Q2 2023 American Resources Corp Earnings Call
Into new and exciting markets, we truly sit at a very interesting position with our ability to bring cost competitive refining of critical minerals to our domestic market and the most environmentally safe and sustainable methods ever developed.
At no point in our history as our business has been better positioned to serve the markets, we operate in and to capitalize on our broad asset base, our talent and our ability to produce process and refine raw materials that are in very high demand.
We're extremely excited about the opportunities for all of our entities.
We continue to execute on our strategic plan to unbundle assets to extract value and to better position each division for growth capital allocation and with separate operating teams.
Let's dive into some of these.
First American carbon.
I will first address the revenue shortfall for this past quarter.
As global met carbon market softened over the second quarter, we chose to idle carbon production.
Over most of the second quarter, our customers became constrained when taking products due to port logistics and bottlenecks within the supply chain.
We believe this was largely a result of the shift in China, and Australia as relationship around product sourcing.
It's created significant shifts within supply chain and the timing of product deliveries.
Our ability to idle back production showcases our operational flex, but flexibility and also highlights that given our expansion around our re element division, we do not want to take unnecessary risks associated with inventory expansion and rather focus on cost constraints and all.
Other words, we chose not to run our mines just to build up inventory, but rather focus on value, creating initiatives such as real and the technologies. The closing of our tax exempt bonds and potential divestitures of the American carbon assets.
We are seeing the short term bottlenecks and logistic issues within the supply chain being resolved and belief belief carbon prices will respond accordingly over the near medium and long term.
As such we are beginning to look at restarting mining operations at our Carnegie mines in the near term to capitalize on market demand and pick up where we left off earlier in the quarter, where we were realizing some of our best fundamental production levels, while executing on the vision of our American carbon team, including the development of Wyoming County.
Cole to prepare for its operations next year.
That's correct just mentioned we are in receipt of two letters of interest for all of the mining assets of American carbon and Perry County resources, respectively, which provides us ample opportunity to execute on our mission to monetize our carbon assets the best benefit our shareholders.
It's worth reiterating our platform of carbon asset is unique given the significant mining infrastructure that we own the quality of carbon that we produce and have access to the restructuring efforts and investments we have made over the past several years to rightsize and streamlined the operations along with a substantial embedded organic.
<unk> growth, we have to provide incremental high quality carbon products to the global markets.
With the recent updates we have provided I believe we are beginning to see the fruits of that labor materialize and on a side note. We continue to see the industry drive consolidation as evidenced by today's news of Cleveland cliffs, making a 725 billion bid for U S. Steel, we feel that we're in great position with the assets that we.
We own today.
We element technologies as we frequently state of re element technologies Division represents an incredibly exciting and very strategic opportunity for us.
We've never been involved with an entity that in our opinion has a higher ceiling.
As we continue to strategically position ourselves in the global supply chain for critical minerals I think it is important to reiterate and emphasize our position within that market.
We element is an innovative and advanced refining platform for critical minerals, while we believe we are a high or a high value component within the recycling value chain, we are not.
Not solely recycling platform. However, we do believe our position in the recycling market.
And a sustainable supplier of critical minerals is highly important as we move towards a highly mineral dependent electrified economy.
That being said and again in our opinion recycling platforms alone are going to have a hard time, bringing bridging the gap.
And end of life of manufacturing scrap volumes materialize to levels that can support their capex and opex fundamentals that.
That is where our innovative and distinctively different are distinctively different.
And how we are positioned.
Our innovative and advanced refining methods using chromatography displace the toxic conventional methods used in China, and we believe is an important lynchpin in making the United States competitive within the electrified economy.
Applying these conventional refining methods, such as solvent extraction or hydro metallurgical here domestically will be very challenging.
They are extremely expensive to build and operate due to the harsh chemicals waste output and maintenance.
Can they separate and purified critical minerals, yes.
But there is a reason why most of these facilities are located in remote areas of inner Mongolia.
Our ability to refine a variety of critical mineral feedstocks from urgent orders manufacturing scrap end of life in unconventional sources and a low cost low impac modular and small footprint allows us to grow concurrently with the market's needs.
Meaning we spend less to produce ultra pure product.
The World has never really needed innovation in critical.
