Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers joins Wealthion’s Trey Reik to reveal how his company is leading America’s rare earths comeback, and why critical minerals are becoming one of today’s biggest untapped investment opportunities.
For this second part of our Rare Earths special coverage, Mark explains how Energy Fuels is transforming from a uranium and vanadium producer into a rare earths leader, securing world-class projects in Brazil, Australia, and Madagascar to help reduce America’s dangerous dependence on China. Discover why rare earths, especially those used in EVs, wind turbines, and defense technologies, are essential for the future of energy and national security.
Key Topics:
- Why magnets drive the rare earths story
- How China seized rare earths dominance
- Why thorium processing sets Energy Fuels apart
- The global race to secure critical minerals
- Why the rare earths boom is just beginning
Would you like to hear more about SCP and its rare earth mineral projects? Get their white paper here: https://wealthion.com/rare-earth-metals/
Investment Concerns? Get a free portfolio review with Wealthion’s endorsed financial advisors at https://bit.ly/4jLZpOO
Hard Assets Alliance – The Best Way to Invest in Gold and Silver: https://www.hardassetsalliance.com/?aff=WTH
Mark Chalmers 0:00
We’re just starting to realize the potential and the importance of the rare earth space and the whole critical mineral sector as well. We’ve gotten overly dependent. We put our guard down, we globalized, and now we need to de globalize. We
Trey Reik 0:23
Greetings and welcome to our wealthion show. My name is Trey Reich of Bristol Gold Group, and we’re visiting today with Mark Chalmers, President and CEO of energy fuels. And I must say, energy is one of the most exciting companies I’ve ever taken a look at and a truly unique competitor of the uranium and rarer space Mark became CEO of Energy Fuels in 2018 but before that, Mark had a storied career in which he established himself as One of the world’s leading experts in in situ, recovery, uranium production. So this interview is not in any way a recommendation for purchase, but in the interests of full disclosure Energy Fuels, has been identified by our partners at SCP resource finance as one of a handful of investable rare earth companies with a particularly compelling investment thesis Mark, thanks for taking the time to visit with us today.
Mark Chalmers 1:31
Now, thank you Trey, and thank you for that introduction. And it’s always a pleasure to tell the energy fuel story, which, as you mentioned, is unique.
Trey Reik 1:40
Mm, hmm, terrific. So now to give viewers a broad brush stroke of your company Energy Fuels is currently the largest US producer of uranium and the sole us producer of vanadium. Do I have that correct? Correct and we
Mark Chalmers 2:01
have a long history in the uranium vanadium business, but we bolted on the rare earths and the heavy mineral sense.
Trey Reik 2:08
So just one sentence for most people, what is vanadium and what does it do?
Mark Chalmers 2:15
All right, well, vanadium is mainly used as a steel hardener and a pound or two of vanadium will make steel twice as strong. But it also is getting increasing interest for these vanadium flow batteries, for energy storage, and like lithium, it is it is a battery material, but it has better characteristics than lithium, because it doesn’t, doesn’t burn out over time.
Trey Reik 2:48
And not that the uranium and vanadium businesses aren’t incredibly provocative in their own right. But I think the true stories of energy fuels, is the fact that you’re developing a rare earth processing chain or processing business? Is that correct? Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 3:10
correct. I said we have a long history of producing uranium and vanadium, and I go back, this is my 49th year in the uranium business. And what we did is we realized that the best sources of rare earths contained uranium that we could recover and and we had the permits and infrastructure so. So that is how the processing of monazite, ores that contain uranium and thorium evolved, and how we got into the rare earth business, because we could actually process the monazite feeds, recover the uranium and also the rare earth. So we decided it made sense to maximize our infrastructure, our know how, and our permits.
Trey Reik 3:57
Well, I hope you’re enjoying my conversation with Mark Chalmers of energy, fuels, Inc, and to those who are interested in learning more about rare earths and investment opportunities in the industry, I wanted to point out that wealthion has produced a white paper about the industry and investment opportunities in conjunction with SCP resources. And if anybody wants to read that, just click on the link in the description below, and we’ll get it out to you. Now, let’s return to our conversation with Mark so you skipped ahead to something I was going to bring up later, which is monazite itself. Could you give us a description for a layman? What is monazite? How important is it, and what are the challenges in mining it?
