Lynas Rare Earths Limited

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

Good morning and welcome to the Linus Reras Investor Briefing for the March 2025 quarter. Today's briefing will be presented by Amanda Lacaze, CEO and Managing Director, and joining Amanda are Gauden Sturzenegger, Chief Financial Officer, Paul Leroux, Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Leonard, General Counsel and Company Secretary, and Daniel Havas, VP Strategy and Investor Relations. I'll now hand over to Amanda to begin the briefing. Please go ahead, Amanda.

Good morning everybody. As always thank you for joining us and thank you for being interested in our business which we wake up and think about from the moment we wake up every day but I'm sure is something which is not necessarily you know on your agendas on a daily basis. I guess today everyone will want to talk about the actions of various governments globally and their impact on the market dynamics for the rare earth market rather than some of the more specific actions and developments at Linus. So with that in mind I would just say that most of you who have spoken with me or been at these calls previously would know that as I have said many times before, the most important feature of any business's success is the development of sustainable competitive advantage. Developing sustainable competitive advantage allows the business to survive, indeed even to flourish, even with difficult market dynamics. Even the most casual observer would know that the rare earths market can be difficult. Marked as it is by low cost competition, concentrated supply chains, fairly change resistant customers, some of whom seem to think that if they cross their fingers and wish hard enough that everything will be okay. and of course the geopolitical posturing and actions of various governments. But the rarest market is also, like most others, market leaders are the most efficient producers, lead industry technically, and offer differentiated products and services. So at Linus, We continue to focus on building our competitive advantage while everything around us gets thrown up in the air like a pack of cards. And I am really pleased to be able to announce today that we have our first product, a small quantity of holmium concentrate, which has been produced from our new heavy rare earth separation circuits. with the all-important dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide to be produced this quarter. In the context of the current restrictions on heavy rare earth exports from China, this is an incredibly important step forward. Our sales team has been engaging with customers for months to develop a sales plan that delivers best returns for Linus. Now, often when people are talking about rare earths and heavies in particular, the focus is on magnets. But it's important to note that dysprosium and terbium are also used in other applications, including, for example, the microcapacitor market, which is considerably less price sensitive than the magnet market. It is the job of our sales team to finalise a best sales portfolio optimised to provide best return to the company. Suffice to say, demand for these materials significantly outstrips our current capacity and we are already assessing options to further increase output alongside continued development of our US project. So Linus's performance during the quarter was very much in line with market conditions and we continue to manage our production ramp up carefully in a market where the US and Chinese government actions are both presenting challenges to our business. However, having said that, the current market dynamics offer the best chance for a sustainable reset of the market as customers are forced to deal with the realized supply risk of magnets from China. As noted in the report, magnets containing heavy rare earths are not being exported from China at present. and the two-way flow of materials including feedstock from the US into China has ceased. In terms of our own progress towards the Linus 2025 run rate, our approach remains to work to prove capacity but not to continue production at rates ahead of demand. As noted in our report, Mount Weld Operations and the Mount Weld Expansion Project are both in excellent shape, performing at or ahead of expectations. Our Kalgoorlie facility is continuing to improve and you will note that we transitioned the cost from the capital account to the operating account from February this year. And our performance at the Linus Malaysia facility in Kuantan continues to improve and really, in a very satisfying way, with several very complex new circuits coming online, including the front-end receiving and processing of mixture areas of carbonate, The new flow sheet for separation of NDPR, which has given us sort of the uplifting capacity. And of course, importantly, as noted earlier, the new heavy rare earth separation circuit. As we note in the report, the US project is awaiting finalization of a further cost review. This is driven by a combination of new design to accommodate some of the wastewater permitting challenges that we're facing at the selected site, but also importantly by the effect of the tariffs which have been applied particularly in US and Chinese jurisdictions. I think as all of our shareholders know, we are risk averse on this project and are not inclined to take cost inflation risk. Of course, if we see real progress on downstream development in the US and or Europe, that may change. But for now and the immediate future, the nucleus of the rare earth market remains in East and Southeast Asia. And we at Linus are strong because we operate in this geography and we operate with now a strong and supportive relationship with the Malaysian government. We will continue to build our competitive advantage. We operate at the bottom of the cost curve. We are bringing new products and applications online. We have strong customer relationships which are built on our proven, not planned, track record as a reliable supplier of quality product. And we have a skilled, capable and committed team of people who are dedicated to ensuring the success of the Linus business. So with those as opening comments, I will leave as much time as possible to take questions because I am sure there are many.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask questions, you need to press star 11 on your telephone. To cancel your request, please press star 11 again. Please limit your questions to one question at a time and you may rejoin the queue after for follow-up. First question comes from Chen Jiang from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Amanda. Congratulations on the commencement of the heavy rarest oxide separation. I think it's the perfect time after China put the export restrictions earlier April this month. Just two questions from me on the heavy rarest oxide. So firstly, on pricing, you mentioned a couple of times strong demand in China. But just wondering if you can share any insights, how would the pricing work for DY and TB? Does your customer use China's DY-TB as a reference, and then they will premium on top of China's index, or China index doesn't matter for heavy, and your customer will pay whatever price you ask? Any color on the pricing you can share, that would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Thanks, Chang. So there are various different models, as we've discussed many times. And depending upon the sector into which we're selling, different customers will seek a different pricing methodology. Now, it has been absolutely normal to have a reference to the inside China price. At present where there is no material being exported from China because of the ban on exports of heavy rare earth materials, that price is no longer a relevant price. So our discussions with customers are on a more sort of traditional industrial inputs basis. which is really identifying and understanding your sort of value drivers for both customers and suppliers and ensuring that we agree a price which is beneficial to both. I'm not going to give you anything further on specific segments or specific customers, except to say that we recognize that the material we're producing is scarce outside China. i.e., we're the only ones producing it, and we think that there is significant value attached to that.