Critical minimum of refining until now or maybe we just became complacent with China's dominance of the market.
And that is the value proposition of re element technologies, the world needs advancements and refining these raw materials and we believe we provide the most efficient solution.
It's worth noting a few of our recent milestones at re element as well.
The recently achieved the production of ultra pure lithium carbonate, which is needed in battery cathode manufacturing verified by an independent third party laboratory at 90 99978 purity.
From L. S P lithium iron phosphate battery manufacturing scrap at commercial scale.
We believe we are the first that we know of to achieve this milestone worldwide.
But very significant achievement.
This achievement comes on top of Us achieving a 90 998 six pure lithium carbonate produced at commercial scale, which was recycling end of life LSP lithium ion batteries.
What makes these milestones unique is our ability to effectively and very cost efficiently refined materials from LSP battery chemistries.
Typically lithium lithium iron phosphate batteries very difficult to recover using conventional refining methods, usually it's lost and without the inherent cobalt and nickel that resides within NMC battery chemistries. It hasnt been remotely cost effective we are able to flip the paradigm where actually <unk>.
Hattery chemistry is more economical for us to refine given our ability to quickly extract and capture the lithium at high purity.
And as we see it from our perspective, the market, especially EV is migrating more towards lithium iron phosphate batteries, we expect about 60% of the market will eventually migrate to LSP versus NMC battery chemistry, which puts us in a great strategic position.
This is also why we are aggressively pursuing sourcing.
Agreements for lithium spodumene ore given how.
How we technically are able to refine lithium.
Obviously, Mark Jensen is currently pursuing such opportunities right now and we look forward to communicating future developments on that front.
We believe the opportunities to provide low cost and environmentally safe lithium refining around the world in a collaborative manner to meet the needs of the energy storage market are abundant.
We've had early success in developing partnerships such as the one we have established with our magnet battery partners, which we have already announced and we continue to have good success with several other pilot programs, where we are fostering collaborative opportunities within the automotive wind energy consumer power tool and broad.
<unk> energy storage and recycling markets.
We're really excited and confident about developing these pilot programs into long term commercial partnerships.
The number of opportunities we are seeing to provide our next generation advanced refining capabilities as a value added service continued to accelerate.
We're confident as we continue to showcase our competitive distinction, including performance a lower cost structure environmentalism flexibility and collaborative value element technologies will garner significant value for our shareholders.
I'd like to recognize our re element team for the groundbreaking success that we've had that we've achieved to date.
And in a quick time frame we've achieved it we do believe that time is of the essence.
We also believe as we've put together.
Best team to continue to drive this revolutionary refining technology and from a technical perspective, we believe we have the world's best chromatography experts and team behind a relevant division, whether it's from our University partners at or from Purdue.
Our engineering team that has had long standing success, developing and commercializing the foundations of our technology at Eli Lilly.
We have and will continue to add top talent to further execute on our vision.
As well as position re element as a Standalone company.
And as a global refining leader.
Our goal is to build re elements into a multibillion dollar business and we believe we have the team and a line of sight to do just that.
At American resources will continue to execute on our strategic plan.
<unk> resources is focusing on its highest value opportunities and we will look to expand that asset base within the natural resources industry utilizing cash generated from any asset sales royalties to acquire interest in high value critical in rare Earth mining assets that can feed our re element.
Technologies division to be refined.
And it's cost effective environmentally sustainable method.
In closing we remain very confident in the positioning of all of our assets and the long term value they provide to our shareholders.
Main hyper focused on unlocking that value.
Ample liquidity to do and do not foresee foresee us needing to issue equity at the ARCC.
American resources level to raise cash, especially with some of the sources of non dilutive capital that we have available.
Just to reiterate as the largest shareholders of American resources, our management team is committed to maximizing the value of all of our businesses and believe our continued execution and the unbundling of certain assets will help us achieve that.
With that I'd like to turn the call back over to the moderator for questions and answers.
Okay.
At this time I would like to ask a question. Please press the star and one on your telephone keypad, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two.
Once again to ask a question please press the star and wine.
And we'll take our first question from Mike Me, how Sir your line is open.
Hey, Mark.
Interesting press releases always just a couple of questions for you.
I'm not quite sure I understand the.
