to be extremely important. And our process for making titanium metal is far more efficient than the existing process. And that's a huge advantage that is going to be increasingly in focus as the years roll on, as the AI revolution continues. And as the need for lower cost processes to manufacture critical minerals becomes more and more evident because of the bottleneck of power in the future. So as we go through it, one of the key things -- one of the key products that we manufacture today is titanium metal fasteners for the U.S. military. That goes on to ground vehicles, tanks and tracked vehicles and things like that. Today, titanium metal bolt, if you look at it today made in America, would have to first come for a titanium metal sponge. How is that made? Titanium minerals, if it's in the case of Japanese sponge, imported into Japan from across different parts of the world, goes through a carbothermal chlorination process that then goes into the Kroll process to make titanium metal sponge. This is then shipped into the United States. The United States is 100% import reliant on that supply chain to that. That is then melted into an ingot, a big 36-inch ingot, meter long. That ingot then needs to go through a pretty energy-intensive forging process to make a billet, in this case, a 16-inch billet. That billet is then rolled and drawn into a 0.5-inch bar in the case of making a 0.5-inch hex bolt. And then that bar -- there is a lot of other processes, straightening, grinding, things like that, that have to go on very -- and multiple steps in this process. This is a simplification of the steps that are done in making a bolt. That is then -- comes out to a final titanium metal bar, which is a semi-finished mill product. A common product out there in the market today is titanium metal sheet, bar, and plate. In and of itself, that bar already has a lot of entrained energy that's gone into making that bar. There's a lot of scrap that's being produced from that's -- making that bar. That bar would have up to as low as 50% yield. So more than 50% of the ingot is lost to the final bar form that you see there. And then that bar is then CNC machined into what the industry calls a blank -- a bolt blank. That blank, again, a lot of energy loss and a lot of scrap loss because of that is then ready to be thread rolled and make a final titanium bolt. A lot of costs, a lot of energy inefficiency in that supply chain, many steps, complex process. This is why also this process is a bottleneck for the industry today. Bars, plate, sheets, there are bottlenecks in the supply chain today and it's only going to increase, especially if we look at American-made titanium products. Our process completely upends that supply chain. And this is how our 2 technologies, HAMR and HSPT upend the supply chain. We take titanium metal scrap today. In the future, we'll take titanium minerals coming from the Titan or any other project or really our Titan project, but eventually anywhere, whether it's the U.S. or other allied nations. And we turn that powder -- we turn that titanium metal scrap, all those minerals into titanium metal powder. Angular powder that we can then -- for very low cost, we can then take that powder, form it into a shape. In this case, we can put it through a simple pressing operation to make a titanium bolt blank shape and then put it through our HSPT process, which sinters it, never melts it, sinters it. So much more energy efficient into a densified titanium metal blank with the same or better and what we showed with the recent U.S. Army testing, better mechanical properties than what the industry is making today. And then that blank just goes through thread rolling, simple operation to make a titanium metal bolt. So what does that result in? Far less energy consumption. There will be 95% savings in energy in this supply chain. We go -- the current supply chain, U.S. supply chain would be 10% to 15% yield. We're 95% yield. So a significant reduction in costs, significant reduction in -- significant improvement in energy efficiency, but also a supply chain that is much simpler and can react quicker to the needs of the industry. So instead of being months or even years to supply product, if a customer needs it, we can supply it in weeks to months once we're fully up and running. So much more efficient supply chain up and that cost efficient allows us to reshore a much better long-term solution to the titanium supply chain in the United States. And that's what we're scaling today, and we're doing today. And that's why the DOW has funded us and that's why we have a lot of customer engagements today. We finished the quarter with a strong cash position post the financing that we did. Subsequent to the quarter closing, we did the financing, but our pro forma of the end of quarter is a very strong cash position. We have still a lot of unobligated funds for our expansion, 7x expansion of the current capacity that we already have installed. We secured -- we've got a secure supply chain of our scrap and of course, our minerals in the future through our Titan project, but our scrap is secured for the next few years, and we see no issues with sourcing scrap. The U.S. government actually gave us 200 metric tons of scrap this year and we're in a strong position as we continue to scale up our business. We announced just the other day that we will redomicile to the U.S. and the new Board Director and we were going to have some more updates to market as we progress through that objective. We think that, that's just a straightforward way of reshoring our business in the United States. We're a U.S.