Metallium Limited (MTM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone, to today's webinar for MTM Critical Metals, ASX code MTM. It has been an extremely busy few months for MTM, as many of you would know, with this week being no exception with a number of key announcements being made. Shortly, I'll introduce MTM Managing Director and CEO, Michael Walshe; and Steve Ragiel, President and Managing Director of Flash Metals USA to present and discuss MTM's latest game-changing announcements. At the completion of the formal presentation, both Michael and Steve will be on hand to answer any questions you may have, which you can submit using the Q&A function on your screen. Without further ado, I'd like to now introduce Michael and Steve, who will run through the formal presentation. And as I said, be available at the end to answer any questions you may have. Michael, Steve, over to you.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Michael Walshe, CEO at MTM. And today's session, we'll provide a focused look at how we're commercializing this truly disruptive technology for metal recovery. And the main emphasis today really is on the business model, the commercial rollout and the significant progress we've made to date in securing long-term feedstock. I'm not sure, David, are you sharing the slides? I don't see the slides on the screen.

You see those, Michael. We've just moved through to the Who is MTM slide.

For some reason, I don't see it. Okay. So MTM, we're commercializing this truly disruptive technology, Flash Joule Heating. And I've covered the technology in detail in previous webinars. And we have a real exciting opportunity here. We've got 2 main business businesses that we're going after: Waste and Mineral Processing. So 2 quite discrete different businesses with huge opportunities. Right now, we're focusing on the high-value waste streams because that's going to give us the most immediate path to commercialization. And the technology, we've already demonstrated that it's very effective on several different feedstocks, including gold-rich e-scrap, refinery waste and mineral concentrates like rare earths and spodumene and also recently red mud, and really, the proposition here is to onshore metal recovery to the U.S. and also to the wider Western world. And we can achieve this, we believe, in a quite rapid fashion compared to many similar technologies like hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy, which typically would require much bigger footprints and capital to achieve what we're doing. Next slide, please. David, sorry, I'm not seeing the slides.

Michael, it's the technology history.

