American Resources Corporation Aktie

Okay. We are ready to get started, and welcome and thank you for joining us for our virtual Investor CEO Connect segment. And today, we are live. So my name is Jenene Thomas. I am CEO of JTCIR and I will be the moderator for today's event. We are very pleased to host American Resources Corporation, and the focus for today's event will be a shareholder and business update. And joining us this morning live are Mark Jensen, CEO Chief Executive Officer; and Mark LaVerghetta, Executive Vice President of American Resources. Welcome, gentlemen.

Thanks for having the phone.

Jenene, good to see you.

Always a pleasure. It's been a while, so we're happy to have you back. So for our audience, for today's CEO Connect segment, the American Resources leadership team will begin with a comprehensive corporate and shareholder update, including recent development and key strategic initiatives. And following their remarks, we will move into a moderated Q&A and open the floor to questions from our audience.

So before we get started, I just want to remind our audience that American Resources is publicly listed on NASDAQ and trades under the ticker AREC. And during today's discussion, the company will be making forward-looking statements. And I encourage everyone to view the company's website at americanresourcescorp.com or the SEC's website for their latest filings and information.

All right. Mark Jensen, we're going to dive right in. I will turn it to you to kick things off.

Excellent. Thanks, Jenene, and I appreciate it. And good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for taking your time and continued engagement with American Resources. Today is an important one. as it reflects not just where we are today, but the transformation that we have laid out and what we have executed on over the past several years to position the company for long-term growth within 1 of the most critical supply chains globally.

As you may know, American Resources historically was rooted in the metallurgical coal industry, of which we built through a series of acquired assets mostly out of bankruptcies where we had to clean up a lot of legacy liabilities and angry industry participants from the bankruptcies, which we acquired the assets. We applaud the fact that we cleaned up over 7,000 acres of land and cleaned up over $20 million of legacy environmental liabilities from these bankrupt assets that we acquired.

Over the past several years, we're thankful for the successes we have had and also the direction we have taken to drive the direction of the entity to high-value applications and solutions for our shareholders, for our stakeholders and for our country. The direction has resulted in a significant deconsolidation across our platform and operations, corporate structure and balance sheet for American Resources to evolve into a comprehensive solution platform from around commodity sourcing and trading within the rare than critical minerals supply. This transformation has been foundational.

We have simplified our structure, separated legacy business lines and aligned our business around clear objectives to play a central role in addressing the growing imbalance between supply and demand for critical minerals across the United States Allied Nations in a globally cost competitive commodity driven.

What I'd like to emphasize is the need for cost competitiveness, the ability to not only source material, but also process that material in a globally competitive environment, not for next year, but over the next few decades. Today, the imbalance is no longer theoretical. The matter of economic security national defense and industrial competitiveness. The ability to source, process and refine and deliver critical minerals domestically is rapidly becoming one of the most important strategic priorities for governments and industries alike.

We believe American Resources is uniquely positioned to help catalyze the supply chain development. The team at American Resources has acquired, developed and run mining operations over the last 20 years, in a very competitive and challenging industry, one that had to compete globally, otherwise, you did not have. The experience we believe, puts us at a completely different level to those entering the space that lack the cost-driven philosophy, and we believe we also believe we are well suited to globally expand into the feedstock aggregation and development marketplace in the critical mineral sector.

We didn't jump into this industry chasing money or hype, we enter the space because we build a solution that works today, works tomorrow and over the next few decades. Our focus is to make sure the rarest and critical minerals that -- our focus is to make sure that rare and critical minerals are no longer rare and no longer critical. We will do that because of our capabilities and the technology we have that make them abundantly available in the United States as well as globally through domestic and for deployment of technology as well as development of aggregation of feedstocks.

Through our platform and our refining partnership with ReElement Technologies, we are able to connect upstream resource development with downstream demand by leveraging high-performance multi-element separation and purification platform that is capable of processing diverse feedstock into ultra-pure critical minerals globally and abroad. Also enables us at American resources to focus on the feedstock aggregation and leverage our balance sheet and utilize our strength of balance sheet to move forward on evaluating opportunities globally that can eat into the domestic supply chain.

This capability allows us to operate as a true conduit within the ecosystem, aggregating and conditioning materials for both conventional and unconventional sources, including both recycled inputs and aligning growing demand across the defense, technology and electrification markets. At the same time, American Resources was significantly strengthened financial position. While we have not filed our 10-K, we expect it to reflect a materially improved balance sheet, including over $75 million in cash and unrestricted short-term investments with minimal debt.

