MP Materials Corp. (MP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, everybody. I'm Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley's Global Auto team and Shared Mobility team. I'm joined by Carlos De Alba who heads Morgan Stanley's U.S. Metals and Mining team. Carlos, thanks for joining me. And we're really privileged to have 2 very innovative companies that in their own way are addressing some challenges and opportunities in the transition to electric vehicles. Joining us, we have Tom Jensen, the CEO of FREYR Battery. I believe, Tom, is in -- are you in Oslo or are you in Mo?

I'm in Oslo right now, Adam, Pleasure to be here. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you. And we also have Ryan Corbett, the CFO of MP Materials. Again, different angles here. Tom, your company addresses energy storage and batteries, both in stationary storage and then emerging into EVs. And Ryan, you have some very unique assets and capability in permanent magnet motors and in absolutely critical rare earth elements for making the most efficient electric vehicles in a renewable way. So before we begin this discussion about a renewable, sustainable EV Ecosystem, I want to mention again, this webcast is for Morgan Stanley clients and approved observers only, not members of the press, please drop now. For important disclosures, please refer to Morgan Stanley published research and the website, www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. Q&A will be conducted electronically. It's wonderful to see at least a couple of hundred participants and rising right now in the audience. Don't be shy. Get your questions in, and I'll do my best to synthesize them if there's too many and get to as many as we can. At least I'll get to the good ones. So with that, I wanted to provide an opportunity, maybe Tom, first you; then Ryan, give us the elevator pitch on -- for sure, there's going to be people on this webcast that aren't intimately familiar with your company and your mission. Give the elevator pitch and what are you most excited about in 2022. Tom?

Okay. Thank you, Adam. And again, a pleasure to be here. I'm the CEO of FREYR Battery, went public, we had a SPAC acquisition in July last year. We have an ambition to produce 150 gigawatt hours of capacity by 2030 of next-generation lithium-ion based batteries using a U.S.-based technology called 24M. We're going to build the first set of facilities in Norway, in the northern part of Norway, where we are deeply advantaged with surplus low-cost renewable electricity, which is generating a lot of interest not only to produce batteries with the 24M technology but also to localize raw material production, cathode materials, anode materials, electrolyte, separators, anything and everything you might think of that goes into battery production will fundamentally benefit from being in a location where renewable energy at low cost is available. And Norway is also a country that has a century-long experience in producing and exporting energy and renewable energy at that and also quite strong project execution skills, which has been augmented through the oil and gas development on the Norwegian continental shelf since the late 1960s. So we have an ability, proven, I would say, in Norway to build quite complicated energy-intensive and process-intensive projects. And that's what we're going to do, combining with what we believe is cutting-edge technology in 24M. So quickly on 24M Technologies, it's an MIT spin-off out of Boston in 2009, which has fundamentally redesigned how lithium-ion batteries are produced and also how they are designed. The short version of this is that we produce larger and thicker electrodes, basically putting more energy carrying material into 1 volumetric unit of battery and basically fundamentally reducing the complexity of producing the battery, reducing the footprint, reducing the CapEx, reducing the energy consumption and reducing the labor consumption, opening up new business models in terms of how one can deploy production of batteries. Initially, we were producing very big electrodes, which, of course, then impact C-rates. As many of you might understand that impacts the chargeability of the batteries. So many have been concerned that this technology is not available and/or suitable for mainstream electric vehicle adoption. But then, of course, we are very excited about what happened towards the end of 2021 where Volkswagen Group came in as a large investor and a dedicated licensee for captive production of the 24M Technology. So that is, in our opinion, a massive validation of the technology also for EV application. We've always been of the opinion that it can work across all sectors. One of the beauties of the 24M Technology is that it's chemistry agnostic, meaning that we can produce LFP or NMC or any type of cathode into it, any type of anode into it, and they've also been awarded various grants from DOE and ARPA-E on lithium metal anodes and other things, which, of course, makes it a bridge into the solid-state future, if you like. So that's a little bit why we're excited about where we are. We made a number of announcements last year on progress on the customer side, in particular on the [ ESS ] front. Our investors should expect us to do a lot more of that in 2022. Then to round off, Adam, what I'm really excited about in 2022 is one, to start up our first commercial facility, the customer qualification plant where actually we'll be producing batteries in Norway towards the end of this year. We will be making investment decisions on large-scale commercial capacity, both in Norway, most likely also in Finland and in the United States. Of course, we're going to announce a number of additional customer offtake agreements as well as partnership-based agreements on the supply side, and you should expect us to have a fairly large, let's say, coverage of supply of sustainably produced raw materials into the batteries that we're going to produce, whether they are in Norway and the Nordic region or for that matter, in the Americas, so to speak. So we're super excited about a number of things for 2022. We think 20 -- or this decade that we're in is the decade of the batteries. We fully subscribe to batteries being the new oil. And thank you again, Adam and Morgan Stanley for bringing us to this prestigious event.

