Latest news with #MetalsCompany
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
President Trump Signed an Order That Could Send This Under-the-Radar Stock Soaring: Is it a Buy Now?
This month, President Trump signed an executive order to promote the development of deep-sea mining as a way to secure the nation's supply of critical minerals. The Metals Company wants to glean nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper from the sea floor. Trump's enthusiasm for deep-sea mining shouldn't overshadow the numerous risks facing the company. Beyond imposing tariffs or pressuring the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates, President Donald Trump's latest effort to strengthen America's economy has him turning his attention toward the ocean -- or rather, what's on the bottom of it. In a recently signed executive order, Trump directed the secretaries of Interior and Commerce, among others, to speed up U.S. efforts to explore the potential of mining the ocean floor for critical minerals. Just as shares of MP Materials (NYSE: MP) soared on the mid-April news that Trump was committed to stockpiling rare earth minerals, shares of The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC) also soared on his order regarding deep-sea mining. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » But does this news necessarily mean that The Metals Company -- a company dedicated to deep-sea mining operations -- is a stock that investors should be powering their portfolios with right now? Metals like copper, manganese, cobalt, and nickel are critical in a wide variety of modern usages, from electric vehicle batteries to components of weapons systems. The problem, however, is that the United States doesn't mine them in great enough quantities to be self-sufficient. The U.S. Geological Survey, for example, found that in 2024, the country was largely dependent on imports for 12 of the 50 minerals deemed critical. Moreover, China was a leading producer of 29 of those 50 critical minerals in 2023. To help fortify the nation's supply of minerals, Trump's executive order, according to the White House, "develops domestic capabilities for exploration, characterization, collection, and processing of critical deep seabed minerals." Attempting to mitigate the potential for China to further threaten the U.S.' supplies of these minerals, the executive order also asserts that it "strengthens partnerships with allies and industry to counter China's influence in the seabed mineral resource space." While there are numerous mining companies operating on terra firma, there are far fewer focused on the bottom of the deep blue sea -- save for The Metals Company, which has developed a system to collect polymetallic nodules off the seabed. Once they're on board its ships, the nodules are cleaned and prepared for processing, which ultimately takes place back on land. The Metals Company cites several competitive advantages that distinguish it from would-be competitors. For one, the company completed a successful pilot test in 2022 where it collected about 4,500 metric tons of nodules from the seafloor, and achieved a sustained hourly production rate of 86.4 metric tons with its prototype seafloor nodule collector. This validation of the company's integrated nodule collection system sets it apart from its peers. Another notable advantage is that the company retains exclusive exploration rights to areas in the Clarion Clipperton Zone -- located in international waters -- that have ample polymetallic nodules. The company estimates that its contract areas have enough resources in place to meet the requirements for 280 million electric vehicles. Regardless of Trump's executive order, plenty of risks for The Metals Company remain. For one, the international community hasn't yet endorsed deep-sea mining as acceptable. The company is still waiting -- as it has for several years -- for the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous organization established by the U.N., to approve seabed mining regulations. Unsurprisingly, Trump's enthusiasm for deep-sea mining has drawn pushback from China, which claims that the proposal violates international law. As such, his order could turn this into another front in his developing trade war. Assuming that the ISA comes down favorably on allowing deep-sea mining and that its proposed regulations are able to overcome international opposition, there's still the question of the actual business model: There's no guarantee that the company will be able to generate a profit from such operations. Trump's executive order certainly looks like a positive for The Metals Company, but savvy investors will understand that a lone statement out of Washington, D.C., doesn't categorically make it a great investment. There are plenty of questions remaining as to whether the company will be able to actually commence commercial operations, and, if it does, whether it can be a profitable endeavor. For these reasons, it's clear that only investors with extremely high thresholds for risk should consider investing in The Metals Company today. Before you buy stock in TMC The Metals Company, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and TMC The Metals Company 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 $598,818!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $666,416!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 872% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 160% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of April 28, 2025 Scott Levine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends MP Materials. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. President Trump Signed an Order That Could Send This Under-the-Radar Stock Soaring: Is it a Buy Now? was originally published by The Motley Fool
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Days After Trump Commits to Seabed Mining, Two Sides Face Off
