Lynas Rare Earths Limited

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Linus Rare Earth's half-year 2025 results briefing. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Linus.

Good morning and welcome to the Linus Ririth's investor briefing for the half year ending 31 December 2024. Today's briefing will be presented by Amanda LaCaze, CEO and Managing Director, Chris Teresi, Executive General Manager of Resource Development and Operations, and Alex Logan, GM of the Mount World Expansion. Joining them will be Garden Sturtzenegger, CFO, Paul LaRue, COO, and Daniel Havis, VP, Strategy and Investor Relations. I will now hand over to Amanda. Please go ahead, Amanda.

I'll just go off mute. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us again today. In addition to my two colleagues, Chris Teresi and Alex Logan, we do have our senior leaders within the organisation on the call, Paul LaRue, our Chief Operating Officer, and Gaden Sturzenegger, our Chief Financial Officer. on who I will shamelessly rely for some of the more complex financial questions related to accounting. But in particular, I thought that it was a good idea to ask Chris and Alex to join us today. As the Executive General Manager for Resource Development and respectively the General Manager for Mountwell Expansion, these two colleagues accountable for delivering really significant changes at Mount World. And many of those have been delivered in the half year results that we're reflecting. These provide the foundation for our success today and well into the future. And I know that it is some time since many of you have had the chance to visit Mount World. It is a hive of activity, I can tell you that. And so I thought this was an excellent opportunity to provide some more detail on those initiatives by the individuals who've actually done the work. So as we move through the presentation today, and as always, we will acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we live, work and meet across Australia and particularly acknowledge and value the our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees and to pay respect to their elders past and present. So looking first at the half year snapshot, our Linus 2025 plan has always been about adding capacity, improving the efficiency of our operations, sustaining our position, Yes, they're sustaining our position as a low-cost producer and enhancing sustainability initiatives within the organisation. And we have started to see some of those strategies deliver in the first half of 2025. In the first six months, we grew production, we grew our sales volume and we grew our sales revenue. versus the prior corresponding period. In the first six months of this financial year, we variously commissioned, operated, and ramped up new capacity at each of our sites. And as always, significantly invested in safety as we extended our operations. And We have managed to record an improvement in our lost time injury-free rate and our total recordable injury-free rate. But we are particularly proud of the million hours LTI-free on the Mount Weld Expansion Project. And for those of you who have looked at the presentation, you will see the amount of work that has been done there is really significant. And the 1.2 million hours LTI-free in Linus Malaysia. I know all of you watch the rare earths market closely, and so therefore you know that prices have remained stubbornly lower over the past six months. As I think a few of the early analysts have identified, the result has largely been pre-reported at production, sales, and cash levels. And so really the only significant element as we look at the financials, and we can move on to the next slide, Lauren, is really the bridge to the accounting results. And that is affected by the allocation of additional cost of goods sold to the increased sales, and that included the sale of some inventory at the end of the half Some small increase in cost of goods sales related to variable costs at Kalgoorlie, a write down of some of our lanthanum and cerium inventory, and particularly foreign exchange effects with a significant weakening of the Australian dollar to both the US dollar and the Malaysian ringgit over the reporting period. It It is certainly understanding the bridge. I mean, I, like most people, run my personal P&L and balance sheet on a cash basis. Understanding all of the bridge from the cash basis to the accounting basis can take a little bit of time, but GADENS is on the call to assist to answer questions on the call or separately if that is helpful. Okay. During the period, we did also build some work in progress inventory, both at Mount Weld and with our mixed rare earth carbonate. And that's all part of ensuring that we are well positioned to be able to demonstrate the Linus 2025 rates in the final quarter of this year. That will progressively work its way through the system. So NDPR production at 2,969 tonnes was up. versus the prior corresponding period, including as a result of improved processing of lanthanide concentrate in Malaysia, improvements in recovery rates, but also as a result of processing mixed rare earth carbonate from the Kalgoorlie facility. NDPR sales volume was up at 3,178 tonnes, and that is a combination of reflecting increased production and also increased inventory. The results show progressive production improvements across all sites, including enhanced operations in our Linus Malaysia facility. As we head towards the end of the Linus 2025 capital program, We had a capital expenditure of $267 million in the six months and finished with $308 million in cash and short-term deposits. Kalgoorlie is operating, and we are now shifting into a continuous improvement mode, focused on both continuing to enhance our flow sheet and reduce our costs. Stage one of Mount World... has been tied into operations and is already delivering benefits. LAMP, mixture of carbonate processing, is operational. New solvent extraction capacity is already being operated, and we have new PF capacity and DYTV separation expected to come into operation before the end of the financial year. So if we move on and just have a few comments on the market, I mean, everyone knows the last two years have been very challenging. Demand has continued to grow, but at lower rates than was forecast maybe in, you know, I think particularly in FY22. And there has been significant reductions in market prices. As people can see, you know, the prices, was $7 less in December 24 versus December 23. We are seeing the first green shoots of an improved market. And people may ask why. And of course, there are complex influences in the rare earths market. As I said, the market demand growth has been sustained. Some sectors are growing slightly slower than we had previously thought they would. However, I think most seasoned observers on this call would understand that the market is very heavily influenced by supply side factors and particularly inside China. So China regulation really makes a difference to not just actual performance in the market, but also perceptions. And there can be a lot of activity in this market based upon people's perceptions and expectations, which is not always reflecting the real time world. China has released in February 2025, just about a week or so ago, some new draft regulations for comment, which show a further centralisation of control and further consolidation of the industry in China. And that is the rare earths processing industry. And it will ultimately, if the regulations pass into law after the period of comment, will centralise control to the two big firms, Northern Rare Earths and China Rare Earths. And we would expect that smaller independent players will be absorbed in time into these two organisations. It does allow greater control in China on production volumes, And it does for the first time also take into scope via the mechanisms which are used any feedstock which is imported into China, which previously was not accommodated within the previous quota arrangements. So we do await the quotas, which we sort of expect within the next few weeks to see what the ultimate effect of the new regulation may be. However, I think everyone would have seen that the price has already improved by about $5 a kilo for NDPR since the release of the draft regulations. And you don't need to be a mathematical genius to calculate what effect that would have had on our results for the six months to December 2024. The greater control of feedstock, you know, generally we would believe Fabus Linus says we are a proven separator. with proven resources, and we remain the only non-Chinese producer who can bank the full value of any improvements in the oxide prices. One of the other things that I've just referenced here is that we are seeing continued consolidation in the magnet manufacturing area with those magnet makers who are operating at the top end of the market with sort of the highest tech materials growing share. We think that that will drive growth over time. And then, of course, like many, we watch with interest the various global geopolitical moves. Once again, our point would be that Linus is best placed to benefit from any of these because it is absolutely easier to get guaranteed supply from Linus than developing whole new industries or mining sectors elsewhere. in new countries. And that is really the real value of Linus. We have the proven resource and we have the proven capability. And our program with Linus 2025, which has been focused on increasing our capacity to meet growing demand, improving our efficiency to ensure continued profitability and meeting, um, community, government, and indeed our own benchmarks on sustainability will see us in an excellent position as we see the market recover. So I now want to take about 10 minutes to give first Chris and then Alex the opportunity to take you through some of the initiatives that we've executed at Mount Weld and then be very happy to take, and then a little bit about Malaysia and Kalgoorlie, but then very happy to take questions from those who are on the call. So over to you, Chris.

