UBS upgrades Lynas, page-37

Located a transcript of CC
Amanda:
And can I just say it's -- the separated NdPr is important to us because it's not just that we get a small premium for it, so -- and separated Nd sells at about the same price as NdPr. Separated Pr sells at a slightly higher price. So on a consolidated basis, it's a bit higher. The greater value for it is really a share of wallet effect once again, particularly with our Japanese customers. So for example, we had 2 very large customers outside of China for cerium which is used in autocat, one's in Europe, one's in Japan. Now those customers are very, very pleased to be accessing cerium from us. They also use high purity Nd, high purity Pr and high purity lanthanum which we have not been able to supply. So that means that they still have a relationship with another supplier. What we want to be is that we want to be the prime supplier. I get into trouble when I say we want to be the wife not the girlfriend but anyway, and we can increase our share of wallet when we have a better -- when we have this new product range, and that is important in terms of setting up switching barriers to sort of -- to that business. So we are more likely -- the more products -- I mean, this is a very, very old rule of commerce that the more products that a customer has, the stickier they are.

The rest of your post is inscrutable and I won't dignify it. I just wanted to explain where my comment re "buying loyalty" originated from.

Further to settling that bit of business, it is interesting, at least for the mentally adroit, that Amanda mentions "high purity La, Nd, Pr" and that Lynas wants to supply it to this EU customer. That should yield better than the "small premium".

It is of course possible that they will need to pay a third party for "further purification" (e.g., by ion exchange) that might be required by this particular customer, not unlike their toll smelting in Vietnam and Thailand to sell metals into Japan.

However, based on the length of time that they are allowing themselves to set up the NdPr separation circuit, and the large boost in capex this coming quarter, and the fact that SX6 refurbishment / rebuild is the only unfinished NEXT business, it is reasonable to believe that SX6 is being significantly lengthened (more tanks) to provide higher purity (on the assumption that capacity was already adequate, which seems likely given its previous LaCe duties). All that to say this: Could be down the road we will be in for a top-line surprise.