The reduction in revenues on the carbon side, but it sounds like.
It just made a lot of sense in order to.
Not to be able to maintain a positive cash flow.
And my interest my curious I'm curious if.
If you are flexible enough to do that or if there's any degradation to the assets by.
By such a.
Significant swing and pausing production or slowing.
Hey, Mike well first I appreciate your questions and all of your support hope you're doing well. So yes. Thank you. The first is the first answer on the degradation of assets no. We don't believe there's any degradation.
I think from.
How we're positioned within all of our businesses.
And we look at the overall platform.
And taking a conservative approach for the business and as I mentioned earlier on the call.
We weren't just going to produce through.
What we view as a as a blip in the supply chain, given where we're relatively in the global landscape, where a relatively small producer of met coal Mac carbon.
Our customer base is somewhat limited and we have we have good customers.
However, we werent going to we weren't going to sacrifice the overall execution of all of our platforms, including relevant technologies just to put inventory on the ground.
Our customer our main customer became constraints just given some of the some of the supply chain dynamics. So we chose not to overextend ourselves dialed back on production.
Focus on continued execution.
We continue to assess.
A variety of options that came out in front of US we executed an LOI to sell our D. Mining complex as we just mentioned we have received multiple LOI is when all of our assets. We closed on our on our Wyoming County tax exempt bond issuance. So.
Our execution was still you know head down driving forward.
But from a capital standpoint, and from an overall risk profile, we weren't just going to spend a bunch of money to put inventory on the ground just given the execution that we've that we continue to have on the element side of the business I hope that makes sense for US absolutely. Thanks for the answer sorry, just to dive into the question.
But so it sounds like you've got the flexibility where you can do that between the Carnegie mines and et cetera.
And it's interesting that there's just a flurry of activity between Dean and Perry and Wyoming County.
And these LOI as well.
What sparked all those things to come to a head this quarter or is it just coincidence or a lot of these things.
<unk> worked on for six to 12 months or is there something in the in the environment, that's causing us to happen right away.
The reason I'm asking is I'm going to try to get an indication of where youre going with this side of the business.
Yeah sure no I.
I think.
You can read between the lines I don't think it's a secret I think we're as we said was we're steadfast and focused on monetizing our assets and that includes selling of specific assets or all of those assets I think the closing of our of the tax exempt bond issuance or fully capitalize on that as one of the last Virgin boundaries.
Mid vol met carbon.
In the Appalachia region.
Brought back some parties to take a better look at our at our at our carbon platform.
Additionally, we will press release that we received a an unsolicited bid coming out of the gate post the closing of that of that bond issuance.
I think that had people that were kicking the tires on the platform of looking at certain assets to get more aggressive with them.
And you've seen it.
You've seen it in the marketplace today, and why I mentioned earlier on the call. The the cliffs bid for for U S. Steel I think where we sit in this cycle of the commodity cycle is.
Folks are very focused on.
Supply chain resiliency.
Sourcing their feedstocks for global steel production and vertically integrating cliffs has done a great job of it.
They are a great example, and they continue to be aggressive in the market.
Think that's part of it as well I think its a macro trend of.
Producers in.
The global steel markets looking at.
At vertically integrating their their supply chain and sourcing materials.
Well I know that the quality of the Wyoming County is something else.
And so.
That gives us kind of a clue as to.
How others might be looking at you for that supply chain resiliency. So thats good another good answer Mark.
The also before I forget congratulations powerless.
A competent hands on Big picture Guy. So I think this is great for him, but be careful what you want.
And shifting.
Go ahead.
No.
I appreciate that I'm sure Carlos appreciates that and use like I said, we appreciate your interest and I know you've spent.
You spent a good part of the day with tireless touring our touring our asset so.
He's the man.
So but on the on the lithium side could you just.
I'm not the lithium guy at Roth, but what is manufacturing scrap for lithium.
Is that.
I guess, what's left over on the cutting room floor and a battery Shaw.
Yeah. So yeah, I think at a high level, the best way to explain it.
And I said it earlier.
Our perspective, we believe the energy storage market and it depends on the application, whether it's just general energy storage electric vehicles.
<unk> power tools or things like that everybody uses a different battery yourself phones.
