Greetings, and welcome to American Resources Corporation Third Quarter 2022 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Mark Laverghetta, Vice President of Finance and Communications. Thank you Mr. Laverghetta. You may begin.

Thanks, [indiscernible]. Good afternoon. On behalf of American Resources Corporation, I'd like to welcome everyone to our third quarter of 2022 conference call and business update. We always welcome this opportunity to provide an update and discuss our accomplishments since our last update and also to discuss how we're uniquely positioned with both divisions of our company, American carbon and our critical minerals division ReElement technologies. Also on the call today is Mark Jensen, American Resources Chairman and CEO; and Kirk Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we kick it off, I'd like to remind everyone of our normal cautionary statements. Certain statements discussed on today's call constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. When considering forward-looking statements, you should keep in mind the risk factors, uncertainties and other cautionary statements, which are laid out in our press releases and SEC filings. We also do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Lastly, we will be holding a question-and-answer session today following our prepared remarks. For anyone waiting or wanting to ask a question, you'll need to dial in by phone to get into the queue. We're going to begin today with a few comments from Kirk Taylor. Kirk?

Thanks, Mark. Thank you, everyone for joining us this afternoon. I'll start first with some financial highlights. We'll dive into results from the quarter. So third quarter of 2022 showcase our focus on execution that continue to position our company for long term value creation. We're looking at that execution over the third quarter as important to take a step back and highlight some of our accomplishments on all fronts. From a corporate standpoint, we've established a special committee to evaluate strategic opportunities to best unlock value of the company and subsequently even announced the share repurchase program. We've repurchased 7.5% interest ReElement so that American resources now is 100% of ReElement technologies. And we've also announced our plan to spin off every element into his own public company. Further, we sold the exclusive rights of our carbon nanostructure in graphene pads to Nova Stero for $16 million worth of Nova Stero Class A common shares. Again, these items are highlighting our ability to unlock shareholder value. Within ReElement, we've achieved groundbreaking success in producing greater than 99.5% pure rare elements at a commercial scale, being the first to accomplish this domestically is a fabulous team effort by our entire group. We've also secured an initial independent working capital facility as we position ReElement as a standalone company and allowing it to scale to meet market demands. Further on, we've added key talent at the technical level, at the commercialization level and engineering level adding to our best in class team. We've entered into our first long term collaborative partnership to help secure our domestic supply chain for critical minerals. And we're looking forward to expanding those relationships. On the American carbon front, we've commenced initial production sales there Carnegie 2 metallurgical mine. We've also received a commitment totaling $1.9…

Thanks, Kirk. As we frequently state, our ReElement technologies division represents an incredibly exciting and very strategic opportunity for us. I'd like to reiterate the significance of our recent milestone of achieving ultra high pure rare earth elements on a commercial scale. First, we're the first domestic commercial producer of separated and purified rare earth elements. The significance of this milestone is worth diving into a bit. One our technology has showcase that we meaning the United States no longer needs to depend on foreign adversaries for the ability to refine, separate and purify these minerals necessary to advanced high tech green energy including electric vehicles and wind, energy, and defense applications. I'm sure we've all seen the reports on the F-35 being grounded for several reasons. One being its reliance on metals and parts sourced from China. Our innovative chromatography technology is a clear differentiator in the market for several reasons. Its modular structure and design enables it to scale congruently with the needs of the market, meaning we do not have to lay out a huge CapEx investment and wait for the market to either adapt or catch up. It's also very flexible to the type of feedstocks and material we want to focus on refining. Strategically we feel it is the most important to address our recycling and sustainability needs to truly close the loop of these critical minerals. Our first commercial production line produces high purity rare earth magnet metals such as neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium from recycled rare earth permanent magnets. Again, these are the metals needed to produce high efficiency electric motors, such as those used in electric vehicles and wind turbines. The flexibility of this technology allows it to be applied to a variety of feedstocks, and we are still on a timeline…

