jack lifton comment exerpts on seekingalpha

Jack Lifton comments on SeekingAlpha article:

"I note that some analysts are projecting cerium at a selling price of $8/kg by 2015 for 99.99% oxide. If MCP's FUTURE cost is $7/kg then you, jbde, are predicting a disaster, since half of the predicted 40,000 mt/a will be cerium, and since NO ONE pays a posted price for volume this would mean that MCP would have to sell cerium oxide at a loss.
Please do not tell me about the market for Xorbex. That is a fantasy at any price but at a cerium price of $8/kg there is a fatal problem in that it has already been stated by MCP that Xorbex will fail in the marketplace if cerium is below $11/kg.

I note that at $21/kg cerium Xorbex is already a flop.

Molycorp's problem is that it is basing its supply model on a demand market that does not exist except, perhaps, for neodymium. The question is: Can Molycorp survive when it has to produce 40,000 MT/a of the light rare earths in order to produce 5,000 mta of neodymium or 7,500 mta in total of didymium, if you count the praseodymium as a desirable product?

Molycorp's problem is one of break even. It is already too high.

The biggest worry for Molycorp has got to be Lynas, which will produce nearly 4,000 mta of neodymium and a total of 8,000 mta of dudymium from just 22,000 mta production. I doubt very much that Lynas' cost structure is twice as high as that of Molycorp, so they will be able to sell their Nd and NdPr at a lower price than Molycorp.

I think Molycorp's basic problem is, as I have already said, their break even is too high and the target production rate is far too high for the real market. This has been obvious for years. The investing public has just caught on..."

See the comments for Jack's discussion of additional development stage miners as well.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/828271-future-quite-bleak-for-rare-earths-miner-molycorp