American Resources Corporation

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining this American Resources Corporation first quarter 2022 conference call. As a reminder, all phone participants are in a listen-only mode, but later you will have the opportunity to ask questions. Also, please be aware today's session is being recorded. And now to get us started with opening remarks and introductions, I am pleased to turn the floor over to VP of Corporate Finance and Communications, Mr. Mark LaVarghetta. Welcome, sir.

Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of American Resources Corporation, I'd like to welcome everyone to our first quarter of 2022 conference call and business update. We welcome this opportunity to not only provide an update and discuss our accomplishments since our last update, which was only just about six weeks ago, but also on how we've positioned ourselves and where we have our sights set as we embark on this exciting time. Also on the call with me today is Mark Jensen, American Resources Chairman and CEO, Kirk Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer, and Tom Salve, our President. Before we kick it off, I'd like to remind everyone of our normal cautionary statement. Certain statements discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which would cause the actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statement. When considering forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risk factors, uncertainties, and other cautionary statements which are laid out in our press releases and SEC filings. We also do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Lastly, we will be holding a question and answer session today following our prepared remarks. And for anyone waiting to ask a question, you'll need to dial in by phone to get in the queue. Because we recently held our last update call just about six weeks ago, we'll try to streamline today's call the best that we can and then get to the question and answers. We're going to begin today's call with a few comments from Kirk Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer. Kirk?

Thank you, Mark. And thank you, everyone, for joining us. Again, we all appreciate everyone's time and interest in American Resources Corporation. The first quarter of 2022 has signified the beginning of our production ramp during one of the most strong carbon and infrastructure markets you've ever experienced. For the quarter, our total revenues of $9.8 million is just over 100% sequential increase from our fourth quarter 2021 revenues of $4.53 million. and are not really comparable to revenues during the closures of 2020 and 2021. We marked the beginning of an inflection point for our company. Given the supply disruptions, labor shortages, and supply constraints, our team has forged forward in monetizing the investments we have made over the past year and a half. On our last call, we communicated that the majority of our Q1 revenue was generated during the March month when we provided the range of $5.5 million to $6 million of revenue for the month of March. While mining is not completely linear, today we are seeing our carbon operations produced more consistently in a market where our current realized pricing is very strong. Also, for the first quarter of 2022, we were able to generate adjusted EBITDA of $5.8 million compared to a positive $1.3 million adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2021 and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.8 million in the prior year period. Again, this signifies the beginning of a significant inflection point for our company and our operations. Based on our broader and more consistent production level and a strong pricing environment, as well as a strong team execution, we believe this is a foundation point for future growth in 2022. Our unique platform of assets is in a great position to deliver what we believe is attractive returns of value to all of our shareholders. This includes our mining assets, which we are currently operating, as well as dozens of idle permits within our portfolio, including the permits for our Dean complex, which we had idled in 2019, but we have recently leased to a new operator, which will enable us to further leverage the strong carbon market without expending our own capital. This also includes our ancillary value-creating assets, such as our sponsored SPAC, American Acquisition Opportunity, as well as our ownership in Novastera. I would ask you both to look at those companies' public documents for future updates. Over the past year, we've been able to eliminate $15.6 million of debt in payables. as well as investing over $23 million in expense development costs to position both our American Carbon and American Railroad platforms for strong growth in high-demand markets, both the current infrastructure as well as electrification economies, where we are currently and expecting to maintain a certain degree of pricing power in both markets. Our debt balance currently sits at approximately $13.1 million in total dollars, of which $2.6 million is equipment financing $8.9 million is in the form of convertible notes with our long-term partners, as well as $1.6 million remaining on our outstanding PPP loan. At the end of the quarter, our shares outstanding currently sit at 66.2 million Class A common shares. Again, at the end of the quarter, our cash on hand is approximately $5.2 million, allowing us to fully execute on our business plan. I can now turn the call over to Mark Labrador for some comments on our American Rare Earths Division. Mark?