Thanks, Tom. Ryan, over to you.

Sure. Adam and Carlos, thank you, guys, for having us here. We were just reminiscing before we started, me sitting with Carlos and Adam, not so long ago before we took the company public. But it's been a great journey. Today, we say that MP Materials is the only scaled provider of rare earth materials in the Western Hemisphere. Our mission has been, since the beginning to restore the full rare earthy supply chain to the United States. It's a multistep complicated supply chain. This does not move overnight. It's one that's dominated today in China, an absolutely critical piece of the electric vehicle supply chain and one that we think we fit a very unique need in, in being a sustainable source of rare materials for the EV supply chain. So this conference was supposed to be in Las Vegas. We were actually based in Las Vegas with Mountain Pass assets about 40 miles or so on the California side. What we do today, what we call our Stage 1 is we produce an intermediate product called rare earth concentrate that is sold overseas for the moment to be separated into rare earth oxides. The very exciting thing that we're looking forward to in 2022 is bringing on our refining capacity to be able to produce and sell separated rare earth oxides, which are the critical ingredients in permanent magnets. Some of you may know, on the discussion of the EV supply chain, permanent magnet motors have a north of 90% market share in terms of the technology of the motor within current electric vehicles. Basically, anything you can do without a magnet, you can do more efficiently with a magnet. And so it's an interesting juxtaposition with the battery side of things, with what Tom is talking about and what we're doing where we enable the automotive OEMs through using permanent magnet motor technology to be able to shrink the amount of battery capacity needed for the same amount of range. So as I mentioned, we're in our Stage 1 today. We have a very exciting growing and profitable business just in Stage 1. In our Stage 2, we'll move to separating rare earth oxides. Another very exciting element that we announced recently in early December is early progress on what we call Stage 3, which is moving further downstream into the supply chain and making in the United States rare earth metals, alloys, and permanent magnets to go directly into the electric vehicle. So we announced our initial permanent magnet facility in Fort Worth, Texas and announced a binding long-term agreement with General Motors to supply their Ultium platform with alloy and magnets. So on all those fronts, we've got a lot of growth ahead of us to execute on this year and in the coming years. And so we've had great success in our Stage 1 business, and we're looking forward to 2022 to keep executing.

Thank you very much, Tom and Ryan, for that introduction to your companies. It's very interesting stories, as Adam mentioned earlier. Maybe, Ryan, just to continue a little bit on the emphasis of the ESG issues. There's obviously a lot of transparency that is now required by the market by different players. And certainly for mining -- for all companies, but for mining operators, it is particularly the case. So as we evolve into this world and obviously, the emphasis and the solutions that you're going to bring to the EV, but also in getting out to a more ESG transparent world, can you elaborate as to what are the sustainable mining practices that you guys have embedded in your operations in Mountain Pass?

Sure. Yes. I mean we obviously agree. We've been saying this for a while that if we're going to make this transition, obviously, the end consumers are going to want to understand sort of the providence of the materials that are going into these electric vehicles. I think we all recognize now that if we're going to make this transition as quickly as it looks like we are -- I was looking at your research this morning on 80% growth year-over-year in November in EV units, if we're going to do that, we're going to need to mine. Period. We need materials to do that. And so I think what puts MP Materials and Mountain Pass in a very unique position is exactly our ESG credit, if you will, in the way that we go about our business. And so it starts with the ore body. Rare earth materials in general in earth mining has historically been associated with radioactivity and having to deal with radioactive waste or radioactive tailing. The type of ore in Mountain Pass is called the bastnaesite ore. It has basically background levels of thorium and uranium. And so we don't have any of those issues that you tend to see with mining in China, even mining in Australia. We don't need to deal with those liabilities and don't need to have the concern of what other impacts we're having on the environment from the tailings. I think the other really unique piece about Mountain Pass that was a very significant investment when the current facility was constructed and something that we spent a lot of time perfecting is the dry stack tailings process that we have. And so you -- Carlos, obviously, in the mining world, you understand the risks that are associated generally with the wet tailings with tailings dams. We see the horrible things that can happen when those go wrong. And so the very unique thing about Mountain Pass, and we think it's not just unique to us vis-a-vis the rare earth space, but globally in mining, dry stack tailings are generally quite rare. What it allows us to do is effectively go from getting the material out of the ground, pulling out the valuable elements that we need and effectively putting back the rest to where we found it. So there's no need for wet tailings dam whatsoever. And so this is a really unique element for us. And what it allows us to do on top of avoiding the risks inherent with wet tailings is the way we go from our material through the process back to a dry product as we extract the water, which allows us to recycle that water back to the front end of the process. And so 95% of our process water needs are served purely by recycling. And so you have this sort of closed-loop element to what we're doing, which is very unique in the rare earth space and unique in, as well, I think, globally in mining. And so that's part of the uniqueness of Mountain Pass that allows us to do what we do in an environmentally friendly way.

