Lynas Rare Earths Ltd

ASX:LYC

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lynas Quarterly Results Briefing Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Lynas. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[Unknown Executive]

Good morning, and welcome to the Lynas Corporation results briefing for the first quarter of the 2019 financial year. We're joined today by Lynas' CEO, Amanda Lacaze; CFO, Gaudenz Sturzenegger; and General Counsel and Company Secretary, Andrew Arnold.I'll now hand over to Amanda Lacaze to commence the briefing. Please go ahead, Amanda.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Good morning, everybody. I hope that life is good wherever you are. So I'm really delighted with this quarter's results that we're announcing this morning. I've had a number of investors ask me over the past 3 or 4 months as we've been facing some political issues here in Malaysia that asked me, what does this mean to the business. And I assured them that we have been operating business as usual. That is the plants have been making product every day. Customers have been placing orders every day. We've been dispatching stock, sending invoices, and they've been paying us for the stocks that we've send them. And you can see from today's results that, that is indeed the case. As we say, some of the headwinds that we face here within Malaysia, I can tell you that every single person who works within Lynas understands that the very best response to those who want to speak against us is to be running a successful business.So I think that you can see that in some of the key elements of the results this quarter. Of course, by far, the one which excites us most is the fact that in September, we actually produced over 600 tonnes of NdPr, and that results, we're originally targeting to do that in the first quarter of calendar 2019. We're delighted to have brought it in early. It's a reflection of the investments that we have made in project NEXT, and some of the most important elements to that are actually the recoveries have really significantly stepped up here in Malaysia, in particular, which has seen us really be able to produce a lot more out of an equivalent concentrate input. But the 600 tonnes is fabulous. We've not ticked the box on absolute sustainability, as you would guess because we've done it once. We need to do it. I think I remember 6x to make a trend. However, we are very pleased with the performance of all of the upgrades that we put in place as part of project NEXT.So the market, the market is reasonably subdued at present, as we've mentioned, particularly inside China. There are few things which are domestic influences which are causing the price to be pretty flat, including some regulatory requirements, the redesign of some of the electric bikes and those sort of things, which have just seen sort of a temporary lull. But we don't change any of our views around the long-term health of this market and the long-term prospect.The -- operationally, as I've said, things are going well. The market is so-so. But we've had a very good quarter. We've been restocking in Japan where the market is absolutely buoyant. Demand is high, and the Japanese magnet makers are continuing to increase their output both for the domestic market and internationally.So just a few words on the regulatory situation here in Malaysia. As we've indicated in the report, very pleasingly, over the last week or so, in particular, we have started to get through the various approvals that we have lodged applications for over the last several months. This is, for us, a very good indication of sort of the business-as-usual position and takes away many of the risks that we might have seen in the near term for the business. With the only one remaining is our ability to process in excess of our current limit on the number of tonnes concentrate we can process, and this is a 2-part approval, and we've got the first part of the approval, and we're waiting for the second part.So really I think the results speaks for itself. I'm sure that you've all read it. I particularly love sort of Dylan's note in terms of reflecting on our performance. And as I said here, we remain absolutely focused on running a truly excellent business because it is the most important and the highest value thing we can do. So I'm very happy to take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Cathy Moises from Patersons Securities.

[Cathy Moises, Head of Research]

To me just probably, the highlight, was your quarterly, with the fact it looks like you're really making headway with the Malaysian government. So just on the actual NdPr price, can you comment on why the China magnet market was a bit weaker in the quarter because my understanding is, generally, it's the European winter, which impacts magnets and obviously, the winter is up to date with you guys on that sort of thing.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

No. So in China, you have a lot of the magnet production is actually consumed domestically. And so there have been some changes there. The most significant, and I wish Paul was here, but he probably will come in a little bit later, is that e-bikes in China, if you've been there, you'll know that sometimes you'll be walking alone and then all of a sudden, this bike will come careening along beside you at about 80 kilometers an hour. And they've introduced legislation to speed limit those bikes. And so that has actually been a significant consumer of magnets. And so the -- they've stopped producing as they redesigned, which we think will be pretty quickly. And therefore, once those new motor designs are implemented, the demand will go back up again. What we actually do see is that and I think we've indicated this before, that the ionic clay processing in southern China has been shut down for some time now, but there's still reasonable amount of inventory in the supply chain in China, which people are really living off those docks. So we don't see it as anything sort of which is a harbinger of even a medium-term trend. It's just that, it really is about the Chinese domestic consumption which is creating a bit of that weakness in the market.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Morgan from UBS.