Less than a week after President Trump signed an executive order to accelerate seabed mining, the U.S. government received its first permit application from the Metals Company, one of the most ardent proponents of the as yet unproven practice. On Tuesday, the company's chief executive, Gerard Barron, was also on hand in Washington, D.C., for a contentious hearing in front of Congress's natural resources committee. He likened Mr. Trump's move to a 'starting gun' in the race to extract minerals like cobalt and nickel from potato-size nodules lying in the frigid, pitch-black, two-and-a-half-mile-deep sands of the Pacific Ocean floor. Republican and Democratic committee members clashed over how much weight should be given to environmental concerns about the practice. The Trump administration has said it will consider issuing permits for mining in territorial U.S. waters and also in international waters. Other countries have condemned the United States for essentially circumventing international law by saying it would permit seabed mining in waters that nearly every other country considers to be governed by the International Seabed Authority, an independent organization. No commercial-scale seabed mining has ever taken place. Representative Jared Huffman of California who is also the committee's ranking Democrat, said the Metals Company and Mr. Trump were moving seabed mining forward in a 'reckless cowboy manner.' He and other Democrats questioned the business case for mining cobalt and nickel given that electric-vehicle manufacturers, once major buyers of the metals, were moving toward batteries that didn't use them. 'The industry's financial models are based on wildly optimistic assumptions and fail to reflect the volatility and reality of global mineral markets,' said Representative Maxine E. Dexter, Democrat of Oregon. The Metals Company sought to assure the committee that any damage to the seafloor would be far outweighed by potential job creation and access to minerals whose supply chains are currently dominated by China. The company says it has conducted a decade of expensive environmental studies that support its conclusions. Mr. Trump's order came after years of delays at the International Seabed Authority in setting up a regulatory framework for seabed mining. The authority, created decades ago under the auspices of the United Nations, is likely to miss another deadline this year to codify those rules. 'It took 14 years just to begin drafting a mining code,' Mr. Barron told the committee, calling it 'a deliberate strategy' to slow seabed mining. He also said a polymetallic nodule extracted by his company was presented to Mr. Trump recently, and he claimed it now sat on the president's desk in the Oval Office. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that nodules in a single swath of the Eastern Pacific, known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, contain more nickel, cobalt and manganese than all terrestrial reserves combined. That area, where the Metals Company is proposing to mine, is in the open ocean between Mexico and Hawaii and covers an area about half the size of the continental United States. The committee's chairman, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, said seabed mining was needed to get the United States out from under the 'supply chain yoke' of China, which currently processes a majority of the world's cobalt, much of its nickel and many other critical minerals, which include so-called rare earths. China recently imposed export restrictions on some rare-earth elements, leading to fears that American companies using them to make an array of advanced electronics would face shortages. The House committee also heard from Thomas Peacock, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has taken part in studies of seabed mining's effects on the seafloor, some of which were funded in part by the Metals Company. Dr. Peacock said that while there were potentially hundreds of unknown species in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone and that specific areas deserved to be cordoned off from mining, 'research indicates that some of the proposed impacts of nodule mining may not be as severe as speculated.' In particular, he downplayed the risks that mining could cause plumes of sand and debris that could affect life on the seafloor as well as higher in the open ocean where fish like tuna live and feed. The debris would be 'roughly the equivalent of a grain of sand in a fishbowl,' Dr. Peacock said. Sitting next to Mr. Barron was the chief executive of another prospective deep-sea miner, Impossible Metals. Unlike the Metals Company, which has extraction technology that resembles a vacuum attached to an autonomous vehicle that would trundle across the seafloor, sending up nodules to a ship through a pipe, Impossible Metals says it has a machine that will pick up nodules individually and without actually landing on the seafloor. 'Our underwater robots hover to collect the mineral-rich nodules from the seabed through an A.I.-driven selective harvesting,' Oliver Gunasekara, the chief executive of Impossible Metals, said. 'We pick up nodules individually avoiding all visible life, leaving 60 percent untouched.' The company has reapplied for an exploration permit off American Samoa in U.S. territorial waters. Mr. Gunasekara said that while an earlier application had been denied under the Biden administration, both American Samoa and Washington were under new leadership and he was confident of its approval.
Bloomberg
29-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Miner Applies to Exploit Deep Sea Under Controversial Trump Executive Order
The Metals Company submitted an application to mine critical minerals in the Pacific seabed in defiance of international regulators. Seabed miner The Metals Company said Tuesday it has submitted an application for a US license to mine an area of the Pacific Ocean administered by a United Nations-affiliated organization. The move sets up a showdown between the Trump administration and international regulators over control of minerals critical to the energy transition. Canadian-registered The Metals Company (TMC) said its US subsidiary has also filed two applications for US licenses to prospect for minerals in a vast stretch of the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico under the jurisdiction of the 169-member-nation International Seabed Authority (ISA).