Ryan, that's awesome. I have one quick follow-up for you, and then I want to turn to Tom on how FREYR looks at closed loop and how they're addressing emissions. Can magnets be recycled? And if so, how does that process work? How does that fit into your thinking?

Sure. Yes, they can. Like a lot of recycling opportunities, I think right now, the question is how do we at scale sort of collect end-of-use magnets, right, and do that in a way that's economically viable? And I don't know if we're -- we're not right at the point where the prices make sense for a lot of end-of-use recycling. But the inherent technology of taking a magnet and turning it back into its piece parts of primarily NdPr oxide to create a new magnet that can be used is really rare earth processing and separations technology. That is the heart of what we do. And so we have proven that it is certainly possible. We think it's certainly possible at scale and something that we believe we will play a very big role in. As part of the Stage 3 announcement that I talked about in bringing permanent magnet manufacturing to the United States, a piece of magnet manufacturing is actually sort of a form of recycling, which is when you cut the magnets into their individual shapes for customers, you tend to have waste that comes off of the production line. We do intend to take that waste and run it through a recycling process to recover all of the elements there in order to start back over again in a closed loop. That's done very successfully at scale today overseas, primarily in China, where most of the magnet manufacturing is today. But suffice to say, absolutely, it's possible, absolutely, we will play a role. And I think as the economics of this industry change and prices continue to go up as they have, it will bring sort of the end-of-use magnet recycling opportunity into focus that I think we'll be able to execute on as well in time.

Thanks, Ryan. So Tom, EVs play such a critical role in getting fossil fuels. But as your company and others have noted, there's some major parts of the ecosystem that create new ESG problems, basically making batteries is dirty in terms of emissions at the conventional ways and then also the supply chain and how much materials are flying around the Earth and then the impact on land usage. So tell us a bit more about kind of where the battery industry is today, for example, on CO2 per kilowatt hour? And what a FREYR Battery can be using 24M Technology renewably produced in Norway and kind of what you can get that to?