Mark Chalmers 4:47
Yeah. I mean, well, there’s different types of monazite, hard rock, monazite, heavy mineral sand, monazite, and in the heavy mineral sand business, really focus on titanium or cone. Medium elements. There is a byproduct called monocyte and and it is is mildly radioactive, and it also includes uranium and thorium, as I mentioned, and very high grades of of rare earths and and so for a number of years, monazite in the China plan, has been a very important part of their rare earth strategy, because it also contains the rare earths and uranium that they recover, and they also recover the thorium and the rare earths. And it also includes heavies, so it has lights and heavies and has better distributions of the heavies. So, but there is hard rock monazite that isn’t, isn’t these heavy mineral sand sources that also has, generally speaking, more heavies. But we’re focused on this the monazite sands that are byproduct of heavy mineral sand mining for the titanium zirconium.
Trey Reik 6:07
Okay, and backing up just a little bit from what you said, how many rarers are there, and how many of them are important? Are there four or five that are the real deal? Are they all important? Do they all show up together? Well,
Mark Chalmers 6:25
that’s like 17 rare earths and lanthanide series. And you know, they all have different levels of importance. But you know, it’s really driven on the economic contribution of those rare earth elements and and really the main ones are neodymium a praseodymium, which are the lights and the heavies. Is the D, y and the T, B, so this bosum, terbium, and also Sumerian. So, so really the main focus is on about five other rare earths. The others can be recovered, but they don’t have the economic drivers of those three and and the main economic drivers are the D, y, t, b, the n, d, and the P, R, okay, so that’s usually, you know, 90% of the value, or 95% of the value in that those rare earth elements,
Trey Reik 7:16
okay, and Generally, rare earths appear together in the Earth’s crust clusters in my Yeah, it’s really they always hear about rare earths, like they are always together,
Mark Chalmers 7:29
yeah. Well, they are, but they can be in different distributions. And is really finding the economic quantities and quality of the rare earths that is important. So, you know, that’s an again, why we focus on the monazite because monazite sands are between 50 and 60% rare earth oxide. So they’re very, very high grade when they’ve been recovered as part of this, this heavy mineral sands process, okay.
Trey Reik 7:59
And then my last sort of introductory question to you, and I’m speaking from my own ignorance, is when I read about rare earth articles in the press, etc, there’s always a list of products in which rare earths appear or are needed for, and it includes jet engines and missiles and drones and EVs. And I, I believe most people don’t recognize that rares aren’t used at all parts of the production of those products, but that it’s centered in magnets. And I do think that’s one of the things that’s least understood, I think, about rares, is the whole things about magnets. So can you talk about that a little?
Mark Chalmers 8:52
Yeah, the main advantages of those that I talked about are the magnetic rare earths, and it’s for the most efficient magnets that you can that they’re known on the planet in terms of use for driving things and used in electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, wind generation, refrigeration, you know, a lot of the high tech appliances, including robots, you know, it’s and to put it, to put it into context, that when you use these rare earth elements, you get a more efficient magnet and motor, that is, you know, 10 to 20% more efficient. So you get more power, more range, better utilization of of your batteries. And so that is why people are so excited about the need for rare earths and also for robotics. So so it’s if you want the most efficient cars, if you go buy an electric BMW or. Sure Tesla, you really want a permanent magnet with these rare earths in it if you want the most efficient vehicle or appliance,
Trey Reik 10:10
right? And not to beat this to a pulp, but are magnets 5075, 90% of the rarer story?
Mark Chalmers 10:24
Yeah, I think they are, I mean, because it’s really about the drive motors in again, I don’t have those numbers straight right in front of me, generally, on the permanent magnets used in motors you know, or, you know, generators of electric, you know, electricity, and the application of those are the main uses.