Washington Post
29-04-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Canadian company turns to Trump for permission to mine international waters, bypassing a UN agency
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Canadian company announced Tuesday that its U.S. subsidiary submitted applications to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to mine the seafloor , sparking outrage by bypassing a U.N. agency that regulates deep international waters. The Metals Company said that it was seeking two exploration licenses and a commercial recovery permit, marking the first time a company applies to commercially mine the seabed. The filing is expected to spark a complex legal battle since the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority, a U.N. agency that regulates international deep-sea waters, has the power to authorize exploitation permits. 'Any commercial exploitation outside of national jurisdiction carried out without the authorization of ISA would constitute a violation of international law,' the authority said in late March after The Metals Company announced its intention to seek permission from the U.S. government to start deep-sea mining in international waters. There are currently no regulations in place to oversee such mining as scientists warn that extracting minerals from vital ecosystems that help regulate climate change could cause permanent damage. The filing comes less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order that directs the Secretary of Commerce to expedite the review and issuance of exploration and commercial recovery permits, among other things. 'With these applications, we are offering the United States a shovel-ready path to new and abundant supplies of nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese — critical metals for energy, infrastructure and defense,' Gerard Barron, chairman and CEO of The Metals Company, said in a statement. Environmentalists and activists decried the move, saying that ISA has the sole power to authorize exploitation permits. 'This unilateral American effort to carve up the Pacific Ocean already faces fierce international opposition,' said Ruth Ramos, Greenpeace's international senior campaigner. 'Governments around the world must now step up to defend international rules and cooperation against rogue deep-sea mining.' For years, members of the authority's council have debated how and if to allow deep-sea mining. So far, the authority has only issued exploration licenses, with most of the current exploratory activity concentrated in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which covers 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico. At least 17 of 31 licenses have been issued for this zone, with exploration occurring at depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000 meters). The International Seabed Authority was created in 1994 by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is ratified by more than 165 nations — but not the United States. The Metals Company has argued that the U.S. seabed mining code would allow it to start operations in international waters, since it's not a member of the authority and therefore not bound by its rules. 'After continuous delay at the international level, the United States now has a clear opportunity to reclaim its leadership role in the deep sea and set a global standard for responsible, science-based deep-seabed resource development,' Barron said. In late March, the Vancouver-based company announced that it would seek permission from the U.S. to start deep-sea mining in international waters to extract minerals used in electric car batteries and other green technology. The announcement was made just hours before the council of the ISA met on the last day of a two-week conference focused on how and whether to allow such mining. Scientists have said that a rush to collect minerals that take millions of years to form could unleash noise, light and smothering dust storms deep in the Earth's oceans. Mining companies have said that harvesting minerals from the seafloor instead of from land is cheaper and has less of an environmental impact. A spokesperson for the authority didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The authority has said that it has the sole legal mandate to regulate mineral-related activities in the international seabed. It noted that the international legal regime established by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea applies to all states, regardless of whether they are members or not.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Metals Company price target raised to $6.25 from $4.50 at Alliance Global
Alliance Global Partners analyst Jake Sekelsky raised the firm's price target on Metals Company (TMC) to $6.25 from $4.50 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. President Trump signed an Executive Order titled 'Unleashing America's Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,' which is a 'significant win' for Metals Company's new permitting pathway, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm expects government support to serve as a tailwind with respect to the company's recently announced shift in permitting strategy. It believes Metals is 'poised to play a key role in the onshoring of the complete critical minerals supply chain.' Discover outperforming stocks and invest smarter with Top Smart Score Stocks. Filter, analyze, and streamline your search for investment opportunities using Tipranks' Stock Screener. Published first on TheFly – the ultimate source for real-time, market-moving breaking financial news. Try Now>> See the top stocks recommended by analysts >> Read More on TMC: Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Metals Company welcomes Executive Order signed by Trump on critical minerals Nvidia Stock (NVDA) Tanks as Tariffs Destroy 'Visibility into Future Sales' Metals Company appoints Rutger Bosland as CIOTO Unusually active option classes on open April 14th Trump Trade: White House weighs fast tracking deep-sea mining
