Energy Fuels Inc

AMEX:UUUU

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Colin, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Energy Fuels Q2 2021 Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you.

Mr. Chalmers, you may begin your conference.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Thank you, Colin. And good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q2 2021 conference call and webcast today.

As always, we're excited to discuss our Q2 achievements and achievements after the close of the quarter. For those of that cannot join the call today, there will be replays of the presentation and recording available for 2 weeks on our website, starting later today or tomorrow.

I just want to say that we continue to make what I believe is extraordinary progress on many fronts, and we believe that Energy Fuels has and continues to emerge as the clear leader in U.S. critical mineral production space. I realize some of those -- of you that are on the call today are invested in Energy Fuels for different reasons. It could be uranium. It could be rare earths. It could be vanadium. And now we've complicated further with the introduction of thorium, and I'm sure that confuses some people. And hopefully, I can clarify that over the course of the next 30 minutes or so, but look, the bottom line is an investment in Energy Fuels represent an investment in clean energy, low-carbon emissions and critical minerals. And I really don't know of any other single investment that you can cover that kind of real estate. Most of you, almost all of you will know that we have a long history as a U.S. uranium producer, and we're very proud of that. And now we're really pleased that we now have the ability to process rare earths at scale and we're more advanced than any other rare earth company in the United States. And we're producing a rare earth product, intermediate product, which is currently being shipped to Europe.

And we have big plans. We're targeting 50% of U.S. requirements in not-too-distant future, but there's no reason we can't eventually be able to produce 100% of current U.S. requirements, or greater, when we secure adequate sources of monazite feed and establish separation at White Mesa. So this is incredible progress and we're incredibly proud of this. We also continue to build our relationships with a number of groups, certainly Chemours, Neo, Hyperion, Carester and others that I'd like to tell you about but I can't. And I believe that, based on -- the quality and the quantity of inbound calls is a reflection of what people are noticing with our progress and rapid progress, but I've said this before and I said it a little earlier: We are not stopping at mixed rare earth carbonate production. We are absolutely going to develop fully integrated U.S. supply chain through a minimum of separated oxides at White Mesa Mill. And we believe it will be low CapEx and OpEx; competitive with the world's best producers, including China. And scoping studies are well underway. In addition, we're seeing price of the uranium and vanadium increase over the last number of months. And if you look at the value of our inventories that -- on the books versus the current prices, it's actually at current prices our inventory is worth about $14 million we currently carry as our working capital number. We also continue to get recognition for industry-leading recycling programs, so we believe that Energy Fuels has got to be one of the best ESG stories in the business, particularly in the United States.

So before we move to the slides, I just want to remind people that you are controlling the slides on the web with the previous and next buttons. I'm also pleased to say that we will be answering questions at the end of the presentation, as Colin mentioned; also pleased to announce that Sarai Luksch, our controller, will help, join me at the end of the presentation if there's any questions that I can't answer. And Dave Frydenlund and Curtis Moore, who many of you know, are all taking well-deserved vacations.

So let's jump in. And on the first slide, and a lot of you have seen this before, a picture of the White Mesa Mill in Utah, in Southern Utah. And the one thing I want to note is that we added thorium to uranium, rare earth elements, vanadium, recycling and thorium. And I'll talk more about it in a second or 2.

So next slide. I may well be making some forward-looking statements, and those are included at the back of the presentation.

Next slide. All right, so here we are. And you've all seen this, our core business case -- or many of you have, Energy Fuels. It's the same as in the past. Our core business is and will always be uranium. We've added rare earths in the last -- probably last 13, 14 months. We're now producing vanadium, a long history of producing vanadium. Vanadium prices are increasing. The recycling, which I've talked at -- in previous presentations. And now we added the thorium. And we're very excited about thorium because, like -- uranium rare earths also have contained thorium, which we believe has the potential to be recovered for medical isotopes that could be used for emerging cancer therapies. That is a remarkable addition to the front line here. And also we're very, very proud of our financial strength and our 0 debt. And also on this slide you can see where we -- on the side, on the periodic table, we got uranium, vanadium and thorium.

Next slide. So our financial strength and flexibility. We posted in our financials $98.8 million cash, securities or inventories. That inventories are valued at our book values which you can see in the table on the right, uranium at $23.79 per pound and vanadium at $5.11 per pound. And at current prices, the price of uranium is up 37% from that, and nearly double for vanadium. So when you look at the $98.8 million, that's actually very conservative. It's actually about $14 million more than that. We have a significant uranium inventory that we produced ourselves as well as a vanadium inventory that we produced ourselves.