Trey Reik 10:49
Because I really think that’s a very commonly misunderstood concept that we’re talking about magnets and their uses specifically. So another thing we read about in the press, obviously, is especially in the Trump administration, Chinese dominance of the rare earth industry. And I even, for the last two, three years, I’ve read about that. But we had a lot of articles, for example, in the New York Times, etc. It seems to be coming to the surface in the Trump tariff era. So why does China I this is almost an existential question, and it involves years of history. But why has China developed such a stranglehold on the rarer’s business? Because
Mark Chalmers 11:38
it could, and and really, we went, we went through this period of globalization. And, you know, places like the Chinese the Russians, you know, picked out sectors that they could, they could take control over, you know, the Russians did the same thing in the nuclear fuel cycle. So we’re seeing that, you know, with this Russian Ukraine conflict is and the Chinese did the same thing on the rare earths, made it a priority, and people were more focused on cheap, and they were addicted to cheap, because we’re going to globalize and we’re going to get stuff from whatever country gave the whatever product at the cheapest price. And so it’s like handing candy to a baby. We handed it over. We let them take control of it. We lost our industrial base, and a lot of these, these, these sectors, until there’s a conflict, and then all sudden, we realize that we can’t reverse that overnight. You know, we globalized over 2030, years, and they took advantage of it and made it and look at and taking advantage is the wrong word. It was theirs to take right the world allowed them to go ahead and, you know, commandeer a sector and industry. They put a lot of engineers to work and a lot of emphasis of having full integration of the rare earth supply chain and and the Russians did too in the nuclear fuel supply chain. And the rest of the world said, We don’t care. We’re okay with that. We’re fine. And till there’s a conflict, and then you end up now you know the rest of the story.
Trey Reik 13:17
So breaking it down from the supply level at the very beginning. Are there lots of rare earth deposits around the globe that it properly developed with the technical skill etc, could have and may still compete with China? Or is it a natural endowment?
Mark Chalmers 13:38
Well, it’s hard to compete with China. It’s hard to compete with China when they have such a head start on the rest of the world on this integrated supply chain. And you know, there are deposits in the world outside of China. Some are heavy mineral sands, some are ionic clays, some are Basset aside, is different element mineral. They’re out there. But it is really hard to say, what is competition with China? Because, you know, a lot of these companies in China have had, you know, substantial government support for building that infrastructure, providing things like power and water and other consumables at either below cost or no cost. So how do you compete with China? So I think, I think the biggest issue with the rare earth supply chain is just the Chinese got a running head start by a couple decades. They had the support from their government. They recognized it was an area that they could expand and dominate, and they did so. They took up the opportunity just like anybody else would, except they did it in China
Trey Reik 14:58
so and again, just. Our viewers to understand what you’re saying. I think what you’re referring to is the fact that China has invested in the vertical integration of Rares in the final products and the whole process in between, and that that’s where other countries have perhaps under invested in terms of know how and production and integration Correct, correct
Mark Chalmers 15:26
and and you know, when you look at these different steps, you know you really have to have all the steps, from being able to mine the material all the way to a car right to be fully integrated, if you miss a step or two in your outside of China, you know, where are you going to get that step filled in? And it may be that you have to send your product to China to do that step, you know, like metals, alloys or magnets or motors or put in a car. So it’s, it’s, it’s tray. It’s complicated in one aspect and not complicated in another. It’s just being established and being in the game ahead of everybody else. And as I said, they’ve been able to capitalize on it because they were astute to take that position. So
Trey Reik 16:18
I was going to ask you, what are the options to reduce dependence on China? But I’m going to skip to the next question, because I think you’ve established that, and that is essentially this whole conundrum. Is the corporate reason for what you’re trying to do at energy, fuels, right? Your corporate goals are to supplant this lack of investment, etc, and develop in the United States a reasonable, vertically integrated start at doing this the right way. Is that fair?
