MP Materials Corp.

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to the MP Materials third quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Maxine and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to Martin Sheehan, the head of investor relations to begin. Martin, please go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you, operator, and good day, everyone. Welcome to the MP Materials third quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today from MP Materials are Jim Lotinski, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Rosenthal, Founder and Chief Operating Officer, and Ryan Corbett, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get to our 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 today. Let me start with the plan for today's call. First, I will open up with highlights of the quarter. Ryan will then review our financials and KPIs. Michael will then provide an update on our stage two optimization at Mountain Pass. I'll then return and close with a brief update on our stage three magnetics business before opening things up for Q&A. So let's get started on slide four. I'm going to change the usual order of my highlights commentary and start with some exciting news. In September, we reached a major milestone. We began commissioning Stage 2 at Mountain Pass. We are starting test operations in several circuits, beginning with concentrate drying and roasting. As you may recall, reintroducing roasting is one of the key strategic decisions we made for our Stage 2 optimization. Roasting of bassinicide concentrate was pioneered at Mountain Pass in the 1960s and was critical to the site's success over many decades. Roasting leverages the natural advantages of bassinicide ore, ensuring high NDPR recovery while significantly reducing the reagent and energy intensity, and hence the cost of the refining process. Roasting is a proven and well-accepted industry process for refining bassinicide ore. In combination with other Stage 2 enhancements, the reintroduction of the roaster positions us to return Mountain Pass as a global low-cost producer of NDPR oxide, thereby continuing what we have already done in rare earth concentrate. I want to stress that these are very early days in the transition to Stage 2. We have a lot of painstaking work ahead that will unfold over the next year. Commissioning will certainly not be a linear process. There will be ups and downs and starts and stops, so be prepared for some lumpiness in our results during this transition. But that said, I am proud of how relentlessly the EMP team has been executing so far. When we consider what has happened this year in geopolitics, the challenges across a weakening global economy, and the continued disruptions across supply chains, today's milestone is amazing. This is probably the most challenging real operating economic environment most people working today have faced in their careers. We are therefore moving forward with commissioning with humility, but we are confident in our ability to execute over time. We have an outstanding team with unwavering determination. Turning to stage three, in September, our magnetics team also reached a major milestone. We topped off the structure of our magnetics factory in Fort Worth, completing the building shell in just seven months and began the build out of internal utilities and infrastructure. As we advance construction, we are simultaneously adding significant depth and breadth to our team and rapidly growing the organization's engineering and manufacturing capabilities. The Magnetics team is focused on advancing the state of the art with respect to manufacturing technology and innovation and rapidly designing and sourcing the long lead equipment we need to begin production. As with stage two, the stage three team has many challenges ahead, but we are off to a solid start. We are making substantial progress. Moving to our third quarter results. Despite the significant stage two related work going on in Mountain Pass, the stage one operation continues to deliver strong production levels while keeping costs under control. we produced our second highest quarterly volume of nearly 10,900 metric tons of rare earth oxides contained in concentrate and sold nearly 10,700 metric tons. And with regards to our financials, if you heard us speak during the third quarter conference season, you would have heard our commentary on the decline in NDPR prices quarter on quarter. We believe the decline was mainly due to global economic conditions and the widespread lockdowns in China. Despite that decline, and a stronger dollar. Average prices were up materially from a year ago, highlighting the continued strong demand for NDPR and, by extension, our concentrate. Ryan will discuss more on pricing and financials in a moment, but in summary, our year-over-year financial performance was very strong. Revenue was up 25% to over $124 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up 34% to over $91 million. our adjusted EBITDA margin expanded five points to 73% and we earned 36 cents per share in adjusted diluted EPS, an increase of 38%. This brought our year to date normalized stage one free cashflow to approximately $321 million. That's an impressive 74% free cashflow margin on stage one for the first nine months of the year. With that overview, Let me turn the call over to Ryan for some additional details on our KPIs and financials. Ryan?