-based business, it just makes a lot of sense with a lot of U.S. investors today, we see that as a natural progression of our company for the redomicile. So Virginia operations, if we get into it, we had some downtime with our HAMR furnace at the start of the quarter, both from some controlled updates that we needed to implement. But in addition to that, we were running some additional different types of powders, which took some time off our powder capacity. We've ramped back up as of July to where we were before we had that downtime. And we are now this quarter are looking to add more cycles to our production. Our HAMR process today is in a batch process. We've already talked about continuous earlier this year, and I'll talk about it a little bit more later. But in our batch process, we're only running 2 batches per week. We aim to increase that over this quarter. And eventually, at full capacity we will be running multiple batches per day. But we're seeing good quality powder. We didn't have any effects to our downstream operations. We are still ramping up downstream capacity to take the powder and make titanium metal products, so it didn't have any effect on our ability to engage with customers. And we still expect to and are planning to be at 200 metric tons per annum by the end of this year and moving into our expansion and very focused on our expansion over 2027. A big focus, like I said before, is taking our powder and manufacturing final titanium metal parts. So downstream of our powder process, we need the ability to consolidate our powder into different shapes and forms. That's through a variety of methods that's used commonly today in the steel industry, whether it's uniaxial pressing or cold isostatic to make near-net shapes or long products like bars or bars with holes in them. And then once we have those what's called green products or green forms, we then put that through our unique sintering process, which gets us the same mechanical and fatigue or same properties as what it would have been if had gone through the traditional melting and forging and rolling processes. And that's where we're ramping up more capacity. We've got the first of our 2 new sintering furnaces delivered putting -- getting put into operation this month. Second one is coming this month, will be put into operation this quarter. And then we've got a third large furnace coming in as well, which will significantly increase our capacity with the aim being that by the end of this year, we will be able to take in scrap, produce 200 metric tons of titanium metal powder and go through a range of processes to make 200 metric tons of final titanium metal products. Whether that be powders that we can sell and we are seeing increasing opportunities across the powder landscape. As that demand for those powders grow, but or whether it's final engineered products like fasteners or impellers that we're doing for the U.S. military or final products that we're doing for automotive or whether it's simple products like bar, plate sheet wire or preforms for the existing industry. We can -- we're going to be able to make a range of products and we do. And by the end of this year, it will be about 200 metric tons per annum and we're looking to grow as we embark on our expansion. And again, it's just the tip of the iceberg, it's demonstrating that we can make commercial amounts of powder, but the real growth is where we're going to be in the next 2, 3, 5 years. Our aim is to reshore the titanium metal industry in the United States. Today, the U.S. imports 44,000 metric tons per annum of titanium metal sponge. And as you'll see from our definitive feasibility study on the Titan project, the titanium minerals we have in the ground could support 50,000 metric tons per annum of titanium metal product capacity. So we are -- our aim is to be able to reshore that entire industry over time. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, just demonstrating that we can do that, and we can provide a solution for the titanium metal industry here in the United States, provide an all-American low-cost solution for titanium metal products. We've engaged over the last few years with some key customers, continue to move forward with them, a lot of engagement in the automotive sector, and we expect to see parts in the automotive sector in 2027, and it continues to grow with more interest from additional automotive companies. We have a lot of, obviously, support across the defense industrial base for need for titanium metal products, and we're -- with increased production and with more downstream capacity coming online, we can just continue to increase those engagements, work through prototyping and into eventual commercial contracts. So our contracts and our engagement today ranges across multiple industries and across multiple products. We have a lot of near-term engagements we hope to bring to fruition this year and eventually contract and announce. Very excited, obviously, across the defense industrial base, but also consumer electronics and automotive. And then longer term across the traditional mill products as well, like bar, plate and sheet. It's important to note here, though, when -- we can be seen as a competitor to some of the industry, but I would rather have us seen as a collaborator. We can supply the preforms that are needed by the existing industry today. So today, the titanium metal industry needs to bring in sponge, needs to melt that and make it into ingot and then needs to forge it and make a billet and then that billet either goes into making a plate or a bar. Why can't we just step in and instead of going through those first few energy-intensive steps, provide a preform that can go straight into the rolling or extruding capacity that's in the industry today? And so I -- as we progress our ramp-up and as we progress our expansion, we want to be seen as a collaborator in the industry, and we are collaborating with industry and we want to increase that collaboration. Because we see our ability to make the existing supply chain, including the existing mill industry, much more efficient with the products that we can produce. With the aim being that we don't need in the future -- my aim is that we never need to import titanium metal sponge again into the United States and that we can supply products that replace the need for the imported