Government-backed MP Materials surges as loss narrows on record rare earth oxide production
Shares of MP were last up about 9% before the market open.
MP booked an adjusted loss of $21.37 million, or 13 cents per share, down 24% compared to $28 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same period a year ago. Its sales jumped 84% to $57.4 million compared to $31.3 million in second quarter of 2024.
The miner produced a record amount of neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide in the quarter. NdPr is the main raw material in permanent magnets that are used in electric vehicle motors, robotics and electronics. MP produced 597 metric tons of NdPr in the second quarter, a 119% increase over last year.
MP's second quarter results come after the company announced two transformative deals last month.
The Defense Department agreed to purchase $400 million of the company's preferred stock, making the federal government MP's largest shareholder. The Pentagon also set a price floor for NdPr and agreed to buy 100% of the offtake from a new magnet facility that MP will build.
Days later, MP announced that Apple will invest $500 million in its production through the purchase of rare earth magnets and will help launch a rare earth recycling facility.
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
MP Materials and Apple Announce $500 Million Partnership to Produce Recycled Rare Earth Magnets in the United States
Long-term commitment will enable Apple to domestically source 100% recycled rare earth magnets for its products, supporting U.S. manufacturing and circular supply chains LAS VEGAS, July 15, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MP Materials (NYSE: MP) today announced a definitive, long-term agreement to supply Apple with rare earth magnets manufactured in the United States from 100 percent recycled materials. Under the agreement, MP Materials will supply Apple with magnets produced at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility—known as Independence—using recycled rare earth feedstock processed at MP's Mountain Pass site in California. The feedstock will be sourced from post-industrial and end-of-life magnets, marking a major milestone in both companies' long-standing efforts to create sustainable, domestic supply chains. For nearly five years, Apple and MP Materials have been piloting advanced recycling technology that enables recycled rare earth magnets to be processed into material that meets Apple's exacting standards for performance and design. Building on this technical collaboration, MP will construct a commercial-scale, dedicated recycling line at Mountain Pass enabling the processing of a range of inputs, including magnet scrap and components recovered from end-of-life products. In addition, to fulfill this agreement with Apple—and in line with its public-private partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense—MP Materials will significantly expand the capacity of its Fort Worth magnetics facility. Magnet shipments are expected to begin in 2027 and ramp up to support hundreds of millions of Apple devices. MP Materials and Apple will also innovate together to accelerate technological advancements in magnet production, as well as end-of-life recovery. "We are proud to partner with Apple to launch MP's recycling platform and scale up our magnetics business," said James Litinsky, Founder, Chairman and CEO of MP Materials. "This collaboration deepens our vertical integration, strengthens supply chain resilience, and reinforces America's industrial capacity at a pivotal moment." Rare earth magnets are essential components in smartphones, computers, wearables, and other electronics, as well as vehicles, robotics, and energy systems. This agreement advances MP's mission to restore the full rare earth supply chain to the United States while raising the global standard for sustainable production. By recovering rare earth elements from recycled materials, MP aims to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive cost-competitive domestic magnet production. About MP Materials MP Materials (NYSE: MP) is America's only fully integrated rare earth producer with capabilities spanning the entire supply chain—from mining and processing to advanced metallization and magnet manufacturing. We extract and refine materials from one of the world's richest rare earth deposits in California and manufacture the world's strongest and most efficient permanent magnets. Our products enable innovation across critical sectors of the modern economy, including transportation, energy, robotics, defense, and aerospace. More information is available at Join the MP Materials community on X, YouTube and LinkedIn. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain statements that are not historical facts and are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding expectations and benefits of a long-term agreement with Apple and the Company's ability to supply U.S.-produced rare earth magnets; the ability to achieve technological advancements and supply chain objectives and the timing thereof; the timing for completion of a rare earth recycling line at Mountain Pass; the ability for the Company to expand the capacity at its Fort Worth magnetics facility and commence magnet shipments, and timing thereof; and the estimated revenues to be received by the Company under the agreement. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including risks related to the Company's long-term agreement with Apple and the Company's ability to meet the obligations thereunder, including risks related to our ability to construct, develop and scale our facilities, technology and production; fluctuations in the pricing and volume of the magnet products to be produced under the agreement with Apple, and the risk that our estimate of the magnitude and timing of revenues from the agreement will not be realized; and those additional risk factors discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and other documents. If any of these risks materialize or the assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. View source version on Contacts media@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
Trump's Trade War Mints An Unlikely New American Mining Billionaire
James Litinsky, chief executive officer of MP Materials, during the Hill & Valley forum at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg © 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP I n July, the Defense Department made an unusual move for a federal U.S. agency when it purchased $400 million of newly created shares, plus warrants to buy additional stock, in the rare earths miner MP Materials. As part of the deal, the DoD also signed a 10-year agreement to buy rare earth magnets from MP Materials to power its future instruments of warfare. The federal government came calling because MP Materials owns the only rare earth mine in the U.S. at its Mountain Pass site in California's Mojave Desert, where it extracts, refines, and separates rare earth materials like neodymium and praseodymium. Those elements are essential ingredients in the magnets used by electric vehicles, drones, defense systems, robotics, wind turbines and other advanced technologies. Shares in MP Materials have risen 150% since the DoD announcement, pushing James Litinsky, founder and CEO, into the three-comma-club. The 47-year-old Las Vegas resident is worth an estimated $1.2 billion, between his 8% stake in MP Materials (worth about $1 billion as of Friday's market close) and over $200 million in cash and outside