If you use an LCR typically or your laptop user and LCR battery chemistry.
<unk> have.
<unk> kind of been a mix between.
NMC nickel manganese cobalt and LSP lithium iron phosphate.
It's migrating more towards <unk> T in our opinion just given the.
You don't you don't need the nickel cobalt, which are high price commodities that go into the Chemistries are in NMC lithium iron phosphate. The lithium is relatively valuable iron phosphate carries less of a value. So the inputs on that the difference between the two is the energy density NMC can carry.
Higher energy density but.
As we state battery technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace and youre starting to see good.
Energy density and LSP, it provides a little bit better safety characteristics as well.
So the market is migrating more towards that as as the energy density safety.
And.
Less expensive.
Feedstocks that go into the production of Enel S. P battery chemistry, so youre, starting you've seen you've seen Tesla announced.
LSP Giga factories Ford is.
In the late because it's so EV is definitely migrating more towards and I'll, let be battery chemistry, and when you're manufacturing cathodes are.
Or batteries, there is a lot of waste.
It's a messy process.
When you when you when you break out your cathode material you trim it for sizing Theres a lot of waste in the process I think its estimated there's about 20% waste currently I know.
Battery manufacturers want to reduce that.
But does that mean.
Understanding is we'll never get to zero.
And trimming it to very low levels is going to be very hard just given the inherent capability. So there's a lot of scrap material that goes into the process, our ability to take that scrap and recycle it back end and the high purity forms.
Having the ability to modulate and co locate with with certain parties gives us a very strategic advantage of when Youre looking at.
Domestic manufacturing because logistics matter.
Input prices matter.
And we're able to reduce that you're able to do it in a collaborative manner to reduce the cost structure for everybody.
That's key when we're competing head to head with China, and the Asia Pacific region.
Ensuring manufacturing.
So this goes along with the theme of that you can pretty much take that.
Anything, but pretty much anything and regardless of what kind of waste it is from different kinds of batteries and.
And conditions Sprague left out in the rain whatever it is.
If you have a basic understanding of your feedstock youre able to purify it so that.
None of it goes to the minimal amount of thoughtful goes to the adult I think that's what I'm, taking away here and I guess it depends on you just prove that you can do it just a matter of finding the right partner at the right place and so that's.
What I drive.
Youre right.
Auto manufacturers are highly focused on all of that reducing the total amount of waste that come out from any of their production.
Our ability to do that we provide very efficient solutions for.
For that problem.
And our strategic positioning of being able to handle OSP OSP is more cost effective for us typically in the recycling process. You can only go after NMC, because you need that nickel cobalt value.
To justify your cost structures for us it showcases how low our cost structure is we can extract the lithium very effectively very cost efficiently in a low cost matter and very high purity form at commercial scale from LSP battery chemistry again, we're the only ones that we know that have been able to showcase that.
Okay, So along those lines.
So you've got a shipment of spodumene coming from Africa.
How soon do you think youre going to be able to tackle that and is that going to kick off marketing too.
Lithium mining.
Companies as they seek to upgrade their their lithium.
With maybe what could become a standardized process in the industry.
Is that.
Yeah.
It's a good question I think.
Timing is always hard to predict just given counterparties timelines.
But what I think you can take away from it is our ability to refine lithium very effectively from manufacturing to scrap or end of life, whether it's LSP or NMC or if it's the input feedstock input is is or base Virgin spodumene ore.
It really doesn't differ from a from a technology perspective.
It's very very similar from a cost structure and purity perspective.
We look forward to communicating our milestones of purifying lithium come from coming from natural occurring ores.
We have our process lined out we know what our.
Technology capabilities or we're fine tuning those today and I think we'll be in a position here in the short term to communicate.
Those milestones and then right as you think about it I think.
<unk>.
It Hasnt big it's already begun the reason mark.
<unk> not on the call today is because he is visiting some of our partners and looking to expand some of our partnerships abroad.
To source those those raw materials, there's natural lithium based stores.
To bring in and again it showcases.
Our technological advantages of PURA.
Purifying that more into high purity carbonate or hydroxide for them, what the battery industry really needs.
Well, it's just a question for modeling for me.
As far as like either revenues et cetera on the re element side with the rare sort of the lithium with what you just mentioned or with the.