Yes. Just briefly, this has been covered before, but we've licensed this technology from Rice University in Texas. And the inventor is Dr. James Tour. He's previously had lots of success on the ASX with Weebit Nano and a different technology, flash memory. And we've licensed it for all metal recovery applications. The technology was originally invented for graphene production from plastic wastes. And that company has license that technology for graphene, they're called Universal Matter. They're based in Toronto, and they've already achieved 1 tonne per day type scale, which is commercial for graphene. And we've got the additional chemistry, proprietary chemistry, on top of that electrical heating, rapid electrical heating that allows us to really game change how metals are recovered from these different feedstocks. And we've -- as I said, we've got the long-term exclusive license that runs for at least 20 years for the technology, and it's covered very heavily by lots of different patents. So the IP is really well protected. Next slide, please. We could skip these slides. Most people know about the what we're trying to do here. We're trying to essentially beat the incumbent techniques, which haven't really changed for many decades in metal processing and recovery. Next slide, please. And please, just go to the business model slide because we've covered the technology really in detail in previous webinars. So the business model really now we have established is around 2 core business units, mineral processing and waste streams, as I said. So with the urban mining waste processing, we're focused on primarily technology metals like gallium, germanium, indium and tin and electronic waste, which is rich in copper and gold. And the -- we've already got partnerships on both of these with Indium Corporation and 2 major U.S. recycling companies, which we've just announced this week. They supply long-term binding supply agreements which is very exciting for us. And that business model will really be where MTM is in complete control of its own destiny. We will -- these high-value waste streams like printed circuit boards or this refinery scrap we will have a build on operating model for our plants, particularly in the U.S. where domestic sourcing and tariffs incentives gives us a real massive edge, and we will control the full economics. On the mineral processing side, we will have probably a different or a hybrid model where it will be primarily a technology licensing and tolling type model and probably have hybrids in certain cases where partners like Vedanta and the rare earths company that we've been dealing with for months, the lithium companies that we're also dealing with, that they will likely purchase the plant outright, and we would provide the services and ongoing running up the plant for them in exchange for licensing fees and potentially share in the revenue as well. And the markets in each of these are really massive essentially. And we will only really be tapping into the at least in the early stages when we're at these lower tonnages, we won't be moving the market essentially. Next slide, please. And so the feedstocks that we're focusing on, really, as I mentioned, we're focusing on these high-value feedstocks right now. We've got this access to this really high-value in-situ material, gallium, germanium waste from Indium Corp. who are a major refiner of these technology metals for the semiconductor markets and the broader e-waste markets. They also trade in lots of different metals such as gold, tin, which we're also separately talking to them about our ongoing agreement that we hope to be combining in the coming weeks. And the refocus feedstocks are this gallium germanium waste, these high gold content, high copper content e-waste and also the mineral concentrates. This demo plant that we're building is going to be designed so that they can accommodate all 3 different streams. And on this high-value waste streams, we think that we can really have a commercial proposition even with the 1 tonne per day that we're currently designing our plan for. Next slide, please. And in terms of the in-situ value of these materials, just based on current spot prices, it's really enormous for some of these materials to see, but based on the European gallium and germanium current pricing from fast markets, the in-situ value of the scrap that we have is almost $1 million per tonne. So it's off the charts in terms of in-situ value. Same goes for that indium scrap, which is indium-, tin-, bismuth-rich scrap as well. The gold-rich e-waste, we put out some results this week on a very particular type of e-waste that we've sourced from a U.S. domestic client who has a separate process for removing the plastics. And that's essentially concentrated the metals. And the metal content is off the charts in terms of gold content. You see 550 grams per tonne, which is orders of magnitude more than any typical ore body. So we're very excited about that particular proposition. That particular client, we also hope to have more binding-type supply agreement in the coming months. And we're also jointly applying for some DoD funding with that particular client. So that's all news to come in the coming weeks. And then a typical e-waste, we've secured over 1,000 tonnes per annum of e-waste from 2 major recycling companies. And I'll get on to that in more detail, but we're very excited about that. And we're also still working with these mining companies regarding the mineral concentrates. And obviously, dealing with these bigger companies and it's just a slower proposition to come to a situation where we're allowed to announce things publicly. But we're still heavily working on all of these types of applications. Next slide, please. Just to briefly explain the e-waste business model from a very, very high-level perspective. Now these numbers are completely indicative. But this is what we believe is the proposition for an e-waste type business where there'll be an in-situ value of the metals based on either spot pricing or an index. And this is widely used in the industry. We're very fortunate to have one of the most experienced guys in the waste industry, Steve, who's on the line here. He's got over 30 years in the recycling space. He's run the biggest waste companies recycling division in the world, Waste Management Inc.'s recycling business, and he's built several of these recycling plants around the world. So this is the man we need to negotiate these types of agreements, and we're very fortunate that we've had them to allow us to secure these 2 agreements. So in a nutshell, the feedstock will have an in-situ value of metal. And currently, these recycling companies are only getting paid a very small fraction by these smelters that they offshore the material to in Asia and is typically between 10% and 20% of the in-situ metal value. The smelters have a complete monopoly and these guys know but they can't do anything about it. So the proposition that we're saying is we'll pay you for much more of the metal content. And that's the attractiveness for dealing with us. So there's a purchase cost of the feedstock, which is significantly less than the in-situ value. And then there will be some losses from recovery and being conservative, assuming a 15% loss, which we've demonstrated this week that we can get 100% for some of the precious metals. And then there'll be losses from payability because at the moment, we're making metal chlorides. And some of these metal chlorides are actually as valuable or even more valuable than the metal itself. So between that -- between the in-situ value and the losses, there's still -- we recommend at least a 50% gross margin spread, not accounting for any operational or other costs, but that's really attractive for any type of model, which we're currently prosecuting. And this, we hope, will also be the same for the gallium proposition and the germanium proposition and the indium proposition. So yes, we think that the economics around what we're trying to do are going to be very attractive. And we'll clarify all this once we can go binding with some of these partners that we're currently dealing with. Next slide, please. Now the -- I won't spend -- please skip this. We all know how big the market is and how the growth and the CAGR is involved in some of these e-waste propositions and AI. So data centers and AI are really going to increase the amount of e-waste that's available and also demand for these technology metals. And e-waste itself, it's -- there's only about 15% of electronic scrap that's currently known to be recycled, a large amount of it is just on accounted for. And there's huge volume. I think it's currently about 80 million tonnes per annum. It's estimated of e-waste generated globally, and that figure is obviously just increasing the adoption of data centers and AI. Next slide, please. Just a quick slide on the this ultra high-value material that we've got very high recoveries from. So this is the material that we're in a partnership at the moment with a U.S. company. They're confidential in terms of naming them and such, but we're very excited about this because of the high-caliber nature of this feedstock. And they cook off the plastics and make a syngas and then we take that and we recover the metals as metal chlorides. And next slide, please. So just the next slide again, again, please. So just a very topical position, but I think most people would be aware tariff chaos at the moment. And the real strategic vulnerability is that most of the world's metals are refined in China, and this has been ongoing since the late 1970s, where the West has essentially offshored most of the manufacturing to China. China, I think, will, by 2030, the manufacturer for, in terms of all goods, about 50% of all global goods manufactured. So it's a crazy amount of concentration in 1 country. Clearly, the tit-for-tat that's going on at the moment with the U.S., the Trump is obviously not very happy about the current situation. He's trying to rectify it. But for some of these metals like rare earths, all the value is already captured by Chinese processors, all the downstream, the separation, the metallization, the alloying and the magnet making for rare earths, for example, it's all heavily concentrated in China. There is a U.S. company that's intending to replicate this and build a full-on magnet-making facility in Texas, and that's quite exciting. But outside of that, there's no other real option for separation for a lot of these metals, including gallium, germanium, where exclusively China is the downstream processor of them. So I think we've got a real exciting opportunity here, and we're speaking to the DoD about potential grants and potential different things for some of these metals that they are very acutely aware that they're strategically vulnerable. We spent a week in Austin with the DoD about 3 weeks ago, and we've got lots of really good context there, and we're hoping that, that would bear some fruits in the coming months. Next slide, please. And just a brief mention of the tariff situation. We -- like there's obviously existing tariffs on a lot of these metals. And China has recently banned the export of a lot of these kind of a tit for tat. But if Trump is really true to his word, and even like this is changing daily, it's now 145%, not 125% as shown on the slide. So it's technically anything that happened, but we think that we're in a really unique position that we're completely sheltered from any of this. We're actually a solution to tariff situations for metals for many of these strategic metals. So we think people understand that story and what we're bringing to the table, we think we'll get a lot more interest in particular, in the U.S. Next slide, please. And yes, most of the metals that we're dealing with, we think that we've got a very low risk from any tariff-related