Thanks, Garth. As we've previously stated, our American Rare Earths Division represents a very strategic opportunity for us. We continue to be on a timeline to commence operations at our first critical and rare earth element isolation and purification facility in the coming weeks. I'd like to reiterate and stress the significance of this milestone. As we bring this facility online, we will be the first domestic commercial producer of isolated and purified rare earth elements. Additionally, we feel it is strategic and to our advantage to address not only our domestic supply chain needs, but also our sustainability needs. Accordingly, our first production line will be focused on producing isolated and high purity rare earth magnet metals such as neodymium, presiodinium, and dysprosium from recycled rare earth permanent magnets. These metals are needed to produce high efficiency electric motors, such as those used in electric vehicles and wind turbines, as well as other advanced technology and defense applications. We expect to have our second production line operating approximately 60 days following the first, which means we'll be targeting late second quarter, early third quarter of this year. This train will isolate and purify specific battery material such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese from end-of-life recycled lithium ion batteries. So what differentiates us? What differentiates us, our technologies, and our process from others looking to address this market? By addressing our sustainability needs, we eliminate the need to extract feedstocks from traditional mining methods. While the massive expected demand growth will obviously require mined ores, our process eliminates the environmental impact, the lengthy permitting process, and high costs associated with extraction through mining. Additionally, our feedstock reserves from end of life products is growing and growing in a big way, especially with the advance of the electrification movement and the onset of electric vehicles. The time to establish a low-cost, flexible, and environmentally safe platform to address this part of the market is now. And that's exactly what our isolation and purification capabilities support. Second, our process allows us to separate and purify all of the targeted critical and rare earth elements back to qualities or grades required to be used in the manufacturing of new batteries and magnets. This is key. as currently we believe no one can recycle battery material back to battery-grade qualities in a comprehensive, cost-effective, and commercially viable application. We recently announced that we secured the worldwide rights to new provisional patents for producing battery-grade lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. This milestone highlights not only our ability to accomplish this while we widen and deepen our moat, it also showcases our team and partners. We feel that our amazing partnerships and team are a clear differentiator as we prove ourselves the leader in the final stage isolation and purification process in the domestic marketplace using chromatography. We feel as we showcase these unique attributes, it puts us in a strategically beneficial position to collaborate and partner with other market participants up and down the supply chain, as well as garner support from the federal government, given their growing focus in this area. I'd like to now turn it over to Mark Jensen, our Chairman and CEO, for some additional comments. Mark?