Thanks Mark. First, I'd like to address the quarter-over-quarter decline in carbon sales. As stated Perry county resources was idle during the historic floods that took place in the region that not only affected the property, but mostly affected our labor pool. And unfortunately, many people were impacted by that flood and are still recovering from that. Ultimately, our decision with Perry is we are currently evaluating restarting the operation. In the meantime, we've also been approached by numerous opportunities that we're currently evaluating to unlock the maximum amount of value for all of our shareholders. When we operate our businesses, we operate them for the maximum shareholder value for all of our investors, be it on a quarterly basis or yearly basis over the life of the operation and the opportunity, and we want to make sure that we maximize that value to our shareholders, and when we bring it back online ourselves, we do it in a highly profitable way. Or if we monetize it in other avenues which we've been approached by that we maximize the value in those aspects. That being said, in revenue, we did increase our revenue by 240% year-over-year from carbon sales, as we are steadfast on monetizing our carbon assets, and a strong market. The special committee we established to evaluate strategic opportunities to better unlock the value of American resources has acted quickly and acting steps to do so. We have implemented a share repurchase program as well as defined our intention to spin off ReElement its own standalone public company. The share repurchase program we announced was during a blackout period. And ultimately, we also have to be cognizant of material opportunities that are being presented to us to not buy back stock during those periods of time. We do…

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question is from Heiko Ihlewith H.C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your question.

Hello, everyone. Can you hear me all right.

We can. How you doing Heiko.

Excellent. Thank you. I'm calling from Zurich right now. And I spent a good part of last week in Germany as well. Let me tell you the energy crisis that you were describing earlier on this call is not just real, but it is on everyone's mind. People having a hard time paying their heating bills, geopolitical risks in a couple of countries away. Not pretty over here. Anyways, your allocation commitment of $4.9 million at new market tax credit that did you got. Can you give a little bit more color on that how much more that you might be able to see and just the financial aspects of it? Just more background information, please.

Yes. I'll try to address them if I needed to have Kirk jump in. But 4.9 million was combined with the tax exempt bond issue. And so that'll be that provides us we are with that 4.9 million on the new market tax credit, as well as the taxes and bond issuance, the Wyoming County Complex is extremely well capitalized. That provides significant working capital and development capital to fully ramp up not only the mining operations, but also the electrolysis technology, which will tie into the back end of our processing plant and utilize that what that processes the slurries, the waste material coming out of the prep plant to capture the rare earth elements, and that's producing concentrate, which will then feed our chromatography technology. But that 4.9 combined with the 45 million our taxes, that bond fully funds that operation with a pretty healthy cushion in there.

That's helpful. Perry county, obviously for outsiders, maybe just a touch of a black box right now. Can you just go through what exactly is happening inside? I mean, I know you should, though, because of flooding, but I assume the water is gone, or is it? I don't know. Is the infrastructure damaged? How many people are actually there doing the care and maintenance right now? How much is the outflows for call it October and November or I guess Q4 even if you want to be bold and guesstimate that. Just maybe a touch more background on that, please.

Yes. So what happened in Perry County, and that area of the world was very unfortunate for the community. The floods were, I mean, I've never seen anything like it. We did get water within the mine. It did not damage any of the infrastructure and/or the mine itself, we just had to pump that water out. The local community was hit a lot harder. So our workforce is hit extremely hard. A number of our employees lost their homes. And a number of those employees are currently living elsewhere until they can rebuild. And so that's part of the problem is when we look to evaluate it is making sure we bring it back online in a highly profitable state. Now as we're evaluating that we've had numerous alternatives that have been proposed to us. Some a number of overseas companies that have stated expressed a lot of interest in that property of partnering with us and/or potentially acquiring it, which we are evaluating all those opportunities and make sure that we maximize the value for our investors and ultimately, we don't, we're not trying to manage quarter-to-quarter. We're trying to manage for the long term fundamental the business and making sure that as we bring this back online and whatever structure that is that it maximizes the value for our investors and some of the opportunities that are being presented to us are extremely attractive right now. And so we're looking at making it a decision all those avenues with my year end, and we believe there will be highly accretive to our shareholders.

Yes. Fair enough. That's all from my end. Thank you very much. And keep up the good work.

Thank you. And I apologize, I couldn't give you a concrete answer on that, because we are currently evaluating those opportunities as we speak. But I can assure you that as an investor in this company, we're excited about the position that those assets are in today.