Equally important, the consolidation of both our legacy cooperations and ReElement will allow us to present a cleaner, more focused financial profile, one that better reflects our current business and strategic direction. The deconsolidation of our businesses also enables the businesses to drive in the direction of their Board and their governance structures as well as recruit the necessary team members to expand each of the businesses independently.

We look forward -- looking forward, our strategy remains centered on a clear set of priorities. We are expanding global feedstock sourcing to support refining demand through ReElement's platform. We are advancing processing and conditioning capabilities for both our unconventional and conventional materials. Also through Electrified Materials, our fully owned subsidiary, we are building leading recycling and preprocessing platforms for critical mineral and metal inputs, including meets, batteries and defense materials.

We are also focused on aligning these upstream and midstream capabilities with rapidly evolving domestic and allied manufacturing base. while maintaining a disciplined low-cost operating model that prioritizes capital efficiency and margin expansion.

From a capital allocation perspective, we will continue to take a disciplined approach to developing and monetizing shareholder value, whether through incubation and growth of strategic assets or through distribution and potential share repurchases when appropriate. We are evaluating multiple opportunities to deploy our capital into strategically attractive opportunities. Those opportunities will include feedstock aggregation that can feed into the ReElement Technologies platform to be delivered to domestic customers, including opportunities we're evaluating in Africa, in Southeast Asia and throughout the world that we can help develop and help feed into the chain.

Ultimately, our objective is to build a scalable, capital-efficient platform that plays a meaningful role in securing critical mineral supply chains while delivering long-term value to our shareholders. Today, we will walk through this transformation in more detail, provide additional context on our priorities to outline the key we are focused as we continue to scale.

With that, let's get started. We'll open it up to you Jenene.

Excellent. All right. So we are going to open up to Q&A. So if you do have a question for the team, you can click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, type in your question, and we will get to as many as time allows. So it seems like we have quite a bit of time, so we'll get started.

Mark, while the audience is typing in their question, I'll just start off to get things rolling, okay?

Sounds great.

All right. Perfect. So over the past several years, American Resources has undergone a significant transformation. We've had you on this platform for more than 5 years. We've seen it. I've seen it with my own eyes. Can you walk us how through the decantation because I'm sorry. I'm having a little bit of an issue. So deconsolidation of legacy cooperations and ReElement has reshaped the company's financial profile and strategic focus going forward. Sorry for getting so tongue-tied.

Yes. No, I appreciate that. There's been an objective we set out over the last couple of years. So this is not a new development. We wanted to deconsolidate this business based on the developments we had. If you look back 10 years ago, we didn't build -- we didn't develop the ReElement platform chasing the rare space. We actually built it for a very specific reason.

We acquired 10 or 8 companies, 5 amount of bankruptcy and the only liability we assumed is the environmental. And so we developed this technology to clean up those environmental liabilities and create a monetizable value versus dumping acid in rivers, which is what the legacy industry does, we wanted to develop new innovations and new technology to treat that environmental liability differently. And thankfully, that led to the development of ReElement, which ultimately ReElement came significantly bigger than the parent.

So what our focus, what we set out 3 years ago was, was to set the direction of the deconsolidation of spinning off the coal business, spinning off ReElement to be separate businesses with separate corporate governance to run independently and we're accomplishing that. We're thankful where we're at today. We have separate teams. The teams are realigning to be laser-focused within their operational objective. And we're focused on now growing those businesses to execute upon the broad mission.

What that enables American Resources to do is to be extremely well positioned to utilize our skill sets, which is acquiring assets, understanding mining operations, understanding feedstock aggregation and commodities to be the most efficient player. We don't -- we're not a mine to magnet story like everybody else in the world. We think that's a fallacy. Mine to magnet means you're tied to one mine. And if that mine produces low-quality product and is low margin, you're not going to be successful. And we see that in the industry today.

What we're focused on at American Resources taking stakes and investing in the best-in-class assets, Ione Clay, and other assets can be developed that have these high-value critical minerals that are low cost and diversified for our customer base to see then ultimately monetize those streams and in partnership with ReElement through the refining platform to be turned into materials that can be used today.

And we're excited about what we've been able to accomplish and the efforts of a small team, not everything is always done perfectly, but we work really hard to accomplish that. We don't sit back and try to hit the easy button. The easy button leads to high cost and ultimately failure. And what we focus on is doing it the right way and fighting the tough fight, 1 for our shareholders and 2 for our country. So we're thankful that the deconsolidation is taking place.