Carbon assets with everything Thats going on there.
Ah narrowing activity there.
Should we just assume that.
It's market dependent production, there and as you move closer to be able to.
Start, Wyoming County, and Ernest Theres going to be a couple quarter slump in revenues as things come back into place and you sort out some of these sale agreements.
It looks like Theres a lot going on.
Yeah.
There is a lot going on.
[laughter].
I think from the press release today, you did I think.
There is some decent value that we've tried to showcase that.
The market is putting on our carbon assets right.
We talked about earlier on the call and in the press release.
We believe our platform of carbon assets is very attractive given the hard work and restructuring efforts that we've taken place and I think the market is is looking at that as a valuable asset valuable growth asset.
<unk>.
We are seriously considering all options, but.
That's the fact that the fact that we put that on the on the front page.
We're.
We're moving towards certain divestiture options, but again, we're only going to make decisions that are in the best benefit of.
Oh.
Meanwhile, how soon could washing our Wyoming county move into summer.
Something respectable as a startup.
Off of the existing infrastructure with the additional opportunities et cetera.
Yes, we've started some of that early development over at Wyoming County, I think.
Sometime next year, we would be in position to start getting some development production.
<unk> started over there.
Meaningful yeah, okay, and as far as like revenues from re element or.
The the lithium.
Too early to tell when we might start seeing revenues.
We are.
And I think one thing to consider.
As this entire infrastructure here in the United States gets stood up right.
There's very little that's being produced today theres not a whole lot of magnet manufacturing that's being produced in the United States, but.
We're partnered we are partners with two of our <unk>.
Three we've heard of a force.
With Grand plans to to.
Put magnet manufacturing here in the United States.
We're in discussions with them.
But.
Currently today very little.
Rare Earth Central manufacturing happens same with Giga factories here for energy storage and battery production. So we continue to see.
Stockpile product, we continue to run our pilot programs.
You've been at our facility, we were running our facility much more.
Frequently.
In a batch process.
Lot of times, we're taking that purified product and showcasing it back to our potential partners a pilot print pilot program partners that we're nurturing into full commercial partnerships, we think that's more valuable than.
No dropping a few kilograms into the into the marketplace.
Showcasing the efficacy of our technology and.
Putting up really sound commercial partnerships.
What's your best currently.
Yeah, well inquiring minds want to know.
But one last question and I'm, sorry for hogging the Q&A.
But could you just make a couple of comments about your facilities. It looks like things are starting to take shape as far as capacity and co locating and I'll just step off the call, but thank you for taking my questions.
We currently as we've.
<unk> talked about in the past our Noblesville, Indiana facility is currently running.
It's really an R&D center, but just given the technological advantages of our of chromatography, we can actually run good throughput.
Through that facility.
We've talked about our expansion up in Marion, Indiana.
42 acre campus building that out with much larger scale capacity. Initially initially we will look to build out capacity out of 2000 tons of output of pure rare earth oxides per annual.
As well as how much how many.
Did you say.
2000 tons of purified rare earth oxides per year.
On the railroad side and on the critical <unk>.
Critical minerals side again, it's a little bit harder to <unk>.
The model on the battery side of things based off of the variety of inputs the quality of the inputs the different chemistries of the inputs, but we're building that out to be about a 5000.
Per year of high purity lithium carbonate 5000 tons.
And a third of that was lets just say recycled.
And then C.
Chemistry from a black mass perspective from an input that would equate to about.
<unk> 3000, 3500 tonnes of a mixture of nickel and cobalt sulfates.
And then we currently are looking at.
Advancing.
Lithium preprocessing.
In eastern Kentucky.
Right.
Thank you for it don't forget that okay, well I'm done and congratulations things are actually starting to take shape.
Continued thanks, Michael Thanks, Mark.
And as a reminder, that is star one to ask a question.
Our next question from Michael Samuels with Fisher Your line is open.
Mark I just have a couple of questions number one when.
When I was looking at your.
Current quarter.
Why was your cost.
Of wholesale and processing.
It went up almost $1 million this quarter, but yet our sales went down $14 million.
So how was that so high.
That was a that was one thing and then the other question I had another question I have two as you announced the buyback.
Time ago did we buy any shares back in the last.