Mark Chalmers 16:52
And we started with with processing at the White Mesa mill, which is uranium mill that we converted into also, in addition to Uranium, it can process the rare earths we
Trey Reik 17:03
start out there. Rob, but could you give our viewers a sort of precis of your corporate assets that you had and the ones that you’ve acquired recently? Yeah, yeah, we can take half an hour. But what are the base assets of the company,
Mark Chalmers 17:23
yeah. Well, going back over decades with either Energy Fuels or predecessor companies, we had a core of uranium mines in the western US, mainly in the Four Corners region, including Wyoming, Texas. We have the white Mesa mill, the only operable uranium mill in the United States. And we also have in situ recovery mine in Wyoming, and that was in the uranium and some of our mines are vanadium. So that was the core assets of the company. Going back for decades, and I go back to the 70s with a number of these assets and and then about five years ago, we started recognizing that we could recover the uranium and the earth from monazite sources, which we secured from Florida and Georgia, from A company called kimours, which is a heavy mineral sand company, and we started looking at processing rare earths as well as uranium and vanadium. We it didn’t take us long to figure out that when the Chinese realized that there were companies like ours, including companies like aluca, that we’re also going to look at processing monazite. The price of monazite went from a few $100 to $10,000 or $12,000 for a ton of monazite. And there was competition out there, and the Chinese, importantly,
Trey Reik 18:55
the Chinese increased the price of what you needed to operate, correct, correct.
Mark Chalmers 19:01
That’s why I said, How do you compete with the Chinese, right? So we recognize that was going to be a challenge for us. And so in addition to the uranium projects and the white Mesa mill, we went out and secured three projects globally. We started with the Bahia project, which is a heavy mineral sand deposit in Brazil that we’re currently drilling on and advancing and permitting. We acquired a joint venture that we’re earning into in Australia, in Victoria. It’s called The Donald project, and we’re earning up to 49% interest in that project, and and, but we’ll secure 100% of the monocyte from that project. Heavy mineral sands project is fully permitted and could go in construction in a couple months, but that’s a work in progress. And then we acquired a company called base resources that had a world class very significant. Project in Madagascar called Toliara heavy mineral sand project that also is rich in monazite as well. And we also acquired a project team at base the now 100% part of energy fuels. So we went out and secured world material scale of feed stock for the white Mesa mill, in the order of Linus, with Linus has ASX listed company in Australia. And
Trey Reik 20:30
for viewers, Linus and MP are the two largest rarer mines in the in the US, correct.
Mark Chalmers 20:38
Yeah, well, the MP is the largest in the United States and then minus in Australia. And so effectively, we’re, we’re catching up with building a strategy that’s at their scale. Okay, MP scale, Linus scale, energy, fuels, is coming up the chain, and, you know, but, but we had a lot of catching up to do because Linus and MP had a head start on us, so we just started about five years ago. So, but we’re our strategy is focused on being equal to, or perhaps greater, in time, but at least equal to those two over the long term, while continuing to produce uranium at our projects in the Western United States, okay,
Trey Reik 21:22
and not to be too looking back, but you raised the money to do that. You issued shares it. How’d you get the money to buy them? Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 21:33
well, it was a combination of cash. The the acquisition of base resources was around 200 million of paper of our company. You know, the rest of it was basically cash, our treasury and whatnot. Or we’re still earning into it, like in the case of the Donald project, we’re funding our way into the Donald project as we go so but yeah, we did it on the back of the strong uranium market. Some people criticized us for venturing out into the rare earth business and the heavy mineral sand business. That seems to be waning quite quickly, because right now, if you go to Washington, DC, or you talk to investors, the critical minerals seems to grab people’s ear even more than uranium at the moment. Now, two years ago, that wasn’t the case. So so we went ahead and we, we, we, we advanced our aggressive, but not reckless, strategy to secure multiple assets around the globe when people weren’t really focused on security assets, like we did, and I wouldn’t do any different Trey, so
Trey Reik 22:47
