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

So my name is Ben Kallo. I cover sustainable energy mobility at Baird. Very happy to have MP Materials here with the CFO, Ryan Corbett. Ryan is going to go through maybe a slide, and then we're going to do a Q&A fireside chat. You can raise your hand or you can also e-mail, I think, the instructions over here, [email protected]. Thank you guys for joining us. Thanks, Ryan.

Yes. Thanks, Ben, for having me. So it'll be a pretty long presentation. Safe harbor, you can refer to our SEC documents. We'll make forward-looking statements with appropriate risk factors and caveats and we'll make reference to non-GAAP financial measures as well. This is the content for today, and then we'll jump into Q&A. I wanted to make sure we had most of the time for that. But just for those that are newer to the business, MP Materials is the Western Hemisphere's really only scaled producer and largest producer of rare earth materials. We own and operate Mountain Pass, which is located in Mountain Pass, California and as well, we have a magnetics manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. We've been embarking on a 3-stage strategy to invest in the full rare earth supply chain and restore that to the Western world. Stage 1 is our rare earth concentrate production, where today, we are one of the largest producers globally. We produce about 15% of global rare earth content in the form of mix earth concentrate. We have commissioned and are in the process of ramping our refining facility co-located at Mountain Pass. That's what we call Stage 2, where we produce separated rare earth oxides. And then Stage 3 is our -- what I referenced earlier in Fort Worth, Texas, magnet manufacturing facility, where we will have a fully integrated supply chain of producing the rare earth metal, alloy and finished magnets all in that Fort Worth facility. We're a founder-led owner-operator business. We've been at this for several years. And I think we have a very unique and special set of assets and are executing, obviously, into a market that's very dynamic. I think in these, well anybody wanted to talk about a couple of quarters ago maybe, and now it's almost a bad word. But I think the fundamentals over the medium to long term for our business are very sound with MP being one of the lowest cost producers globally. And then certainly, as we've seen with recent announcements on the tariff side and the magnetic space, as an example, a lot of focus on security of supply and ensuring that there is a vibrant domestic market that can compete at scale in the magnetic space, given how important that is for electrification broadly, not just EVs. So that is the context for today, beautiful shot of the new magnetics plant as our backdrop to jump into questions.

Sure. And thank you, Ryan. So maybe just for everyone, could you just talk about different end markets much on EVs, both for rare earth.

Sure.

And then rare earth supply goes from, you mentioned in Western Hemisphere here being the only mine.

Sure. Yes. So I got a lot of questions this morning, actually, in fact, that are saying despite the negativity in EVs, EVs are still growing, right? Units are growing so pretty rapidly. So why is the commodity reacted so negatively and I think the thing that sometimes not well appreciated, given the excitement about growth in EVs and wind power and things like that is what is the mix of demand in the magnet space today? And the reality is today, only about 1/4 of the market is levered to e-mobility, commercial and passenger EVs. The other major end markets are wind power is about 10%, industrial, general industrial motors are about 15%. And then consumer electronics and appliances are another 1/4 of the business. And so there is a pretty broad mix of discrete demand drivers within there that obviously impact supply and demand and thus pricing in the market. And so despite EVs growing. If you have a pullback in some -- the other 3/4 of the market that are more GDP-ish when you think about HVAC and elevators and escalators and things like that, that go particularly into the Chinese property market, you can, sort of, see how those dynamics have played out over the course of the last year. And so think about the law of compounding, that will change over time. Even with revised estimates for EV penetration, if you just look forward, EVs will end up making up by 2030, probably about 40% of demand. And if you think of what that demand number is, that number would be 90% of today's magnet market. So that gives you a sense of how quickly this is still growing. So those are some of the puts and takes from a magnet perspective. On your question of geography, this is another story of, I think, over time, some pretty thoughtful industrial policy on the part of the Chinese that have gone from many decades ago, no magnet market to speak of. It was dominated by the Japanese who had led in a technological advancement. I mean I think the thing that's actually really fascinating is the neodymium-iron-boron magnet was really, sort of, pioneered with General Motors and the Department of Defense, I think, in the 40s or 50s or something like there, maybe there's the 80s, I don't know. But it's amazing to think about sort of how that's all going to come back to bear fruit here with our relationship and partnership with General Motors. So the way the market looks today, though is there is really no significant Western magnetics players to speak of, of large scale, except for our facility that's coming into play and a few others that are advancing into the market in the United States. The Chinese represent about 90% of magnet production, and the remaining 10% is basically what's left in the Japanese industry. So it's amazing to see how that geographic mix has shifted over time.

You mentioned the strategy between Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3. Could you just dive in a little bit more on each of them?