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from David Deckelbaum from TD Colvin. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Amanda and team, for fitting me on, and congrats again on the commissioning of the heavy-rare separation. Amanda, I am curious maybe if you could just remind the market and walk us through the anticipated ramp and volumes to come out of the separation circuit here. And then as a follow-up to that, this was, I believe, a relatively low capital intensive project in Malaysia to take the seg mix that you typically produce and separate it down to the oxides.

is could there be expansion capex in malaysia or would expansion beyond this uh have to exist in in other jurisdictions thanks david nice to hear from you um so let me take that that the the second part of your question um it really sort of i probably it deals with some of the first as well but certainly um the There is nowhere where we can add separation capacity as efficiently or as painlessly as we can do in Malaysia. It is also close to the primary markets for the materials that we produce, whether it goes into magnets or whether it goes into other industries. Yes, in Malaysia we have been able to, at very low cost, add this additional circuit. The tonnages which it will produce are less than market demand outside of China, and so we are assessing what additional capital would be required to further increase production. We're also assessing additional, I mean, I think as everybody knows, as part of our exploration program at Mount Weld, we specifically explored for heavies and we understand where within our Mount Weld ore body we can get an increased proportion of heavies. But we are also exploring other opportunities for feedstock, including, I think very valuably and very prospectively, the potential for development of upstream feedstock development in Malaysia. Malaysia has in some areas the same sort of ionic clay geology that you see throughout Southeast Asia and there is an appetite from the Malaysian government to support the development of that upstream asset as well. So that would give us additional feedstock and certainly make a lot of sense for us in terms of increasing processing capacity in Malaysia. With respect to the US facility, it is much more expensive because it is a greenfields facility. We talked about varying capacities there and we continue to have a conversation with the US government about really what is essential for the US market and particularly for defence applications and ways that we can do that within the regulatory environment in the US. So we're continuing those discussions with the US government at present and in due course we will provide a further update.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Jonathan Sharp from COSA. Please go ahead.

Hi Amanda and team. Thanks for taking my question. Just a question on the CAPEX profile for next year. So we know that The expansion is being completed. Can you just give us some detail on how you see CapEx next year? I know consensus is around $180 million. We know it is going to come off quite a bit from this year, but can you just elaborate on that and give us some details, please?

