Rare earths play Lynas in $400m capital raise, two brokers hired, page-25

Lol, not likely, expect it to fill quickly, but when the full details emerge, including various components of Govt funding and the details of downstream partners in the supply chain, reasonable to expect it will make a healthy new high and revalidate the now 5yr uptrend.

While some here appear to have a preference for carnival barkers or Chinese honey traps THIS is the way to assert your authority on a mkt, and at the same time establish buying power for alt primary feed, control the vital access point to the downstream mkt.

Given this looks very much like a leak, quite fascinating to imagine how AL handles this on top of a relatively mundane FY results briefing Monday morning, particularly reflecting some of the recent QR chatter:

Daniel Morgan
Hi, Amanda and team. Just wondering given all the strategic interest in the rare earths sector, et cetera. I'm just wondering if you are hearing of any movement on magnet making facilities outside of China and Japan. Is there anyone is bankrolling downstream facilities that might enable you to have more customers? Thank you.
Amanda Lacaze
Thanks, Daniel. I might let Pol contribute to this as well. At this stage, we're aware of consideration, but we're not aware of any firm investment. Pol, would you want to add to that?
Pol Le Roux
Yes. Good morning. Actually, there is no -- no plan that is confirmed or moving forward. Just as a reminder, before the crisis, the total consumption of NdPr outside China was around 65%, of Lynas production capacity. So, the challenge was already to develop further capacity downstream of magnet making, motor making, and with the current economic situation, I think there is even more uncertainty on this. So, I don't think there is a lot of push for plans for downstream investments outside China at the moment.
Daniel Morgan
So, does that mean that the ex-China magnet making capacity, I mean, it's going to center in Japan. Is that right?
Amanda Lacaze
I don't think that that's necessarily the outcome. As I said and to Pol's point not -- nothing which is confirmed, at this stage, but given all of the various considerations, there are many who are thinking about it. There are a few who may be studying it. But we would not see this as being something which is going to take -- take root in the short-term.
But I think that as we continue to have the focus on development of non-Chinese supply chains that the chances that something might come to provision, we will continue to improve.
Daniel Morgan
Sure. And when -- you obviously are operating at less than full capacity at the moment and it sounds like that's discretionarily at the moment due to demand. I'm just wondering how you're going to think about that through the rest of the year? I mean in the past couple of years, you would have liked to produce more, but you had licensing constraint in Malaysia and you're trying to get that obviously changed.
But towards the end of this year, would you look to produce up to your constraints in order to have inventory? I mean, obviously, that will cause you to fund that inventory, but -- or would you look to produce in line with demand? Just wondering how you're thinking about that?
Amanda Lacaze
At this stage, we're planning to be prudent in our approach, which means, yes, in line with demand, primarily. We are in uncertain times, as everybody knows and I think that making sure that we take actions which ensure that we continue to preserve balance sheet strength is really important.
And yes, so we -- look, we will update it as things develop. A good thing for our business is that we do have the ability to flex that production. But at present, we would not be -- we are not considering producing to inventory.

Daniel may be a little pissed, but AL would probably consider it evens, lol.