One thing to add, Jenene to, I mean, we've set out on a multi-quarter, multiyear restructuring operation or mandate that we've put in a couple of years ago. We've executed upon that plan. And during that, we've been able to commercialize and leverage a multimineral multi-feedstock refining platform, which has really enabled us to look through a very unique lens matching supply and demand. These markets, 2 things. These markets have by design been made very opaque by actually producing high purity elements for technology industries, defense industries, et cetera, has enabled us to identify multiple feedstock sources and match that with downstream customers. So that puts us in a really unique position.

And then secondly, this is one of the most dynamic industries that I think we've ever seen, been around for the dot-com era. I mean this industry is moving exceptionally fast from a national security, economic security mandate, given geopolitics, given the reindustrialization of the United States of America, our trade partners, et cetera, and the positioning that the current administration and the past administrations are taking, where it's not a choice, it's a need for our nation. But we don't tie ourselves to solely government or government subsidies and handout because of what Mark said in his opening statement, we viewed the world through a very unique lens of matching clarity of supply and demand, production of high-purity product, scalability, innovation and lastly, cost competitiveness.

All right. We'll start with the questions from our audience. When can we expect a firm time line for the ReElement IPO, the company has previously provided estimated dates that were later delayed, what specifically is causing the repeated pushbacks.

Yes. I mean I think it's -- timing of an IPO is obviously quite important. We've had multiple stack offers that are of extremely attractive values for ReElement. We have a phenomenal private equity investor ReElement that has funded providing capital to fully build out the Marion facilities along with our internal capital that we have. And so what we want to focus on is getting Marion up and running.

Marion up and running is the most critical aspect, not only for our business but also for our country given the capacities and the magnitude of materials that we can produce out of Marion with 4 different production lines, we need to get those production lines up and running. But while at the same point, we are working on a process for ReElement. We've had offers to acquire the business. We've had offers to merge with facts. We have numerous investment banks that are interested in that, something we look to evaluate, and we're pushing forward on it though.

We have -- the audits are being complete for ReElement. We have -- we've engaged our auditor. They're doing a good job with that. And so preparing all the necessary steps to do it right. This is, I would say, a once in a lifetime opportunity that what we've created at ReElement and what we spun out of American Resources and we want to make sure that it's executed in the proper way, but we still are pushing forward on that on a daily basis and evaluating the landscape. I mean, right now, it's choppy market, choppy market conditions. And at the end of the day, what we're really focused on is generating cash flow and getting the business scaled up and getting the Marion production running here this summer.

One thing to add to -- I've said this numerous times publicly to our investor base. ReElement is a really unique asset. It's been a private equity story. We knew that. We've taken some, I would say, unconventional steps distributed to our underlying shareholders at the end of '24. But we knew it was a private ad story. We knew we were early in the supply chain. We knew we had to be early in the supply chain. We were standing up innovative technology.

So the IPO process, whether it's an IPO process, a direct list, despec other M&A opportunities, we evaluate that on a daily basis. But -- and I get a lot of questions from shareholders always starting with when, when, when are you going to IPO or when we're going to have this. And we've always said this is a -- this is an exercise of value creation and value discovery, not an exercise of speed. And ReElement being private right now has bode very well for all of our investors. American Resources being a stakeholder and a shareholder in ReElement as well.

We've raised private equity capital at an attractive valuation, given what Mark just said about the standup of Marion, our 4 production lines, you can go back to our previous press releases on an update of the scale-up of Marion, it will be stage gated sequential on multiple production lines, germanium, 2 MREC lines, hard product line to go back to our press release. As we continue to stand those up and the market continues to see that we are doing this, doing it in large scale, doing it cost effectively.

The value should translate for ReElement and than subsequently American resources as well. So we feel really good about where we're positioned from creating value, and we're going to take the appropriate steps to deliver that value. to our American Resources shareholders, and we believe the distribution and dividend that we've provided our shareholders to participate that over the next several months or years is going to be really attractive and could be historic.

Yes. And then I would also add that part of that timing is honestly it's predicated by the corporate governance of ReElement, no different than American infrastructure, which has merged with Wilcox, they have separate governance, they have separate boards. They will make that decision. And that's part of why we spun them off and so that the Board of those independent companies can make run and corporate governance and make the correct decisions by the shareholders for those entities?

Okay. Our next question -- and Mark, I'm going to ask the questions that you may have already answered, but we did -- I did see kind of an uptick in the audience like as you were speaking. So some people may have missed something. So I just wanted to give everyone a chance to hear everything. My next question, why is the company delayed filing its annual results? And when do you expect the filing to be completed?