sponge. And even more so than that, provide those products that allow for efficiency gains that lower the cost of titanium metal products that expand the titanium metal market as well with American made product. So we've got a lot of engagements going on. This is only going to increase. And this is a key focus of us right now is we continue to make titanium metal products is to work through the various engagements we have for customers -- for customer products that are wanted from our operations. And then supporting long-term or even our medium-term scale-up is GenX. Today, we operate in batches, and that's proven out the technology. And even in the batch process, as we've shown from studies we've put out, and as we're seeing in our operations, we can bring the cost of titanium metal powders into the high $20 kilo mark. And when you consider that we can make those near net shapes and go directly into bars or go directly into sheet, that's a very low-cost final titanium metal product, already lower cost than what the existing industry could do in some of these products, especially in products, which have high buy-to-fly ratios or very low yields, a lot of scrap generation like fasteners. We can significantly lower the cost already just with our batch process. But as we announced at the start of the year, we have successfully at small scale been able to prove the ability to do our HAMR process in a continuous process. And right now, we're in the throes of starting up our first semi industrial scale GenX furnace that will do the HAMR process. In this quarter, we aim to come out with some results that we aim to hit some key milestones around the scale up of that. This not only lowers operating costs but allows us to scale the HAMR process or our manufacturing of titanium metal powder at a fraction of the already low capital that it is to build these batch furnaces. And so this will be a huge development. It's something that we're very excited about, especially when we consider that long-term need to reshore the 44,000 metric tons of titanium metal sponge, which is being imported today. The GenX furnace will allow us to do that. Once we've proven it out at that large commercial scale, it will allow us to do that from a very low CapEx. So we're very excited about what we're doing there. So the titanium metal business, we're very excited about. It's going to revolutionize the titanium metal industry, allow us to reshore the scrap, but eventually titanium mineral-to-metal business. But this is where our Titan project comes in. This -- and with the recent DFS and the recent Atlas Mine acquisition. We are very excited about the next 12 to 18 months in Tennessee. So our Titan project is a traditional mineral sands project, which is rich in a few key minerals, monazite and xenotime which contains not just the light, but also the heavy rare earths which are needed for those high-temperature magnets, contain zircon, which is used in the ceramic industry, but contains the zirconium and the hafnium that's needed in a lot of these future industries. We have the titanium minerals, which we need for our upstream mineral supply, both the rutile and ilmenite. So one deposit solves multiple upstream feedstock supply chains. In the case of the titanium supply chain, we can completely reshore it just with what we see here already what we've defined in the Titan project. Let alone what we could expand into with further exploration in the region. But in the case of heavy rare earths, we can supply a significant chunk of heavy rare earth needs. In the case of zirconium, all of the zirconium needs for the United States, yttrium, hafnium for the future. So one deposit can solve multiple supply chains starting with titanium, but a lot of these other critical mineral supply chains as well. As many of you know, we were funded by the IBAS program to not just scale the Virginia operations to 7x where we see -- where we have capacity today, but to also complete the definitive feasibility study on the Titan project. And so when we completed the definitive feasibility study, we were able to define our first reserve, which gives us an after-tax -- significant after-tax NPV plus $800 million in today's market, 40% IRRs post-tax. This is a very economic project. It benefits from excellent infrastructure closest to market, good grade and the right critical mineral assemblage. Development CapEx is relatively low, but the supply of the critical minerals is significant for the United States. So we're very excited -- just on the Titan DFS, we're very excited. It is a crucial -- one of the most critical, I would say, deposits today to supply some of our critical industries here in the United States. But as we announced post -- the DFS completion, we always had our eye on an operation which was nearby. This is a historic and that's the Atlas acquisition that we announced. This is a historic silica sand mine that was operating for close to 100 years. And it was targeting the opposite to what we're targeting. It was targeting the sand, the silica sand for glass operations, for glass manufacturing. Relatively small scale, but after 80 years, it had accumulated a significant amount of tailings which are rich in the heavy minerals that we are targeting. And they're just sitting there at surface. So we acquired this. This is where our downstream -- some of our downstream facilities for our Titan project need to go anyway. But in addition to that, we have now these ultra-high-grade tailings. We have pre-stripped operations in the historic mining area, and we have the established utility. So it was a straightforward acquisition for us. The mine was only recently shut down. So the utilities, everything are still there. We're in the throes of the exploration program there across tailings and the historic mine. And over the next 6 months, we're going to have a significant amount of updates across what this asset does in terms of near-term production of these critical minerals, near-term cash flow at