Understood, it's just sometimes you just like this on inbounds. And I frankly couldn't answer a whole lot more than I saw on the release which is why I brought it up. Well said. Thanks again.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Samuels with Berthel, Fisher. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, Mark, how you doing? Two questions on the American carbon side. One is, do we have any business interruption insurance to cover the Perry over the last quarter and this quarter? That's number one. And number two, what happened with the guy who was leasing the land has started any production yet? Because I know, as opposed to getting 20,000 a month, we could be getting $5 a ton. Just wanted to --

Yes. So we haven't notified our insurance providers. I said, that's a very complicated process, to see what is available to us and ultimately it's floods in Eastern Kentucky are not something typically covered by insurance for internally on properties. That being said, it's what we're evaluating, as I stated earlier, is some very attractive opportunities for the Perry county complex. But to so yes, on the insurance side, we've notified our insurance providers, I wouldn't anticipate a lot coming from that personally. But I'm not an insurance guy. And I will let them evaluate that. On the [demining] conflicts that we've leased out, we have been in constant communication with them. I spoke to them on Sunday, they have moved to a high wall miner or moving high wall miner on site, which is a high performing high volume method of mining. I'm excited that they were able to get that in there. They have stated to me, they're in final stages of going through all the different proxies to bring that mine online. And I think they have to do so within the next 30 days. And you're right. I mean, right now we make it's a great deal for us right now, they cover our cost, they pay us monthly. As they commence mining, that number will increase dramatically. And that's pure cash flow to the business. And we're excited about supporting them helping them in any way to get them up and running. And they were extremely excited about their progress of getting up and running. So we anticipate that eminently.

Okay. Okay. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Steven Segal from KBB Asset Management. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Hey, Mark, and Mark, great job and doing everything your company, especially in the relevant division. I had a couple of questions. I know in you've already talked about this a little bit you create a special committee to unlock value. Beyond what you said in your prepared remarks, is there anything you can enlighten us with as far as the progress in those fronts beyond what the spin off you're doing? And how the current market is affecting the value of the core properties you're trying to monetize?

Yes. Well, thanks for joining Steven. It's an exciting time right now. In terms of the current market is really unique. I mean, you're seeing there's not a lot of unconditional increase of production taking place within the carbon market worldwide. One, everybody supplies and infrastructure. And then the permits required to bring new mines online is very challenging. And now you also see Germany coming to market trying to buy 29 million tonnes a year for the next 10 years, as they made the decision on what their energy source will be given the Russia-Ukraine situation that they're facing. That is putting an extreme value on permits and infrastructure that are ready and able to come online quickly. And so we've had, we're evaluating numerous opportunities that we believe will maximize value for our shareholders. One being partnering with people. We have customers that are coming to us offering significant capital and to bring minds online either in an uptake or joint venture scenario. We've had overseas companies expressed interest in acquiring or operation. Our duties are to evaluate all those opportunities that will drive the maximum shareholder value for the investors and position for the companies. And so we're currently evaluating that. But we're not, we've never built a business to sell and we've never sold an asset. We don't, we're not intending to sell any assets unless they come to the table [indiscernible]. But we are focused on ramping up our cash flows and monetizing the value of our assets to drive earnings per share for our investors.

Right. Okay. And then, thank you for answering that. And I feel like when you talk about the property, it's all property. So it's not just you because I know you have a numerous properties that you could monetize.

Yes. And we're evaluating. We've been approached on numerous opportunities, given the vastness of our permanent base and infrastructure, because we own five processing facilities across over 19 million tons of carbon a year. We own rail, five rail loadout facilities that access both the CSX and NS. We have over 54 permits that are fully permanent operations. We're in a unique spot. And ultimately, it's right now we're focused on ramping up the McCoy complex. McCoy itself to ramp up to a couple million tonnes a year and doesn't need a lot of capital, given the current growth of the business. We're right now we're focused on driving cash flow for the investors and ultimately probably utilizing some of our cash to buy back stock should we be allowed to given information known and SEC guidelines. But ultimately, that's our focus right now. And in the meantime, we do continue to evaluate these opportunities that are being presented to us and we'll continue to do so.

Okay. And my second question, actually regarding the buyback, because I know you've been in blackout period for a long time. And I believe this week, you'll be out of blackout period with the stock down here, which, to everybody on these calls are all the industries, that seems like an amazing value. As far as whether you pull the trigger to buy stock back, is that based on the value or other uses of cash or?