Sure. As you know, we don't give precise guidance on these matters. Some of it will be based upon how much carry over whilst we expect to complete the Mountwell project in this financial year. Of course not everything will be bought and paid for by the 30th of June so there will be some carryover of capital costs associated with that. We think maybe somewhere in the range of you know sort of 50 to 60 million dollars will carry over and the remainder of the capital present will be our sustaining business as usual capex, which we would expect to be somewhere in the same sort of vicinity. We will assess any other projects, including things like expanding the capacity of heavy rare earths or any other sort of projects. will be assessed on an independent basis and we will inform the market as we do that.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Paul Young of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Morning Amanda and team. Amanda, I hope you're well. Really unprecedented events in the rare earth market at the moment as you know. A couple of questions on that and firstly, I know you've spoken a lot about the heavy earth pricing and offtake but I'm actually curious about what happens in the NDPR market and a couple of things. Firstly, I mean not all your product goes directly to Japanese offtake or should I say facilities in Japan so are you still able to actually sell all your NDPR oxide into those Japanese magnet producers that have facilities in China. And then I guess the second part to that is around your comments around that at the moment there's an opportunity for sustained market restructure. I gather that that probably also means NDPR. And there's about six magnet facilities being built outside of Japan and China. So we are seeing quite a rapid development and rollout of magnet facilities across Japan. particularly Europe and the US. So I'm just curious about your, any sort of initial, I don't know, we've spoken about this a long time over the last, for a lot, I should say, over the last five years, but any comments around potential for you to actually sign NDPR with ex-Japanese MAGNA facilities?

Yeah, good questions, Paul, as I would expect from a Womba boy. Anyway... Can we sell everything we produce? Yes, we can. There are no constraints on us selling into China in addition to selling to Japan. We have a number of contracts which are direct contracts with magnet buyers as well as our contracts with magnet makers. Having said that, the market is difficult at present because We do have this situation where there are no magnets coming out of China, yet industry is yet to feel the real pain for that because there is a fair bit of everyone following the last rare earth shock carries a reasonable level of inventory. Having said that, We are very actively engaged with a number of prospective magnet makers. We would not think that all five or six of the projects that you referenced will actually end up coming to market. But we do think that there are a number that will come to market and we are actively engaged with each of those magnet buyers. We're also actively engaged with the Japanese magnet, sorry, magnet makers, with Japanese magnet makers as they seek to, you know, engage with magnet buyers. Having now, you know, sort of really the, as they say, the black swan event has materialized. And so, you know, some of the magnet buyers who seem to have thought that if they kept their fingers crossed, everything would be all right. are now seeing that they definitely do need to take a risk-based approach to their procurement of rare earth materials. It won't happen overnight. It is something which we are, and it's not a new engagement. As I said, we've always had some contracts with magnet buyers which operate independently of the magnet maker that they may choose. So we would think that, yes, there is the opportunity for a sustained price reset. We think it is very difficult just now when you have the magnet industry in China basically looking at a situation where they can't export their materials, so are reliant upon domestic consumption. but we do see this as the best opportunity we've had for some time with really resetting rarest pricing at a level which properly reflects the importance of the material in finished goods.

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next question comes from Austin Yoon of Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Morning, Amanda and the team. Just one question from me. As you mentioned at the call, you will continue to pursue the market condition and meet the demand from the customers. Given what has happened and unfolding in the last couple of months, do you see higher demand from your customer base already? Any changes in the inventory management or purchasing behaviors? Any comment you can share? That would be much appreciated. Thank you.

So I think that we – hello, Austin. Yes. We have seen an increase in inbound inquiry, that would not surprise anybody, as various customers, and depending upon which segment they operate in, various customers are seeking to secure demand. And, you know, so we are engaging with each of those customers on an individual basis and reaching out to others that we think would benefit, as I said, from taking a more risk-based approach to their procurement strategy. Which means playing a risk premium for secure supply.

Thank you for the questions. Next question comes from Daniel Morgan of Baron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda and Tim. Obviously, it's a very strategic and odd time in the market, and I just wonder how it's best for you to be running your business to capitalize on this never waste a crisis sort of situation. How do you plan to be running your throughput in the months ahead? I mean, your China customers would presumably, they're the magnum makers, they would presumably not have as much demand as they would normally have. And so is it in your interest to not ramp up very quickly in the next few months? Thank you.