that’s what I was sort of hinting at, was that you were taking advantage of the situation where maybe should more competitors should have been concentrated, but they weren’t sort of paying attention. Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 23:01
we overstating it a long game. We play in a long game. And not all resource companies play a long game. And you’ve seen it with these critical elements, with lithium, graphite, cobalt, uranium, rare earth, vanadium. They’re very, very fickle, and they can, they can go up really quickly over a period of a month or two or a year, but they can also come down very quickly over a month or two or a year. Got it, and we are coming up with a diversified strategy of around 50 to 100% of 10 critical elements that are required by the United States, 50 to 100% of the demand required by the United States of 10 critical elements. And we believe that’s a smart strategy, because it buffets out the volatility of some of the individual elements. Okay,
Trey Reik 23:59
and this is a very layman question, but one would be questioning finding a supply in Madagascar. Can you run me through a little bit of the economics of what it is you’re actually transporting and how much it costs? Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 24:19
it is, I mean, effectively, the the totally, our project in Madagascar is again, heavy mineral sands project. So, so it is, you know, ilmanite, rutile and zircon are the main products, and then with a byproduct of the monazite, and all those products will will leave Madagascar, but to different different homes with you know that you’ll have the people that are in like the pigment business, where a lot of that will go. The monazite will be concentrated physically, not chemically, in country, to this 50 to 60% Percent monazite, or REO monazite, which is 80 or 90% monazite. In terms of pure purity, the monazite would be transported from Madagascar to the United States, and in bulk, it is quite expensive, but very high value products. So, you know, I don’t want to give the exact prices, because it depends on the the how, with the bulk of the shipments, but it can vary from, you know, plus or minus 1000 to 2000 a ton based on quantities, this would be large quantities, and then it’d be processed in the United States. But it is
Trey Reik 25:44
your ray form or anything liquid, right? It’s still ore form. It’s,
Mark Chalmers 25:49
it’s like a sand it’s, it’s like in a sand form, but, but it is a class seven goods, which is, is mildly radioactive. It’s not highly enriched, contains uranium and the thorium, but it we currently receive monazite from Florida and Georgia in just bulky bags so but the key here is that the totally our project was economic, without any credit for the monazite without any credit for the rare earths and base, had done a feasibility study a couple years ago that indicated the project would and again, these are all numbers. Are all being updated, but at the time, it was indicating that the project as a heavy mineral sand project, would spin off around $200 million per year EBITDA for decades and decades, and not including a credit for the rare earths. And if you add that, it’s even much greater than that, because of the additional value from the monocytes. So so we see it. I see it as the world’s best undeveloped heavy mineral sand deposit, and I see it as the best rare earth deposit for monazite in the world.
Trey Reik 27:11
Access went to get it. Congratulations.
Mark Chalmers 27:16
What was interesting when I talked about this time when people weren’t looking for, necessarily, for heavy mineral sand projects. We went to a group called tcmi, which is based out of Perth in Singapore. They’re global experts on heavy mineral sand deposits, and we tasked them, paid them as consultants to search the world for the best heavy mineral sand deposits and rare earth deposits contain monazite. And the totally our project was number one on their list, and the Donald project was effectively number two. And we went and got both of them out of 75 projects. So this was a scientific, focused, deliberate exercise by our company, where everybody was kind of just asleep because the markets were soft, or rare earths or getting softer, and we went out and secured those projects, and that is where the value is for the future to unlock what our strategy has been so and the totally our project is absolutely a very key piece of that, because it is world class. When I have people from the bigger companies out there in the world, including Rio Tinto, BHP, tronox, Luca and stuff, telling me it’s the best undeveloped project in the world and the best they’ve ever seen. I really happy that we acquired it.
Trey Reik 28:44
So you bring up a question I hadn’t thought of, so, for the big integrated all of this is too specialized.