Sure. Yes. So the Stage 1 business production of mixed sort of concentrate, that's been our bread and butter business for the last many, many years. It's something where I think we've proven our ability to be a low-cost producer to the world of our products. We see a lot of opportunity still in that business. One initiative that we announced a couple of quarters ago is what we call upstream 60,000 tons. Right now, for context, we're producing about 40,000 tons of worth oxide in concentrate. The 60,000 and probably 60,000 is 60,000 tons. And so our target is to grow our upstream production by 50% over the next 4 years with a relatively modest amount of capital investment, which I think speaks to the quality of our asset base, the ability to grow production at that scale with pretty modest capital is something that we're very, very excited about, we think is sort of underappreciated as well in the context of our ability to create value and create shareholder value over time. The Stage 2 business is taking that mix growth concentrate, refining it on site of Mountain Pass and producing separated rare earth oxides and carbonates. The main product there, the main revenue driver is NdPr oxide, which is that fundamental building block of rare earth magnets. We started commissioning late last year in the facility. We've been in our ramp-up stage over the last several quarters, as we've talked about many times over the last several quarters, conveniently pricing has been pretty difficult over that same period of time, which in a lot of ways, gives us an opportunity to be really thoughtful about how we ramp that facility. We've been very clear that we are prioritizing cash flow and not sort of headline's for headlines sake on a production volume perspective. But we talked a bit on our last earnings call about some of the proof points we've been seeing recently in our ability to really dial in the separation process and refining and get ourselves to what we think would be run rate levels of production. The downstream -- the all the way downstream business, the Stage 3 business, the magnetics business, is our first facility which is about 1,000 metric tons of initial design capacity. We talked on our last earnings call about how that design capacity is fully committed at this point, which we're pretty excited about. We have our foundational customer in General Motors. This is something where, if you think about the scale of production of oxide at Mountain Pass, where we're targeting about 6,000 tons of oxide, this would consume this magnetics facility less than 10% of that, but it is an incredibly important step in bringing this capability back to the United States in a scaled way with a great scaled commercial partner in the automotive space. This is something that we will be working towards dialing in and ramping up over the next 18 to 24 months. Our target is to be producing finished magnets at the end of 2025.

Thank you. There's -- having the asset in the United States, important understandably outside of China, have you seen any difference in customer discussions and them differentiating between rare earths that come from China or process through China versus in the United States?

So I think the answer on the commodity side of the business, at least today, is different than on the finished product side on the magnet side. We've always run the business on the upstream and midstream side for concentrate and for oxide understanding that we operate in a commodity business, those products are priced globally, at least for now. And so we need to be competitive at a global price. The magnet business is a little bit different, right? These are custom engineered products where a lot of -- we get asked a lot of questions like, what's the price per kilogram for a magnet, well, tell me the grade, tell me the shape, tell me the laminations, tell me the coding. And maybe I can give you an answer. And so it's hard to really generalize magnets the same way as, of course, you can easily do with a commodity that has to hit a market spec. I think it's very clear that the market response as evidenced by a fully committed initial facility for us on the downstream side is that there's a real recognition that there needs to be security of supply for magnetics. Given the scale of industrial production, employment, et cetera, that is driven by these things and the fact that we get asked about defense quite a bit. Defense itself is pretty small volume, but of course, as critical as it gets and so there's a real demand for security there on the magnetic side, I think that the market is really still getting educated on how the upstream works. The way we got into the magnetics business, frankly, was OEMs trying to understand in the context of the supply chain scares that came out of COVID and things like that. How do we make sure that all pieces of the supply chain are in a place where we feel comfortable that we're not going to trip over dollars to pick up pennies in our supply chain sort of situation that a lot of them found themselves in. And so today, are we seeing a differentiator in price on the commodity side of the business? No. But increasingly, what you're seeing is requirements from an environmental perspective, from a disclosure perspective, things like that, that is still being driven quite a bit from the Europeans. And so European automotive OEMs, in particular, are really focused on that. And so that easily could lead to some sort of bifurcation. And then what we touched on a minute ago on the downstream side with the recent announcement of the 301 tariffs is something where you may start to see some bifurcation on the magnet side, too.

When you think about the market prices coming down dramatically, could you just talk to us about what your thoughts are around that? And then the market is pretty opaque because of how much capacity or production is in China. And so how much kind of, I don't know, intelligence you guys have on what's going on there. Sometimes I wonder if they're just turning on supply and causing prices to fall.