Perfect. So this is a big part of our -- I mean, the core tenets of our strategy as we've alluded to is speed, scale and sustainability. I mean at the end of the day, batteries are intended to be the core catalyst for decarbonizing transportation but we, in our opinion, it's going to be equally important to decarbonize energy systems globally and to store sunlight and wind and provide stress relief for grids, et cetera. But how to sort of get there, right, to your point, Adam? Today, most batteries are produced in Asia and an increasing amount of them in China. Of course, a number of projects and companies now emerging, both in Europe and the United States to sort of create regional security of supply. And with that, I think you will see the emergence of supply chains emerging also locally, close to where the batteries are going to produce. Now what we are going to do in Norway is, of course, utilizing the renewable energy, not only for the battery cell production itself but also to attract the supply chain players and all the 13 different elements that we require for the 24M batteries in and that we're going to produce in Norway, all the suppliers of these components, most of them today in Asia, want to come to Norway to set the facilities in Norway using renewable energy to produce the same inputs. And many of the critical elements, the iron, the phosphates, the nickel, the graphite, everything you need for different parts of batteries, you can actually find in the Nordic region as well. And of course, a lot of it, you can find lithium in the United States and so on and so forth. So I think long and short of it is today, I would say roughly between 80 and 100 kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt hour of battery is what you're generally seeing as emissions. Our ambition is to drive that down to about 15 kilograms per kilowatt hour, so an 80% reduction relative to what is the norm in the industry today or 80% below what we anticipate being the average in 2025 is where we're sort of targeting that to be. A big chunk of that, roughly half of it is going to be by actually producing the battery cells themselves in a Nordic environment using renewable energy and the remaining will be to decarbonize the supply chain, if you like, and of course, then reducing the logistical disadvantages of transporting materials all around the world, which still predominantly in an ocean-based freight, where we'll also have CO2 emissions with it. Now final thing I'd like to say in terms of closed loop systems and ensuring that recyclability of batteries are sort of core, it's also a very much a technological question. And in the conventional battery cell production manufacturing, you have a lot of scrap. And of course, all that scrap is waste if you don't recycle it. And with the 24M Technology, the recycling capability and opportunity with this SemiSolid production platform is actually much, much simpler because we mix the electrolytes with the active materials upfront. And if for some reason, we have waste in the system, which, by the way, the system is designed to not have. But if for some reason, we have scrapped cells at the end of the production, to actually, let's say, separate the materials and put them back into production is a reasonably simple process. So we think the technology itself offers large, let's say, advantages relative to conventional production to ensure higher recyclability within the system itself. And then at the end of life, when the batteries come to their sort of natural stage of evolution where they are going to be recycled back into black mass or new active materials for new -- let's say, new batteries, the 24M Technology is also very advantaged relative to conventional lithium-ion. So it's about localizing supply chains. It's about having renewable energy into the entire value chain of battery production. And it's about having technology that enables you to minimize scrap and waste and recycling that waste immediately into production and then having a technology solution that enables you to do it better once you get large volumes for batteries for second life use kind of thing.

So Tom, translate that into cost for me. What's the proposition for either ESS or however do you want to describe it to an automaker or any other customer?

Yes. So if we have an 80% reduction in CO2 footprint at $100 per ton of CO2, you can easily sort of envisage a $5 to $7 per kilowatt hour cost advantage by having that decarbonized level, yes? So it's a significant number in a world where cell production cost or cost per cell will go from plus/minus $100 where it is today, depending on where you are and what product you're making. So this is a material sort of cost advantage for sure.

And Ryan, over to you. How about economically, kind of does your -- as your process evolves and you do more of the vertical integration in North America, what's the cost proposition to your customers?

Sure. Yes. I think the reality of the rare earth industry is it's a scale industry. That's the way that you compete. I think the great thing about our current asset is we are at tremendous scale, and we sit really as low as you can sit on the cost for a variety of reasons. And as part of kind of this conversation, we're talking about closing the loop. The unique thing that I didn't mention earlier about Mountain Pass is it's fully integrated on one site. So we're talking about [ keep rate ] and all those sorts of things. We just cut that out of the equation where we've got the mine asset, the processing facilities right co-located. And so as we move downstream in terms of how that looks for customers from a pricing perspective is as we gain scale, we'll continue to be able to benefit from those economies of scale and pass those on to our customers. I think the great thing about what we've announced to date on our Stage 3 initiative is our goal is not out-of-the-gate to be a price leader. We don't need to do that. And I think that's because you've got leadership from OEMs like General Motors stepping up and saying, we're willing to invest in and sharing the risk of bringing the supply chain back to the United States in a way that's traceable, in a way that's green, in a way that's sustainable and auditable. And they are okay with investing in that and reaping the benefits down the road, just like we will as we scale that up. And so this initial facility, like I said, is a very small percentage of our output, but the goal is to grow that over time. And with that for us to become increasingly cost competitive vis-a-vis our competitors overseas.

And Ryan, talking about scale, definitely, there is lot of benefits from that. But at the end of the day, the process for you and for rare earth products starts at the mine. How are you thinking about the life of mine and potential exploration and the need to eventually increase your resources and reserves in order to keep producing?