impacts. Next slide, please. And as mentioned, there is a real strong onshoring element to this current administration. There's executive orders about increasing mineral production. And I think this is only going to increase, especially considering that the defense budget has been massively increased. And the -- accordingly, the requirement for some of these metals is going to probably go exponential in cases like gallium and germanium is what we're being told. Next slide, please. Next again. And just to underpin the caliber of the our team here, KnightHawk Engineering are now a real part of our team. They are our engineering team essentially. They've got over 30 years' experience. These are the guys that they call in for any really complicated engineering task. They were a major contributor to that Deepwater Horizon big litigation case because of the expertise within the team. Their clients include NASA, Rio Tinto, Sasol, Texaco. And they're called in when other bigger firms can't achieve or can't solve a problem. So we're very fortunate to have these guys. They've been involved since the very beginning. They were originally brought on by the early vendors of the technology to study whether this technology from its humble lab beginnings at Rice could be commercialized. And they've been involved since the very beginning. Notably, while they've recently taken skin in the game, so in lieu of their engineering fees and costs, they've taken an equity stake in MTM. So we're very happy with them. Next slide, please. And we're -- right now, we're in the prototyping stage, and our prototype is shown here on the screen, the current version, which we're tweaking all the time, of course, in the prototyping stage, but this is the machine that we're using to get all these fantastic recoveries and results. And this is the foundation for the full-scale design. And the pilot plant we hope to be in construction by about August, September this year and essentially commissioned by the end of the year. So it's a very aggressive schedule, but we believe we can meet that. And the original design capacity for the plant is 1 tonne per day. But based on some recent developments, we believe we can significantly increase that given this -- on the same CapEx and the same unit, we can get that up quite significantly. And we effectively hope to be in commercial production and cash flow by 2026. So we would hopefully then completely be in different eyes and have essentially trade with some kind of an industrial multiple on the stock. Next slide, please. As mentioned briefly, the technology has already been scaled up. The core electrical heating part of the technology has been scaled up by a sister company, Universal Matter, based in Toronto. I visited this plant as part of my DD before I agreed to join. I originally was brought on to the company as an adviser and reviewer because of my background in mineral processing technology. And part of my DD before taking this role is visiting this plant. Once I saw how well the plant was built and run and effective that, that would give me credence and happiness to take on the CEO position at MTM. So effectively, the technology has been derisked in terms of scale up. And yes, that's why we're very happy that we've now got this design underway to get into production by December. Next slide, please. And the reason we think we can get into production is because we're focusing on the many available industrial sites within Houston, Texas that are available that have all the services we need like power permitting, in particular, is the key one. So waste, permitting and air permitting. So we've got several short-listed sites that are under review at the moment, and there's just one example on the left-hand side. And that's why we believe we can get fast track into production by the end of the year. Steve is hotly on this case. Next slide, please. And one more, please. And just to underpin that how we are really derisked right now. We've got 1 billion companies who are already backing us. So we've got Vedanta, who's the Rio Tinto of India, the biggest alumina producer in India and also one of the big top 10 mining companies globally. So they've had a red mud problem for several decades, and the Indian government is essentially forcing them to do something about it. So that's why they're looking for technologies. They've been studying this for years. They've never had a real economic means of pulling the iron out of red mud, which is the key issue with red mud. The iron locks up all the other valuable metals like alumina and titanium. There's still about 20% alumina and about 7% titanium within many red mud deposits. And the proposition here is to remove the iron, which we've done and demonstrated. And then you can recycle and recover the alumina and titanium. In saying that as well, though, that when you remove the iron to a certain level, it actually becomes suitable as an additive for what they call green cement. It effectively means you can use less clinker, which is the most CO2 intensive part of the whole cement process. Clinker is one of the most CO2 pollution processes -- producing clinker is one of the most CO2 producing processes globally. It's about 7% of global CO2 emissions. So it's a very exciting proposition to be able to remove red mud. And all the alumina companies have this issue, and we're talking to several of them, both in Brazil and the U.S. Next slide, please. Yes, as I mentioned, Indium Corp., so we're very excited about what this particular relationship holds. These are, as I mentioned, one of the biggest players in the Western world in terms of refined technology metals, particularly for their semiconductor clients based in Taiwan and Europe. And we had them visit our site about 4 weeks ago. And the -- we're getting into the nitty-gritty now of trying to work out a binding both supply and an offtake agreement. So obviously, that's -- won't be done overnight, but we're getting very close, we believe. And Steve is off to visit them, I think, next week or the week after to meet their CEO. So we're very excited about what that particular relationship holds. Next slide, please. And why we're excited is because of the grade and high caliber of the material available. Like if you just look at the gallium and germanium, in terms of its in-situ value compared to where the metals come from these ores, they are minor byproduct of either bauxite or zinc ores, where they're a ppm 10, 50, 100 ppm level, same for indium. There's no naturally occurring stand-alone deposits for these metals. And we've got material that's several orders of magnitude higher in terms of grade. Indium, this is a waste material. So the gallium, germanium paste is a waste from their refinery process that they currently just have sitting on the shelf in their warehouse that they cannot recover the metals from. And they're very excited that we've been able to recover those metals. We had them visit the plants, and they witnessed a test in the flesh, and we now hope to get a binding both supply of the feedstock the refinery waste and also an uptake for the products that we make. So very exciting times ahead for that. Next slide, please. I mentioned Vedanta. We've got an MOU with them. We're very excited about that as well. And we hope that will soon lead to a more advanced stage, and we'll be able to comment more on that in the future. And one more slide, please. And the main news of this week is, look, we're very excited about finally being able to secure feedstock so with any recycling proposition, securing quality feedstock is the main hurdle. And we've now managed to lock in 2 of the biggest players. It's again down to Steve's relationships in the industry, and he's known these guys, some of them, I think, for nearly 20 years. So it's all on the back of relationships that we've managed to secure 2 of the biggest players. And incredibly, we've actually managed to put penalties in the -- performance penalties for -- to guarantee reliability of feedstock. That's very rare that someone of these guys' caliber and size would agree to something like that, but it's just, again, a testament to Steve's negotiation skills in the space. And these guys witnessed the test results that we're getting. And these guys are effectively getting screwed by the smelters that they're selling this material to in Asia. They're going to get paid a smaller fraction. They currently get about $1,000 or $1,500 a tonne for the material. And some of the in-situ values can be like $15,000 a tonne or even $20,000 a tonne for the high gold content material. So there's a huge margin discrepancy with what the Asian smelters are charging them. And the compelling reason to deal with MTM is that we keep the material onshore. We said, keep Mr. Trump happy. You avoid the middleman in between. You don't have the huge carbon cost of shipping the material over halfway around the world and effectively capture more margin and value. So this is really key to derisking our business model, and we have now 1,100 tonnes per year committed from these guys. And we believe we can comfortably achieve 1,100 tonnes per year in our -- or we're calling it 1 tonne per day, but as I said, we think we can get a lot more capacity from that machine. And we can comfortably prosecute 1,100 tonnes per annum by just adding a separate line -- to having effectively 2 lines of our 1 tonne per day current design. So very excited about what that holds. Next slide, please. And then yes, lots of news flow still to come for the remainder of 2025. We'll keep putting out test work updates. We've got a huge queue of material to test like antimony and niobium, et cetera. And we'll be putting out regular updates as we go. We're working on at least probably 10 different strategic collaborations with all different types of feedstock players, and I obviously can't comment too much, but we're not going to be short in terms of collaboration news flow still to come. And we will also be putting out more refined business model updates. So people can -- analysts can actually start to put numbers on our business model. And then as the pilot plant is getting constructed, we'll be putting out regular updates. Site selections, as I mentioned, we hope we're quite close on a few sites. We've shortlisted 4, and we hope to be able to secure those in the coming weeks. And with the DoD, we've now got 3 different lines of attack into the Department of Defense for different types of grant funding. And obviously, dealing with any type of government agency will be slow, but we've made great progress since our Austin, Texas visit a couple of weeks ago. And by the end of the year, we're still -- it's an aggressive schedule. We still hope to be commissioning by around December this year, and then effectively in commercial production on the gallium, germanium, and potentially gold-rich e-waste by Q1, Q2 next year. So super exciting. And one final slide. Effectively, we think we're a huge hedge on this current tariff chaos. And we know the markets are crazy. We're ignoring that at the moment. We've got a healthy cash position. We have no need to raise any capital right now. And we've got strong validation from big, huge multibillion-dollar companies. We're hoping as well that we will be able to secure nondilutive funding from some of these players that we're dealing with or from some local economic development authorities in Texas to support or effective bring jobs into these areas where the plants have been mothballed. We've got a very disruptive technology. It's effectively acid-free metal recovery, which is very attractive for a lot of companies to get away from sulfuric acid. And we think it's a very attractive entry point right now, low enterprise value. We've got plenty of cash in the bank and lots of catalysts coming. So I'd like to effectively finish there and if there's any questions.