Mark Jensen Thanks, Mark, and thanks, everyone, for joining. Overall, we continue to see strong demand for the products that we produce, not only on the met carbon side, but also on the critical and rare earth element space. We've seen strong interest from customers of all of our products and the ability to continue to ramp up our production to achieve this demand, to supply this demand. Global carbon demand for steel production continues to be strong from our perspective. Supply remains constrained. And ultimately, we believe it will remain constrained for a number of years, which will help sustain this market at very high levels. The pricing environment for our high vol PCI and specialty stoker carbon product remains very healthy. Over the course of the last few months, our pricing for these products have switched to index-based markets and will enable us to take advantage of the current market environment while we continue to expand our production at all of our facilities. As we get closer to bringing our first critical and rare earth element isolation and purification facility online, we're seeing various parties interested in entering into offtake agreements for our products, both on the magnet side and also on the battery side. It's a very interesting time for our domestic supply chain beginning to establish itself, and we find ourselves in a unique position in the ability to be a value-added partner, a supplier to a variety of market participants. It is clear that the demand for domestically produced products is rapidly materializing, and true sustainable products is definitely an area of high importance. The ability to recycle products that are going to landfills today and bring them back to magnet and battery-grade materials is of high importance and will be needed to sustain the growth of the electrified economy. For American Carbon, our focus is on continuing to ramp up our currently operating complexes by bringing additional production online. The broader base of our production we saw in March continues to produce at a more normalized and consistent rate. In any mining business, you have various disruptions and you have various challenges to overcome. Our team has been able to do that and will continue to be able to do that consistently to grow our production each month from all of our complexes. At PCR, we currently have Two super sections, one a walking and one a full super section. And we're also currently developing a second pillar section. What's unique about how we set this facility up is of extreme importance. One, we took over a bankrupt operation. That operation needed significant help. We needed to make it a safer complex for our employees to work at. We needed to make it a more rewarding complex for our employees to work at. And we fought for these employees and continue to fight for these employees. By establishing the mine plan that we put in place, we're providing a more productive operation for everybody that's going to work at this mine now and for the next 20 to 30 to 40 years because of the mine plan we established. Putting in two pillar sections enables us to pillar back the mine to reduce the outbuy costs but also reduce the outbuy risks that are present in this mine due to the degradation of the facilities prior to us acquiring it. We put a substantial amount of capital in place here, and we've developed a mine plan that will be the only sustainable mine plan at this operation. At our McCoy Elkhorn Complex, we're now running two continuous miners at our Carnegie One mine. What we're focused on doing is developing this mine to be able to utilize the existing infrastructure and the existing cost structure to add that second development section. By doing so, we'll be able to expand our production by roughly 100% while increasing our cost by only about 30%. We have most of the equipment present already to accomplish this goal, and we anticipate continuing this development as we speak, with the goal of having it operating in the third quarter. What we also have in place over at our Carnegie mines is our Carnegie 2 mine. We are currently in the development phase of this mine and believe we'll have some substantial announcements come out in the very near future about how we're progressing and bringing this mine online in a very short order. The good thing is, We have already invested a majority of the capital needed to develop the Carnegie 2 mine, and the Carnegie 1 mine is already generating solid cash flows. We're excited to announce that we put a bonus program in place to reward our employees so that our employees' interests are fully aligned with our stakeholders and our shareholders. We're excited to announce that in this first week of announcing this bonus structure, our employees achieved that success so they can get the bonus, so ultimately they can be rewarded as well. And we believe that'll position our company for success by rewarding our employees the same way that our shareholders will be rewarding as we generate cashflow. As we bring on Carnegie two mine, we anticipate that same type of structure and also at the Perry County complex where we can reward these employees through this bonus structure. We've been working on expanding and getting these complex running at their maximum efficiency and maximum optimization. We initially anticipate our Carnegie two mine operating with one section, with also the goal to expand that into a second section. We anticipate this mine being brought into production over the next 60 to 90 days, which could add an additional 25 to $35 million of additional revenue based on producing eight to 10,000 tons a month out of this complex. Beyond our Carnegie one and Carnegie two mine, we have a number of other mines in this area, in this region that we can bring back online and fully utilize the McCoy Elkhorn complex to its maximum potential. by utilizing our existing infrastructure, lowering our cost of CapEx, and partnering with our customers to bring these mines online faster. With our current operations, we feel we are in a very strong position. We are a growing provider of carbon products for our customers and are able to fulfill the vast majority of our $110 million sales book for the 2022 year, while also continuing to expand that production beyond that. As we continue to execute at our Perry and McCoy complexes, we remain focused on progressing our Wyoming County division and having conversations with strategic partners on that complex as well. We continue to work through the process of the $45 million tax exempt bond to the state of West Virginia that we have been preliminary approved for. And with that issuance, we're excited to showcase how we will position this complex to be the first of its kind, an advanced carbon and rare earth element processing facility combined with a premium met carbon production facility with our unique rare capture and process technology, all being present on one location to actually make it a profitable venture from day one. Additionally, as we recently announced, we have leased out our Dean Mining Complex, showcasing the magnitude of our asset base. The partner that we've leased this to is projected and committed to us that they would hit that million tons of production within the first year, generating a minimum of $5 million of additional cash flow to the bottom line of our business, while also offsetting approximately a half a million dollars of cost. The processing capability that we leased out represents about 3% of our total processing capacity as a company, showing the vastness of our asset base that we can continue to bring online and or lease out with other partners to bring cash flow to the bottom line for our investors. which is of the utmost importance for us. This complex was not considered in our near or immediate term plans, but allows us to generate that additional cash flow by leveraging the strong carbon markets that we're currently seeing right now. We also have a significant other amount of reserves and permits that we can bring online, as well as processing capabilities to further continue to expand our cash flow. To expand on the American Rare Earth Commons that Mark just gave, I'd like to reiterate the importance of the milestones we're about to achieve. I firmly believe we'll be the first commercial producer of isolated and purified rare earth and critical elements in the United States, while also introducing a practical and efficient solution to address our sustainable needs. It will usher us into a new era. For us, we are definitely striving to be the first in the market, but also want to provide the best solutions to the domestic needs. And that is what we're confident in and what our process team and technology bring to this market. and showcasing it through the number of conversations that we're having with very strong strategic and collaborative partners that we can expand our operations with, both on the upstream and the downstream side of our business. As we accomplish these goals, we are highly focused on unlocking value for American resources. We've long believed that the value of our extensive asset base, the growth potential, The innovation, IP, and the leading position in redefining of how some of our most essential resources are sourced and processed is not being reflected in our current stock price and our current valuation of our companies, especially in the most recent market sell-off. And ultimately, we plan to address that. We plan to look at opportunities to unlock that value for our shareholders and generate that shareholder value that we believe our shareholders deserve from the efforts and the performance of our companies. As you can see in our public filings, we're putting our money where our mouth is, and we'll continue to do so with consistent insider purchases. We'll continue to evaluate any and all options to continue our execution and the best unlock value for our shareholders, including a possible spin-out of parts of our business and or subsidiaries of our business to bring that value to a place that we believe is more reflective of what we have as a company. As Kurt stated earlier, the first quarter of this year saw 100% quarter-over-quarter increase in revenues. Our operations are well positioned to continue on a strong path of consistent returns, revenue growth, and profitability. With our operations beginning to put cash back onto the balance sheet, we don't foresee us needing to issue additional equity or to raise additional cash. Just to reiterate, as the largest shareholders of American Resources, our management team is focused and committed on maximizing the value for all of our shareholders. And we thank you for joining today, and we thank you for listening and being a member of our company. We'd like to turn it back over to the moderator for some questions and answers.