Yes. Good question. Yes. When we announced the stock buyback, when the stock was at around three now, we've been in a blackout period until we filed our cue. And I think we are until three days after that, yes, I mean, we believe that it is highly undervalued right now and ultimately, should we be able to, we intend to exercise the option to buy back stock. We do have to be cognizant of material information that if we are working on something that we believe will be very valuable to our shareholders, we have to be cognizant of not buying back stock knowing that information until there's resolution one way or another. But and we are, so we are we're navigating around those aspects just to make sure that you do what's right by all right.

Okay, great. That's all I had. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you Steve.

Thank you. Our next question is from Mike Niehuser with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, Mark, try not to run out of time here is do I understand that you have not received any revenues from Dean yet or it hasn't yet entered production?

We receive revenue from there. They have not commenced production though. So we have minimum royalties that they owe us. And so we get paid those on a monthly basis, and we got paid a fair amount of money up front as well. But they are and then they'll continue to do that until they get into production. But ultimately, they have I mean, the progress that they made there has been phenomenal. Not only that, but we own the assets their stuff, and they put a significant amount of money into upgrading the facilities there to start production and I would estimate they put over a million dollars, if not substantially more than that into the processing plant and itself. And so they are progressing nicely in terms of their development and the equipment they're bringing in is worth I mean Hywel miner itself today's worth about $6 million-$7 million. So they're, they're bringing in some pretty heavy equipment to increase to start production there. And I'm excited about what they're doing. I mean, we all want to see and produce. It's a fun day when our mine starts there. They're getting close to doing that. So it'll be it'll be exciting times here in the next 30 days.

Well, it sure is, it was fun to see Carnegie two where it was just a short time ago. Can you comment on a range of time where you might see Carnegie 3 out in the future or mind 17 or 15A readied for production? Do you have any kind of idea what quarter that might be in the future?

Yes. So I would say the first the next virtue we'll see out of the mining industry is the second section at Carnegie 2. They're progressing towards that as we speak, also a deep cut plan at Carnegie 2. So that will combined will increase production there pretty significantly. And that's a, so that's the next phase of growth at McCoy. And then I would actually say probably mine 15A, given it's an idle mind right now that can come online, we're interviewing contractors for it as we speak that can be one that comes online pretty quickly. I would say that the team says before end of the year, I would say probably pushed at the beginning of January or into January. That'll be a nice additional revenue growth. And then 17 and Carnegie 3, we're evaluating which one of those we'll start up next. But those are probably first quarter events, the end the first quarter. And so it's McCoy complex is a valuable complex, because one, the processing facilities are state of the art, they're the best in that area. They're the biggest in that area. And I mean, the facilities build out to the nines, James River spent hundreds of millions of dollars building that facility. And so we're the beneficiaries of that capital, but also the mines that can feed that complex like 15A and 17, to Carnegie 3, there's a rapid amount, there's a vast amount of opportunity and growth at the McCoy complex to ramp up to, I mean, internally, our target is around 2 million tons a year that we can ramp them up quite complex up to it and current market, that's a phenomenal number. Now, that's not going to happen overnight. But the uniqueness of that complex is it's already it's production ready. And ultimately, they're all within a very short distance to the prep plan to continue to ramp up production.

Were there any impacts to the facility with the rains on the last go round? Or did it pretty much avoid all that trouble?

In the third quarter, I mean, we were delayed, because, I mean, I will say that a lot of our employees were helping other neighbors. And they were I mean, helping their families. And I mean, so there was, during the third quarter, we had, we probably had two to three weeks of delays that even at the McCoy complex, that impacted our numbers a little bit. We also ended the quarter with quite a bit of inventory at cost on the ground too. So that would have been a lot higher in the third quarter as well. So I mean, those impacted the quarter, they didn't impact the facility. So the McCoy complex in that area of Kentucky, I mean, in the mountains, when storms get over certain areas, they hover over them and unfortunately, that has a region guy hit really, really hard. Letcher county, Dean area got hit pretty hard, did not infect does not affect our infrastructure down there. In the McCoy complex, didn't really get hit that hard at all. It was, it kind of avoided that region. So it didn't affect our any of our infrastructure.

And at Perry, you avoided any water coming off the site into the rivers, environmental issues, that kind of thing.