Yes. So we switched auditors for this 10-K. They're doing a phenomenal job, extremely detailed. And so there's no issues. I don't think with any of the preformations, any of the numbers or anything to that extent. I think they're working through the final deconsolidation of determining which states everything else on that front given the separate corporate governance and all that, we -- I know our CFO and finance team is working with our auditors on a daily basis.

I think we're both -- it's a matter of time. And when you switch auditors, they have to go back and do their work and the group that we brought in is doing a phenomenal job at that. But we hope to get an update on that shortly and very shortly. It's a desire, but we'll update the shareholders on that. I know they're close, just takes a lot of time when you switch auditors. And then on top of that, working through deconsolidation of these entities, it's a lot of moving parts, but it's good for the long term.

Great. Right. What differentiates you and ReElement from other players in the rare earth space, particularly when it comes to cost structure, scalability and an environmental footprint.

Yes. I mean I'll address it from American Resources as well as separately relevant. But one, I think as I stated earlier, we didn't enter into the rare space business school, right? There's a lot of -- I mean how many mine to magnets stories have been heard about in the last few weeks or months or years and/or prior during the last administration, the battery space, there is millions of people that jumped into the space and dove into it.

We entered the space because we had something extremely unique. We had a technology that reshapes the landscape and enables global competitiveness. That's what's unique about why we entered this space. We built the technology to clean up environmental liabilities 10 years ago or over 10 years ago now today when we spin on this journey. So what makes us unique is, one, American Resource as a team that has acquired assets evaluated thousands of assets, chose best-in-class that could be operated cost competitively and fit the need of the market.

Now we did that in the coal industry. We acquired at nameplate assets that could be cleaned up. There were diamonds in rough. In the critical mineral space, what American Resource focused on is partnering with best-in-class on both recycled as well as on virgin ore and understanding what makes a mine viable. And we have great partners in Africa. We've identified a few different sources there. We have great partners in Southeast Asia. We've identified some really good sources there. We hope to deploy our capital to those projects. We get those projects operating in the most cost competitive way.

Understanding landscape. Understanding that, today, you can compete, right? Prices are really high. We don't think prices are going to stay high, though. We think prices are going to come down. We hope they come down. It's good for the country, that's good for the industry. And we -- because of our unique technology and our unique skill sets of evaluating operations, we believe we will help drive costs lower and enable the industry to be more competitive.

And then on the ReElement perspective, we -- it's a new technology. It's a new -- it's an innovation that makes the industry better. We can deploy rapidly overseas, we can build modular scalable facilities. We're not making one bet based on one feedstock. Solvent extraction is not flexible. It's not very cost effective in the long term, and it's very hard to maintain. You see it. You see it all throughout the world. What we've built is a platform technology that can be deployed towards multiple feedstocks, multiple product outputs that can compete on the global cost curve.

And right now, at ReElement, we're brute-force expanding, expanding as fast as we possibly can to feed the needs of the current market, so we're producing this year for the defense industrial base as well as for our commercial partners while then focused on optimizing cost structure and continually driving down costs so that we could help drive down prices in the global marketplace and ultimately go head-to-head against the gorilla in the space, which we all know who it is, the country that operates today, we want to compete with them, not just by providing products that they provide, but by providing products that they provide at the same cost structure or better.

Okay. Our next question, when will the Marion plant be fully operational.

Yes. That's a great question. Fully operational. That's a -- that's a loaded question. We have -- so Phase 1 is 4 production lines. The goal is to have all 4 of those production lines up and running this year with the first production starting in July, August time frame. We're on track to do that. The team is doing a phenomenal job of ReElement. The leadership team there and the Board is driving the company to make sure we don't go slow. We get pushed daily from our customer base to make sure we scale and we grow as fast as we possibly can.

Now fully operational, though, Phase II, Phase III, Phase I, first 4 production lines are more rare, it's critical mineral centric. I would say probably the next production line we're evaluating is on the battery space given the partnership with Electrified Materials, our wholly owned subsidiary, which is also, as we publicly disclosed is going through its own separate capital raise and govern it setting up its own governance team. It's extremely well positioned to do really well in the battery space for production of lithium carbonate from LFP batteries, we're one of the few players that can go all the way through a circular economy.

So fully operational, I don't think I can give an answer to that because we don't know where we stop. Our goal is to continue to expand. Our Phase 1 uses about 160,000 square feet of our 400,000 square foot facility. We also have the ability to expand that is a 42-acre campus. So the Board at ReElement will make that decision. But when we fully continue to scale. We also have other partnerships we're developing in the United States as well as globally of deploying our technology to other sites to compete and the Board at ReElement will dictate when we bring those online.

