 Today I had the pleasure speaking with Amanda LeCars from Linus. How are you today Amanda? I'm really well. Thanks Tracey. How are you? I'm fantastic and I just want to start by congratulating you because you recently announced that you've exceeded production targets and earnings And our editor Robin Bromby was crediting this for the spark spark in the rare earth prices that was happening recently similar to 2011 can you tell us more about these results, please? Okay, so actually I don't think I would completely agree with Robin. The result is not price driven. It's actually volume driven so We're very pleased with the quarters results, which we announced on Monday So total total tons produced are up 30% and EPR tons produced are up 36% sales revenues up 37% off the back of a volume increase of 30% so Unfortunately, the prices are nowhere near where they were in 2011 if they were I would be a much more relaxed woman than I am however the results are really the result of You know the the culmination of two years where we have finalized the commissioning of all of our capacity and brought it into state your steady operation and so in quarter three we commissioned the final separation train for our Sx5 unit, which is the unit that separates NDPR from LA and CE products And of course, that's the key value driver in the business because the magnetic materials of the highest value materials in the market at present so In quarter three there was some costs and some reduced volume associated with that in quarter four now We've actually got that operating Okay, so for the investor intel audience they're listening right now We're just talking about the fourth quarter results And basically you lifted sales to a hundred ninety six point one million and you're basically and this is what you're attributing your success to Um, so Look, I think as I said it really is about making sure that we're utilizing the equipment that shareholder funds and and and and Lenders funds have have been invested in Effectively and so now we have a hundred percent of that equipment Commissioned two years ago when I first joined we only had fifty percent of the equipment commissioned so we now have a hundred percent we produce a lot more NDPR and They will we sell a lot more NDPR because it's certainly the one product where we never had any problems selling it Okay, so let me ask you Amanda Are you selling at index or fixed prices as the reported selling prices are much lower than our information on the current market prices? Can you just tell us a little bit more about that? so I think it's always quite difficult when people are trying to track and and Analyze prices in the rarest market and as you would know The rarest market is not a particularly orderly market You know in most markets demand and price are fairly closely correlated and You will actually see the effects of one or the other reasonably quickly the rarest market remains one which is quite Is still quite distorted by speculation at all levels of the market and So in this quarter there was a lot of speculation early in the quarter that the China central government would undertake a New stockpiling program and typically what that does is it puts a floor price For materials and so the price actually did increase if we use The local currency from about 252 up to a 272 remember Early in the quarter, however According to the information that we got out of China the price then dropped back fairly quickly to about 258 remember me and it's come off a little bit more since then After the government and the big six rare earths companies were unable to reach agreement on the price Well, I hope you don't mind. I'm going to take this opportunity to ask you about the overall rare earth market Amanda I'd love to hear what your thoughts are The structure of the market is difficult The whole of the rare earths industry still wears some of the pain from the 2011 bubble you know, some of that is because companies, you know Put too much debt in their businesses because I looked at the bubble I thought this was the way that it was going to keep going So that has actually been a real issue in terms of it. It drives speculative behavior in The investor base, you know, a lot of a lot of in a speculative behavior there and also in the traders and the producers particularly inside China but the more Sustained damage I think to the market really is the fact that at at that time it created a lack of confidence with end formulators and even just last week there was an announcement from Honda and Dido about the production of a first rare earth magnet for a hybrid vehicle Which was or an electric vehicle it might have been which was actually heavy rare earths free Now for us, this is fine because we're a light rare earths company and it actually reinforces demand for the neodymium and precyodymium products But and so we actually see that as a very positive thing because what it does is that it starts to give some of the OEMs the the the end-use formulators more confidence in the supply chain And I think our continued success is an important part of that. I couldn't agree with you more Amanda And I've got a question for you from our writer Jack Lipton He asked what is your strategy going forward in the Japanese market if Toyota to sucho's Projects come into production. Will you compete on price or quality or both? So you would know that in the Japanese market we very strong and Certainly, you know Japanese industry was They probably wouldn't insist to him but quite spooked by the But by the rare earths bubble the automotive industry is still an incredibly important business in in in Japan and it is one of the reasons why Japan by Jogma you know is our senior secured lender and That is really about ensuring that there is an alternative outside China supply chain we have Commercial partners our distributors in Japan as so Jits We work very closely with them. We also work very closely with the End-users and the magnet makers in Japan We have well in excess of 50% market share in that market and we do that by actually working Directly alongside our customers We we still sell for a slight premium in Japan compared to China notwithstanding the WTO ruling last year and We see it as a very positive thing the Japanese industry has chosen to compete on Technology rather than on price and we Asia working very closely alongside to match our activity Well, of course Amanda, you've just passed your two-year anniversary at Linus and I enjoyed a presentation You did where you attributed a lot of your success to operations and running a company. It was actually very inspiring for me Can you tell me what kind of operation mandates are happening now that you've been there for two years? I imagine everything is under control Yeah, everything's under control always. No, that is not the truth even in very very mature industries with very mature technologies Manufacturing operations do not always run up perfectly Right, if they did we wouldn't need people and we wouldn't make need people to make decisions and do all of those sorts of things and so My production team has challenges every day. I am telling you that however Two years on we have now got a hundred percent of our equipment has actually been commissioned So two years ago it was only fifty percent We actually have made nearly three times as much We make nearly three times as much with our four trains as we did with two So that's a combination of increased capacity, but also increased utilization and efficiency of operation So what should we as shareholders anticipates in the next upcoming quarter or two? Okay, so so I guess you know the most important thing for us now is to stabilize and Really lock down the improvements that we've made to date We indicated in our quarterly report that we would seek to run at about 90% of capacity for about six months as we Continue to do some minor de-bottlenecking and then we'll ramp up to the hundred percent So I think that that's that that's in terms of operations I think on the other side as you will have noted we have very positive and and productive relationships with both of our lenders and I think ensuring that our Structures with our lenders as such that they continue to support the success of the business is really important and then For me, you know the question is you know, we've got this beast Which had you know, this this huge factory, you know built and it operates within the rare earth's market Once you've got all of that operating then the question is where to from here How do we now grow this business to be an even better business? And I'm not going to tell you what's in my mind on that today. However, watch this space Well, thank you so much for joining us Amanda. It was a pleasure Thanks, Tracy