what would be a fraction of the capital at developing Titan. So we now see the scale-up of critical minerals out of Tennessee being a step solution. Start with Atlas, low capital, quick to market and then bring on Titan. And not only is there a lot of support from the government to do this, but we also see a lot of interest from industry for the rapid pace at which we could bring on some of these key critical minerals, which are in short supply today. So that's pretty much the end of the presentation. We have a few questions that were sent through that I can go through. But we're -- to recap, we're extremely excited about the future for the business, whether it be the ramp-up of our titanium metal operations, the expansion of those operations and the eventual backward integration with the co-products of these other critical minerals. We're very, very excited about what we see happening on the ground here in here in -- both the Virginia and in our Tennessee operations. And there's a lot more to come and to see over the coming months and years.

So with that there are a couple of questions, actually a lot of questions. So the first one, which is probably on a lot of people's minds is what to look at -- essentially paraphrasing what we should or what all stakeholders, whether it's shareholders, government, customers should be looking towards over the coming year really with our operations. So as we talked about, we're in the throes of ramp-up. So ramp-up is the key milestones that we need to meet. The more we ramp up production the more products we can make, the more we can engage with the industry. So that's a key, key focus for us is the continued execution and ramp-up of our operations here in Virginia in making high-quality powder, safely and taking that powder and making high-quality products that we can then deliver to the various customer engagements we have, both defense and nondefense engagements to progress our commercial outreach and our commercial scale-up of our business. In addition to that, of course, contracts a big one. We've got multiple commercial engagements, some of which we aim to bring to fruition over this year. They're going to be big milestones. We believe this is across -- again, across defense, automotive, aerospace, consumer electronics. We engaged across a lot of these -- a lot of programs. We're adding a lot of effort to pushing a lot of these programs across the line into contracts. And that's something that I think is going to be major milestones and major catalysts for our business over the coming 6, 12, 18 months and actually well into the future. So very, very focused on that. The progress on the ground with Titan and Atlas is another key focus of ours, and I think is a key catalyst for our business, especially in today's market, where we're seeing like Lockheed Martin and others in the defense industrial base looking to secure their supply chains. They're going to look towards not just scrap, but the minerals. And having that secure mineral supply of multiple different types of minerals, not just our titanium is going to be a key focus and a key catalyst for us to showcase that. So we're doing drilling now. We're going to be having updates to how that affects the economics of our mineral operation, which is going to be for the better. And that's especially over the next 6 months, I think there's going to be a lot that we can say about that. And then the fourth one, which I think we want to really focus on, and I think is going to be major catalysts, whether it be for shareholders, but especially for customers and government, which is extremely interesting is the progress on GenX. GenX is already our batch process for the step change. GenX is a further step change in the ability to manufacture low-cost titanium metal products. And so there's going to be significant progress really in the next 6 months on that. So -- we've got an exciting, not just this year, but really in the next few months and the next 6 months ahead of us, and we're well placed to do that. So that's good. What else -- so Atlas why it is important? Essentially paraphrasing Atlas and what it does. So the Atlas acquisition it may not -- we're picking up actually a lot of ground with Atlas as well that hasn't been drilled, but the historic mining operations were not that large. It's just that they operated over such a long amount of time that the -- there is a lot of prestripped ground, 180 acres of prestripped ground directly into where we see higher -- typically have seen higher grades in situ. But more importantly, there's a significant amount of tailings, ultra high-grade tailings in stockpiles. But in addition to that, there is -- we are picking up a lot of ground, which has never been tested. So there is a lot of exploration upside as well. So it could end up being as large as what Titan was. We just need to see. But -- in the immediate term, in the next 6 to 12 months, what I believe we'll see from the Atlas acquisition is the ability to turn on a tailings operation, which allows us to get into the market very quickly with product with a very low cost and then expand into the historic mining operations and again very quickly into high-grade operations. And in addition to that, leverage the infrastructure that's already on site. We think that's going to save us tens of millions of dollars in capital as opposed to what we saw in the DFS to build out those utilities and that's already existing there with the Atlas acquisition. So I would expect IRR to be very high on that project. But more importantly and strategically is that we can bring these minerals, these key minerals, especially the heavies to market very quickly for the processing into the magnets needed in the defense and other industries. So Atlas is a key -- has been a key acquisition for us. We think that once we've drilled it and once we've defined the economics around that and the amount of production that we can have and how quickly we can turn it on. And that's -- we're