Thanks, Michael. Great presentation, very comprehensive, and hopefully gives shareholders and those looking to invest the information they need to make those decisions. Now before we jump into the Q&A, and we do have a stack of questions. It is probably remiss of me not to introduce formally Steve, who has been sitting there patiently and taking it all in. And for many of those who are on the call today, probably haven't met or heard from Steve. So Steve, before we jump into the Q&A, I'm wondering if you give maybe a quick snapshot on your experience in this space. But probably more importantly, what attracted you to MTM?

Thanks, David. Appreciate it. I'm Steve Ragiel. I'm based in Houston, Texas, have a background in chemical engineering. I've spent, as Michael said, 30 years in the recycling industry operated and was responsible for Waste Management Inc.'s $1 billion a year recycle processing business with over 80 operating sites in the U.S. And I also was fortunate enough to spend 5 years working with Waste Management International in Europe and was able to bring a lot of European technology back to the U.S. as part of that. I've been CEO of a number of private equity-backed engagements with successful exits. And now I've been with MTM for about a year. And the main thing that interested me most is the disruptive nature of the technology. And as we've learned more about it and finished up our designs, it's very clear that our approach is for extracting metals is a 3- or 4-step process where most typical hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical processes are 15, 20, 25 steps. And our energy usage is going to be significantly lower than those other legacy processes. Our acid and reagent uses are 90%, 95% lower, maybe 100% lower. And overall, we can deploy in a much smaller scale. So our capital intensity is lower and our speed to providing processing capacity to our customers is actually very fast.