[Daniel Morgan, Director and Analyst]

So operationally, everything looks like it's faring well. I'm just wondering if I get a little...

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

We've just lost Daniel.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Dylan Kelly from CLSA.

[Dylan Kelly, Research Analyst]

Yes, I do agree with you that it was really great to see that 600-tonne number come up. Just 2 questions for me. Number one, could you just -- you didn't reveal your NdPr sales tonnes for the quarter and I know that you haven't done that in the previous quarter as well, but just wanted to understand how much inventory you kept at the end of the quarter? Last summer, it was about 100 tonnes. Is that about the same this time around? And has that changed? The second question is also to do with your realized sales prices. That really was quite interesting for us in terms of how high it was. I want to understand what happened there? Was that a reflection of an NdPr premium? Or did you sell a lot of heavy or SEG materials during the quarter? And if so, how much of -- how many tonnes was that? Can you give us some detail behind that?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Sure. Thanks, Dylan. The NdPr inventory Asia, it's top of my head, I can't tell you exactly how much we had on 30 of September. Less than 100 or more than 0. Not that really seriously low sort of number that we've often had before where we might have had like 7 tonnes in inventory or something like that. So I don't know. I think it was maybe sort of like 40 or 50 tonnes. Bear in mind that 600 tonnes a month, we make about 20 tonnes a day, and it takes 48 hours for us to have it create -- available for sale. So not huge and not small. Once again, just reinforce, the only reason why we specifically mentioned the 100 tonnes at the end of June is that it was the only time we met. Up until then, we had never finished a quarter with more than about, as I said 7 tonnes is the number that I remember most clearly as ever finishing the quarter with. And so we're just wanting to highlight. I know that there are some people who keep a running spreadsheet on exactly how much inventory we have, and wanted to make it clear that it wasn't that we had that because we couldn't sell out. We had that because we chose not to sell it at the time. So where we are today? As I said, there's some destocking, but not huge. In terms of the sales and the sales price, really there's a couple of things. The first one is even though we sold lots and lots of tonnes in total, the share of NdPr was much higher than in previous quarters. So if you have a look at, and I'm not going to tell you exactly how many tonnes of NdPr we sold because it's not what we've sort of said as a normal reporting and not particularly helpful in the market -- in the actuaries market to do so. But you will see that our total tonnes was about 400 tonnes less than it was last quarter. And basically, that is less La and Ce. And so therefore, the arithmetic says that the average selling price went up. So it's really a significant product mix effect. And yes, we did sell a reasonably substantial parcel of SEG. Price got back over our target price because, as I said before the ionic clay mining in the south of China which is primarily source to the heavies, has been shut down for an extended period of time. So there is a bit of increased demand for heavies. And so we were able to sell a parcel of heavies at a price that we felt was reasonable. So that is -- which remains influences.

[Dylan Kelly, Research Analyst]

Okay. Fair enough. And just in terms of your SEG sort of inventory levels with the situation in China and in terms of the shutdowns in the southern place, do you think this is a trend that you're going to be able to draw down more inventory in the next quarter? Or is this just largely a one-off?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

I think we probably -- I think the settings are reasonably positive. But the more positive they get, the higher the target price I give pol online. So we don't have any -- we don't aging and savoring the results. We don't have an urgency to sell this material. We don't need to be giving it away. And so we will watch the market sort of carefully, but I would think that so long as the ionic clay operation is shut down, it's more likely to be favorable than unfavorable.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Chris Hughes.

[Chris Hughes]

I might just like to follow the other callers and compliment you on what was an outstanding quarter. And no doubt a lot of juries. That's business, unfortunately, but it's -- I think it's excellent to see the progress that's being made. So I'm one of those dreaded people that keeps a spreadsheet on inventories. I'm sorry about that. So I won't ask any further questions on it at this point, but what I would like to know...

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

It's not dreaded. It's not dreaded, Chris. Just acknowledged. Not dreaded at all.