Yes. It certainly is always difficult to read the tea leaves in China. But what I would say is that to our discussion at the beginning about the breakdown of the market. I think what we've seen over the last 18 months is a bit of a disappointment on the recovery in the Chinese property market, in particular, which, as I mentioned, with 25% of the magnetic space being sort of appliance levered in consumer electronics levered, HVAC, all sorts of things like that can be pretty meaningfully impacted by those sorts of drivers in the Chinese market. What we would say on this though is overall, look, commodities can do from a pricing perspective, can do anything in the short term, right? It's a fool's errand to try to really predict exactly what they're going to do in the short term and exactly what's driving the puts and takes in pricing in the short term. But I think from a medium- to long-term perspective, what we see is the law of supply and demand will apply at some point. And with the opacity in the market, there still are several public Chinese companies that are large producers of these products. And you guys can take a look yourselves at profitability at this point is pretty nonexistent. We've been saying that for a period of time. And I think with the focus is and should be from the Chinese side of things is ensuring that they're very rapidly growing and high-employing, high-technology electric vehicle space, has the raw materials for them to be able to continue to grow production. And so if the focus is ensuring that their downstream is properly supplied, the upstream is going to need to have reinvestment economics over time. And so at these prices, that's not there. And so just the fundamentals of supply and demand from that perspective, I think, give us confidence over the medium to long term in what a reasonable market price for our product should be.

Can we talk a little bit about the Stage 3 of the magnetics facility? Maybe just talk about the GM deal, how that originated. And then when the facility starts up and how it progresses in the term types of sales?

Sure. Well, to some of the comments I made earlier, the progression of MP into the magnetic space is something that we had flagged as a potential opportunity when we went public in 2020 as this will be a 2025 plus event kind of before we talk to you guys about it, right? It's out there. It's exciting. We've got a lot to execute on. The market is going to develop, and it's going to take time to develop. So we'll talk to you guys in 5 years about it. Lo and behold, I think we'll be in production with a magnet at the same date that we originally told people that we'll come and talk to you about it. So that is exciting, and that is exactly because of the development of the market that I talked about where OEMs and real -- large consumers of magnetics have -- some of them have become very thoughtful about getting ahead of some of the supply chain risks that we saw in COVID. And I think that a lot of times, this is pitched as us against China thing. But in reality, really having the concentration of production of something as critical as magnetics in any one country, no matter what the country is, is a real supply chain risk that anyone should be focused on mitigating. And so you have certain OEMs that have been more forward-thinking in understanding what is it going to take to make sure that we have this market in a real way, in commercial scale with staying power in the Western world, what does it take to get there? And I think GM was one of the most forward-thinking in that. And so we originally signed our supply agreement, our long-term supply agreement with General Motors at the end of 2021. We've made a lot of progress since then in product and process development to get the facility to where it is now. It's amazing to look at it, and it's great that we've got the facility. But what matters is what's inside there, not what it looks like on the outside. And that's made a tremendous amount of progress. And over time, we're excited to show people that as well. And so the plan from here is what you saw us talk about on our last earnings call was that we've made some real progress in operating milestones on the precursor products and making rare earth metals and alloys ahead of making finished magnets. And so that's unlocked some prepayments for us to continue to invest in the facility. And so over time, as we get to the latter part of this year, we'll start actually delivering precursor products to General Motors. And then the target is to get into magnet production at the end of 2025 and ramp volumes from there. And so that's sort of the rough time line on precursor products into this year, magnet products end of next year, with any sort of ramp of a discrete manufacturing process or any manufacturing process for that matter. We see it for sure in our oxide production. You don't flip the switch and go on full tilt, so you can expect a real sort of multi-quarter or multiyear ramp to the full design capacity over time, but we're obviously thrilled that we've seen real customer acceptance and demand for the full design capacity, initial design capacity of the facility.

Can you talk about the Stage 1 expansion there at the market because you've had several owners of mine before you.

Yes.

And then maybe just how you guys, I think your operations have been better than any previous owners and just how that happened as well.