It is in our interest to carefully manage, and thanks for the question, Daniel. You are absolutely on the money. There is no point in us sort of ramping up to 10,500 tonnes without a clear pathway to get best return on that production. And right now, that means that we need to take the time to agree the new commercial arrangements with various different prospective customers, because as I think everyone who tracks the Asian metal price of NDPR would know the reduction in demand for Chinese material because it's not leaving the Chinese ports is seeing a softening of prices for NDPR. We expect that will start to recover, but our view on this is that the last thing that we need to do is to produce huge quantities of material which either finds a home in our warehouse or finds a home at a lower price elsewhere. And so taking our time to get full advantage out of this crisis is absolutely our number one priority.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from the line of Rich Spencer from Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Morning, Amanda and team. Just a question on your reference in your quarterly about more conversations with potential customers for direct contracting. I was just wondering if you were able to comment about probably, well, most definitely in general terms, about how these customers might be thinking about changes to supply chains and sourcing, given that today there is still relatively limited manufacturing capacity in China. So do these customers, will they look at direct purchasing of volumes, tolling arrangements? Because, for example, I look at GM purportedly buying magnets from MP. Would auto OEMs, for example, go direct to a rare earth producer such as yourself to secure volumes?

Yes. And we've done some of that. I guess in priority order, we certainly have many discussions with various defence contractors, particularly in the US, and having material available as they completely reconfigure their supply chains to be non-Chinese ahead of the DPAR's regulation. So this is something which has been on track for some time but now has some added urgency. We have, over time, had direct contracts with both OEMs and with Tier 1 suppliers to OEMs, including, in particular, high performance motor manufacturers. We expect to do more of that. We also, as I said, are engaged very actively with magnet makers as they sort of approach the market. We think that non-Chinese magnet makers, we think that working in partnership with them to make a compelling offer to customers is something probably the most prospective approach in a lot of ways. So we're doing this via a number of different mechanisms. Some are direct and some are in partnership with magnet makers. But I come back to really it's got to be getting that whole supply chain working together, which matters. Of course, In due course, we would expect that the Chinese new licensing regime will settle down and it may be that our contract with, say, a European OEM may see our product being delivered into China again sometime in the future to a Chinese magnet maker. But right now that's not a pathway which is available.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Delilah or Shannon Sinha from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi Amanda and Tame. Just a question about how you could increase your heavy rare earth output. So I was wondering if there's any way you can switch production from NDPR towards heavies given that heavies demand perhaps is a bit greater ex-China and you can get a better price perhaps for heavies than you can for NDPR. So if that's a possibility at Malaysia or is that limited by the amount of heavies that you can produce from Mount Weld at the moment? Thanks.

Thanks, Shannon. Yeah, mother nature determines the proportion in which we can produce NDPR and DY at present. No, we can't just switch an NDPR circuit into a DYTB circuit, but we can and we do have opportunities to consider increasing our heavies output in Malaysia. But it will require some further investment. And as I said, you know, we continue to work with alternate suppliers, potentially, of heavy rare earth feedstock. And, you know, we expect that we will, with time, be able to produce more heavies from our Malaysian facility.

Thank you for the questions. One moment for the next question. Next up, we have the questions from the line of Al Harvey from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Morning, Amanda. Just following up on your earlier comments, just wanted to see if you could speak to what you are hearing from customers around magnet and heavy rare earth inventories. And I suppose if you're fielding concerns around how the market can function without access to Chinese heavies in the medium term, given you're really the only ex-China producer?

Yeah, well, we can satisfy, despite what some people, you know, sort of seem to think. You know, the West is not short resource. Linus, you know, can satisfy Western demand for NDPR. And we stand poised to be able to do that. With respect to inventories, I can tell you that, Inventories range on different products from maybe as low as three months forward cover to two years on some of the lower volume materials. So we have the time to get this right and to make sure that customers are appropriately valuing the benefit of having a diverse supply chain.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from the line of Regan Laurels from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda and team. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the DYTB, I mean, historically you said that going down this path wasn't necessarily about expanding margin. It's more so about providing a broader product offering suite to your customers. Has that thinking sort of changed? And I guess sort of looking forward over that as you start producing those volumes, what's the qualification pathway or process in order to turn those material into sales and revenue?