And Steve, Michael touched on it in the presentation, and there's a stack of questions in relation to this. But you've been on the other side. So you've worked in e-waste, you've worked in recycling, you've run extremely large operations in this space. So you know the language. You know what the recyclers and the e-waste producers are looking for. Is it about providing them more value for the waste and the recycling intake that they're getting? As Michael mentioned, rather than just sending it on a boat off to a foreign land and getting sort of cents in the dollar, is the opportunity for them and the reason why they're running towards this technology, the fact that they can see they're actually going to see some real value from this product?

Yes. That's a very good way to describe it. The value is there, and we are rewarding them with incentives for long-term security of supply to us, so long-term supply contracts. So we are able to pay above market rates at this time for the inbound scrap, which is important to them. The more important thing is they're very frustrated at this time because the information they get back from the computer scrap and the printed circuit board scrap that they supply out to global smelters, the information flow is fairly opaque, and they're not comfortable that they're getting really, really accurate and consistent data back on what truly is in their scrap, what metals are contained. And they're very excited in working with us on getting the data on the assays, not just for gold and silver and copper and palladium on the electronic scrap, but other metals like tin and copper and things that they're not necessarily getting paid fully on today or not getting paid at all. So it's a combination of increased value, for sure, increased information and transparency on what they are supplying and the value of it. And then there's a speed aspect, which today, when they ship materials for smelting overseas, it could take them 2, 3, 4 months to close out a transaction. And with us, the expectation is they'll close it out in 2 or 3 weeks, which, from a cash flow point of view and an ability to deal effectively with their supply customers is a huge advantage.

Thanks for that, Steve. And hopefully, for those watching now, they have an insight to why Steve's part of the team and a key part of the team and is driving a lot of the deal making with the recycling groups. Now I will jump into the large number of questions that have come through. And I'll let Michael and Steve, you guys sort of fight over them as they come through. First question. Are the latest recovery figures from e-waste, the figures for 1 tonne of PSB or are they the figures from 1 tonne of PSD after the syngas process?

So the results that we put out this week are from the process where the plastics -- most of the plastics have been removed to make a syngas. And then we've got that concentrated char, they call it. It's gone through a gasification process. And we're -- effectively, it's not combustion. It's where you limit the amount of oxygen so that you get a gasification reaction to go. And so the carbon goes to CO, carbon monoxide and the hydrogen goes to H2 as opposed to H2O or you don't fully oxidize the materials like a combustion process would. And then that char material, it's rich in the metal fraction that we tested. And that's the material with the 500 grams per tonne of gold. But the incoming feedstock was still quite substantial in gold content, I believe, it's over 300 grams per tonne on the inbound. So still a very rich feedstock in terms of gold content. And it all depends, the e-waste it's very particular to the source of the e-waste. So is it a telecommunication source? Is it a phone source versus a printed circuit board? So there's various nuances and even within the particular type of printed circuit board. So that's why we were very focused on getting these supply agreements from people who can give us a very consistent supply of the same material. And how we plan to incentivize these guys to give us a consistent supply of the same material is to give them a portion, not much with a share in the economics. So instead of paying, say, 10% for the in-situ value metal content, we might give them 20% as a long-term incentive. Does that make sense?

Hopefully, it makes sense for the person who asked the question. Why was there a recovery of 300 grams gold per tonne in the September '24 test work? What is the reason for the increase in grade? Is it higher quality of raw material?

Just different feedstocks. As mentioned, the 500 grams is the stuff that's been effectively concentrated because the plastic portion has been removed. And the original material was just us flashing as a proof of concept, just raw printed circuit boards without any plastic removal step, just as a proof of concept. So that was the original test work. And we will now, in our own process, obviously put in a plastic removal step upfront to concentrate because you get much better recoveries. So effectively different feedstocks. And it was a different point in our evolution in terms of the technology and prototypes capability as well. So the current version is much more optimized than the version we were testing October last year.

Will the 1 tonne per day capacity of the factory be enough to process 1,100 tonnes of e-waste per year?

Yes, I kind of touched on this. But based on the current recent design, we effectively our reactor are crucible. We've been playing around with different diameter sizes. And we believe that from the same CapEx that we've penciled in, which is very modest for this 1 tonne per day, we can potentially increase that capacity by quite a significant amount. I don't know, Steve, do you want to comment a bit more on the specifics. Look, we're not going to put out anything concrete on this, but it's -- we believe that we will only need at maximum most 1 other line of -- just for the reactor, not for the feedstock and gas product handling. We just need to replicate the reactor times to achieve the CapEx. Steve, do you want to add a bit of extra flavor on that?

Yes. I think you hit the nail on the head, Michael. In the last month or 5 weeks, as we've been working on our individual reactor sizes, we've had a lot of success with slightly larger reactors and medium-sized reactors, which means that our initial plant will do more than the original capacity. So we feel very comfortable that with 2 lines, we can get to the 1,200 tonnes. And it looks like we may even get there with 1 line. So that's all going to be set in stone here in the next 60 days, and we'll be ready to run end of December.

And yes, that's why the numbers are very specific in these agreements. They weren't just random numbers in terms of the tonnages that we put in there.

Question here. How do you see the commercial utilization? I know you touched on it in your presentation, but how do you see the commercial utilization of the FJH technology? Do you plan to grant annual perpetual licenses for specific countries? Or will it be for specific metals? Or will it be a plant technology mix?