Our revenue was just about $0.5 million. That was mainly from some of the cleanup work we're doing in New Mexico. 0 debt. We did have a net loss of about -- nearly $11 million, but $3.6 million of that was related to the share price increase and the warrant liabilities. So that's a noncash issue. We also had about $2.5 million in increasing expenditures for our rare earth production in Q2. And I want to say that, even though the capital cost was only less than $2 million, for capital costs, we had things like reagents and labor costs that [ execute that ] a bit.

Our guidance for 2021. We are not going to produce any uranium at the current time. We're going to retain that in-circuit inventory. It actually is produced, but it will be circulating in the system and we won't be recovering it into finished goods. So year-end, at this point in time, we're projecting nearly 700,000 pounds of uranium inventory. Also, rare earth oxide, we're projecting that we will produce between 700 and 1,100 tons of mixed rare earth carbonate production, which is about 350 to 550 tons REO. That is because of a delay in shipments from Chemours. It is not a reflection of our ability to produce rare earth carbonate. They've had some operational issues, and I am currently talking to them how they catch that up in due course. So anyways, for those of you that have a question about our ability to produce rare earth carbonates: It is not restricted on the plant. It's restricted on this short-term shortage of feed.

Next slide. So let's talk about some of our milestones. We maintain our U.S. uranium leadership. We began production of rare earth products and we started shipping carbonate. Uranium, we still continue, as we believe, the clear leader in the U.S. space. We maintain our assets on standby. And as I mentioned, we've got uranium inventories that are currently valued at about $22.5 million that we produce as U.S. origin. We also announced after the quarter that we are divesting some noncore assets to International Consolidated Uranium, which we're very excited about. [ I have a ] long history [ with a ] number of the members of International Consolidated Uranium. And that has a pro forma value, when it's closed and all the progress payments are made, of around $24 million. We will become the largest shareholder of CUR.

Rare earths. We talk about first shipments and started to go to Estonia. And no other company is advanced as we are. We signed our contract with Neo, for the shipment and for them to procure rare earth carbonates from White Mesa, on July 7. And then we continue to have numerous discussions with monazite suppliers around the globe as well as advancing our scoping studies with Carester for full integration. Vanadium: Really no change in vanadium as a company, except for the fact that the price keeps going up. And we now have about $16.5 million of high-purity vanadium in stock and ready to sell when we decide to sell it.

The new kid in town is thorium. And we announced recently that we've signed a strategic alliance agreement with RadTran, which is a Denver-based company. And we're going to be evaluating the recovery of thorium, as I mentioned, for the production of medical isotopes that I'll talk about more a little bit later for emerging cancer treatments. And we're very, very excited about that as well.

So look. This next slide, just showing our footprint in the United States, and most of you have seen this before, from Wyoming all the way down to Texas and the White Mesa Mill in the Four Corners region. Next slide, our front line of production centers White Mesa, Alta Mesa, the Pinyon Plain and the Nichols Ranch facility. These continue to be our front range. We still have Alta Mesa and Nichols Ranch on standby, as well as Pinyon Plain. And White Mesa is the only producing asset we have at this point in time.

This slide. Again you've all seen this -- or most of you have seen this, but between Cameco and Energy Fuels, between their assets and our assets, 85% of the uranium produced in the United States came from 2 companies. And when you add Ur-Energy and Uranium One, that is 97% of the uranium production in the United States over 15 years. And actually the assets that we're on selling to CUR or International Consolidated Uranium, they would actually become the fifth largest if you look at the uranium production over time from those assets.

Next slide, rare earths and uranium. Again I've talked about this at length. It's very complementary, and we still are focused on monazite because of the high value. We really believe that this is a real value proposition. And our ability to basically recover the uranium, potentially the thorium, and dealing with radionuclides is a real game changer. And Constantine Karayannopoulos continually uses that. And I really am happy he does because it is really a remarkable position that we are in as we advance our critical mineral hub for these number of elements and also for fulfilling this newly projected fivefold increase in magnetic rare earth oxides that they're projecting over the next 10 years.