This year so far.
Two points Curt you want to maybe jump in on the.
Our.
Cost of a cold.
Coprocessor.
Yeah, and so it's just it's a timing aspect really too when you capture in.
Inventory costs when you take it off of your balance sheet.
Is it through the P&L when the coal sold sold through.
We should see that evening out over the next quarter.
Our coal shipments are fairly chunky. So if you have.
One large shipment.
Day before or the day after the quarter the can.
Provide some.
More impactful inventory cost swings. So as you look at the over 369 12 months you get a more even.
Picture.
<unk>.
Regarding the share buyback program. We do note that's a huge strategic committee. It was one of the points that they brought up.
As we discussed on the year end earnings call.
Your own earnings call, we did buy back shares during the end of 2022 but we have not disclosed or bought back any during the toy story three.
I mean, I'm looking you know you're saying you've got this letter of intent.
And we've had letters of intent letters of intent and youre, saying that could be worth like $3 83 a share.
Happen to be watching is talking to an after hour here and as Buck just continues to go down down down down down and so at $1 60, you would think you would at least be looking at a buyback.
If youre going to get 383 from <unk>.
And then the other question I had is you also had mentioned at the beginning of the call that we were going to spin off American carbon.
Like one share for every two shares of American resources, but then we also last year, we were going to do the same with re element.
Why would we be spending both sections off.
The other half is jewelry.
You want me to take that one Kirk or did you want to continue no. Yeah. So yeah. So again as we go through the options to a strategic committee.
Each operating business.
Does deserve to be it stand alone public company and so as we looked at building.
World Class management teams to run them attraction talent traction with customers.
They do seem to deserve to be on their own.
Once those are executed.
Resources would would remain as a NASDAQ listed public company they would give it the flexibility to execute on some opportunities that lie outside of the current.
Operating business model.
That would give it more flexibility to take take all of those opportunities. So again as we progressed on the business plans of those subsidiaries.
Each of them.
I have a clear defined structure.
And message to the investment community as well as to workforce.
<unk> customer base and so given the strategic committee of the board of management feels of the each deserve to be their own public company.
Okay I can lag.
Matt and Mike.
If I can add in on that too it's each separate entity, we would we would capitalize American carbon differently than we would American or excuse me, we elements technologies. Those those things will look differently, just given the markets that they that they operate in.
And the opportunities that they have in front of them. They probably are also carry a different multiple and in the public market as well.
Hence the reason to.
Drive forward with add on bundling of assets too to extract that value.
Both of them carry different multiples as well so capital allocation for growth multiples in the public marketplace Steppers, and then separating it from our operational and governance perspective as well it makes a lot of sense.
<unk>.
To do so so.
Then.
Where American resources would sit post that potential split or divestiture of any of the carbon assets.
<unk>.
American resources would continue to leverage.
Re element refining just given that strategic advantage of refining critical minerals to be able to broaden the natural resource play again March over in Africa, or we're looking at.
A variety of different lithium plays again, because we can refine lithium very cost effectively and to high purity forums, it's a hard element to refine right.
Will you be able to get enough batteries.
Well, that's the unique thing the opportunities we're exploring right now are for spodumene, which are.
Which is natural occurring or right just like coal just like iron ore or any other.
<unk> based product.
That is again strategically differentiates us because it helps us bridge that gap of winter. All these batteries is going to come to an end of life is it going to be five years from now 10 years from now 15 years from now.
The recycling market is dependent on end.
End of life or manufacturing scrap, but like I said earlier, nobody is producing a whole lot of things here in the United States yet.
The mandate has been set the capitals being deployed infrastructure being stood up but manufacturing scrap isn't widely available in large large volumes today getting our hands on access on high quality ores in the lithium market is very attractive for us that helps us bridge that gap to win.
In recycling.
It takes on a much larger.
Product mix or input mix of of your feedstock. Okay. And then last question you had it's been a while now since we applied for the re element side.
And I know you had questions back from the FCC and I thought you answered them.
How far along are we on the spinoff of our re element right now.
Oh time is relative Mike I think.
The reason why we announced it initially was from a strategic perspective, because having a really clean tech refining company embedded inside of our coal mining company cost beta stage.