[Chris Hughes]

That's your public demand on it, Amanda. Anyway, I'm not going to go there. But what our inventory has done is you're -- you've noticed for the -- you've noted in the projected forward cost that was a reduction in wages in the December quarter, and I've got 2 questions relating to that. The first one being that is that as a result of a permanent reduction in plant wages? Or is that a temporary reduction due to the shutdown and potential frustration on production due to the regulatory environment? And just following on from that, I'd extrapolated back that if you do cut back your NdPr by 400 tonnes, that means the -- you're probably looking about 1,250 tonnes of NdPr, and that means that the total production, if it's in accordance with the normal standards, will be about 4,150 tonnes. Now that might seem like a bit stupid, but it does make a difference in terms of my analysis, which I look at it as get, and you all know on the cost per kilo which is cost to produce, and I know it's a cash thing, but for me it's important, so I don't know whether this is a sensible question there for you.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

All right. Sorry, now, I forgot. The issue on the staff costs, that's actually related to the payment of short-term incentives, the cash component of the short-term incentives which was paid in this quarter that we're reporting on. And clearly, we don't get paid those again next quarter. So that's it. That's all it is. The second point with respect to the reduction in tonnes and the effect on cost, yes, that's real, but bear in mind as well because this is cash, if we do turn down production, it won't be until -- we'll probably do it early December. And so any savings which are associated with that won't show through in cash until January or February. So what you're actually seeing in the cash forecast is a reflection typically our cash costs 1-month lag to incurring them. And so what you're essentially seeing in the quarterly is 3 months of full production in terms of cash outflow, but it may be that in the third month of the quarter, we have a lower production.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Andrew Chirnside from Escala.

[Andrew Chirnside]

My question basically is on -- specifically on the review and the terms of reference, 2 things. First of all is have you been notified specifically what the terms of reference are? And the second question, is if you haven't, what sort of contact have you had with the government or the committee?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

So we haven't seen a detailed terms of reference. We've been given the advice that it is primarily a committee which is looking to safety of operations. We've been advised when the committee will be coming to visit our plant. So I think there's been a great deal of consistency around those sensitive matters. In terms of our ongoing engagement with the government, we have most clearly and most focused really strong ongoing engagement with the public service departments which regulate our business. That has certainly been a core focus for us as we are thinking to ensure that we can continue our business-as-usual operations. And then are there some of those stakeholder engagements, most of them not particularly helpful. This time where we met with this person, we met with that person. We understand the political landscape, and we certainly are engaged in way that we think will assist us through that political landscape. Our view generally is that the review committee has been reformatted. It's now completely comprised of academics rather than politicians. Whilst everyone brings their own particular bias to any position that they have, and some of them no doubt will have not being intricately aware of Lynas' operations, will have formed a general view on us, but we remain completely confident that we will always win through on the science, because the science is clear, the data on our operations is clear, the intrinsic risk from our operations is low and our safety systems and processes and controls are excellent. So we generally are in a position at present where we think that continuing to engage positively with our regulators and positively with the committee when the committee members come to visit our plants. It's the thing which is going to derisk through that most positively. And then in terms of the politics, there's an issue around politics, issue around people. The importance of everyone understanding that Lynas Malaysia is not a bunch of Aussies or even other nationalities, but Lynas Malaysia is Malaysian. 97% of our workforce are Malaysians. And so we continue without public communication campaign as well on this because ultimately, to win the politics, you do actually need to carry the people. So we have quite -- we had an extensive strategy on this. Part of my delight which is currently report is that clearly, I have had spent a lot of my time actually involved in managing this process, and clearly, we have now sort of got the business in sufficiently good shape that they didn't even notice that I wasn't around and they delivered a fabulous result. So how good is that? So I think that we probably will still have a few more twists and turns in the process and the process here, the political process here in Malaysia. But I have -- I'm pretty confident that we will find our way through this.

[Andrew Chirnside]

Okay. Yes. That's good. And so look, can I ask just one more question in terms of the approval of the inquest concentrate processing, otherwise, potentially being in the Pr production in this quarter? I think you said that the -- you got the first part of the approval through and you're waiting for the second part. Can you just expand on that a bit?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

There are 2 parts of the approval because we have 2 regulating parties, and one party is that we have an approval for how much we're allowed to import and that is actually regulated by the AELB, and then we have the second part, and that's -- sorry, and we have a second part which is how much we're allowed to process which is regulated by the DOE. You can't get 2 before you've got 1. So we now got 1, and we'll go through 2. We don't think it will be particularly controversial because it sits within our current but we got the AELB because it's within our current radiation impact assessment, or our RIA. And so we expect that we will be able to get 2 through, but we feel that it's important that we flagged it at this time, just in case.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Morgan from UBS.