moving at pace to do that. I think that will really shine for what it could do for the U.S. critical mineral supply chain, not just in titanium, but in these other things like heavy rare earth. And then so one of other questions is -- and this is a common question that I had with some people that I talked to after is we did see the reduction in April, mainly in April and May on titanium metal production and how we see ourselves still ramping to 200 metric tons per annum. This is a new process. The equipment is not new that we're using. We're using off-the-shelf equipment that's being tweaked for our process, but this is a new process. The way we've done it and the way we've put all the different equipment together to manufacture our titanium metal products is new. And the science behind it is completely new. It's breakthrough science that wasn't known before the breakthrough science -- before the breakthrough little over a decade ago now. So with any new processes, you have to go tweak it, you have to ramp it. And that's the whole process. That's the whole reason for doing this initial 200 metric tons per annum. It's commercial scale, but it's still just a tip of the iceberg. And it's just a stepping stone in our pathway to making tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of tons of titanium metal product in the future. So with this initial scale, we naturally, as you would expect, you would have some changes to the equipment. And what we saw was some updates to the controls needed for -- to maintain the operations and maintain a high level of ramp-up that we wanted. And so we had to work with the OEM, which -- to update those controls. And while we updated those controls, we had significantly reduced our ability to conduct the HAMR process in the batches that we do it in. Since then, we've ramped that back up, making sure that those controls are in line, making sure that the quality that we want was there. And as of today, we're back up and we're looking to expand over this quarter and continue to hit new highs as we move through this quarter on our march towards what would be 16 metric tons per annum -- per month, which would equate to 200 metric tons per annum. We -- this is -- because it's the batch process, as each batch that we're doing now is coming out -- we've dialed it in, is coming out where we want it to be. We've been able to optimize it. There's still more optimization that will go on. But this isn't a case of a stretch to increase the HAMR powder production. It's just more operations of the furnace from 2 days a week to 3 days a week to 5 days a week to multiple times a day. And that we're going to be progressively ramping up, especially once we get into the fourth quarter. But while we do that, we're also ramping up both the upstream feedstock supply. So we're ramping up some of the upstream processes that we have ahead of the HAMR furnace. And we expect those to be ramped up well in excess of the 200 metric tons per annum in early -- the start of next quarter potentially at the end of this quarter. But more importantly, matching the ability to take that powder and turning into products on the downstream. There's no reason to make all this titanium metal powder. We could sell some of it, probably sell most of it, but there's no reason to do that when -- and not oversupply our downstream, which is still ramping up as well. We need more HSPT furnace capacity, which is coming online this month. We need more ability, which is coming online to take that powder and make it into the products that our customers are asking for today. We -- most of our customers are asking for products. There's some increasingly, especially in the last few months, we've seen an increasing outreach for titanium metal powders, but angular and spherical, but most of the engagements we have is for a final titanium metal product form most of which will need to go through our HSPT furnace capacity. So we're ramping up our powder capacity whilst we also ramp up the downstream ability to take that powder and turn it into the products that we're engaging with the industry on. And in the fourth quarter, we expect that to be fully operational, both from the powder, but also the downstream production side for that titanium metal production. Actually, we aim to have more than enough sintering capacity for the amount of powder that we produce just in case we have additional powder from GenX to come out, which is seeming -- which is increasingly seeming likely. So we're having to sort of match that up, ramp up those operations. And we feel very confident that 200 metric tons of titanium metal powder and that powder turning into products is what we can achieve by the end of this year. And then as we move into 2027 whilst we're doing all of this, we continue with our IBAS expansion. We've been doing a lot of the utility work that's needed for the new equipment that will come in for IBAS which is just an extension of what we've done for the 200 metric tons per annum. And that will -- that is expected to be installed and start commissioning and ramping that up in 2027. So the quarter, I'm very pleased, though, with how my team has grown, how my team has been trained. We are going to have multiple site visits this quarter with investors and other stakeholders from government and customers. And then I'm very proud of showing off what we have here in Virginia and I'm extremely excited to be sharing the upcoming milestones with everyone that's joined on this call. And I look forward to the next time we do this webinar. So with that, I'll sign off. There's a lot of questions that came through. We'll try to eventually get to them over future webinars. But I encourage people to reach directly out to us and ask additional questions, and we'll get back to you as quickly as we can. But we're very excited about our future, and I thank everyone for listening in on the update today. And with that, I'll say goodbye. Thank you, everyone, and have a great rest of your week.