Thank you, Amanda. Our recent program of drilling and assessment at Mount Weld has delivered an all reserve with more than a 20 year life of mine. to supply feedstock at an expanded production rate of 12,000 tonnes per annum of NDPR oxide finished product. This outcome continues to confirm the exceptional geology of Mount Weld rare earths deposit as being the foundation of our business. Notably, the composition of the light rare earth elements and the heavy rare earth elements at Mount Weld has provided us with more options for mine planning over the life of mine. So moving to the next slide and drawing attention to some of the key numbers that we released on the 5th of August 2024 in our mineral resource and all reserve update. Mineral resources are now at 106 million tons and that includes both the weathered laterite near the surface and the fresh carbonatite below. Our program of drilling drilled to a depth of 200 meters below surface intersecting both the weathered laterite and into the fresh carbonatite and all holes ended in fresh carbonatite. After assessing the modifying factors, our ore reserves now contain over 2 million tons of rare earth oxides. We added to our ore reserves and replaced depletion from ongoing operations over the past few years. And there's more. This includes 12,000 tonnes of contained dysprosium oxide as one of the heavy rare earth element metals in the ore reserve. And our release on the 5th of August 2024 lists the inventory of all the rare earth elements in the ore reserve. We now have 32 million tonnes of ore reserve, and that includes the existing tailing storage facility, with an average grade of 7.3% total REO. My colleague Alex Logan will discuss shortly the improved efficiency at Mount Weld that supports the reprocessing of tailings. The next slide shows the location of our drill holes relative to the open cut mine. It was a cost-effective drilling program immediately surrounding the open cut mine and also drilling below the open cut mine. And pleasingly, we safely had both drilling and mining operations ongoing at the same time. The result of this improvement in our ore body knowledge is providing more options for our long-term mine planning. So let's focus on heavy rare earths in Mount Weld. Next slide, thank you. The drill program identified an expansive halo of heavy rare earths that is now within the life of mine pit shell. So looking at the image on the right, you can see that is the red outline of our current life of mine pit shell. And it shows that we have heavy rare earths mineralization with the yellow shading and the darker yellow shading of up to 500 meters surrounding the open cut mine and also below the open cut mine. And once again, there's more. the ore reserve grade increased to 400 ppm dysprosium oxide and 100 ppm terbium oxide. This improved understanding of a heavy rare earth mineralization has also provided more options for our mine planning. And introducing the fresh carbonatite as an inferred resource. The fresh carbonatite occurs below the current life of mine ore reserve as shown in the cross section on the right. Whilst the grades in the fresh carbonatite are lower than the weathered ore reserve, we see that it is a less complex mineral system as it contains no geological weathering. And the team here at Mount Weld are assessing the fresh carbonatite with the scoping study. And with that, I'd like to pass on to Alex. Thanks, Chris.

