MP Materials Corp.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the MT Materials first quarter 2022 earnings call. 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 will need to press star 1 on your telephone. And if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today,

martin sheehan head of investor relations please go ahead thank you operator and good day everyone welcome to mp materials first quarter 2022 earnings call With me today from MP Materials are Jim Latinsky, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Rosenthal, Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Corbett, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get to our opening remarks, as a reminder, today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements relating to future events and expectations that are subject to various assumptions and caveats. Factors that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation, earnings release, and in our SEC filings. In addition, we have included some non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the appendix to today's presentation and earnings release. Any reference to our discussion today to EBITDA means adjusted EBITDA. Finally, the earnings release and slide presentation are available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim. Jim?

Thanks, Martin, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We had a great first quarter. I'll get to the highlights in just a moment, followed by Ryan's review of the financial and KPI details. I'll come back to update you all on our progress on stages two and three, and then we'll open it up to Q&A. So let's get started on slide four. In the quarter, we produced more than 10,800 metric tons and sold more than 11,700 metric tons of REOs. That represents year-over-year growth in production and sales volumes of 10% and 20% respectively. Operational execution, cost management, and market pricing are what drive our financial performance. We executed well throughout the quarter, maintained cost discipline, and benefited from higher realized prices. This resulted in record financial performance. Revenue was up 177% year-over-year to $166.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up 301% to 132.3 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 23 points to 80%. And we earned 50 cents per share in adjusted diluted EPS, an increase of 285%. These are exceptional results, particularly when we consider the global and industry backdrop. We have seen wide reporting this earnings season of companies in our sector having challenges around production and cost. Our team continues to focus on consistency and continuous improvement in our flotation process while keeping uptimes at world-class levels. We do not take logistics for granted. We continue to overcome challenges with suppliers, shipping, and labor. All these efforts, combined with strict cost discipline, means we are positioning MP to improve per ton economics over time. We also certainly benefited from strong market prices for NDPR in the quarter. In February, NDPR exceeded $170 a kilogram. With our rare earth distribution of nearly 16% NDPR, our realized pricing for concentrate is highly correlated to the market price of NDPR oxide, as it is the vast majority of the contained REO value. Putting it all together, we generated significant cash from operations during the quarter Our stage one business generated over $133 million in normalized free cash flow. After completing our offtake agreement and making substantial investments towards our downstream expansion, we still generated $71 million in free cash flow during the quarter. MP is in an attractive economic position. We are generating free cash flow and strengthening our balance sheet while investing in high return on capital growth opportunities that will transform our business. I should note, though, for those not following as closely, recent NDPR pricing has pulled back from the February highs. Recent geopolitical developments are an obvious primary driver of the current macro market concerns, specifically the Russian invasion of Ukraine and COVID lockdowns in China. We do not see much of a direct idiosyncratic connection between the Ukraine situation and the rare earth industry. I can provide some insights into impacts from the COVID lockdowns in China. There are two ways the COVID countermeasures implemented in China could potentially impact our business. The first is potential congestion or bottlenecks in global transportation. While the Shanghai port was recently closed, we generally do not ship significant volumes through Shanghai, as there are no major rare earth refiners in the province. Should other ports become more congested as ships transit through Shanghai or divert from Shanghai to offload or pick up products, it could ultimately cause delays in ports that we do use more regularly. We have not experienced any significant issues on this to date. We will continue to monitor this situation as you would expect. Secondly, as you may have heard, certain major EV manufacturing facilities in China have shut down or significantly slowed production at times. This and other resulting supply chain issues in China are clearly disruptions that might be impacting near-term NDPR pricing. But as this dynamic unfolds, shipping bottlenecks or shutdown issues are ultimately short-term in nature. I would also add that there were some reports a couple months back that the Chinese government was encouraging rationality in the markets. likely trying to address inflationary pressures on downstream businesses, including magnetics companies, component manufacturers, and OEMs. What we have historically seen with this kind of rhetoric is a short-term blip with limited transactions at lower prices, followed by a return to the forces of supply and demand. In fact, according to Morgan Stanley Research, four of the top 10 OEMs in year-to-date market share for global battery electric vehicle sales Chinese OEMs this means that the Chinese industry needs to incentivize a lot more materials production just as Western industry does in the coming years as I've said many times prices will do what they will do in the short term but we are in the early innings of the transition to electrification across the global economy this is very bullish for rare earth demand and MPs prospects even the as real global growth appears to be retreating amidst a very challenging geopolitical and economic landscape. Speaking of transitions, we continue to make parallel progress across stages two and three during the quarter. Stage two construction is ramping and on track, and construction of our initial magnet facility in Texas is also underway. I'm going to cover stages two and three in more detail after Ryan's remarks. So with that, I will turn it over to Ryan to discuss our financials and KPIs in more detail. Ryan.