Had several opportunities to chat with Jon Blumenthal in...

Had several opportunities to chat with Jon Blumenthal in November and didn't presume to ask as frankly it is largely irrelevant.

Blueline is a relatively small family company that took advantage of the 2008/9 recession to over capitalise on a massive ex ceramics facility in Hondo, Tx. Obviously this is where such fantastic assets such as three tunnel furnaces originate, and they would have been totally underutilised since.

Blueline has built considerable RE manufacturing expertise, particularly Ce which should ring a few bells Lynas 2025, but the main attraction for Lynas is a superb brownfield site to establish US domestic processing.

Lynas have clearly stated they will be the major JV partner, no doubt largely fund the project, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't an exit strategy for the Blumenthal interests over time, guessing the equity split would be ~85/15, somewhere in that region.

You simply cannot evaluate this project solely on ST financials, this is an extremely strategic LT investment in stimulating ROW RE mkts, not necessarily limited to US.