So I did briefly mentioned this. So there's 2 different business units that we're building the business around. There's the urban mining waste recycling and there's the mineral processing. So for the urban mining, that will be a Build-Own-Operate where we will own the plant outright. And maybe that might be in partnership with one of the recycling companies or likes of Indium Corp. might be part on the plant, but we effectively own the full economics of the metals recovered. And we do pay for the feedstock, but we effectively own most of the economics. Therefore, the mineral processing applications like red mud and these applications, which will likely regard much bigger tonnages, that will be like a toll processing and technology licensing type model where the client will pay for the CapEx, and we will supply the services, but we'll charge a licensing fee per tonne of material, and it's effectively like a royalty model. Also different jurisdictions, we will probably have hybrid models. So in more challenging jurisdictions, I suppose, where we wouldn't necessarily want to be operating ourselves, we could effectively look at the licensing model as well. But fundamentally, 2 different models: Build-Own-Operate for the high-value waste; and it's a toll processing licensing agreement for the mineral processing red mud-type applications.

You touched on indium. How is that collaboration progressing? And are there any other collaborations that are sort of in the wings?

I'll just -- as mentioned, there's about at least 10 different collaborations that we're currently working on different feedstocks, different applications, but there's no shortage of interest. And indium, as I mentioned, that's really great. They came down to the plant about 4 weeks ago, Steve took it out to the rodeo to show them what real Texas experience is like. And we're now getting to the nitty-gritty of working at both the supply agreement for the different feedstocks. There are several different feedstocks that we're talking to about. The refinery waste, the semiconductor scrap, the wafer scrap from their big client base, like Taiwan Semiconductor, for example, a lot of scrap out there that could be processed. And then there's also offtakes, not just for the gallium, germanium, indium material, they're also actually interested in the metals from e-waste like gold and tin, which they also actually do use and trade. So it's very interesting that there's 2 potential avenues with indium to go both on the electronic waste offtakes and the gallium germanium indium offtakes. But yes, progressing really well. Steve is off to visit them, I believe, next week or the week after to meet the CEO.

Question here, quite a direct question. Can you advise when revenue from the recycling business is expected to commence?

Look, we can't obviously make any definitive statements here, but the plan is we do hope by H1 next year that we will be producing cash because we're effectively -- we are going to have the plant up and running, and we've got the feedstock secured. So yes, in H1 next year, we'll hopefully be producing cash. Obviously, I can't put out any formal statements to the ASX because of all the various reasons, but that's the current plan.

A technical question here. So hopefully, I'm not getting you both on the spot. Can you explain how or why the metal chlorides are higher value compared to the final metal products?

In some cases, from our very, I suppose, brief research, some of these metal products like the germanium chloride, effectively, is more valuable than the metal because germanium chloride has a very specific use within the electronics industry. And if we can produce a germanium chloride at a high purity, it can be effectively bolted in this existing process without the need for that particular user to turn the metal or the oxide into a chloride, if that makes sense. Gold chloride is also, we believe, almost as valuable as the pure metal itself. But look, we will clarify all this. We are also studying different options to turn our metal chlorides into a more separated and different form in terms of solid type products as well. So lots of work by the engineering team in the U.S. under way. I should mention, we've recently hired a PhD student, now graduated person who's done his PhD on Flash Joule Heating, and this is one of his projects is to go to the next step in terms of our flow sheet development and turning these different chlorides into more separated products.

You touched on your presentation site selection and particularly looking at the existing brownfields industrial sites. Is that to provide an environmental benefit or a permitting benefit?

Steve?

Yes, I'll take that one. It's really not an environmental benefit because the sites are clean, and we are not going to be emitting significant amounts of material. It has more to do with speed to market, and we're fortunate that we're putting our first plant in an area where there are a significant number of pre-existing buildings and industrial sites that are available kind of in the petrochemical complex. So we have 3 or 4 sites that we've narrowed it down to, and we're talking to different municipalities about economic development incentives and working through the exact best site of the 4 to choose. But we'll know -- I'd say we'll probably know within 60 days, maybe 70 days, which site we're going to choose. And speed to market is super important. And most of these sites have existing electrical power, existing permits, and just the infrastructure we want, so we don't have to spend a lot of time seeking new permits or putting in additional buildings or infrastructure.

I'll just mention that the plan for these sites is actually to have like effectively a technology campus where we have our ongoing lab and R&D in one branch of the building and then the processing of the different feedstock in separate arms. So it's going to be effectively a campus.

An eagle-eyed, I should say, shareholder has picked up that some time ago, you did mention site selection, hopefully, would be in Q2 of '25, and it now looks like Q3. Is that just about finding the right site? But also does it have any impact at all on the actual delivery of the pilot plant?

Yes. Equipment delivery will start happening in October and November and building it together and bumping motors. So as long as we have the site all in order here in the next 60 or 70 days, we'll still have a very good cushion. And we do have one particular site that we like, but we've decided it would be best for the business to have a competition amongst these sites to see which municipalities will provide us the best and most interesting incentives for the long-term economic performance of the business.

Question here in relation to grants, DoE and DoD. You did mention it in the presentation. How receptive are each of those groups to supporting MTM and its plans? And when and what do you think grants could look like?