Unknown Speaker 28:55
You mean to be fully integrated? Me, in terms of how
Trey Reik 28:58
PhD and Rio Tinto, they wouldn’t be interested in this type of a opportunity, correct? Well,
Mark Chalmers 29:03
I mean, Rio Tinto has heavy mineral sands projects in in South Africa and Madagascar, so they’re a big producer of of these, these, you know, titanium, zirconium, rutile products. And so, you know, they are interested. I’m not sure if bhp, that specifically is in the heavy mineral sand project or business, but certainly aluca tronox kimors are, and they all think very highly of the project and and and so, you know, we surrounded this from several directions. We got a consultant to do this confidentially. Obviously, we did the first pass, and then we did the second pass, and then we went out to secure the projects. And we surprised people when we secured these projects. Who surprised a lot of people, matter of fact, their jaws dropped when they heard the Energy Fuels had secured to totally our project. But it also had a bit of its record history too, because it had been in suspension by the Madagascar government. So it’s a long story, but it’s a good story, and we’re we’re advancing, working with the government very closely to do all the the binding agreements and some Law Amendments as we speak. But they they lifted, six weeks after we secured base, they lifted the suspension on it, they signed it MOU and now we’re working on the legal agreements as we speak. So I still have a few steps ago,
Trey Reik 30:46
perfect. So in preparation for our talk, I spoke with a very enthusiastic owner of your shares, who knows you very well. And I asked, what is the comparative advantage of energy, fuels. What do they have that makes them, you know, in the fast lane of who’s likely to succeed in the US? And I was given two answers. Number one, your unparalleled knowledge of separation technology, and, number two, your ability to process and store thorium. So could you give us a little pricey on both of those? Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 31:27
I mean, again, I started out with the the, you know, the core business, which was uranium and vanadium, long history there where we use solvent extraction to recover the uranium and the vanadium, and we’ve done that for decades, and we understand that, and we have the licenses in the permits to do that, and we have the tailings facilities to handle the tailings, which are Designed for 1000 year, rickra standard, and we’re, in addition to that, we’re a perpetual care facility that when the project is finally reclaimed, it goes into perpetual stewardship of the department energy, okay, not many people have that, okay, but because we have those that the infrastructure, the know how the permits and and and the capability we could apply the separation to separating the rare earth oxides. And so what we did is in our SX plant building, where we recover the uranium and the vanadium we we modified that building and included a rare earth separation capacity as well. I think it’s only been done by us in the world to have uranium vanadium and rare earth separation capacity in one building. Okay, so, so we were able to to do that, build it, commission it, prove to the world that we can make saleable product and still handle these radio nuclei, as I mentioned. So, so that that is our that is our key differentiator, and advantage, which is not insignificant. And so people that are shareholders are excited about we’re taking and leveraging our infrastructure, our permits, to the maximum by adding on this ability to deal with the rare earths.
Trey Reik 33:38
Got it, and without naming names, given the excitement of this corporate strategy, are other people catching on, or are you still sort of out there by yourself?
Mark Chalmers 33:53
Well, we’re, we’re kind of replicating what CNN C does in China, and the CNN C is one of the nuclear giants for China and and they seen, and see has a number of uranium projects, and they have the ability to process in China uranium, but they also have the ability to recover Earth from monocyte in China. So what we’re doing is we’re replicating what the Chinese are largely doing at the White Mesa mill in Utah and but we’re doing it at US standards, you know, at the highest standards possible, excuse me, and utilizing our infrastructure. Know How so, so it’s, it’s, it has been done before in China, it has been done before other places in La Rochelle. So they used to process Mona site, but it they, they got upside down on. The radionuclides, and they had to stop processing monazite in France, and so they no longer process monazite, so you have to send it to somebody who can deal with those issues. And Energy Fuels is one of those options, as is China.
Trey Reik 35:19
Okay, perfect. And my last question on the corporate side, what are your say goals for the next two to three years? What are the the milestones, the you know, the road? Yeah,
Mark Chalmers 35:33
well, over the next six to 12 months, we we are completing all our reviews on well, so the feasibility work for the white Mesa mill to go up to the same scale as Linus, which is about 6000 tons a year of ndpr oxide. We are also updating the feasibility study on the totally R project and moving towards the final investment decision on that project, and we’re doing the same on the Donald project in Australia. So over the next six to 12 months, we’re going to have a lot of news flow on how these pieces fit together to get to the scale of align us by, just say, 2028 so in like three years time, how these pieces all knit together. So right now, it’s about completing all the studies, the bankable feasibilities, getting our finance in order, and being in a position to go into construction. It could be anywhere from a few months from now, between a year from now, a number of these projects could go into construction to be in production at Linus scale, ish, 2028 so that is really our objective, but we’ll still continue to be mining and processing uranium between now and then and beyond.