Yes. Yes. Well, it's somewhat not well understood how important and differentiated our Stage 1 production is versus prior operators of the asset. And so a lot of times, the focus is on Stage 2, which is for the investment that we're putting in to optimize what was over $2 billion of early 2010s capital. So many, many billions of dollars today of invested capital, we put in several hundred million to optimize that plant and drive what I think will be in almost any commodity price scenario, great return on capital for Stage 2. But the way that you're able to do that is by having a reliable Stage 1 operation where we produce sort of on average in a given quarter, more than 3.5x the best quarter ever of the prior operator of the facility. And that's from sort of basic blocking and tackling operational best practices that took us, right? It didn't happen overnight, right? We've been at this for many, many years now. But that is something that really differentiates also our platform in a low commodity price environment like we have right now, our ability to produce and sell the mixture of concentrate product at an attractive margin even in extremely low commodity pricing environments. And so what we've always said about the development of this market is the lowest risk, highest return on capital, incremental supply will be from us in an expansion of our upstream. And so several quarters ago when we announced upstream 60,000 tons, the reason we came out and started talking about upstream 60,000 tons as a cohesive project, it's really many projects in one and each of them had advanced from a maturity perspective where we felt very confident that over the time frame that we laid out and with a modest amount of capital, there are a lot of different ways that we can get to 60,000 tons, but we feel very confident that we will get there, and we'll be able to do it in a way that's very, very attractive from a return on capital perspective. And so that will be in a variety of different flavors over different time frames. And I think sort of that's probably what you're getting at is when are we going to see it and what's it going to look like? Michael, our Chief Operating Officer, spoke on the last call about the fact that one of the improvements that's part of the umbrella of upstream 60,000 tons is already very advanced, and probably will be coming online towards the end of this year. And so I'd characterize that as one of the easier, lower capital, quicker hit type of things that is -- are extremely attractive from an economics perspective, improving recoveries and things like that, but it's probably not a step change. It's a nice improvement. Then there are pieces of the puzzle that will be a little bit more capital, a little bit more time, will manifest towards the latter part of that 4-year time frame, but could be more step change like. And so I don't know it doesn't give you a ton of color, but I would say, expect the investments and the results to be a bit back-end loaded because of those -- some of these things take real time, but it's not going to be without some nice earlier wins, probably manifesting in early '25.

How has your capital allocation changed in the low price environment. Since you guys went public and prices were much higher to today. I mean I used to think about you got like 12 magnetic facilities and so how do you guys think about that?

Sure. I think that we have always had the same philosophy, which is that the leverage in this business in general, belongs in the price of the commodity, not on the balance sheet. And so we had always run a very conservative balance sheet and continue to do so. Very recently, we saw a unique opportunity to term out a significant amount of our convert maturities. We had a $690 million convertible bond maturing in 2026. And we saw an opportunity to both term that out and use that opportunity to take advantage of what we view as a real mispricing in our equity at this point. When you think about the invested capital on site, we talked about $2 billion of 2010. That's probably $4-plus billion at this point to recreate, and that's not even taking into account the ore body, which is one of the best in the world. That's also not taking into account Stage 3. And then lo and behold is an operating business on top of it, that even in low price environments, particularly on the concentrate side is making money. And so we look at that and looked at the opportunity set and saw an opportunity to step in and we repurchased nearly 7% or over 7% of the company, in sort of the $15 range, mid-15s per share. And I think that speaks to our view of not just a mispricing in the market, but also our confidence in execution over time. We see the results on a circuit-by-circuit basis in our Stage 2 operation and granted the proof is going to be in the pudding for us to string all of that together and drive incremental production over time, but from the data that we see, we feel very confident in the outlook for the business. And to some of the commentary we talked about before, the medium to long term from a commodity price perspective, we reported Q1 with all of these transactions, we were roughly net debt neutral. And so we still have a very conservative balance sheet considering the earnings power of all of these 3 stages put together. And so we feel good about where the balance sheet is at this point. We thought it was important and very opportunistic for us to do what we did and capitalize on the mispricing that we see, but we also will always stay true to the conservatism that we've exercised to date.

So it seems just kind of like a straight answer, the important asset, the U.S., the supply coming out of China, what is -- is there any policy or any kind of regulation that you guys are working on will actually differentiate you guys from China. There's so much trade war going on. It seems like that you don't get enough credit for it and you go into defense and all kinds of applications.

Yes, look, I think that -- I mean an important thing to highlight is, this is a global business. China is a significant constituent, frankly, in this market and we sell into that market and need to continue to sell into that market because this is a nascent business in the Western world. And so in some ways, it's important for us to differentiate ourselves as one of the few scale producers outside of China, but it's a global business. And so we need to always think about it with that lens. I do think that for defense applications and things like that, undoubtedly, there needs to be and is a focus from government increasingly on ensuring that there is access to raw materials at each stage of the chain in the United States. And so there are things that are already in the works, something called the [indiscernible] that differentiates for defense acquisition that the raw materials cannot be sourced from a Chinese source. And so that comes into effect in, I think, 2026 in a big way, '26, '27, and that could really start to impact certain purchasing behaviors. What I think is important, though, is to approach this problem of building up a business that has not existed in the United States in a scaled way in many decades. The way we want to see it done is the American way, which is rewarding scale and return on capital and return on private capital and so some of the things that we've seen are, for example, production tax credits, things like that, that incentivize formation of capital, which I think is really important to drive a diverse supply chain for these products in the West. And one thing that we haven't talked a lot about here today, but as you start to see the real tipping points in this industry, which I think we're pretty close to another one here with the advent of robotics and what AI is sort of doing to robotics, that puts a whole new lens on the importance of having a real industry here in the west.

Okay. We'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Ryan.

Yes. Thanks a lot.