So we have 2. We have a DOE grant application pending, and we have a DoD grant application along with Rice University pending. And then we're having conversations about much larger grants with the DoD. Actually, as Michael mentioned, we have 2 or 3 conversations going on there. So I would say as a general comment that the DoD is reorganizing and kind of resetting itself in terms of apportioning dollars that were already budget for this year. And from what we can see, the focus now is higher on sourcing supply of critical metals, critical materials. So it feels like we have a tailwind, and all of those things are looking good. It's still -- it's -- as everyone knows, working with the government could take a little longer than expected. So it may be something that doesn't happen for a couple of months or until the end of the year. But regardless, we think it's a very important step, and we're pushing forward with it.

Just touching on the macro situation in the U.S. There's been a lot said, written about tariffs and the impact on tariffs, everything else. Are the clients that you're dealing with impacted by tariffs? And do you think you provide an economic solution to some of the impacts they may be feeling?

It's interesting. In the last 2 weeks, we've had a lot of inbound calls about our industrial partners that we're dealing with directly. They have their customers that they supply products to asking for service to do end-of-life recycling or production scrap recycling domestically because they're seeing that if they send their production scrap or their end-of-life materials export and then they want to get the metals back that they're being potentially hit with strong tariffs. So there's a very interesting and strong undercurrent of wanting to onshore processing of U.S.-produced production scrap and U.S.-produced end-of-life materials. But Michael, over to you on that one.

Yes. I was going to say, in Indium Corp., for example, they have, I believe, 2 sources for their metals. They effectively buy 2 end purity metals, gallium, germanium and tin, and all these other metals from either operators in Europe or China. And regardless of who they will be buying from, they're going to be hit with tariffs, obviously, and much more so if the material comes from China. So I think that's why there's been a renewed interest from Indium in like effectively getting this deal signed as quick as possible. That's why it's now with the CEO. But at the end, they are definitely going to be impacted because they exclusively import either from Europe or China. And the same goes for some of these other clients that I can't mention right now, but we think that there's a lot of uncertainty about where the tariff situation will go. But regardless, the main message we want to underline is that what we're trying to do is onshoring in the U.S., and we're a hedge against any tariff. And because we've got this multi-metal applicability, we think that's a real moat around the business. So even if some metal crashes in terms of market interest, we don't necessarily have to put all our destiny on that particular metal. We can effectively pivot. And the modular nature of the plant is really suitable to processing different feedstocks. So we're a tariff hedge.

A question then on the plant. So Slide 7, this is a question. Slide 7 shows a 1 to 10 tonne per day operation. Is the 10 tonne per day design in the works? Are there any major engineering challenges that need to be overcome to make this happen? And how large might the economies of scale be with this higher throughput?

Look, I'm not going to say anything definitive here, but we -- yes, believe we can comfortably get to 10 tonnes per day of incoming feedstock with the current design without much additional CapEx. But I don't want to say anything until we've got that more concrete and put something out to the market. But yes, we definitely can comfortably achieve that capacity with very modest CapEx.

I've got a few more questions, so we'll try and get through them as quick as we can. One of the next steps with the gallium opportunity, are you going to have offtake in supply agreements and volumes confirmed?

Well, yes, that's the main ambition over the coming weeks. We're now at that point of negotiating this particular binding type agreement, both for the supply of the different feedstocks, the refinery waste that's rich in gallium, germanium, and the potential gallium wafer scrap from Indium's clients. And then there's also the offtake. So both of those are under discussion. And we put our initial ask to them, and we're just waiting on our response.

And talking about cash, how far will the current cash on hand take the company towards first payables?

Yes. No, we're very comfortable in cash position. We're putting out the quarterly probably today or tomorrow or Monday. And we've got over $10 million left in the bank, and that does see us out through the end of the year. We've already spent about probably 25% of the planned CapEx for the plant and less from the engineering side of things. So yes, we're very comfortable to get to the end of the year and build this plant with the current cash.

I've got a question here that I will ask, but I do understand you may not be in a position to answer, but we'll give it a go. Could you please step through the cost stack and reiterate what losses from payability are? And also, how you look at the rest of the cost stack? And if, for example, the reactor costs x per tonne based on power consumptions, how can we start looking at this?

Yes. We've outlined a very basic way to look at the gross margin before you account for operational costs. So the payability is, I suppose, it's unknown at this stage. We will know more once we negotiate these binding agreements as to what purity level we need to achieve for the particular contract for indium, for example. But if we assume like a payability -- reduced payability of between 10% and 15%, that's what that particular slide shows. So that's to account for if you look at the spot metal price and what the material we're making is in that difference. And we don't believe that the discrepancy is going to be large at all. And we can -- we are looking at ways to effectively go to finished metal if we need to. We don't believe...

Yes. And Michael, we should mention, too, that on a number of the grades we're aware at this point that we'll be getting above index. So a bigger, higher revenue bar in that graph rather than a discount. So...

Do you want to try to explain that more, Steve? Just to really underline it.

Yes. When we produce our metals, some of them are already in the form that our customers are seeking. Saying it another way, metal chloride is what they want, their target material. And the market many times will trade and pay for that metal above the published index, so an index plus, which is quite common. So even though in the model, we're showing a discount to index, in effect, some of these grades will get paid at least index, and in some cases, more than index.

Do you want to just explain the typical recycling model gross margin spread and how it works?