Yes, no, we've environmentally did not have any issues. I mean, there were flies all throughout our properties. And we're the heart one of the largest permit owners in eastern Kentucky. So it's a I mean, there was definitely environmental work to make sure that there was never an impact to the environment. But environmentally, as a business over the last year, we've crashed, we have over $8 million of additional bonds rolling off here in the near term, or bond releases that will go into place in the near term. And so it's, the floods didn't impact us too much on the environmental side, or didn't we mitigated any potential impact after the floods to make sure that there was no impact there and Perry even at Perry now there's, it's the issue is, is the workforce in that region, because ultimately they're been displaced. The mine is actually we've I think we've fully got approved to, for the mine to be released now, in the last week or so. So we got a lot of that stuff cleaned up, there was no long term damage to any of the infrastructure we made significant improvements to the mine to be even more efficient when we bring it back online. Set it up as a three section mine where we were previously operating around one and a half section. So it's set up as a beautiful complex right now. We're pretty excited about it.

Well, I'm really excited about what you're doing on the rare earth and lithium ion battery recycling side. And really looking forward to seeing news about the commercialization of the lithium ion batteries etc. When do you think that you might start seeing meaningful revenues out of either one of those efforts? And by meaningful, I just mean something that's reported on your income statement that wouldn't be maybe accounting wise considered like a development offset? And in that question, I'm wondering about if you've had any other thoughts about additional site expansion? And lastly, if you don't mind meters running on there, I'm really interested in this USA rare earth magnets. And it sounds like they're developing the facility. So a lot of this revenue seems to be '24 and beyond. Is there something meaningful you might be able to put up on the board and ’23?

Yes.

Sorry for the long question, Mark.

Yes. No, I'll try to remember and I'll do my best. In terms of revenue generation, and we'll start generating revenue in the fourth quarter, meaningful, probably in 2023. The business is set up to expand. We've done, we brought all the internal leaching in house since last time, you've seen the facility it was obviously quite different need to get you back to Indiana, when you're around the region, because it's looks completely different than when you saw it last with the battery drain in there with the full leaching and house at scale now. So that's progressing nicely, the facility set up to scale revenue pretty rapidly selling battery materials, you can sell them 10 times over same with rare earth elements. USA rare earth, phenomenal team, I haven't met the new CEO yet. We intend to speak this week. Great business. They are doing a great job of setting it up. They're set up to be the largest magnet manufacturer in the United States will be the first magnet manufacturer in the United States at commercial scale. So we're excited to be able to partner with them and provide them the raw materials they need to supply domestic manufacturing and world so then we have a nice relationship with them. And we're collaborating on partnerships on the downstream and upstream. We've introduced them to some of our OEM friends. And they obviously have their own relationships and they're doing great, I mean, I having the luxury to be out in Oklahoma at their facility was extremely impressive. In terms of our scale and growth, we have our current Noblesville facility, we have a property in Noblesville, we're evaluating. We also have begun pretty advanced discussions on a site location and in media and Indiana for a extremely…

And an excellent job at that. One last question. Sorry for filibustering here. I'm really glad you bought back the 7.5% of rare earth element. And was that for cash or stock? And can you tell me what the amount of consideration for that?

Yes. We did not disclose what the consideration was. But it was not in stock. It was in equal consideration of what they paid. And so we had the opportunity to do that we wanted to spend the ReElement division off and when that opportunity presented itself. We worked with them to get that deal done. I have nothing bad to say about heritage great, great company, ultimately, continued dialogue with them. And ultimately I wish them the greatest success but when we had the opportunity to buy it back for our investors that made the most amount of sense, and we moved aggressively and quickly to get that deal done when the opportunity presented itself.

Well, it obviously makes it cleaner to spin out that business. And it just seems like the Heritage Group has been a great partner. So that's all my questions. Thank you very much. And good work and difficult times.

Yes. It's exciting times. I will say it's, both of our divisions are seeing demand that we've never seen before. And we're ramping up production of both. It's probably one of the most exciting times I've seen in my lifetime.

So best of luck.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from [indiscernible] Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. I've wondered, with the cash on hand in the burn, do you anticipate that you will have to do a raise to sort of bridge you over?