So I probably never intended to be quite that definitive. I mean, we are happy to take a dollar in margin on any product that we produce. So certainly there is value to be had from being able to sell in sort of magnet proportions. However, as I said, these materials are used in other sectors as well. certainly which are less price sensitive than the magnet sector. We see that there is value in both. With respect to qualification, material qualification process for materials that go into magnets is relatively short. With this quarter's production, we will have production samples for various customers to be able to test for things like, as I mentioned, the microcapacitor market. Qualification will take a little longer, but we're very confident about the quality of the material that we're producing and we will elect how much we allocate to each of these segments on a margin basis, basically.

Thank you for the questions. Next question is from Mitch Ryan from Jafoes. Please go ahead.

Morning Amanda and Tim. Clearly the geopolitical is a key focus, but I wanted to move to operations. If you could give some more colour around Kalgoorlie during the quarter. How is the MREC quality? How has the facility been performing and then how is the product quality?

Yeah, so as with all facilities, it's presented us with some expected challenges and also with some unexpected challenges. Having said that, I think we measure about... Sorry about that. I think that we measure... Paul, you'll be able to tell me, but I think about eight different measures on quality. with the most important ones being things like the particle size, clearly the amount of NDPR and moisture and then impurities in the material and particle size. Those are the sort of categories that we're talking about. We are improving on all of those. We have one which is the sulfate where we are implementing a new, which is an impurity, where we are implementing a new process to reduce that significantly from where it has been previously, which will absolutely improve its processability in Malaysia. So I guess I would say that we are It's an understatement. We're certainly pleased that we have excess capacity in the cracking and leaching stage of our process because we are able to operate our Malaysian facility alongside Kalgoorlie. That has given us the opportunity to approach the ramp up at Kalgoorlie in a very controlled fashion. But we are pleased with the improvements being delivered, but we have a couple more which we think will be, you know, sort of step changes in performance, and we'll be very pleased when we bank those.

Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from Dim Ariasinghe from UBS. Please go ahead.

Good day, Amanda and team. And, yeah, congrats on the rare earth separation progress. Just one for me on this Section 232 investigation. Just wondering if you had any views yourself on what could come out of these investigations, just given your existing relationship with the U.S. government. You've got a pretty unique or advantaged viewpoint. If you could maybe talk to that, please.

Daniel, are you up to talking about that? Daniel's not feeling 100% at present, but if he is, I might get him to address that.

Sure, no problems at all. There was a Section 232 done about three years ago in a similar form, and we provided a submission towards that, as you would expect, and we are looking to provide another submission for this one. However, in real terms, the conversation has not changed significantly from when we submitted the last submission back to the U.S. government under the previous administration. So there's still some ambiguity, I guess, as to what they're trying to achieve with it. But we are talking to the U.S. government about what we need to put into that submission to make sure we get the best outcomes from it.

Thank you for the questions. We have the follow-up questions from Jonathan Sharp from CLSA. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for letting me take another question. Just a quick one on the proportion of NDPR. That increased quite a bit this period. Do you expect this proportion to be sustained, or do you think it will return to roughly sort of 50-50 product split there?

Once again, that just really reflects the market. It reflects the market for lanthanum and cerium as opposed to reflecting the market for NDPR. So the price for much of the lanthanum and cerium, you know, sort of on a... I sort of hesitate with the term, but standard lanthanum and cerium is below the cost to process it. So we focus on only producing the lanthanum and cerium for which we're able to achieve premium based upon improved specification. And we have seen some slight improvement in lanthanum and cerium pricing over the past month or so. we will return to producing more of that material, but not necessarily in the proportion that Mother Nature offers it to us. But it will simply be on the basis, Jonathan, it would just be on the basis of market demand and market price.