Next slide, monazite. Again I've talked in the past about this, but it is a byproduct of existing heavy mineral sand operations. It's mined around the world. And as I've said and told people previously, we're talking to basically everybody around the world. Every day that goes by, more people understand the progress we're making and the speed of our progress. And so that is creating a number of interesting opportunities that are showing up at the doors for us. It is low-cost production. It's high grade. It has typically -- the heavy mineral sands produces monazite sands which is between 50% to maybe 60% total rare earth oxides, which is like the equivalent of the McArthur Rivers and Cigar Lake [ and ] uranium industry and the rare earth industry. And that's why we're focusing on the monazite. It is lower-cost production and processing. It's got great distributions, NdPr and heavies. And it's much higher grade than typically what is mined [indiscernible]. So we're going to stick to this monazite plan even though we will look at other sources in due course.

Next slide. Now this slide, again just unique capabilities of the White Mesa Mill. And this picture on the right is a picture of myself; Logan Shumway, our mill superintendent; and Constantine Karayannopoulos at our packaging plant. That is a 1-ton [ bulky bag ] of rare earth carbonate that is headed to Estonia. And I checked this morning, and right now we've basically packaged about 170 or 180 bags of this rare earth carbonate. And we've got another 20 or -- 120 to go in this first batch from Chemours. And so we're very excited about that and we had sort of a photo op. Constantine came down to the mill. And it was really a great day to showcase what we've accomplished and as quickly as we accomplished it and with limited capital costs required. So again, this first amount from Chemours is giving us the opportunity to basically work all the kinks out in the mill in terms of recovery, reagent consumption and handling of the product and -- but we -- our next step is we want to secure enough feed to get up to around 15,000 tons of feed, which would be approximately 50% of U.S. current requirement. So a little bit of monazite goes a long way because of the grade, and so again we're moving very quickly on this front.

Next slide. So I've talked again quite a bit about our short-term plan, which is the purchasing and processing of around 2,500 tons per year of monazite. I mentioned that Chemours is lagging on that, but we're going through some steps. And I have some talks with them next week on how they can increase that, hopefully, in the next not-too-distant future. We are out there actively seeking to purchase additional monazite. And there are people, as I said, around the world that are noticing what we're doing and are talking to us about monazite supply. And so we're planning to -- in this period of time while we're building up our capabilities and our ability to eventually separate, we're using the facility with Neo in Estonia for separation; a very strong, healthy relationship with Neo. And we plan to have that continue for a long, long time.

So when you look out in 2023, '24. We hope to have a U.S.-centric supply chain. We've been talking about potentially submitting our plans to the State of Utah next year, sometime, that's not completely nailed down yet, to have and capture the full value chain of the rare earths supply at White Mesa, including our relationship with Neo. So we're very excited about our collaboration with Carester's. Many of you know Carester's. They're long-established and proven operators and separators of monazite feed not just in France but in China as well. And lastly, we have a long history of dealing with solvent extraction at the White Mesa Mill. So many people that -- tell us that solvent extraction is unruly and not easy to control, which is true. We have a head start over most.

So this is just a graphic of what I just said. And looking at this initial step to get through separation and then looking in the midterm in a few years to have full integration. And as I said too, we're looking to get through at least separation at the White Mesa Mill, but we're starting to look at metals and alloys and powders right now. So we've still got work to do there, but we're taking a step at a time.

Next slide. So sort of our accomplishments in a little over a year. We continue to engage additional professionals. We've had Constantine working on this with us for over a year, Brock O'Kelley, Jack Lifton and Carester, but we recently hired Chris Wyatt worked for Iluka. He's a heavy mineral sand expert. And he's helping us particularly in this front end when it's securing and sourcing monazite for the White Mesa Mill, so we're really pleased to have Chris join the team. And that just continues with our philosophy and approach that [ we know what we don't know ]. And so we will bring in the expertise we need at every step to get the best outcomes possible. So I'm hoping in the not-too-distant future that we can add to this list in -- on top of Chemours and Hyperion, to -- others that are joining the initiative. I actually talked to Hyperion this morning. And so they're very excited about working with us in the future. I've talked about the rare earth carbonate that we're producing at the mill, and it's very unique that you have an opportunity like this. I mentioned that we went from lab scale to 1-ton scale to 110 scale. We've done this 300 tons this last run. And the next step, we hope to start up in October; and it will be somewhere in the order of 600 to 800 tons. And we plan to continue to ramp it up as feed becomes available.

