00:00I had not heard of this company before. Is it a big player in the rare earth space?
00:04No, this is a pretty small company. There are lots of small mining companies around the U.S.
00:08that explore for rare earths or other critical minerals. They've all been getting a boost over
00:12the past year because of President Donald Trump's push to onshore these metals. USA Rare Earths is
00:17really one of the latest. And so they're among quite a number of companies that have received
00:22either funding or promises of potential funding from the administration.
00:26In terms of non-binding, what does it actually mean? Like what kind of benchmarks need to be achieved?
00:31Yeah, so non-binding means this is quite a conditional offer. So, you know, $1.6 billion
00:35in potential funding. So we need to see this company advance several key projects in order
00:40for them to get this money. This is a company that has a sprawling number of projects across
00:46different states. They have a deposit in West Texas, about 95 miles from El Paso, that is supposed to
00:52produce rare earths. If they can get that up and running, they get part of this funding.
00:57And they also have to advance a magnet-making facility in Oklahoma, which would be taking the
01:01material from the mineral deposit in West Texas and ramp that up, too. And that also gets them funding.
01:08So along the way, as they progress certain elements of this whole plan, they would, in theory,
01:15get parts of this funding.
01:16What have they done so far?
01:19So far, it's in early stages. So they have this big mineral deposit. And what they've been working
01:24towards is a study for this mineral deposit to determine just what concentration of rare earth
01:30minerals are in the ground there. What they say is that they have access to so-called heavy rare
01:34earths. These are important elements called, you know, terbium and dysprosium. And they're incredibly
01:39important for consumer electronics and heavy magnets. And what they have to do is investigate,
01:45basically, just how dense this deposit is with those metals. And that tells investors if they
01:50should be investing in this, how much it's going to cost to build. And so that's what they're working
01:54towards right now.
01:55So this is still a far cry from being able to replace China as a supplier for rare earths minerals
01:59for U.S. companies.
02:00That's right. A far cry, maybe even an understatement. It's a long way away. And we need a lot more
02:05projects like these to come anywhere close to touching China's dominance in this area.
02:10So USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton spoke in an investor call today. What did you learn from that
02:16call?
02:16So what they say is that, you know, what this proposal does is it gets the company on investors'
02:23radar. That's the idea. And we've seen the Trump administration do this with quite a number of
02:27companies where they've proposed, you know, the possibility of investing in them. And what that does
02:32is it sort of circulates the company and their projects around to investors in the critical minerals
02:37space who now look at it and they say the U.S. is interested in it. This is clearly a key
02:42project for the Trump administration. Maybe we want to be a part of it, too. We've seen
02:46that with a number of companies. There are some companies where the U.S. has decided that
02:49they're worth investing in already. So we've seen with MP Materials, for example, which has
02:54an operating rare earth mine in California that the U.S. is willing to put money right away
03:00in the company. With USA Rare Earths, it's not quite there yet. What this does is it's almost
03:07like advertising for the company.
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