Sybella Benchmarking vs Peers, page-159

I will have to find it again but I watched a pretty great geopolitical podcast where the topic of USA IRA money being spent was discussed. Long story short here are some of the cliff notes

- Even if trump wins, the IRA is really a bipartisan bill designed to shore up USA's strategic interests as an EMPIRE. Everyone knows it's not really about inflation reduction or any of the EV stuff it talks about, but both sides are well on board with what it really does. So expect the cash splash to continue.

- Australia is the prime American ally to receive stuff first. There was a recent amendment made which allows Aussie companies to qualify for a variety of components that it did not before. We will likely see that flow through and rare earths would be a likely recipient for obvious reasons.

- The most economical projects are obviously going to have cash splashed at them first. With RDM in mind, if our OPEX and CAPEX really do end up being lower than our peers, it becomes a no brainer for IRA funds.

- Geopolitically the Americans have been making subtle moves in Australia for a while and plan to use Aus as a forward operating base in Asia alongside their other 2 critical allies, Japan and the Phillipines. Out of those 3, Australia is considered the most trustworthy. As an example, the US funded an expansion of Tindal airbase to accomodate B-52 bombers.

While all of this might seem a bit unrelated to RDM, I assure you it's not. Money is flowing around in sectors according to geopolitics left right and centre now and if a stock meets the criteria it has a very good chance of benefiting. So watching the defence and geopolitical discussions is actually quite related. I am invested in another stock that just got a 100m cap raise effectively done at a premium (bit of a roundabout way but effectively that's what happened) with 2 Japanese majors and it's obvious the geopolitics at play is responsible.

It was previously a marginal play that was never viable but conditions have now changed thanks to technological advancement and geopolitics and now HUGE amounts of cash are being thrown around. In my opinion the deal was stuck purely for 2 reasons:

- OPEX is lower than the global competitors and lower than anyone else in Aus at this scale
- Geopolitically Japan is being used as a USA forward operating base and is desperate for a secure and stable supply of resources. They have been very open about it and their keiretsu companies are being backstopped by the Japanese government who are being backstopped by the Americans.

This is all very relevant to RDM because the same thing could happen to any strategic resource that ticks the boxes. I actually think the chance might be higher here as our capex is going to be 1/10th of the capex required in this other strategic stock.