I mentioned the separations and the work with Carester. We hope to have some initial results. There won't be final results of some of the scoping work that they're working on in the next month or so. And I mentioned the rare earth metals and alloys that we're currently starting to do more work on. And then we have secured around $2 million of support from the U.S. government thus far.

Next slide. So this is a new slide that I don't think I've shown to you before, but it's why can Energy Fuels succeed when others have struggled. Number one, we have the licenses and the capability to handle the radionuclides in monazite. Number two, monazite has the high grade and value over other rare earth minerals. And I know this is a little bit prescriptive as I go down, but it -- I'm trying to really hit the points. Monazite is already being mined in the U.S. and around the world. There is monazite out there that is available.

Number four, it's straightforward to process monazite over some of the rare earth streams. In our case, it's low cost and capital efficient with existing infrastructure. Number six, we're planning to use solvent extraction technology which we have this long history of, of nearly 40 years. We're going to focus on proven technology using SX. Now if other technologies present themselves that we think make sense, we'll look at them. And lastly, Utah is a great place to do business. It's low-cost jurisdiction. They are very pro mining and processing. And we think it is far less costly to do business in Utah than it is places like California and Australia.

Next slide. All right, now let's talk about our divestment of noncore assets. We now set after the end of the quarter and July 15 to International Consolidated Uranium. We're divesting the Tony M mine, the Daneros mine, Rim mine and some DOE leases. That divestment comes with a toll milling agreement. They are the only company that will have a toll milling agreement at this point in time with Energy Fuels. These are high quality, fully licensed and either completely developed or partially developed. And they are ready to become a producer of uranium when the markets justify. Total consideration is approximately USD 24 million if all aspects of the agreement are exercised.

We'll get $2 million cash at closing, which we believe will be in about the next month or so. We'll become a 19.9% shareholder of CUR, and that's worth around $15 million at current prices, They'll make progress payments, 2 progress payments, of CAD 3 million at the 18th and 36 month anniversaries; and then when they go into production, another payment of $5 million. I will also go on the Board of International Consolidated Uranium to help them with my long expertise, as I started as a minor in 1976. And that dates me a bit.

So additional benefits to Energy Fuels. It reduces our holding and compliance costs. We are still going to manage the properties for the time being for at least 3 years, so we'll continue to use our people to make sure the permits are in good order. They're well maintained. And they have access to myself and our -- other people in the company for advice as required. And we hope they spend money on these projects because they can get these mines in better condition than they currently are because we don't have time to focus on them right now and then provide ore to be processed at White Mesa in the future. So again, we're very excited about this. This is not to be considered that we're getting out of the uranium industry. We just don't have time to focus on it. And this is a way that we, hopefully, can see CUR grow, become a uranium producer. And we are their major shareholder.

Next slide. Now let's talk RadTran. And this is strategic alliance that we announced just a few days ago, the execution of the agreement. I mentioned RadTran is Denver-based, is technology development company. And they are actively investigating the recovery of isotopes from existing processing streams at White Mesa. The focus is on these alpha therapies, the TATs, the targeted alpha therapies, for cancer treatment. And what the -- and there are a number of these in approval with the FDA and around the world. There are major pharmaceutical companies that are studying and advancing these alpha-emitting treatments. They're in short supply. The objective is to treat cancer on a cellular level by minimizing the damage to surrounding healthy tissues because the alpha therapies basically half-life out very quickly. And so the existing sources of isotopes for this are costly and probably not able to scale up to meet the demand of some of these new drugs. And RadTran has technologies, patented technologies, that they've developed. And they've also been working closely with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which is owned by the Department of Energy. They've actually received funding for this initiative.

RadTran was not the only party that came to us with this idea. There are other parties that came to us with this idea; and we chose RadTran for a number of reasons, including location. They were the first in the door. And so the benefits to Energy Fuels: We can possibly play a role in filling some of this solution to the medical supply chain, the materials. The monazite ores and uranium ores contain a number of these isotopes. It is another example of recycling and value add for our shareholders, and it could potentially add significant revenues to Energy Fuels. It's early days, so I'm not going to speculate, but it could be very significant. And what a great story when you look at the uranium, the rare earths, the radionuclides that then potentially we can recycle, working with RadTran, for the isotopes to treat cancer. So I think this is a really, really great position for us to be in and utilize the elements that come into the mill in every way possible.