Thank you, gentlemen. And to our audience joining us today over the phones at this time, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. Pressing star and 1 will place your line into a queue and will take your questions one at a time. Also, a friendly reminder that if you're joining us today on a speakerphone, please return to your handset prior to pressing star and one to be certain that your signal does reach our equipment. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one if you would like to ask a question. We'll pause just for a moment to give everyone a chance to signal. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one if you do have a question. Star and one on your touch-tone phones now. We'll hear from Steve Sigal at KBB Asset Management. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi Mark, and congratulations on that great quarter. It's been great to see all your work finally coming to the bottom line, Mark. My question is, it seems like the market is giving no value at all to all the patents and progress you've been making at Rare Earth. I know you mentioned the possibility of spending off on the call just now, but is there any real plan for that to separate the companies this year?

Yes, Steve, thanks. I appreciate you joining. Yes, I believe there is. I mean, one, we've had numerous conversations with many institutional investors that have stated that it's not – They don't require us to separate the companies, but they believe that it would be highly beneficial if we did. And there's people that are looking to invest in the rarest critical element side of the business that may not be looking to invest into the met carbon side of the business. So we are actively working on a plan and evaluating a plan to unlock that value and separate the companies into two separate public companies of which all of our investors will benefit from that. That would also position our rare earth and critical element side of the business to further expand through collaborative partnerships on both the magnet and the motor side of what we're doing, as well as on the battery upstream and downstream side of the business. So it's something that, as shareholders ourselves, we believe we're not getting value for, and we are looking to put in place very quickly a plan to enable that to happen.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you.

And once more, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and 1 if you would like to ask a question. We'll pause for another moment to give everyone a chance to signal. And also, ladies and gentlemen, for your knowledge, if you were in the Q&A queue prior to us reaching this portion of today's presentation, please re-signal us with star and 1. We'll hear next from Michael Samuels at Berthold Fisher.

Hey, Mark. Congratulations again on a good quarter. I just had two quick questions. Do you think that the rare earth plant will be up by the end of June? That I thought you said, or was it the third quarter that we were looking at? That was the first question. The second question would be, can you give us maybe like an idea of what you're looking for revenue-wise off of the coal in the quarter going forward? Thanks.

Yeah. Thanks, Mike. We do. We believe that and are confident that our initial production train will be operating in the month of June in Noblesville, Indiana, and excited about the progress that Jeff Peterson and Bill Smith and Jay and the team there and Dave have crushed it. They've done a phenomenal job of putting this plan into execution phase and getting the facility in a position to scale and grow. And so I'm excited about the progress and excited about showcasing that in the very near future. So if you look at our last quarter, we obviously went from right around, what, four million over the quarter up to nine. We anticipate seeing very similar type growth of the business and, uh, and we'll continue to execute upon that growth. I mean, and then going into the third quarter, very similarly, um, as we talk about Carnegie two, and then also the expansion that all the Carnegie, uh, Carnegie one and the Perry County will enable us to continue that revenue growth with basically very little cap cap X, uh, given we've already spent the money. Um, and we already have the equipment in place to be able to do that. So, uh, We do anticipate having a very similar type growth of revenue growth that we can continue to expand upon the business.

You had said you did roughly $6 million in March. So I'm presuming if we can continue at that rate, we'd be doing probably $18 million this quarter.

Yeah. I mean, we're not giving exact revenue guidance, but it's, uh, we think we'll have strong growth in it. I mean, there'll be some volatility depending on when trains go out and stuff to that nature. I mean, as we continue, the volatility goes away as we continue to expand given its timing of shipments and stuff to that nature. And as, and as we expand the mine, um, there's always disruptions and small, and then there's always positives as well that we hit last week at Carnegie. Um, so it's, uh, There will be a little bit of volatility as we continue to grow, but we're going to see nice, steady growth in cash flow that's putting cash back under the bottom line.