There there was some strategic advantages for us doing that some portfolio managers aren't allowed to buy they want a piece of re element, but they can't buy it within American resources, but announcing that we have a plan to spin off maybe it gives portfolio managers.
And there's some other strategies that that makes a whole lot of sense up from from other aspects within the supply chain.
In developing commercial partnerships and looking at different.
Government based incentives or grants opportunities as well.
So there's a reason why we announced it maybe early in the process because we wanted to be on record of this is our plan.
Mclaren.
If we wanted to go forward.
Curt you want to.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think at this point.
We're now engaging discussions with OCC or tried it back so.
Shareholder and strategic value along that process.
We wanted to make sure that it is a.
Proper public company and not just spun out just for the sake of spitting out. So we really wanted to go through the process to keep our options open.
And get it to the point of being actionable.
Actual win what the value was there to act upon.
Really.
That's probably as far as we want to go I don't want to get into it.
Well, yes, or no comments or so.
Right.
I've always also said repeatedly when you've talked to me in the past I've talked as is.
The spin out of re element is a strategic but b it's not.
We like we like to execute on things quickly right.
And I think and I think we've showcased our ability to do so.
But in regards to the re elements spin off it is not.
Speed is not the primary objective here.
If speed, where the primary objective, we could separate re element and let it drop off into the public market and let the public market figure out how to evaluate where we can.
Help investors had the easy button by discovering value through the capital raising process through strategic partnerships.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you we appreciate it.
And as a reminder, that is star one to ask a question it will pause a moment to allow further questions to queue.
And we'll take our next question Steven Segal with KDB asset management. Your line is open. Your line is open hi, Mike. The question I wasn't going to ask was just answered but I was just wondering I know we've talked to.
You talked a lot about lithium so far on this call has there been any new thing for new developments in the Magna area.
Partnerships.
And on the Magnus side of things are on the lithium.
Magnified.
We continue to have very strong pilot programs.
Sure.
And our pipeline today, where we can take a variety of feedstocks from large powerful manufacturers.
Auto OEM auto <unk>.
We continue to showcase our the efficacy of our technology.
Showcasing what we're able to do in providing sustainable sources back into their supply chain.
Those critical raw materials.
So yes, there there there's there continues to be progress and developments made we just haven't gotten to a point, yet where we're able to publically announce them by name.
But we're getting I would say were getting closer.
On the magnet side I think one thing to also highlight Steve as highlights the flexibility.
<unk> of our platform allows us to look at.
But looking at different feedstocks, our ability to take the entire.
Train of an EV and recycle that back into the high purity sustainable products.
As differentiated as well so our ability to take the motor and magnets out of an ebay recycle them back gives us the ability to talk to Oems battery team as well and vice versa.
Rather than just looking at where our battery recycler and we can only handle.
M C battery chemistry that we have a much.
Have a much broader and a.
Appealing proposition from an orders perspective, I would say to look at but we continue to drive those pilot programs forward with the with what we feel is a high degree of success.
We look forward to communicate when we're communicating those.
Milestones when we're able to.
Okay and then the other question is.
Not sure.
As far as the.
Sorry about that as far as the LOI goes.
For the.
For the.
For the whole field is there some type of a timeframe on that because.
In the meantime, you still have to progress.
Carnegie reopening when you can get Wyoming charging right.
Yeah, and I think that's why we've.
We talked about both paths forward right, we're not just not going to hang our hat on one path, we need to drive our vision forward from an operational standpoint.
You know as far as developing Wyoming County.
Getting our Carnegie minds back up and running when when we feel the market is solidifying I did mention earlier on the call that our customer base is fairly narrow we're working on broadening our customer base as well there. So we continue to drive that execution forward.
While we explore other alternative avenues as well like divesting the entire platform or pieces of the platform.
Right.
<unk>.
Thank you I appreciate it.
I appreciate you guys.
I just want to point that is star one to ask a question.
I'll make to allow additional questions to queue.
And it appears we have no more questions at this time I'll turn the program back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks.
I would like to thank everyone for your interest in American races, where in your time you took out of your busy schedules to participate in today's call.
We look forward to executing on your half and and communicating with you in the near future.
Thanks again.
This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation and you may disconnect at any time.
[music].