This is my last slide, just summarizing. We talked about our uranium assets, proven assets, long history producing uranium, our ability to ramp up. They're 100% paid for and proven. And we have more facilities, more capacity, more experience than any other U.S. company in the production of uranium. We're now producing rare earth carbonate. We're more advanced than any other company in this regard in the U.S. We're shipping that to Estonia. There are advances being made with the U.S. government on a number of fronts, not just the U.S. uranium reserve but also on critical minerals, so we're very pleased with the new administration's efforts to focus on critical materials. And there is no one else that has more of those than Energy Fuels.

We're still advancing our recycling and our cleanup programs. We have the strong balance sheet that I mentioned that is actually quite conservative when you look at current prices of uranium, vanadium and the divestment of the noncore assets. Vanadium production is still an option and is improving by the day, and our inventories are going up in value substantially. And the recent addition of the thorium recovery options and possible cancer treatments. I couldn't be more excited.

So now that will be it for me. It's open to the floor for questions. And that is the end of my presentation.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Okay, your first question comes from Heiko Ihle from H.C. Wainwright.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Perfect. In relation to all these rare earth stuffs that you're doing and all the other really non-uranium stuff, clearly the market is very appreciative of what you're doing there, when one looks at the share price [ on ] the chart. A few years back, we did a road show together in Switzerland. And your presentation had little Cupid arrows where you showed all the different franchises, for lack of a better word, that you have going with the company. Mentally looking back at that presentation or more clearly for everyone else, I guess, how would you say the priorities for the firm both in regards to management's time but also investment dollars have changed for the company? And frankly, I wrote this question before the call, but then you brought up on the call that inbound calls are very much focusing on some of these things. I mean, what -- can you just sort of maybe walk us through changes of priorities?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Look. I think the changes to our priorities are really what drives cash flow now, okay, or what improves our cash position and our profitability. And when you look at the prices of rare earths today, they're economic. And if we have enough monazite and abilities to do this value add and the processing, Heiko, it is a significant economic return if we have the ability to do all of it right now. So it's a right-now opportunity. And so yes, I would say that my main focus right today is rare earths. Uranium, you know as well as a lot of people I've been doing this for 40 years. It's really my love, my first love, when it comes to mining. We still need higher prices. So we're still keeping our properties in good standing. We're still spending money on them. We've still got our key people there, but we need higher prices. So it's not really a now opportunity, other than the fact we're ready to go into production when the time presents. When you look at things like the vanadium -- I mean actually, when you start looking at vanadium -- and vanadium prices can be very, very spiky, as you know, if you go back 2 or 3 years. Now the price of vanadium is nearly $10 a pound. I mean it's almost a now opportunity as well. So I think, really when I look at where I'm spending my time, it's on the rare earths mainly because of the now opportunity, so -- but we can shift quickly as required.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Yes, makes sense. Slightly different question and this is more or less thinking out loud with the sale to the International Consolidated Uranium. Would it maybe make sense or have you at least ever considered spinning off some assets into a little publicly traded spinco instead of selling them to a third party? And if so, what assets do you think would lend themselves to such a thing?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Geez, I don't think I want to speculate that much on a call like this, but look, we will always consider whatever makes sense to our shareholders. And I recognize that it gets complicated when -- as I said at the beginning of the presentation or before I started the presentation that -- uranium, rare earths, vanadium and thorium. It gets to be a bit of a mouthful. So as this evolves, we will consider what creates the greatest value and go from there. When you look at spinning off bits and pieces, each of those bits and pieces would have corresponding overheads. And we also have -- a lot of our overheads are experienced at managing all these assets. So look. At this point in time, have we thought about it? Yes. Are we actively thinking about doing it in the near term? No, but could we, and what will we spin off? I don't want to go that far on this call.

