The Exchanges

Q were, Back then, now, not, not really, you don't need to go to the courthouse steps, but where would you be looking? You know, would you look at lithium? Would you look at nickel? Would you look at trying to do what, you know, China's doing and create better and simpler and cheaper chemistries for batteries? Like, where would you spend your time right now if you weren't doing MPs?

A So, I, I think you actually said it perfectly well in the lead-in, which is just anything that is real stuff. And so, yeah, all of it, lithium, copper, nickel, steel, aluminum, all of these areas that have been starved, the cost of capital is just so high across the board, that if you can come up with solutions to deliver the shortages, and again, I'm not saying the next three months, we could have a brutal recession for six months, but we see the long-term five, ten-year trend, I think anywhere you look in this space, you're looking in the right direction. It's, it's, it's a wind at your back as opposed to, and again, I'm not, you know, taking a view, but to come up with a new cryptocurrency right now, it's, it's, it's a huge wind at your back relative to

AI assessment note: “yeah, all of it, lithium, copper, nickel, steel, aluminum”

Q entrepreneur out there, uh, to get into lithium, please, you know, become a lithium miner. Right. Um, so maybe if you can just quantify for us and I, and you showed the, the, the gap for your For NDPR. But broadly speaking, lithium and all the other things that we need to actually electrify and get to a reasonable place in climate change. How behind the curve are we really?

A So it's a great question, and the data is tough because a lot of it is reliant on battery chemistry. And so we don't know exactly how much nickel it'll be, how much, you know, but we do know certainly lithium, nickel, copper, all of these things, it's multiple. So we need, here, here's actually, maybe this is a great stat. Uh, some, some good source that I utilize estimated that we probably need on the order of 40 to 50 copper and nickel projects over the next couple decades, so call it roughly two hundred billion dollars of capex, um, to satisfy the demand for electrification that we have over the next couple decades. And what's so interesting, you mentioned, and obviously I assume Elon sees this, is if you look at the multiples, you know, just think about it from a strict investor point of view. From a financial arbitrage standpoint. Look at the multiples of where auto, auto OEMs trade.

AI assessment note: “we probably need on the order of 40 to 50 copper and nickel projects”

Q Could you get your mind operational in today's political environment, do you think? Like, if you had to start from scratch, or if you found a new thing in Nevada, or, you know, wherever it is?

A That's a great question, and that's the challenge, is that it takes, to get any of these things, it takes a decade, right? It takes, if you have all the capital in place, all the human capital, all the, just the, you know, going through that process to build it, the materials cost, and so, uh, Could I do it? I, I think the world needs it, and I think that what we do environmentally is so unique that I think we could get it done, but this is a big challenge, and I think, frankly, it's a, it's a, you know, you guys were talking in the last session about, um, we need to come together. This is a big time area where we need to come together. There should be a grand bargain, right? There should be, the environmentalists should say, okay, I accept that we need this stuff. I accept that we don't want it to be only made in Russia and China. And they should loosen up on some of the permitting stuff, and I think the people who are just like, you know, drill, drill, drill, mine, mine, mine, don't care, need to accept that we need to have really tough standards, um, and I think we should have some kind of grand bargain, and it could be, you know, tax policy focused on it, but there needs to be some kind of coming together in our country to recognize that we need this stuff.

AI assessment note: “Could I do it? I, I think that what we do environmentally is so unique that I think we could get it done”

Q Was it straightforward for you to find the right person within the Trump administration that said, of course, this is obvious, let's sit down and hash this out, like? Yeah.

A Well, and I, I think that's, you know, our, our particular deal was led by DoD. And so I have to say that the Pentagon leadership is extraordinary. Um, and, uh, you know, this was a mandate though, directly from the president to solve this problem. And so again, they deserve a lot of credit for being, you know, bold here. And, and to be clear, cause I, you know, this story's not out there, our process, this was, I've never worked so hard in my life. I mean, this was, this was like a true aggressive private equity style investment and negotiation. The transaction documents are public. You can look at that. So, yeah. And that's you saying that.

AI assessment note: “our particular deal was led by DoD... I've never worked so hard in my life”

Q than there is in the crust. And there may be systems for extracting lithium from the oceans that are electrochemical in nature, um, that will allow us to kind of access that resource. And what'll, you know, obviously if you can get a system that can scale, you can get it all out very quickly. So, I mean, have you looked into these systems in the sense for the opportunity?

A Let me step back and then step down to that. So investment styles are cyclical just like industries. You know, I believe in cycles, right? The price, the cure for high prices, Is high prices. There's no question in my mind whether it's that, or there will be someone, or frankly, maybe someone in this audience will have some breakthrough, right? And so we will solve this problem. But the challenge is, is that I don't even think that we've ignited the proper focus and resources to actually solve this problem. And so there may be, that may be an example of a solution, but that'll take five to 10 years. But in the meantime, there's, you know, there's a lot of resources that need to be applied.

AI assessment note: “that may be an example of a solution, but that'll take five to 10 years.”

Q catastrophe? Like part of I think why a lot of folks, you know, folks like this who could probably go into that business Don't. Is in the back of their mind, they think, man, this is like, this is a lot of gnarly stuff if something goes wrong. How do you manage that risk and how, and how big is that risk if we try to do this in America?

A So the single most important thing we do at MP is safety. And we actually, on our last service call said, you know, last two years, we've had two years without a lost time injury, and we gave everybody, every single employee in the company a cash bonus to celebrate that milestone, which is really critical. The reality is this isn't software, right? It's real stuff. All we can do is our best. I, I just think, I think, frankly, as, as a human being, as an American, I would rather have mines being done in America, even in the state of California, over elsewhere in the world, where I certainly know that, I assure you that nickel mining in Russia is not as environmentally friendly as it is in Canada.

AI assessment note: “I would rather have mines being done in America, even in the state of California”