Right. And if I can ask you just one more question, are you seeing the market slowing down at all right now on the coal side? Or, I mean, obviously with the infrastructure bill coming up, you would think it would pick up again.

Yeah, we're not seeing any slowdown from customers. I mean, at the end of the day, what people have to realize is that the spot markets, is not always indicative of what people are selling a product for um given and there's not always transactions that are being done in extreme volatility uh demand wise we could produce everything we could sell everything we produce probably five times over um there's still a huge amount of demand not only here domestically but also overseas and and at the end of the day we'll continue to as we ramp up we'll be able to take advantage of that what's really nice is that Like in our Cardi B1 mind, we just switched to index-based pricing from a legacy contract. So we went from selling in the first quarter between 100 and roughly 18, then ramped up to 180. Now we're probably close to 300. And that'll be reflected in this coming quarter. So we're starting to see that ramp up of growth because we're rolling on to our better contracts. And I think you'll continue to see that. But ultimately, even new contracts, Carnegie 2 mines that we're bringing online, going into index-based contracting, we're able to finally take advantage of that market. And we're seeing good demand. I don't see us slowing down. Well, thanks again.

And, again, great quarter. Excellent. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Heiko Ehle at HC Wainwright.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I hope you can hear me okay.

Yep, we can.

Wonderful. Let's talk a little bit about these $45 million and West Virginia tax exempt bonds that you got there working on. Can you provide some color on the timing of the close, and can you just confirm that there aren't any, like, steps or approvals or anything like that along those lines that are still required, please?

Yeah. So as we announced, we got preliminary approved by the state of West Virginia, Citigroup's underwriting the deal. We are working with the engineering firms as we speak that just gets through that process. We're also in conversations with some strategic partners in that area, including customers that are very interested in that quality of coal. That quality of coal is the highest quality of met carbon you can source, actually in the world. It's a mid-ball met carbon, which is pricing is extremely strong for right now. The hurdles are just checking boxes. It's going through the engineering reports, answering the questions on the engineering side. We are entertaining some very strong strategic alliances in the meantime that could come to fruition that would help expedite the ramp up of the operation as well. And so those are, those are conversations we're actively having as we speak. But it's to us, we believe it's it's, pretty standard of what we're going through right now to get it wrapped up. We've always anticipated this to be an end-of-year type development as we start to bring it online and start to ramp it up, and we'll stick with that. We have a lot of growth coming in place and a lot of execution that we anticipate having over the next couple quarters from the core operations today. But we'll start developing on West Virginia, and there's some things that can pull it forward a little bit beyond that, but we've always stated this to be an end-of-year type development.

Right. Fair. Yeah. Your current specialty metallurgical carbon backlog is about $110 million. I mean, obviously, that's a huge number. At what point should we expect you guys to just start tightening pricing a little bit? I mean, given that inventory is many, many quarters of sales, there's got to be a point where that starts making sense a little.

Sorry, clarify. Start tightening our pricing on what we're selling?

Yeah.

I mean, we're starting to see, I mean, as I said, we're starting to see a very strong ramp up of revenue from the, of what we're selling our product for. So we did have some contracts that we, and we're honoring our contracts. We'll continue to honor our existing contracts. But at the McCoy complex specifically, we're starting to take advantage of the current market environment where we've rolled off our legacy contracts and now taking advantage of the index-based spot market where we sell at a slight discount to the high vol index on the East Coast minus transportation costs. But we're starting to take advantage of that as we speak. And, I mean, seeing it coming down, I don't anticipate from where we're selling at right now. We see strong demand. I mean, at the end of the day, I would say producers are struggling – especially new producers that are coming online are struggling to ramp up and are struggling to fulfill the current supply needs. And we'll be able to continue to take advantage of that. What's unique about our growth is we don't need to hire a lot of people to expand a mine. We're adding additional production shifts, not an entire additional crew.

That makes sense.

Does that answer your question?

No, no. Yeah, it does. It does. And then lastly, just a clarification, and let me just put a quote from your release in there. Significant increase in carbon demand and price realization being seen as company scales operations and on track this March to realize operating profit. The March numbers are included in the financials that you put out. So are you saying with that sentence that that should be every month going forward you expect to see operating profits, or what exactly – Am I reading something into nothing here?