[Heiko Ihle, analyst]

Well, that's, I think, a very fair answer, especially given the nature of this call. Congratulations.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Joseph Reagor from ROTH Capital Partners.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

You touched on a lot of things, but I have some questions there kind of more specific to the uranium industry. There has been some public commentary about the infrastructure bill and subsidies included in it for the nuclear power industry, and I just wanted to see if you guys have any thoughts on what's being done there and how it may or may not benefit you guys.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes, Joe. It's pretty quick moving. There's a lot of news on all things infrastructure and nuclear, critical minerals. We haven't really been able to piece it all together, but as I said earlier, I'm quite pleased with how the administration, the Biden administration, has been looking at all those things seriously. And so I think we've never been really in a better position to get some relief, but what I have learned over the last 3 or 4 years -- and you'll know how much work we spend on the Section 232 in the Nuclear Fuel Working Group -- that you can't depend on it and you can't take it to the bank, okay? So we're not managing the company that we're going to get relief from the government anytime soon even though, if we get it, it will be appreciated, okay? So I think, though, that even some of these discussions on like supporting nuclear power and all that, some of the commentary looks like it came right out of the Nuclear Fuel Working report.

So it's good that some of this has lived on. And this initiative started with the other administration, with the Trump administration, but a lot of it seems to be carrying forward for the right reasons, okay, in a bipartisan way. So look. It's moving pretty quick right now, so I don't know exactly how it lands, but so far, they're making the right sounds and the right noises with regard to doing something.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

Okay, fair enough. Just quick follow-up on the series of things: You mentioned historical stuff. There's the $75 million uranium reserve that's supposed to be created. Do you have any update? Well, it's been rather quiet on what the government is actually doing with that, if they're going to actually spend the money. What are the qualifications to be able to apply, to deliver into it? Is there anything additional you guys could give us and color on that?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Well, because it's appropriated, it's the money is approved. And the DOE and NNSA are trying to figure out how to administer the program. One of the things that have slowed it down, and this kind of surprised me when I heard it, that there's discussion of whether they had to do a NICRA process, which is with the national environmental protection act process, which had -- and it could be done on a desktop review which could be very quickly; or a more detailed review, slow it down, but the latest I saw even just a few days ago, that they're trying to resolve that. But I'm also hearing that the federal year basically ends at the end of September. 1st of October is the beginning of the federal budget year, but I'm also hearing that -- I believe it will be carried over while they're trying to figure out how to administer the reserve. And there are also other steps being made to increase it potentially to that $150 million a year that was originally in the Nuclear Fuel Working Group report. So again no specifics. It's still on the radar screen. If we get support as a company, we'll take it, but we're not managing the company on belief that we're going to get relief from the government in any form.

[Joseph Reagor, analyst]

Okay, fair enough. One final thing, if I can. There was a bunch of contracts handed out for the cleanup of old uranium mines on native American lands. Have you guys seen any opportunities come from that to do either toll milling or processing of any kind or like alternative feed? Anything there or whether it'd be later this year or next year where you can pick up some additional revenue?

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. We're still working on it. We are doing that cleanup with Rio Grande Resources, which is the Mount Taylor mine. We've got, I think, about 40,000 tons that have been shipped to the mill already on that, but yes, we're still working behind the scenes to -- and when they start cleaning up these mines, they may well find that they have -- digging up uranium that we could handle at the mill. What they're going to do with it, I don't know, but the mill is certainly an alternative. So yes, we're still trying to advance that, but unfortunately, it's -- the biggest issue there on the reservation is mired in politics. I hate to say it. And I will say it on this call that, a number of the environmental groups, they don't want us to be involved with the cleanup on the reservation because they'd rather not help us. They don't want to help us. They'd rather have that stay on the reservation at the health expense of the Navajos and the native Americans. So that's really pathetic. And I know some of them are listening on it. They can call me directly on that, but the politics are getting in the way of a viable now opportunity that we could do with the reservation right now as we're doing currently with the Mount Taylor mine in New Mexico.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to Mr. Chalmers for closing remarks.

[Mark Chalmers, executive]

Yes. Well, look, thank you for listening in on the conference call.

As I said, there's a lot of things happening. We're focusing on the long term here to create significant value for our shareholders. We're not managing the company for the share price tomorrow or the next day. We're managing the company to create significant value over the long term. When you look at our company, currently market cap is around USD 750 million. I look towards the Lynases and MP Materials that have market caps of 4 billion and -- $4 billion to $6 billion. That's what we're aspiring to be as we get some more of these things in place and on these critical mineral opportunities, including the advancement of thorium which is early stages but still very exciting. So we are not trying to just do good things. We're looking at doing big things.

So thank you for your time. Really appreciate those that have an interest in our company and our investors. And we will work hard to build value for all of you as we go through and advance our objectives. So thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.