[Daniel Morgan, Director and Analyst]

I think much of my question on the revenue side was answered before. Basically, it looks like it's product mix that was favorable during the period. I just wanted to see if you could possibly explain it or whether -- you've put a lot more NdPr into the market over time, and in this quarter, you sold more than you produced. Wondering if you feel you've had any impact on the market outside of what you are talking about on China? That's just my first question.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Possibly. But despite the fact that we are the second largest supplier in the market, we still haven't really got ourselves to, I would say, to being in place bearer of price data. And then certainly as part of our objective is how to sort of make that transition from being sort of a challenger to being a real leader in the market. I don't think that, that is the -- that is really the issue here, and we did not sell much into Chinese market this quarter at all, so -- which is another influencing factor on the average price, is that the more we sell out of China -- outside of China, the better the outcome. So I don't think that it's us. I think that as I -- and sort of said, we said in the report. It's more about some internal China domestic market drivers rather than international drivers.

[Daniel Morgan, Director and Analyst]

Can I just ask a couple of follow-up questions not on that? But you have been looking and splitting into more and more products and rejigging the plants, so splitting down into Nd and Pr separate products and La and Ce. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And what that opportunity is and when we might see the benefits of that?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Only a little actually, Daniel. I actually had to face out to the fact that I have not made it to the new product development meetings over the last couple of weeks, several weeks actually, and so I can't tell you whether it's next quarter or the quarter after. But we do have some -- the team is doing some substantive work around processing, and it's really about increasing the purity of those materials. Those 2, just so I told probably about NdPr, the more we can sell it outside of China, the better. The only way that we can sell more outside China is to have the more high purity materials in that area. So it's sort of a fact. We get a little bit of benefit out of it even now. We do have sort of some areas, where we've got a higher average price for our cerium than the market would indicate. But I think to really see some benefit from this, we're probably talking about moving into the 2019 financial year -- sorry, the '20. The one that starts on the 1st of July next year because I can't be to say 2020 because I know how old I'm going to be. Yes, I won't be until next financial year. I think that we really start to see some benefits from that. And as well as that, everyone keeps asking sort of what's the next step, the next and the smart boys in operations are now turning their minds to that quite significantly. And I think that, that's going to have some effect on what we do with product mix as well.

[Daniel Morgan, Director and Analyst]

And one last question, if I may. You mentioned recoveries are improving.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Yes.

[Daniel Morgan, Director and Analyst]

Can you possibly elaborate at all on that? And is there more to come potentially on that because I know that some of your constraints are, as you've outlined volume into Malaysia or volume that you can process, is there more to come on recoveries?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

A little, but we actually have made a big step, right? So if we talked about what was going to be our gap in getting us through to the end of the year on the import, 3 months ago, that gap was much bigger than it is today, and that is a reflection of the fact that the recoveries really have made a big step. And we are much better at things like recognizing a change in performance due to a change in ore faster. We went through a bit of pain about this time last year when we had new ore that came through from Campaign 1B I think, and we didn't really understand how it's performing differently, and it took us a little while to actually recognize and then to diagnose. But once it had been diagnosed, the ability to manage it was reasonably quick, but it was a longer process than I'd be happy with. We're much more allured to that now, and we respond much more quickly. But the really big, big issues have been the improvement in recoveries, in cracking and leaching, and a lot of that has to do with the main MgO neutralization circuit, where we spent quite a lot of money putting in the heat exchangers, changing the feed systems, a series of those sort of things. So we had made a big step. I think we've got further incremental benefits from that. Kam's target that he's given to the ops team, is certainly higher than today's performance, but as you will then get another step change. Frankly, this quarter, particularly September, we really did benefit from that step change in recoveries. And the first task for us is to bank those and make sure that we hold them and that we don't drop back to previous numbers, and then we'll look at how do we go to the next step.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Chris Hughes.

[Chris Hughes]

Just a quick one. You've already took the box, that 600 tonne 2 months equating to 7,200 tonnes per annum in NdPr which is scheduled production under the state of the output, the NEXT. You still aren't fully commissioned on NEXT, so I guess the question is, are you setting a new target with an increased output for NdPr?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