No. We want to do an equity raise. We have, as Kirk mentioned over $18 million of available liquidity between our credit facility cash on hand and receivables. That's a and then ultimately, I will say we I mean, at our Carnegie complex. We had record production last week. That's and with and so we're, we've also cut back on our development spending on the carbon side significantly. We have development costs, obviously hitting the balance sheet of holding company through relevant that's being done through don't credit facility though.

Okay, majority capital of the capital --

Yes go ahead.

And the price of coal. It's come down a bit lately, but how is your spread going from costs to what you currently being able to get?

Very good. I mean, some net prices are down from third quarter or from second quarter and the third quarter, they were down like they were down from the second quarter, second quarter. I mean, Amazon doubled in the second quarter, that was phenomenal. And I actually think next year, we'll be stronger than that given the fundamentals in the market, it's one of the if you look at the fundamental nature of the market right now with met coal being solar, thermal coal and long term contracts. And with China, the China controls the fuel market, China controls commodity market. And we -- I've been in the [indiscernible] industry for 20 years, they've always have their shut down effectively for COVID. Right now their COVID restrictions have put them in a spot where they've slowed their economy down pretty significantly, which ultimately, they produce over 50% of the world's steel. And so that's when they come back online, and you're starting to see them come out of COVID actually announced something this morning that which is actually a little bit earlier than I thought they would, that they're starting to release some of their COVID restrictions. As they come back online there's no way to increase production in any material nature in the world, the coal industry is tried. So I see you have a really strong, coal market now our spreads right now, even with a down it's still way up from over a year ago. And so it's and with the like the deep cut plan that it just adds additional margin to the balance to the income statement. Adding the second section of Carnegie 2 will be extremely accretive to our, really to our cash flow. So with current markets, I mean, if you could say I could sell this, cause this market for the rest of my life, that'd be phenomenal. And so I we actually see a lot of strength coming in the market in the near term because of the fundamental nature of the markets and prices are still really attractive.

Right. And then just to go back to the railroads from the magnets. What do you think is that, what's the next sort of catalytic investment? Not investment I'm sorry, catalyst news event that shareholders should look for? Because I think that that's just really starting to go and I would expect that it seems overlooked dramatically by the rest of the investing market. I mean, it's very unusual what you're doing. So I'm trying to understand what might be the next thing that will get investors to understand how unique this is?

Yes. There is quite a few things. We have a busy balance of the year. Partnerships that we continue to move forward on, some signs, some in development. There'll be a once our partnership cutter, we'll get those out there additional developments site selection for the facility, battery production train, coming online full scale, expanding in our current facility, processing lithium ores is something we've been working on that we feel extremely good about with our technology. Chromatographic separation for lithium spodumene is a very attractive opportunity for us given the uniqueness of our technology. And then additional partnerships on the feedstocks with magnets, as we are very close to having, there's only three companies in the country that I know of that are talking about producing magnets at scale. And we are in conversate, we actually partner with USA Earth. And we're extremely excited about that, excited about that team. And they're where they're at in the space. And then there's a more novel approach that's coming online that we are in conversation to partner with. And so it's I mean, we're one of the only people in this space, the unique thing about our business having the ability to produce both rare earth elements and battery elements using cryptographic separation is the opportunity to fully leverage the platform. The magnet side is very high margin, the magnet materials are almost 5x on a per kilogram bases that battery materials sell for. But more importantly, the LFP chemistry is actually extremely attractive. If we just started the lithium, our processing costs dropped dramatically were sub $2 kilogram to produce lithium from their lithium spodumene or from LFP battery chemistries. And that puts us in a really unique spot in the industry, because we can process materials that nobody else wants to because we don't we don't use solvent extraction, right. don't use harsh chemicals and toxic chemicals to do so which are extremely expensive to operate.

Right. Well good. All right. That's good.

Well, thank you. I appreciate you joining the call.

Thank you. Our next question is from Paul [indiscernible] who is a private investor. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, thank you. Can you hear me all right?

We can.

Relative to the coming to the rare earth business. It's a new business. I'm wondering how tight your partnership is with the processor? Do you have room as you learn what's going on in this business to adjust pricing? Or can you sell into alternate channels? How bound up are you?