As you can see by the picture here, Mount World is looking a lot different today than it has over the last 10 years. We are well advanced on the Mount World expansion and tracking on budget. When we began the design of the Mount World expansion, there were three core objectives that guided the project's approach. The first one being increased capacity. The flow sheet's been designed and built for a step change increase in capacity, both in throughput and production outputs. The circuit has been designed to deliver a fourfold increase in mill throughput and a capacity to supply concentrate feedstock to support up to 12,000 tonne of NDPR refined product. The second core objective is improved efficiency. The benefit of expanding a brownfields asset is that we've been able to apply 10 years of lessons learned into this new design, and that's a very rare opportunity and one we've sought to leverage at every point in the process. The expansion has incorporated new circuits that improve fine particle recovery, new circuits to process a wider range of ore types, and increased automation to ensure that we can optimize fixed costs despite a much larger plant. The third core objective is enhanced sustainability. The sustainability initiatives on this expansion range from the hybrid power station, targeted tailing stems designs, and a significant investment in water management. These initiatives, while good for the environment, are also good for business and improve the reliability of the critical inputs required to efficiently operate an expanded mount weld. In terms of capacity, you can see the pictures below of what we call Stage 1. This is the concentrate dewatering circuit. The concentrate dewatering circuit was the bottleneck of the existing operation, so we took a very deliberate strategy of constructing and commissioning this circuit first. tying it into the existing operation while the remainder of the plant was built. The circuit's been running for over three months now and is fully integrated into operation. It's enabled a capacity increase at Mount World and the performance is exceeding the design basis, particularly with regards to moisture content of the concentrate product with moistures materially lower than what was produced from the existing circuit. The other benefit of building on a brownfields operation is that we've had the ability to stage. We're seeking to leverage this as it reduces our execution and ramp up risk. Stage one circuit is proven, it's operational, so it's one less circuit that we need to focus on as we ramp up the remainder of the expansion. This photo here shows our crushing circuit. So this is part of stage two and Commissioning of this circuit has commenced. And once again, we've got the ability to commission this circuit in isolation, prove it up, iron out any bugs before the mills and the flotation circuit comes online. So this progressive commissioning is reducing our execution and ramp up risk. We're not having to press a big green button on this project to run everything at once for the first time. So crushing at Mount World historically has been via a mobile crushing circuit. This is labour intensive and it's involved multiple re-handling points. This new circuit is fully automated and provides a direct path from ore being tipped into the crusher bin directly through to the mills. It's much more efficient and it's an example of how the expansion can drive cost efficiencies despite higher throughputs. The photos below show our new grinding circuit with construction at an advanced stage. This new grinding circuit will enable a fourfold increase in throughput capacity and the ability to process a wider range of ore types. The blue mill on the right is our regrind mill. Now, this is a new addition to the flow sheet and reflects many years of laboratory and piloting test work to now be implemented in this circuit. This enables a very fine grind which improves the liberation of fine particles and therefore the recovery of those fine particles. The regrind mill opens up the possibility of tailings reprocessing, as Chris mentioned earlier, as these fine particles that were unable to be recovered on the existing circuit can now be unlocked. This is our new flotation circuit. It's incorporated over 10 years of operational lessons and lab development over the years. This circuit contains latest generation technology with high shear cells for enhanced efficiency and particularly focused on efficiency in fine particle flotation. The circuit has a lot of flexibility built in for processing a range of ore types, including a dedicated apatite flotation circuit, which represents a significant part of our ore reserve. Water is very precious at Mount World. And as Chris talked about our ore reserves, sometimes we think water is rarer than rare earths at Mount World. So we're very focused on managing that. It's critical to the process and we've made a significant investment in this project in water management. We've built a high efficiency bore water treatment plant, which is the photo on the left. That's designed to deliver 85% recovery. Construction's nearing completion on this circuit and we are moving towards commissioning. We're also building a state-of-the-art recycled water treatment plant. That's designed to deliver over 90 per cent recovery. This is a Gen 4 design that's been in development for well over five years before we commenced this project. We're also building additional tailings facilities and the design of these facilities has been undertaken to ensure we can support expanding our successful mud farming initiatives which have been recognised externally as best practice. We've also designed the tailings facilities to ensure that the higher grade tailings produced over the last 10 years are not sterilised and are available for future reprocessing. So the Mount World expansion as you've seen is a much larger facility and it requires a modern power solution. Now with the increased power demand it was clear that continuing to burn diesel for power generation was not acceptable from both an emissions perspective and a unit cost perspective. So we've assessed a range of technology mixes and it was very clear that a gas-fermed renewable hybrid power station would provide the optimal balance of reliable power, lower unit costs and lower emissions intensity compared to a diesel or gas-only alternative. So as a common theme on this project, construction has been staged and is sequenced to align with the ramp-up in power demand. Construction is on schedule, commissioning of the gas generators is underway The solar pad earthworks are nearing completion with the solar online before the end of this calendar year and the wind turbine earthworks, the photo on the top right, also underway and they will be online within the first half of next calendar year. Once complete, this power station will provide reliable power and we're expected to deliver approximately 70% average renewable energy for Mount Weld. Thanks, I'll hand over to Amanda.