God, you're never happy, are you? No, we're not. We are fully commissioned on the things that relate to volume. The final piece of the commissioning is related to the separation of Pr and Nd. So in this quarter, that's just past, you would work out that if we said that, which we did that we had over 600 tonnes in September. And August, we said despite the water problems -- and bear in mind this result, we still had a 10-day water disruption in this quarter, but August, we were on track for 600 tonnes if we hadn't had the water problem. So July was lower, and that was because in July, we were cutting over to our SX 7 Train 4. But that has become our bottleneck where we -- and I think as we were doing that, we got up to the stage of having, I think, at its peak about 70 tonnes in front of SX 7 waiting for that cutover. So that was the final commissioning which was volume related, and the commissioning which we will do, and it will have an effect on volume whether or not we have the licensing change is that with commissioning the units which will separate the Pr and the Nd. And so the effect on volume there is that we actually have to fill up the new vessels so we've got holdup of product actually in the processing vessels, and we will have to shut down one way or another for either a shorter or a longer period of time as we do that cutover. But there's nothing else which is going to give us extra tonnes, and it would give Kam a heart attack if I said no, let's now shift it to 620 tonnes a month. Let us get sustainable performance at this level first, and then we'll talk about next step.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Michael Henry.

[Unknown Analyst]

I'm just ringing to inquire as to what recourse we will have against the Malaysian government in the event that a fully compliant would be shut down as a result of this process.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Well, Mike, we think that's highly unlikely. I'll let Andrew actually speak to it. He's sitting here, and he's the lawyer, not me. So...

[Andrew Arnold, General Counsel & Company Secretary]

Yes, thanks for the question, Michael. As Amanda mentioned, I don't think it's helpful for us to speculate on hypotheticals at this stage. We continue -- there's a strong engagement process up here, and that's our main focus.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of [ Rizal Savares ]

[Unknown Attendee]

I'm calling you from New York City. I'm a private investor for more than 10 years with Lynas. And I watch how you're doing and you're doing great job, thank you for meeting all the challenges. My question is to encourage the demand on the rare earths products you have. Have you contacted anybody at the United States, for example, the Department of Defense has declared that they don't want to depend on China and they're looking for getting their needs from other sources like your company. Also, another consumer which is -- could consume a lot of rare earths, like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, I don't know what's your relation with them if you have explored their purposeful dealing with them. Also, I like to ask you, what you could do to improve the stock price which is in decline recently?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Thank you for the questions. I apologize because I didn't get your name.

[Unknown Attendee]

[ Rizal Savares, Rizal ].

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

[ Rizal ]. Okay. Thank you very much, [ Rizal ]. So first of all, your points about the U.S. market, yes, we are very engaged, and we understand those points. So the Department of Defense, the legislation which prohibits the purchase of magnets from the polar underlined nations with the U.S. is meaningful for us and is meaningful for our discussions, not just with the DoD but actually with the broader market in North America. I think that industry in North America has a pretty clear understanding of the fact that in many instances, the DoD leads and our industry follows. And indeed often, the types of things that the DoD does helps to set our market framework or market capability which then benefits the private enterprise. So we're very alert to it and are engaged explicitly with relevant areas. In terms of the large U.S. consumers, particularly of -- so large consumers in the U.S. for rare earths materials. The big oil companies and oil refineries use a lot of lanthanum and the catalyst producers are very U.S.-centric. Whilst the current legislation as it did, doesn't speak specifically to the catalyst. Certainly, the catalyst manufacturers are much more keen, and I think that we might have mentioned it in here and that it was in our board report that we would expect that we're going to continue to grow. Yes, so -- our non-NdPr sales to the U.S. will grow during the December quarter. And then in terms of magnetic materials, it's quite interesting, the U.S. is not one of the large magnetic materials markets, but there are a few sort of decent-size consumers, so including people like Tesla, some of the consumer electronics manufacturers, and yes, we have direct relationships with them.

[Unknown Attendee]

Very good. And this will help increasing the demand. How about -- what are you going to do to improve the price? What -- how you'll do that?

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Oh, the share price. I can't fix the share price, unfortunately, [ Refael ]. I look at it, and it doesn't head in most days. I don't understand. I think today, we've sort of delivered a terrific result, and the share price is down, but then the whole of the market is down. So I actually can't determine the share price. Investors could determine the share price, and I just have a fundamental belief that as we continue to produce a high-value business that delivers great results that over time the share price will reflect it, but it's not one of the things I can control.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Look, I think unless we have any other questions in the queue, we've been going for almost on an hour. So unless you got something else right now, I think we can probably close out the call.

[Operator]

There are no further questions. Thank you.

[Amanda M. Lacaze, MD, CEO & Director]

Okay. Terrific. Thank you all for joining us today, and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our AGM in a month's time.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.