Yes. I would think the most important thing to say about the model is it's a hedged out, it's a fully hedged out market, meaning -- it's a fully hedged out model, meaning that as commodity prices go down, we pay less for our inbound raw materials and we maintain a minimum gross margin spread per tonne or per pound. As the commodity prices go up, we'll pay a little bit more for our raw material, our inbound scrap and will widen that spread a little bit. We share extra dollars as the market goes up. But at the end of the day, we have a minimum gross margin spread that we have the ability to manage to. The other interesting thing about the buy-sell process in these markets is that we're going to be paying for the actual percent composition that's in the scrap. So we'll do an assay, and we pay the supply customer based on the actual contained metal that we've received which is those 2 things together is very important. And Michael and I describe it as a hedged out business model. So...

Steve, do you want to mention about how we're not taking a lot of balance sheet risk in securing the feedstock and having to pay for a huge amount of feedstock upfront?

Yes. In today's world, a lot of the material will come in and partial payment will be made by a smelter upfront and then the final payment won't be made for 3 or 4 months. Our cash flow dynamics are such that we'll be paying our supply customers in the range of net 30 days after arrival of materials into our plant and we'll be processing and selling materials within a very similar time frame, possibly a week later. So our net working capital requirements are not very large compared to other smelting operations.

The bottom line is we do believe that on these high-value waste, there will be a substantial margin.

Yes. Yes. And it's built in by the way. In the format that we buy the material in and that the market is used to, there's a built-in margin. And we're fortunate in that our power costs, reagent costs and net capital costs are much lower than the competition. So the margin side of it looks very attractive.

Last couple of questions. One in particular, quite technical. If you're buying at the high-value material and competing with smelters, are you paying on assay?

Yes. We will do our inbound assays, and we'll pay them based on what we have received. One of the big difference is that we don't have 2 or 3 months of freight and receiving and freight inland transport, we're able to land the material pretty quickly from domestic sources into Texas, assay them and turn them around and process them very quickly. So we are going to be able to pay off of assay and pay fairly quickly because our production will follow the assay very shortly after.

Steve, just how we differentiate from that typical e-waste smelter. Those -- you can't just turn on an office smelter and you can't ramp up the volumes. It has to be a very consistent operation for these very, very large $1 billion-plus type operations. So they have to have a huge amount of waste on hand at all times. And you can't just turn it up and down based on market dynamics. So we are a modular design, much, much smaller in scale, and that's what we -- our working capital is -- much of our working capital needs are much lower than a typical e-waste smelter.

Just touching on that. A question has just come through. Can you explain why the working capital is large for others? Is it processing time? Is it the CapEx to build a big operation? Is it a mixture of all of those things?

Yes. Look, they're generally very centralized, very large operations. And as mentioned, once you turn on a smelter and get it up to throughput and temperature, you have to maintain it at that particular set point. And it sometimes takes months to cool down a smelter to do internal refurbishments. So that they have to maintain a very consistent flow. They also have to have huge amounts of feedstock to feed these monstrous plants as well. So our needs in terms of feedstock supply are much, much lower than millions of tonnes per annum type operation in Asia.

Michael, last question, catalysts. Just to reiterate, I know some of it is there on the screen. But just to reiterate for those watching, what are the big catalysts that investors should be focusing on from the company over the short to medium term?

As mentioned, we've got at least 10 other negotiations or collaborations that are in the works that we'd hopefully be able to announce. And I think each of these once we announce them, it basically derisks us more and more and adds more credibility that this is much more real than maybe people expect. And so there's lots of collaborations, MOUs, and potentially binding-type agreements with these players, potentially nondilutive capital injections from some of these players as well. Site selection will be a major one because that really derisks the time line and the speed at which we can get this thing up and running and producing cash. And there will be ongoing test work updates on different materials like the topical materials like antimony and niobium, which they're sitting in the queue just waiting because we're, I suppose, at capacity in terms of our testing abilities currently. And yes, maybe DoD funding as well. We're not going to commit to anything on DoD funding because we just don't know in terms of the time line, but we definitely are very confident that we will get some substantial checks from the federal government in the U.S. And yes, I think under this new administration, it's only becoming clearer every day that for onshoring initiatives. Once the market settles down a bit and count them, we think that there will be lots of tailwinds in eyes on what we're doing, in particular in the U.S. And we're going to focus on the U.S. and trying to grow our, I suppose, institutional-type caliber of investor in the U.S. over the coming months as well because that's where the big -- I suppose big loads of capital are.

That does bring to a close the Q&A section. We do have a couple of questions, but I might deal with them offline. We've dealt with pretty much every question that's come through. So to Steve and Michael, thanks for that. Haven't hitting from any questions. We've thrown them all at you as they've come through. So I appreciate the time you've taken to answer the questions. As I said, we did have a lot come in. So we've dealt with pretty much all of them. So thank you, gentlemen, for that. Thank you, everyone, for your time to tune in to listen to today's webinar and to Michael and Steve for participating in the Q&A. For those of you who are MTM shareholders, we hope this presentation has given you a comprehensive update on what MTM has achieved and the plans for the future why your investment in MTM is a sound investment but also an investment in a strong e-waste future. For those of you who are not shareholders, we hope the compelling nature of the MTM proposition will see you at the very least place the company on your watch list and watch with interest as the company continues to roll out further news and further agreements and important announcements over the coming weeks and months ahead. So to everyone, thank you for your time. Steve and Michael, thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

And everyone, I hope you have a great day. Thank you.

Thanks.