Okay, so just a couple more. Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Alex. Everybody is very familiar with our investment in Kalgoorlie, the first plant of this kind in Australia. The capacity uplift is about meeting future demands. We have implemented a number of both efficiency plans You know, so you can see the retainer here, which, you know, currently we have bagging and we actually have to export bags to Malaysia, which then become waste, whereas here we have retainers which operate within a closed system with Mount World. And, of course, the sustainability, ensuring that this plant has all of the elements which are going to – support its operation into the future. The Kalgoorlie facility during this period was officially opened. As we look at it, as I mentioned earlier, we are now moving more into what we would call continuous improvement mode. That means continuing to enhance the flow sheet. The cracking and leaching part of this operation, clearly we have long experience in cracking and leaching. The mixed rare earth carbonate production is actually a new process to the organisation and ensuring that we optimise that flow sheet to give us the best outcome, highest recoveries is important. And of course, the other area where we are very focused in terms of continuous improvement is is continuing to improve our cost position. There is a cost penalty to operating in Australia. Well, that's a bit of a surprise, isn't it? But we are working on, you know, in terms of the design, we worked on opportunities to automate and improve efficiency. And we now have a team which is really focused on ensuring we start to bank some cost benefits for this operation. Linus Malaysia, and maybe next time around we'll spend a bit more time on Linus Malaysia because, you know, there have been some very big changes in our Quantan facility, yet, you know, some of those have been at, you know, relatively small cost. So you see on the photos here, we've got the mixture areas carbonate receivable facility and processing of that material is operational. And we are starting to see, you know, sort of once again, as we continue to improve, we aim to improve the efficiency of those operations. On the right, is our new rotary furnaces and product finishing. This is incredibly exciting. You know, I mean, it's a long time since we put in completely new equipment into this part of our facility. And I can't wait to see them in operation, which will probably be sometime next quarter. And then as well as that, in Malaysia, we can see the work which has been done on the new DYTB separation circuit. This may surprise some people how far progressed this is. But others, of course, would say, well, of course, we'd expect that because we've said we should get some first product by the end of this financial year. And look at our beautiful solar array that we've got on our administration building and our car park in Malaysia. Of course, we continue to engage very actively with our local communities and we've shared some of those events with you here. As you can see in Kalgoorlie, we have really, you know, the United Nations working there and working you know, sort of engaged with the community on a variety of events. So, you know, as we look at this and, you know, reflecting on our sort of presentation today, I know everybody understands that the all body matters. I think that sometimes people underestimate the quality and longevity of the Mount Weld ore body and it's useful to have Chris to be able to take us through some of those, some of our understanding of the ore body. It also matters that we are able, as Alex was able to show, but also when we look at what we've done in Linus, Malaysia, that we have sunk investments which we are able to enhance by additional investment. And this sets us apart from many others who seek to participate in the rarest market. But really, most importantly, intellectual property and experience really matter. And when you look at these items, it is one of the reasons why China has been able to sustain its dominance for so long. They have the sunk investment. They're able to efficiently increase output. And they have the experience and intellectual property. I asked Chris and Alex to join us today because I think that it is really important valuable to see the amount of experience that we have within the organisation. Alex has been with us for more than 10 years and has been a key part of driving many of the improvements of Mount World prior to taking on the role of running the major project. And Chris has been with us for over five years, first of all in Kwantan and then in Mount World. So, This sets us apart as we think about, you know, being set up for the next major growth phase in the rare earths market. We are ready and we are ready to be able to bank all of that upside as it comes through. So with that, I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you, Amanda. As a reminder to ask a question afterwards, press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please have one question. If you have more questions, please re-queue. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Austin Yun from Macquarie. Your line is now open.