Thank you for the questions. Next question is from Paul Young of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi again, Amanda. Amanda, another follow-up question on NDPR pricing and relates to ex-China pricing. Firstly to note, the demand for magnets is growing really strongly and my understanding is double-digit at the moment globally and prices for NDPR have bottomed. So just curious around the potential to place your your ex-Japanese I guess offtake with other producers and actually how we could think about the price of NDPR, Ex-Asia Metals Index and I think that probably the question is the fact that the cost of production outside of China for magnets is probably 20, 30, 40% higher than what the Chinese could produce that. So if an OEM wants to contract with you directly, how would that potentially the pricing work? Would they have to, you know, maybe underpin a margin for that magnet producer to stay in business?

Oh, yeah. It will vary. I think that the first thing is that, you know, whilst we all seek to have a price which operates independently of the largest, rarest price in the world, market in the world, which is China, the simple fact is you know, producers of the finished goods, whether they're a vehicle or a phone or a wind turbine, are still operating in a competitive market. And so, you know, are not gleefully saying, well, let's pay more for our inputs. And as you said, that difference can be significant. On the other hand, Our view is that singular supply chains are never healthy and we certainly seek to make sure that for all of our major inputs we have more than one supplier even if the second supplier is at a higher price than the primary supplier. So our view would be that for a lot of the non-Chinese customers the sensible thing would be for them to contract a portion of their requirements. And if that comes at a price premium, well, so be it. They're basically paying a risk premium for making sure that their production lines don't stop. So for us, to your point, magnet makers are more expensive not because of the raw material they're more expensive for a whole variety of other reasons but it's another reason why as i said we work in partnership with magnet makers to approach the market and make sure that magnet buyers understand the benefits over time the most desirable outcome will be if the Chinese price lifts because then it will become, you know, sort of sustainable pricing at a higher level because we'll all be on a level playing field. And that's not beyond, you know, sort of potential pathway for this market going forward because certainly the consolidated rare earth players in China, whilst they stay at home, do seek to deliver profitable performance as well.

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Austin Yun of Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Amanda. You talk about the feedstock expansion, look at Malaysia. I just thought about moving along the value chain to the downstream. do you see any opportunities to unlock value there and even potentially give you more pricing power on your product?

Yeah, we've thought about it a lot. I think that it's important to note that it's easy to write in a PowerPoint presentation and it's harder to execute I think Paul who's been in the rare earth market longer than any of the rest of us in Linus would say, I think he said the first time he saw a PowerPoint presentation talking about this was in about 1999 and no one has executed successfully on it in that time. Why? Because the skills required for minerals processing, for running a big chemical plant of the sort that we run for our processing are quite different from the materials science which is attached to a magnet. So we think that the best way for us to participate will be via partnerships. Now at some stage or other they may be equity partnerships or they may simply be strategic alliances but partnering with skilled and capable metal and magnet makers, we think is a better pathway than striking off on our own.

Thank you for the questions. Next, we also have a follow-up question from Daniel Morgan of Barranjoie. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda. Just maybe talking about your US plans. There's obviously a lot to talk about with your US partners, operating costs, CapEx, permitting. Could you expand on when you would hope or expect to see FID on the US project, if at all? And I would imagine or expect there'd be some urgency for US government action here, or perhaps not. Can you let us know?

So just in terms of urgency, we have We are very actively involved with defence industry to ensure that the US defence industry is not exposed at this time with or without a facility in the US. And I think that that makes us an important and valuable player as far as the US government is concerned even absent all the other things that we've talked about. The finalisation of the plant had reached a stage where we had a final design. We had bought the land, we had the final design, we were ready to go and these issues around water permitting have become just an additional challenge. We have a new process which we propose to implement which will see us deal with those. But it does come at a greater cost and the US government at present has quite a lot of issues on their plate and not all decision-making positions have been filled because as you would understand there's sort of Senate confirmation processes and otherwise. So we are working actively. We have actually a weekly call. We're working very actively on resolving this. But as with most things, I hesitate to predict what decisions any government might make and when.

Thank you. Our next follow-up question is from Chen Jiang of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Then your line is open. You may unmute locally. Can you hear me? Yes, please go ahead.