No, I think you're reading something into something. Basically, we break even at about $3.5 million a quarter of revenue. So obviously, now it's not 100% of it. There's some variable cost in there, but not a lot. And so as we continue to ramp up our production and as we continue to generate, I mean, in the March quarter, that was a very profitable quarter for us, and we anticipate being profitable thereafter. So obviously from the first couple months, we're slower. January is a very slow start. We started ramping up in February, and then March we had a good month. But we anticipate continuing to scale that and continue to grow that. As we get these next couple sections running at these other mines, it gets extremely attractive very quickly. What I'll also say about our profitability that's really unique, especially out of the Perry Complex and then out of the McCoy Complex, when pillaring puts you in a more advantageous situation, but from a cost structure perspective, and also at that particular location, it puts our men in a safer position as we get rid of the out-buy works. But what's really unique right now is you're seeing a huge supplies and parts problem in the industry as a whole. I mean, everything's going up in price. Anybody that says inflation is not real is not out there buying goods and services or going to grocery stores. It's very real in the mining industry. Finding water line, finding roof bolts, finding supplies, the cost of those are going up rapidly. What's really unique about our mine plans is it puts it in a more sustainable environment for a number of years than because we're not having to rely on the parking supplies as much based on the mine plans that we developed, and it puts it in a better position for our workforce. So we're kind of taking – this was the plan from day one when we acquired these complexes, and we're fully now at the point where we're executing upon them. And it puts us in a really nice position for the next couple of years, not only for us but also for our employees, to start getting them bonuses and making sure they're rewarded the same way our shareholders can be rewarded for the cash flow that we're generating.

Very hopeful. Thank you all, and stay safe.

Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one if you have a question or need clarification on anything covered in today's release. We'll hear next from Phil Caudill at Caudill Enterprise.

Hello, Mr. Caudill. Your line is open.

Is there any chance, sir, you may have us on mute?

I did. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Welcome. Yes, we can. All right. Thank you. Mark, thank you for your time and sharing all this, and congratulations on all the progress. You had talked about doing some things to help the share price reflect the increasing demand value that you have put in and that you're pulling out and so on. I had seen a couple of – and I know you are doing insider purchases regularly and so on, and obviously that helps. I had seen some chatter about whether you guys were considering some share buyback program of some type. Is that something – is that just noise or is that something you're thinking of? Thank you.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it, Phil. I mean, one, right now we're focused on putting cash back on the balance sheet. I mean, obviously, we're not worried about our markets, but obviously the world in general is going through volatility, and we think it's prudent to build up our cash balance. Our debt continues to go down, and so we're in a really good position there from a balance sheet perspective. In terms of using that cash to buy back stock, probably I wouldn't anticipate it over the next few quarters. as we continue to put cash back on the balance sheet. But then after that, if it's not being reflected in the market, I definitely think that would be an option. But right now it's focused on growth. And with the rare earth business and the customer conversations we're having, the ability to expand that business, and then once we unlock the value of both businesses, spin them off, I think that could be a potential as well at that point. given the carbon side of the business will be a cash flow generator in a very big way. And I actually think the rare earth business and going into the next year could be a nice cash flow generator based on the conversations we're having. But I think it's prudent for us as a company and for our shareholders from a risk perspective to continue to build up that cash balance and then honestly maybe even take advantage of opportunities to continue to grow the business through organic expansions.

Thank you. Yes, that sounds good. Thank you. Sounds good. Thanks.

And at this time, we have no further questions from our audience today. Mr. Jensen, I will turn it back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

I want to say thank you to everybody that joined today. I think we're at a really unique position as a company. We have a business that has very strong markets for all of the products that we produce. On the met carbon side to the rare earth and critical element side of the business for both magnets and batteries. As a team, we don't sit patiently waiting for things to come to us. We're out there seeking them out, including going and visiting our upstream and downstream partners as we continue to get ready to ramp up the rare earth and critical element side of our business, as well as planning to put our mining operations in the most secure position to continue to drive cash flow for all of our investors. We don't believe we're being fully valued today. We believe we're highly undervalued based on our peers. We are focused on execution and we believe the continued execution from our team will drive that value and will help us bring in some of these institutional investors that have been actively reaching out to us over the last few months. What we're focused on is driving value for our shareholders, of which the management team, as the founders of this business, being some of the largest shareholders. We appreciate all your time. We appreciate your interest in our company. and we look forward to the next few quarters coming about. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's American Resources Corporation first quarter 2022 conference call. You may now disconnect your lines, and we hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.