Good morning, Amanda, Tim. Yeah, good to hear that you've been closely following the policy update in China. Just came to understand your production update and operational update at the Kalgoorlie. In the quality you mentioned, there were some impurities in the form of a sulfate, and you're working on that. Any update on that? And also... Looking at the presentation, you mentioned that the continuous operations started at the plant. I came to understand the current utilisation rate and the trajectory of the utilisation rate in the near term.

Thank you. Thanks, Austin. So, yes, as I said in the presentation, there are two sort of major parts to what we do at Kalgoorlie. One is the cracking and leaching. We have 10 years' experience with that. The second is the production of the mixture of carbonate, and there are some new processes associated with that, and also just, you know, sort of the normal process with bringing a plant online and continuously enhancing that. So, you know, in the first set of the first production, we had various different impurities associated It's exactly as we would expect. It took us a bit longer to get to a stage where we were able to produce within a target range when we first started up the Quantan facility a decade ago. We've got most of those in order now, but we are implementing some further changes and enhancements to the flow sheet, which we will do over the next couple of months, which we think will significantly improve, you know, sort of sulfate and particle size, you know, sort of our two big targets at this stage. In terms of capacity utilization, you know, our objective is to ensure that we are able to meet our Linus 2025 target target uh by the end of uh fy 2025 ten and a half thousand tons a year which is give or take 900 tons a month so we need about a third of that to come from calgary feedstock and about two-thirds of it will come from the lanthanide concentrate um which is processed in malaysia thank you amanda so just to confirm i i did he mentioned that so you still um

expect to achieve the 10.5,000 tonne round rate, roughly running for like a month or two towards the end of this financial year as part of the original plan. This is unchanged.

Every single person in Linus is focused on delivering that.

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next, we have Chan Jian from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi. Good morning. Oh, good afternoon, Amanda. Thanks for taking my question. I'm wondering if you can help me to understand your underlying unit cost of production, either on ROE or NDPR basis. Based on the difference between your revenue and underlying EBITDA, I have a unique cost of production at around US 47 per kilogram of NDPR, which is substantially higher than what you reported on the second half of FR24. But I noticed that you also have other expenses such as foreign exchange laws, $70 million, $5 million inventory write-down, as well as your technical challenges processing the higher impurity Calculi Phase Sock front lamp. et cetera, et cetera. So altogether, I'm wondering what kind of costs are one off from this half and what is recurring going forward? And also, how should I think about your underlying cost in the next two months, given you have done a lot of work to improve the efficiency? Thank you.

Thanks, Chen. It's a really useful question, and you are right. I mean, the results is significantly affected by foreign exchange effects. So I think that is probably more helpful to, rather than look at the EBITDA number, because, you know, there are some of those changes to actually look at the margin. And you will see with that, if you just do the simple, and we put this into the financial report, if you just do the simple calc on, you know, sort of the revenue divided by the number of NDPR tons, you can see that there's been a small increase in the costs on a per kilo basis. But why don't I invite Gaddens to either add to that or, you know, happy to set up a separate meeting as well. But Gaddens, I'll invite you to add to my comments.

Yeah, hello.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Just a quick one more high level to make sure people can read the data properly. And I refer to the financial statement, particularly page 19 and 20. I think as Jen mentioned, I think we have in there about 16, 17 million exchange rate adjustment. And what's important here, I want to point out, this is not on transactions. So this is not transaction exchange. This is purely profit and loss translation exchange and basically changes every day based on the exchange rates. And particularly on page 19, what's very interesting, if you move down to the more comprehensive view, at the same time, you have the 16 million kind of translation on the profit and loss. We have a 93 million positive adjustment on the balance sheet. So, and particularly if you look at the page 20, you see that the Through the same effect, basically, we increased the equity position by 100 million. And that's very simple, obviously, particularly the Malaysian Ringgit has improved quite significantly against the Australian dollar. So all our assets we have in Malaysia in expressed in Australian dollar have increased a lot. So I think that's important to understand. So the FX is not related to transactions. It's really purely translation. And again, the effects changes every day. This value will change every day. We'll see at the end of the year what that will give. As you indicated, we have, I wouldn't say a write-down. I would rather call it kind of a provision on the CE and DLA product. And there, as we see kind of a price moves on the NDPR, we might also see certain price moves on LACE, which would kind of neutralize that provision. So that's not realized. It's purely a provision at this point in time. based on December, but there's some life in the prices and it might not come through or reverse completely. What's also quite important on the financial side to understand, it's kind of a transitional period and their reference is made to the inventory. I think that's quite interesting, obviously, as expected. We are building up the inventory pipeline, so a lot of more work in progress material. And here you have obviously the material which is shifted from CAL to the LAMP. So that's coming in. So in total, that's the 35 million increase on that cost. At the same time, you also have raw material and consumable increase coming through from the particularly Kalgoorlie side, as we are building it up, obviously. And at the same time, we did sell more in the period than we produced. So the finished goods are decreasing by about 13 to 14 million. So net, we have an inventory move of 27 million. I think that's to be expected. I think that's probably more a one-time thing. It can move a little bit into the next quarter as well as we fully fill up the pipeline between CAL and the LAM. And, yeah, on the cost, I think underlying, I don't think on the pre-unit cost, you see, you always have this relationship of NDPR to other products. I think there we continue with our improvement projects. And I think from that perspective, we did deliver. At the same time, you obviously have the cost coming in at the initial stage. Before jumping too much on the interpretation of this one, I think we should really see kind of a full period where you have the new setup being effective. I think that's my initial comment. I hope that helps. And yeah, happy to have that one on one. on the analytical accounting side.