All right, okay. Thanks, Amanda, for taking my follow-up question. Just on the follow-up on the U.S. plans, in the report flagged additional CAPEX, I guess given the whole Heavy Rares project is fully funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, Is that fair to say whatever additional capex required, the U.S. Department of Defense will cover them or they will reimburse you because they can't get heavy wares for military use from China going forward? Is that a fair assumption? Thank you. And also, yeah, sorry, and also, rather than talking about the FID for the project, are you able to expedite the construction for the project, given the urgency? Thank you, Amanda.

Yeah, so in response to the second question, I mean, given, you know, sort of this extra time, our team has had time to really... review and fine tune and continues to do so, you know, sort of how we will execute the project and so, you know, you don't waste the extra time that you've got available and our team certainly has not wasted the extra time that they have available for thinking about this and how do we execute in a timely fashion. With respect to the Whether the US government picks up the tab, that's the conversation we're having with the US government about what's the size of that additional requirement. As I have always said, it's not a project on which we will risk our balance sheet. There is a certain amount of faith that there will be development of downstream industry But for us, a dollar spent in Malaysia today can give us a bigger return. So it's the conversation we're having with the US government. It doesn't affect our ability, certainly in the short term, to be able to meet the market in a way that is beneficial for our customers.

Thank you for the question. So next follow-up question comes from L Harvey from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, Amanda. Just a follow-up on my earlier question and sorry to labor the point. So I appreciate the West not short on NDPR for ex-China needs, but I suppose given they are responsible for nearly all the heavies production, I suppose the question I'm really trying to answer and hope you have a view on is whether the West can satisfy the ex-China heavy demand. I mean, I suppose within that context,

the upper limit time frame you mentioned on inventories that the west might hold of around two years um within that time frame can can the west satisfy heavy's demand sure i think we can um i don't think we need i mean i i think that what we need to do is there are two or three potential feed stocks that we need to look at um ensuring that they come online appropriately but in terms of the ability to process those materials with confidence we can certainly sort of do that so yeah I don't think that this is beyond the wit of the West to be able to solve for it. It's just a case of we're the only ones who know how to do it outside of China and for various reasons it hadn't made it to the top of our capital list until recently. But now that it's there and now that there are prospective additional feedstocks available to us, yes, certainly I think that we can in due course ramp up our production.

Thank you. Our last question comes from Regan Burrows from Bell Porter. Please go ahead.

Hi, Amanda. Thanks for taking my follow-up. Just on Kalgoorlie, obviously you guys stopped capitalising the cost there in February. Just concerning, was that beginning of February or end of February? And I guess with your guidance of saying you're going to ramp up sort of in line, given that Kalgoorlie is sort of seen as a higher cost plant, does that mean you're putting more material through Malaysia? And how should we think about that ramp up process for Kalgoorlie?

Yeah, so Gaden's, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was at the beginning of February. And bear in mind, it's the It's only the fixed costs. The variable costs have been running through the P&L because we have been producing material. The balance between Kalgoorlie and Malaysia on a cost basis is tilted clearly towards Malaysia. On the other hand, We need to run at a certain rate. Any plan of this sort needs to run at a certain rate to ensure that we capture efficiencies. The team is looking at the best operating rhythm to have in Kalgoorlie, whether it is 24-7 operation or whether there is some sort of different operating rhythm that might work better in terms of our ability to capture efficiencies but not overproduce. So we're working on that at present. As I've said, our first task was to get the plant working as designed and then to optimise and that optimisation comes partially from what's our operating format and also from really addressing some of the costs which are associated with Kalgoorlie, which I am confident we will be able to bring down over time.

Thank you for the question. That's the end of the question and answer session. I would like to hand the call back to Manishan for closing.

Thank you. Thank you all for your questions. Jen always prepares me very well for Q&A. She comes up with all of these questions that she thinks that you might ask. You probably asked about 40% of the questions that Jen came up with, so she's a much better interrogator, I think I've decided. But thank you all. No doubt you will be in touch with Danielle if you've got any further follow-up questions. We look forward to an excellent fourth quarter.

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