investments, per Forbes' estimates. Litinsky, who did not respond to Forbes' request for comment on his wealth, is not your typical mining magnate. He studied economics at Yale and received his J.D. and M.B.A. from Northwestern University before working at investment giant Fortress Group and then founding his own hedge fund JHL Capital in 2006. His firm acquired $20.5 million worth of distressed bonds issued by Molycorp Minerals, the previous owner of the Mountain Pass site, in 2014. Three years later, during Molycorp's bankruptcy proceedings, he turned those bonds into full ownership of the mine (which had flooded and was inactive). After getting $50 million in financing from a Chinese backer and orchestrating an 18-month cleanup effort, the newly named MP Materials began mining operations in 2018. Litinsky took the company public in 2020 through a SPAC, and its output has more than tripled since it began operations. While Trump's tariffs and trade war wreak havoc on global supply chains and raise consumer prices in the United States, MP Materials is uniquely positioned to benefit from the chaos, especially from the escalating standoff between the U.S. and China. That's because China dominates the global rare earths trade, processing 90% of the metals and producing 95% of high-strength magnets; the U.S. imports nearly all of its 7,000 tons annually from China. China has used U.S. reliance on its rare earth magnets as a key bargaining chip in its negotiations with Trump. Following Trump's Liberation Day tariffs announcement in April, China began requiring foreign companies to obtain export licenses for rare earth magnets, which caused a crisis for U.S. firms: exports of the magnets to the U.S. declined 59% year-over-year in April and a whopping 93% in May, the Wall Street Journal reported. For MP Materials, the chokehold spurred a surge in domestic demand. 'The sense of urgency, I've never seen anything like it,' Litinsky told Forbes in April. Ironically, Litinksy has relied on the Chinese to get MP Materials off the ground and sustain its business prior to Trump's trade war. Shenghe Resources, a Chengdu-based rare earths giant that is partially owned by the Chinese government, helped finance JHL's 2017 bid by purchasing $50 million of future rare earth concentrate produced by MP Materials. Those funds helped pay for the mine's cleanup effort and new capital costs, in return for an 8.4% stake in the company, which Shenghe still holds. (It has no operational involvement at MP Materials and does not have a board seat). Shenghe is also its largest customer, accounting for 80% of its $204 million in revenue last year. That is changing fast: after Liberation Day and China's retaliatory tariffs, MP Materials announced it would stop shipping its products to China and focus on other buyers. To wean off its reliance on China, MP Materials needs to continue vertically integrating. Its Mountain Pass refinery now processes around half of all ores excavated from the nearby mine, but it is still working to build out refinery capacities for the all-important neodymium-praseodymium metals that go into magnets. (The government's $400 million investment should help on that front). Further downstream, MP Materials has built a magnet manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, which is already churning out magnets and is on track to begin full commercial production later this year. And in conjunction with the DoD deal, the company announced it will build a second U.S. magnet manufacturing facility at a yet-to-be-announced location with the help of a $1 billion bank loan. All of this costly, but even more costly for MP Materials has been the precipitous decline in rare earth prices over the past couple of years, which has hit the bottom line hard. After netting a record $290 million in 2022, MP Materials made $24 million in 2023 and lost $65 million last year. Still the company remains well positioned with $750 million of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, a growing roster of U.S. customers like General Motors, and now the government's backing amid the ever-escalating trade war. Even with its stock trading at an all time high of over $73 per share, seven out of 11 analysts have a Buy rating on the stock, while the other four have a Hold. Though Litinsky has no formal training in mining or geology, he clearly knows a good investment when he sees one. He's turned a $20.5 million bet on distressed bonds into a $13 billion (market cap) company with strategic importance to his home country. 'If you can buy a world-class asset at a discount to replacement cost at the bottom of a cycle,' he told Forbes last year, 'luck finds you.' MORE FROM FORBES Forbes The Only U.S. Rare Earth Mine May Win Big From Trump's China Tariffs By Alan Ohnsman Forbes This Contrarian Investor Saved America's Biggest Rare Earths Mine, With Some Help From The Chinese By Christopher Helman
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Why MP Materials Stock Popped Friday
Key Points MP Materials lost less money than expected last quarter, and collected more revenue than expected. Sales surged 84% year over year, but MP is still losing money and burning cash. The government has offered MP financial support in the form of a $400 million investment. 10 stocks we like better than MP Materials › Shares of MP Materials (NYSE: MP), America's biggest pure play on mining rare earths, soared nearly 12% in early trading Friday after beating earnings (sort of) last night. It's since given back much of its gains, but as of 2:25 p.m. ET is still up 4.1%. Analysts forecast MP would lose $0.20 per share on second-quarter sales of $45.6 million. In fact, the company lost only $0.13 per share (hence "beating" earnings), and reported $57.4 million in sales. MP Materials' Q2 earnings Sales surged 84% year over year, with rare-earth oxide production up 45% and NdPr production more than doubling. MP is still selling off most of the rare earths it mines -- 74%. But the company's keeping more for itself, and used it to create and sell $19.9 million worth of magnets. One unhappy note worth highlighting: MP lost only $0.13 after backing out one-time costs. With costs included, the company's loss as calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) was much closer to analysts' forecast: $0.19 per share. Still, this was less than MP lost in last year's Q2. Is MP stock a buy? MP Materials stock skyrocketed in July after the Department of Defense invested $400 million in company stock in order to boost the magnets business and secure U.S. supply chain access to these invaluable components. Investors seemed to think that if the government was investing in MP stock, then it must be a sure thing. I'm not so sure about that. MP has lost $53.5 million so far this year, and burned through more than $126 million in cash. Even with sales surging, I'm going to want to see the company prove it can generate consistent, solid profits before buying into MP. Should you buy stock in MP Materials right now? Before you buy stock in MP Materials, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and MP Materials wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,563!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,108,033!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,047% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 181% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends MP Materials. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why MP Materials Stock Popped Friday was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