Thanks for that. I might take this offline. So give time to other analysts to ask questions.

Thank you very much. I think that I'm just, you know, sort of the poor dumb CEO. I don't have quite the same appreciation as Gaddens, but I would highlight again that we are One of a very few was the only others being Chinese firms, rarest firms that are able to book a profit on both a cash and an accounting basis, even when the prices have been as low as they have been in the last six months.

Thank you, Amanda. Just a moment for our next question, please. Next question comes from Jonathan Sharp. of CLSA.

Yeah. Hi, Amanda and team. So my one question is, you know, there's a lot of geopolitical noise at the moment. Would love to hear your views or your thoughts on Ukraine rare earth deposits or potential supply from this region. You know, there's a lot of anecdotal comments about this, you know, one being that it's pie in the sky and uneconomical, but would love to hear your views or thoughts.

Jonathan, you know what? In the time that I've been involved in rare earths, I've heard about a rare earth race to the moon because there could be lots of mining on the moon to get rare earths. I've heard about, you know, sort of a rare earth race to the sea floor because there's lots of rare earths on the sea floor, which could be useful in the future. I heard about a rare earth race to Afghanistan at one stage. You know, so there is always a lot of discussion on these matters and And I remember watching a television show with my husband and they were talking about accessing lanthanum and how expensive it was. And I'm like, well, I've got 100 tonnes in the warehouse if you'd like to come and buy some from me, you know. So our view on this is that, and I think that everybody who assesses this industry would know how long it from having the, you know, sort of thought bubble of wouldn't it be great to have some rare earths sourced from X, you know, wherever X may be, and actually having some separated products sitting in a big bag waiting for a customer to buy it. And so our view would be very simple. It's the best way to get guaranteed supply in the West. is to buy product from Linus because we have it, we have the skills, we have the resource in the ground at Mount Weld and we have the skills to process that resource cost efficiently. So we don't get too tied up with some of the sort of speculation about, Various different sources of various. I mean, we really just focus on making sure that what we do is the best that we can.

Okay.

Thanks for your views, Amanda. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Al Harvey from JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Yeah, morning, Amanda and team. I'd love to hopefully can squeeze two in if I'm lucky, but I figure if it's only one, given we've got Chris and Alex on the line, I might focus on an ops question. Just wanted to get a sense on the heavies distribution at Mount World on slide 10. Let's go over the dysprosium falling in the 2024 long pits. So I just wanted to get an understanding of how much of that in the near surface weathered ore zone and how much might be in the deeper appetite zone. And I suppose basically how terbium is associated with the with dysprosium.

Hi Al. So we see the on the chart we see the contours of 300 ppm dysprosium oxide as one of the heavy rare earth metals. And the darker yellow you can see is that 500 ppm dysprosium oxide. The ratio of dysprosium and terbium we see across the ore reserve, so this is all contained within the life of mine, is fairly consistent. In terms of depth, it's all within the weathered saprolyte zone. Now our life of mine pit is no more than about 80 metres below surface. So what you see presented in that slide is a life of mine pit shell no more than 80 metres below surface.

Great, thanks for that. And I suppose just in that context, you've got the scoping study on the fresh carbonatite underway. That's a fair bit deeper from my understanding. So I guess given you've already got 20 years of mine life at the expanded production rate, on your base case, just wondering how we should be thinking about the carbonatide as a potential justification for further output expansions, or is it really just looking at further extending life beyond that 20 years, which I suppose is more than enough on most people's DCF?