Yes. So our rare business we can sell anybody and make it's all throughout the world. We're not restricted. We don't have any exclusives with anybody. We're obviously excited about our partnership with USA Earth and intend to supply them a lot of oxides. For them for the magnet manufacturing space. I love their domestic model, I think it ultimately will qualify for a domestic supplier given and so I love their focus, I love their team, and they're great partners. That being said, we can sell to anybody and ultimately will sell to other parties, including we think the DoD would be a natural fit as a buyer of the products. And I've had numerous conversations with numerous numerous government agencies, given their need, and their demand for rare earths and battery materials.

Is there a possibility on the processing side on the proprietary processing that you have, that you might distribute that processing to purchasers of the products so that they can supply some of the capital in your growth?

Would we supply, so would we effectively license it to them to an extent?

Well, not necessarily licensing, but provide their ability on site to do the processing?

100%. That's cool locating on battery material.

That’s what I’m referring to. I sense that. Thank you very much.

Yea I mean, that's what I'll say to that question is that that is the uniqueness of our technology is because we can't do that. Because of our footprint that we utilize is so much smaller than solvent extraction, which is the only other method of producing critical or rare elements that you hydro met, which is solvent extraction, could not be co-located. We can co-locate because of the uniqueness of our technology with battery manufacturers as well as magnet manufacturers ultimately reducing its optimizing right it's reducing the logistics costs within the footprint of the space. If you're going to buy an electric car, you want to pay as little as you possibly can for it. The battery manufacturer is taking their waste material shipping it 200 miles down the road or 500 miles down the road to be processed at a solvent extraction facility. That adds a tremendous amount of cost and logistics we can do that in house at facilities and we're progressing nicely on that front.

Clearly, the Chinese got their monopoly in this business by acquiring that processing. And they had the margin and a processing to squeeze Toyota in the past. And it's really a critical area.

The final stage purification is what that's where we started. Most of the people in the batteries, they started at the shredding side of producing black met and selling it affect China, which is where everybody does today. We started with a purification because that's the bottleneck in the equation. And that's why we put that focus over the last three, four years, is to make sure we had the most efficient process of doing that. Because ultimately, that's what makes our business valuable. And we'll showcase that over the next year.

One of the overhanging questions we have as analysts looking at this new process is how confident are you that you can ramp up the throughput?

Extremely.

Thank you.

The process, the trade secrets, the technology in itself, the team we have in place between [indiscernible] Bill Smith, Jeff Peterson, J. Campbell, and number of other teams and Dr. Wang and her team at Purdue. Our team at Texas Tech led by Jerry body and Christian Pergolesi. I mean those, the team we have in place have enabled us to optimize this technology. I mean, Bill Smith was at Lilly for 35 years building there and engineering and building their chromatography facility. They produce over $3 billion of insulin using chromatography. chromatography also processes high fructose corn syrup. So it processes high volumes of material, scaling our technology, we've proven that it works better at commercial scale than it did a lab scale because it's all about surface area, surface area to the residence. And so going bigger columns going taller columns, adding additional production training, we're highly confident our ability to scale it and we're excited about what we're getting ready to do here in the very near future.

Will you benefit from the culture that Purdue put together from other companies?

So I'm an IU guy. I went to Indiana, both my parents went to Purdue but I do love Purdue University. The team there. And I mean, Mitch Daniels from the top down, we built a great build a great university made it extremely efficient. Dan Hassler, who just took over as Purdue Indianapolis, the head of it at this transition, which is phenomenal. I mean, they have a great team and then ultimately, it's Linda Wang. Linda does a great job of driving the PhD she works with and the postdocs and everybody else to think about commercialization first understanding the importance of it. So do we hope to learn from the culture of Purdue? I mean, we're for profit business. We do things different than universities but Purdue is a great university and a great to what we do.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Mark Jensen for closing remarks.

Well, I want to thank all the investors for dialing in today. We are excited about where we are currently positioned. We are extremely excited about the value of the assets of our business and the cash flow these assets can generate. We are at a unique inflection point of the business and ultimately we have accomplished a lot over the years and we anticipate accomplishing a lot more in the balance of the year. We are and continue to be the largest shareholders of the business and working on getting my 10-B five plan back in place so I can buy more stock. But ultimately, we believe that the fundamentals of the business will continue to drive value, and ultimately create value for our shareholders and our management team, our board of directors are focused on driving this value every day in every decision that we make for all of our investors. Thank you for joining the call and look forward to the future calls.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.