It's a great question. It's something that we've thought about a bit, certainly this year in better defining our current resource. The reality is Mountain Pass has been in operation since the early 50s. And so that probably speaks to the fact that I think our 10-K last year had us going out to 2042, a 24-ish-year mine life. We've been very clear with our investors that we think that there's a lot more exploration to do to better define that ore body. And importantly, that resource statement doesn't capture all the economics of Stage 2, let alone Stage 3. And so as we move downstream and -- we've been very clear that each stage stands on its own from an economics perspective. And so we're adding incremental value to the business as we invest in these downstream opportunities. That enables us to further grow what are -- the defined resource and reserve of our ore body. I think the reality is Mountain Pass itself will probably outlast our lifetimes and then some. But the reality is, as we look to grow the business, we have tens of thousands of acres of mineral rights across the highway that we could start to look at that we have a feeling of some sort of mineralization. But the reality of this industry and the uniqueness of the Mountain Pass ore body that we're leveraging right now is that even looking at other assets out there, I think the next highest return ability to add incremental annual volumes to this industry is Mountain Pass expanding its output. And so that's something that we think about a lot And so I think more to come, obviously, when we file our K coming up here, for 2021, there are new SEC regs that have us defining resources in a different way, which I'm sure you're aware of. And so we'll be able to talk a little bit more about what we've been able to define in 2021, but I think that's something that we'll continue to focus on over time, is better defining the boundary and the future potential of the asset.

Can I just follow up on that? Because you both, Ryan and Tom, you have your unique, let's say, geographic or in your case, Ryan, geological moats. Yours is fairly straightforward, Ryan. You just -- you have this unique ore body there and there's -- it's extremely unique to this hemisphere. Tom, in Scandinavia, tell us about what can prevent or what gives you the geographic moat, if you will, or capability moat beyond tech of ensuring that you don't have a flood of competitors that say, well, we're just going to go right -- somewhere else in Mo and take some more offtake renewable and hire some more workers. So I realize I'm making this sound a little -- I'm being very naive about this, but what is it about your access to labor, the expertise of your management team, the experience in big projects and/or just the scarcity of that renewable resource that provides the moat for FREYR?

So I think it's a combination of things, right? First of all, we were the first out of the gate in Norway in terms of large-scale battery cell manufacturing, inspired by [indiscernible]. And as we say in Norway, if the Swiss can do it, we can do it a little bit better. So that's kind of -- I don't know if that's a moat, but that's a big...

I think we've all known that. I grew up with that quote from childhood nursery rhymes.

So -- but on a serious note, I mean, the renewable energy position and the sort of surplus renewable energy position in Norway is dwindling, right? So -- but in the Nordic area or in the northern area, I should say, of Norway, there is no other sort of competing solution yet, right? But of course, people will see what we have seen. But I do think there's going to be limited room for a number of players in that area. And if you then have an advantage technology located in the right area and put the team together that we have that have decades of experience in these large oil and gas, solar, aluminum, fertilizer facilities, building them, executing them and operating them, I think we sort of have already assembled a fairly sort of strong competitive team. And we have exclusivity protection around the technology that we're going to deploy in that favored location and we've already established quite a number of, let's say, relationships with some of the raw material providers in the Finnish mineral groups in Finland. We've announced that we're going to do something in Vaasa. We're looking into other locations in Sweden and for that matter, other locations in Norway. So I do think the moat of low-cost renewable energy in the Northern Norwegian environment, coupled with privileged access to raw material based on a U.S. technology that we believe is cutting edge relative to conventional is a very strong combination that is going to be hard to beat in this decade.

Yes. It's the combination we find -- so it's not necessarily one thing. If I even think back to Tesla's success, there was not really any one thing that they did or even still do today, but it's just the -- having the unique combination in an ecosystem that's so important. I'm going to turn to some of the questions here from the -- almost 250 clients in the audience here. So thanks for your question. Maybe, Ryan, I'll start with you here. How big do you see the threat of other synthetic materials to potentially displace rare earth? Or what is it -- based on your discussions with auto companies, specifically, why would they be committed for a long tail of permanent magnet motor using your rare earths?