Trey Reik 37:09
So, not to get too specific, but capital needs say, to bring these to fruition. Yeah, it’s,
Mark Chalmers 37:16
it’s, it’s, it’s a big lift. It’s a big lift. So you know it’s going to are we going to be using? You can use a, 1b, plus, okay, you know, it depends on how we go forward. Do we sequence some of these things? But you can just effectively say between one to $2 billion to to to execute the the whole plan, which is significant. But if you look at other rare earth producers in the world, you know, Luca, Linus, MP, they all spent $2 billion plus anyways. Okay, so we think we’re at a certainly a significant advantage on capital strike rate, because the United States, particularly in Utah, on an existing site with a lot of the infrastructure in place, and the cost of electricity and water and people is significantly less expensive than places like Australia, even like places like California. So but I have to say that with the interest in this critical mineral space, particularly as of late, which you’ve seen a billion or 2 billion, is all in the realm, actually, on the low end of what you know people have been seen on the critical mineral front. Look what’s happened for financing projects in the lithium space and graphite and cobalt and in the rare earth space. So yeah, but it’s in that order, and we think there is keen interest. And remember where I started with, with what the Chinese got a lot, if not all, their support from the government agencies, and they don’t really have to worry about some of these things, like capital costs, I assume
Trey Reik 39:09
some pretty supportive backup from the current administration. Or is that going too far? Yeah, we
Mark Chalmers 39:20
we approach this differently than a lot of our peers. A lot of the peers ran to the government and said, Give us some money first, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do second. Got it. What we did is we went to the government and said, We’re going to tell you what we’re going to do, and then we’ll come back and ask for money when we have the whole thing knitted together. Well, guess what? We’re getting very close to knitting it together. And, you know, I think that you know, through, you know, commercial financing, through Xm, through DOD, Title Three, the DOE, there is definitely and including some of the. You know, the OEMs, there’s an appetite for US centric rare earth processing at scale and at low cost relative to the rest of the world.
Trey Reik 40:14
Excellent. So that has been a remarkably concise corporate update. We’re very excited and rooting for your progress. I’m going to ask you one last general question. You know, when rare earths are on the front page of New York Times four days in a row? Obviously, there’s a lot of you know, fever pitch interest in the space, but from your perspective, sort of on a scale of one to 10 for investors generally. Do you think this is a good time to invest in the rarer cycle?
Mark Chalmers 40:48
I rarely give investment advice, but I think the advice I would give is there are a lot of investments that I would be very wary of. There are only, there’s only so much product out there in these, this, this area that I would say is investable, and Energy Fuels has its own unique story. You know, you can look at the assets we’ve acquired. You can look at, you know, we got a market cap of about a billion US dollars. We’ve got in the order of a couple 100 million of liquid working capital, zero debt, very good liquidity, right address in the United States for processing and several different projects to advance that could be sequenced. So I would just cautions people that there’s a lot of sort of, you know, less than, than, you know, investable kind of companies, and I would stay very suspect of some of those and but everybody has to make their own decision. Obviously, I think Energy Fuels isn’t is I think it’s the most exciting, quickest rising opportunity out there, globally, in
Trey Reik 42:15
terms of the general cycle of rare earths. Do you think it’s too hyped up, or do you think we’re just starting to recognize the potential?
Mark Chalmers 42:26
I think we’re just starting to realize the potential and the importance of the rare earth space and the whole critical mineral sector as well. We’ve gotten overly dependent. We put our guard down. We globalized, and now we need to de globalize and figure out what things are actually important to the Western world, and trying to reassure those capabilities like they would have been 3040, years ago, before people talked about globalization. So it’s a really difficult balance to figure out exactly how you get there, but we need to get back there somehow.
Trey Reik 43:07
Sounds to me like there’s a good decade in front of us, then in terms of opportunity in the space.
Mark Chalmers 43:15
Well, I mean, as I said, Our plans are, you know, 28 you know, three, four years out. But yeah, if you believe in the need for improvements and electrification and and, and, you know energy base load, energy Well, Energy Fuels is, is that all on steroids, in terms of our, our uranium business, the the vanadium business, in the rare earth business, heavy mineral sands. So, yeah, I couldn’t be more excited. We’re in a unique spot. There’s not going to be another story like energy, fuels, and that’s who we are, and that’s that’s how we roll. Terrific
Trey Reik 43:53
Mark. Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us on a Friday afternoon, and we’ll be watching things closely, and maybe we’ll check in in six months or so. Thank you, Trey, terrific. Have a great evening. You too.
