MP Materials Corp.

Good afternoon, thank you for attending today's MP materials first quarter earnings call all lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to queue for a question on today's call you can do so by dialing star one, I would now like to pass the conference over to your host Martin Sheehan with MP materials, you may proceed.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the MP Materials first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me today from MP Materials are Jim Lutensky, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Michael Rosenthal, founder and chief operating officer, and Ryan Corbett, chief financial officer. 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 today's earnings release and the appendix to today's slide presentation. Any reference in 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 an overview of today's call. I will begin with the highlights of the quarter, including a Stage 3 update. Ryan will then review our financials and KPIs. Michael will then provide an update on our Stage 2 optimization and mountain pass. I will then return with closing comments and then open it up for Q&A. So let's get started on slide four. We continue to execute well in our stage one upstream business. For the eighth consecutive quarter, we produced more than 10,000 metric tons of rare earths in concentrate. Sales volumes were similarly strong, allowing us to generate solid adjusted EBITDA and related margin, despite challenging realized price comparisons. I know pricing is a topic on the minds of investors, and I will share some detailed perspective on that later in the call. Moving on to stage two, commissioning has been making steady progress, and we have begun to process a portion of our roasted concentrate through our leach circuits. This means we are closing in on the even bigger milestone of recommissioning our light rare earth separation circuits. To reiterate what we have said on prior calls, the commissioning process is painstaking with stops and starts, but we remain on track towards soon producing separated rare earths and reaching run rate production by year end. Michael will provide a more detailed update in a moment. Another important development in the quarter relative to our midstream business was the signing of an additional tolling agreement to convert a portion of our NDPR oxide into metal in Vietnam. For those of you unfamiliar with tolling agreements, Towing is a process whereby a third party processes our materials for a fee, in our case, turning our oxide into a metal for us. Producing and selling NDPR metal, in addition to oxide, ultimately expands the market for our materials, supports our low-cost production profile, and expands the direct customer base for our products. Notably, Japan is the largest manufacturer of neodymium magnets outside of China. But Japanese magnet makers have limited oxide to metal conversion capacity and have historically depended on facilities in China or Southeast Asia. Combined with opportunities afforded by our Sumitomo relationship, this agreement will enable MP to maximize and extract more value from our sales of NDPR products to customers in Japan and other global markets. Moving on to stage three, downstream magnetics. Process engineering and long lead procurement continues to rapidly advance. Our Fort Worth engineering and manufacturing team is gathering talent and getting stronger. The internal structure of the factory is taking shape. We are preparing for the arrival of the first phase of electro winning and strip casting equipment, which will be needed to meet our goal of delivering alloy flake later this year. We are observing factory acceptance testing of this equipment at key vendors and are also planning the final connections between this equipment and the building infrastructure. Importantly, our business development pipeline remains robust. Therefore, to summarize, for what was within our control, execution, Q1 was a quarter of great success across all streams of our business at MP. In addition, in April, we surpassed three years without a lost day due to injury. That's over two million work hours. I am very proud of the team for this important achievement that we must continue. I will come back for closing comments and address pricing and the marketplace. For now, let me turn it over to Ryan for the financial and operating metrics. Ryan?