Sure. I think the reality of electric motor technology hasn't -- it hasn't meaningfully changed in a long time because it's -- you're bound by the laws of physics. And so I think the thing about permanent magnet motors is they were just more efficient and lighter in converting energy into motion. And so I think the nice thing about being part of the motor ecosystem is we're agnostic to if Tom's batteries are in the car. If it's a hydrogen fuel cell that's in a car, that energy has to be converted into motion. And the most efficient way to do that is with permanent magnet motor. And so as you look at the relative costs from an EV manufacturer's perspective of the incremental unit of energy that you need to put into a vehicle to achieve a certain range versus tweaking the motor technology to better leverage those units of energy that are in the car, a magnet is a very, very small dollar item relative to the cost of the battery in the car. And so if you look at all of the cutting-edge vehicles, the EQXX Mercedes was announced yesterday, permanent magnet technology, really, any of the new cutting-edge cars that you're seeing that are pushing the envelope on range, there's really no better way to do that than using permanent magnet technology. And so I think the other thing is industry observers oftentimes will look at the trade-off between permanent magnet motors and the one other technology, which is induction in a vacuum and say, here's the price at which NdPr that those permanent magnets needs to get to in order for that trade-off to make sense. The thing that often gets missed in that analysis is, okay, what are the materials that are easy alternatives. And so if you look at the alternative and induction motor, there's a tremendous amount of copper. And so we all see what that market is doing, and I think there is a ton of copper needed not just for motors, but for charging infrastructure and all these other things. And so it's not -- you can't really look at that trade-off in a vacuum. And so I think that it's a combination of the technological advantage. And then frankly, the reflexive nature of our success giving the OEMs the confidence to continue to build on that technology. So now that we've provided a secure sustainable source of supply of these materials. In our discussions, we walk our customers -- our potential customers through our long-term plans and sort of the ability for us to further leverage the assets that we have. It gives them confidence, I think, to continue investing in this technology. And so we don't -- we haven't seen real threats on the landscape of synthetic technologies. I think there's always the discussion of induction. But for particular use cases, given the trade-offs, not just in efficiency but in packaging. You look at the Rivian, there's a motor at each -- basically at -- [ not in the wheel bed ]. Packaging-wise, you can't achieve that with an induction motor, the size advantages you get with magnets or something that you need. So there's a lot of, I guess, competitive moats there that we think about that give us a lot of confidence in the future in the tail of permanent magnet motors.

Let me ask you both a question and we're kind of coming up about 3 minutes before the end of the session. If you're looking ahead for the -- all of 2022, what are you watching on the policy road map in which -- in the regions where you're operating or plan to operate that could have the greatest impact on your business that you want investors to understand? Maybe Tom, I'll start with you.

So I think policy regulation and incentives to sort of accelerate deployment of batteries is increasing exponentially day by day. I think the governments in Europe, the [ at-sight ] solutions that are incentivizing the build of bigger factories and/or Norwegian export finance agency providing guarantees backed by the Norwegian government's balance sheet into sort of doing the same. That you will see more and more build back better and all the incentive plans in the U.S., however, sort of up and down that process is going, I think you will see a number of sort of incentives basically aligning roughly around the same thing, 20%, 25%, 30% kind of support for the CapEx build-out of capacity. I think the timing is right in the sense that the technology and the cost point has come together. Incentives and subsidies can only get you so far if you don't have a cost position or a technology that can actually scale and compete against the alternative. And that's what's happening now. Now you're having batteries and electric vehicle solutions and storage solutions based on renewable energy plus storage, which is actually competitive with combined cycle natural gas power generation, and you have EVs that are competitive with combustion engines. And this is only going to continue. Remember, this is only in the early stages of adoption. We're going to see massive improvements in these things as capital and competence is deployed against it. So it's the decade of the battery. And I think incentives can only accelerate this.

Ryan, over to you with a minute left.

Yes, yes. I think frankly, we tend to benefit from some of the same policy actions in the sense of driving EV adoption. I think the uniqueness on the rare earth side is that being in the United States, I think that this administration as well as whole of government has begun to recognize this is a national security question. And not just national security in the traditional sort of defense sense as there are rare earths in a lot of defense applications, but economic national security in having this supply chain in the United States that -- such that our domestic OEMs are not threatened to by an inability to access raw materials as we've seen over the course of the last 2 years. And so from that perspective, there's a 232 investigation into permanent magnets. There are a bunch of different policies that have been put forward in Congress to incentivize domestic production of these materials. And so there are a lot of different things to keep our eyes on from that perspective. But I think it's -- there's a real recognition of the importance of supporting this industry in the U.S.

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Tom. So just to kind of wrap it, it seems like as ESG -- whatever investors see as ESG transparency on a supply chain today, it's going to be unrecognizably more stringent 3 years, 5 years, 10 years from now, probably nonlinearly so, in terms of national security and how clean and sustainable it is, whether from a carbon or labor or land use and all of the above. So both of your companies are uniquely positioned to benefit from that. And I do appreciate you both helping to kind of see some of the different angles of this debate from your own lenses and seats. And I wish you both the best of luck. And Carlos, thanks for your help with us today. And that -- this concludes our session on the renewable EV ecosystem. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Carlos.

Best of luck. See you soon.