So I think that there are two elements. I'll let Chris comment as well, because he is particularly passionate about the carbonatide. But The first is that, you know, we deplete the resource and we certainly want to sustain and have always had an objective to sustain a plus 20-year mine life. The lifeblood of miners is to continue to explore and to understand what's available. And, you know, it's interesting, Alan, that you picked out this thing on the heavies because, you know, comparatively, to other deposits, you will see that this is really, you know, a significant heavy rarest deposit. But the rest that is interesting about the carbonatite is that whilst it is at lower grades, it does appear to lend itself to more efficient processing. And so we see that we derive cost competitiveness by thinking a variety of different means. Certainly the grade and the simplicity of mining at Mount Weld is a critical part of our cost advantage, but continuously looking for new opportunities to improve the cost effectiveness of our processing is certainly part of this. It does not feed into currently a plan to further increase capacity. Did I get that good enough for you, Chris?

Am I able to jump in with another one?

Sure. Because we like that question, because we love that old old body.

No, no, no, it's a great old body. I 100% agree. I suppose just maybe just one final follow-up. Amanda, I mean, you mentioned that, you know, that lower grade in the fresco bonnet type, that you get more efficient processing. I guess just wanting to understand if any work's been done, I guess, because it is deeper and fresh rock will be obviously harder. Is there any offset, I suppose, around the mining side? Or when you say more efficient processing, do you kind of just mean overall it could be cheaper?

I will let Chris take that question.

So our thing to focus on, this is an inferred mineral resource and we are working towards a scoping study. A lot of these more technical questions would arise in the subsequent studies as you progress through to understanding the modifying factors, including some of the more technical aspects of the ore. So our focus right now with the inferred mineral resource is to understand and then assessment of our scoping study.

And I would add to that and say in terms of mining, one of the magical parts about the carbonatide is that we don't have any overburden removal as part of our costs associated with that. So definitely preferable. And then in terms of the processing, The metallurgical team has done some initial work in that area, which is highly prospective for simpler and lower cost processing.

No worries. Really appreciate the technical side of things there, guys. Thanks, Alan. Thank you.

Are we done? Next question. A few more, Amanda, if that's okay. Next question comes from Shannon Shiha from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Thanks, Amanda and team, for not cutting off my question. Maybe if I just ask on the USC drift facilities, I didn't see any update in the PREZO, but just maybe any movement there around the pathway for wastewater management and I guess how that's impacting timelines.

Sure. Thanks, Shannon. We have identified a pathway which would see us not incur some of the sort of challenges that we had seen with some of the permitting previously. It does require some additional capability for the facility to be able to do that, including sort of mechanisms that would see us recycle more of our chemicals and water and also a zero discharge site. highly engaged with, you know, sort of the team at the DOD, but I still think everybody understands right now, you know, Washington's a bit challenging just right now, but we're working through that process. But we have a design, we have the engineering, and we have a path forward.

Great. Thanks for that. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. Thank you. Just a moment for our next question. Next, we have Chris Brogan from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda. It's actually Paul Young here. Hope you're well. Just a question on the heavy circuit and just sales of heavy earths. I mean, first of all, good to see the heavy circuits taking shape and Construction looks like it's going well and etc. Question around the offtake on the heavies and how we should think about where that material goes and also the pricing. And just on the customer base, I know you've outlined again in your accounts that you need to prioritise Japanese customers for heavies the extent possible under any agreement with the US. So how do we think about where the heavies go? And then also... on reference pricing. Is it going to reference the Asian metals TBDY, or can we actually, in this instance, I know there's a lot of discussion on NDPR, ex-China pricing, but can we actually break away from Asian metals for the heavy offtake?

Paul, I think that, yes, there is a lot of discussion about ex-China pricing, and most of it is easy on a spreadsheet and difficult in reality. Um, so, uh, you know, we have real product and real customers. Um, the issue around the DYTB, however, is that the, there is a lot more scarcity of DYTB, as we all know, particularly outside China. And we will be the only source of separated DYTB outside of China. Um, It also has more uses than NDPR, which is primarily used and only very small quantities are used outside of the magnet sector. And so for DYTB, that gives us additional opportunities as well. So, for example, there are – you know, sort of different sectors where we will have the opportunity to actually improve the quality of the material. So we have the opportunity to leverage what will be a relatively small amount of DYTB in its first instance to give us improved pricing on the DYTB and potentially on other products in the range as well. So with respect to the agreement with JARE on product being available for the Japanese market, it certainly doesn't demand that product is available for the magnet market. And, you know, in the electronics sector, there is significant demand for a higher quality DY, and that is in Japan. And you should also remember that always the condition on the availability to Japan is that it is at no commercial disadvantage to Linus. So it will always be at the highest price. Of course, the other thing is that in the U.S., the Department of Defense Act, DFAS, which prohibits the use of material and defence applications, which has been sourced from China, comes into effect in 2027. There is a requirement for heavies in that sector. And if they're going to meet the 2027 target, it will be on materials which are actually being manufactured over the next 12 to 18 months. So there are significant opportunities for us to improve pricing and even with the relatively small initial, you know, sort of amount of DYTB that we will get out of the circuit in Malaysia.

Yeah, thanks, Amanda. Just that I know there's been a few follow-up questions, so can I just add one that around some recent developments on the magnet side, magnet industry, I know you actually put a comment in your presentation, that's changing very quickly, and we've seen a couple of, well, actually three prepayments that have been done in the US with USOEMs, with another company. And that tells me that the magma industry, ex-China and Japan, is starting to actually move quickly. So it supports your comments. Is there anything there that actually that we can read into that actually positively impacts you? Or is that just a positive sign that the ex-China market is actually changing quickly?

Yeah, look, I think the situation with the OEM and those prepayments in the US, it's not a relatively small volume of material, but yes, it is. And I guess for that particular OEM, it's a bit of an insurance payment. It's still a relatively smaller amount of their overall consumption. We... We've always, you know, sort of spoken to the importance of the outside China processing market for our business and for anyone else, frankly, who aspires to be in the rarest industry. Because at present, as I look at, you know, sort of many of the projects that, you know, the product is going to ultimately, unless we get more outside China, it's going to have to be sold into China. for further processing. So, therefore, it doesn't actually enhance the resilience of Chinese supply chains. So we are seeing many magnet projects. I think the biggest challenge is going to be magnet makers outside of China. I know this is one of Paul's, you know, sort of he sees this as being a big challenge, is magnet makers outside of China actually producing having the technology to produce the high-performance magnets that will be required by the market going forward.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks, Paul.

Paul, did you want to add anything to that? No.

Thank you, Amanda. I have nothing to add, Amanda. Sorry.

Okay, thanks. Okay, sorry. Our next question comes from a line of Daniel Morgan from Baron Joey.

Hi, Amanda. I know that you said you would look to demonstrate the capacity of 10,500 tonnes by the end of 2025, but obviously the sustainability of running at that depends on the market demand for product uh you referred to green shoots some optimism towards the market but basically is what you see in markets enough for you to want to run your system at full capacity or might you dial it back until you see better signs you know it it it is such a difficult question isn't it because you know the the um

It really does end up just being a purely financial question. We never have a problem placing our material, you know, whether we're placing it with magnet bankers outside China or indeed inside China or via, you know, agreements with OEMs and other magnet buyers. And, you know, we have a number of those as well. It comes down to will it be at the sort of price that we're happy to, you know, to bank at that particular time. We think that the price, where it's been for much of the first half of this financial year, and indeed up until, you know, sort of a couple of weeks ago, is below a sustaining price, both for Chinese producers and also for banks non-China producers other than Linus. I note that once again, we have banked a profit outcome where others have banked a loss. And so for us, we are cautiously optimistic that some of the price momentum at present will remain for a while, and if it does for us, even if it's sitting where it is now or another $5 to $10 a kilo above, then it definitely is to our benefit to run our system as efficiently as possible, and part of that is driving volume through the system. So the answer is it makes sense if the price is right.

Okay, thank you very much, Amanda. I'll stick it to one.

Thanks, Daniel.

Thank you. Next question comes from Dim Ariashin from UBS.

Thanks, Amanda. Thanks, Tim. Just a quick one from me. Maybe you could help me. I noticed that Linus, you guys have started recording NDPR sales. For the half, can you just confirm, you don't typically break out NDPR sales. You break out NDPR production, and if that's correct, maybe rationale for that. I notice that NDPR sales are running ahead of production for the half. Does that have read-throughs for the next half or the market? Yeah, if you could help with that, please.

Well, hi, Dem. We thought that you would be particularly interested in trying to, you know, we know that analysts are particularly interested in trying to calculate a unit cost per kilo of NDPR and that this was a helpful piece of information to provide. And that's the start and finish of why we put it in there. We thought. it was useful information for, for, for analysts and investors.

Yeah. And in terms of just selling, um, more like, is that, you know, just being ahead of the market, is that just more because you were down on December production or, um, um, yeah.

Well, uh, yeah. December production wasn't where we wanted it to be. Um, And so therefore, you know, being able to draw down a little of that inventory was helpful. We still hold more inventory than we did in the days when we finished every quarter with zero, exactly zero tonnes of NDPR in the warehouse. So we do carry some inventory these days. But you know, we still produced more versus the prior corresponding period reflecting the additional capacity that we've brought online over the past year.

Okay, cool. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan. Thank you for all the questions. This concludes our Q&A session. I will now hand back to Amanda for closing remarks. Amanda.

Well, once again, thank you all for joining us. You know, we would prefer that the financial result had a few more zeros on it, but we continue to work on the initiatives that will allow us to deliver some more zeros as we move forward. And as I've said, we think that the market is showing good A few positive signs, and we continue to be the best position to be able to take advantage of those. So thank you, and I'll look forward to seeing some of you over the next couple of weeks.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.