What is American Resources' current ownership share of ReElement.

Yes. It's approximately 17% right now based on the financing that we closed on with TEP.

Okay. Do you think that your technology with ReElement is being appreciated by the Rare Earth world and will be able to replace the old processing process quickly.

Appreciated by the legacy industry, no, no, it's not appreciated. The legacy industry doesn't want us to survive. When Marion comes online, we're going to show case a better way of doing things. I think from the mining side, yes, very much so. We have a number of really strong mining partners that can -- that American Resource is looking at investing in as it's mandating charter from the Board. but the industry doesn't want ReElement to win. They don't want ReElement to be successful because they show cases of lower cost, better way of doing things.

That's the unfortunate nature when you're innovating and you're developing technology that leapfrogs the legacy technology, the legacy producers will do everything they can, they altered any way they can to try to distract the market from their own inadequacies versus focusing on how to get better. We're focused on how to get better every day. and keeping our heads down blinders on driving in the direction of producing product for our customers.

Next question, if possible, please talk about the cash versus debt position at American Resources.

Yes. minimal debt, about $75 million of cash on the books to date or as of December 30. Obviously, that will be in the 10-K when it's filed but a very, very strong cash and short-term investments, nonrestricted short-term investments, I should say, just because obviously deploying our capital to earn the highest interest rate we can. But it's a really strong balance sheet. And we're -- the Board of American Resources and the team at American Resources is evaluating multiple opportunities to deploy that capital within the critical minerals space on feedstock aggregation as well as commodity trading.

Okay. Can you confirm that the Mitsubishi partnership is currently moving from the elevation phase into commercial site selection for re elements, refining technology. And will this involve a joint venture model that accelerates the ReElement spin-offs valuation?

Yes. I mean I think Mitsubishi Materials is a phenomenal partner for ReElement. The teams are working daily or weekly on that. I can't give continue time lines on it, but it's moving forward aggressively and they have been phenomenal partners to date. Our team are ReElement has been over there multiple times. They've been over to our facilities multiple times, which enabled the joint venture to be set up and the relationship to be set up towards that today. Just doing that due diligence that's required in such a large partnership like this one, but we're thankful for having them as partners at ReElement and where that's going. I can't give concrete time lines on it, but we'll update shareholders as we do.

Yes. I think one thing to add there, too, Jenene, is as you look at the overall platform, and again, this is more specific to ReElement, but given the attributes of what we can do to separate purify and refine high-purity rare and critical elements. We become very -- we want to be very collaborative and it showcases the value from an economic trade perspective between nations, we obviously have a really good partnership with POSCO International out of South Korea. And now Mitsubishi Materials out of Japan, we're -- it underlines and showcases the value of the platform and how we can collaborate to bring value to the domestic and allied markets.

Next question, have they used the $5 million feedstock credit line from Old National Bank? What is the actual purpose of that credit line?

Yes. I mean the $5 million credit line is exactly for that to evaluate feedstock versus commodity -- trading of commodities. We're evaluating multiple opportunities in the Southeast Asia over the next 60 days evaluating opportunities there for American resources that we can deploy our capital to the credit line as well.

Given the strength of our balance sheet, putting credit lines and partnerships in place is really important as we continue to scale as you understand commodities and the opportunity to acquire these feedstocks with partners that then we can monetize through the ReElement partnership, it's important to set up these agreements now as we continue to grow them. And given the strength of our balance sheet, was an opportunity time to set that up.

I don't think we've deployed any of it yet where we have offers out there for a couple of different feedstocks that could be deployed off the credit line or off the cash on the balance sheet.

I think what is important to touch upon too from the investor base here, like I mentioned earlier, a very dynamic marketplace. And then having the commodity backgrounds, the lens that we look through the world through matching supply and demand the attributes of the refining platform, every ReElement enables us to be very versatile across the periodic table of rare earth and critical minerals.

For example, a lot of people, as Mark stated, focused on this mine to magnet, 2 magnet elements that are very prominent in front of magnets are neodymium, praseodymium, and we view them as higher volume, lower value. And accordingly, a lot of people set up the their production around a mine, a specific feedstock to focus on specific elements where we're -- the unique thing about us is we're very versatile.

We ran lithium carbonate for battery when lithium was higher. We validated that through the cathode market, validated production flow sheets, magnet material we've done as well, put us in a really good position to win export controls, trade wars, tariffs, et cetera, started to occur over the past year, 18 months. we got a lot of inbound asking, can you do things like yttrium, gadolinium, germanium, things that are a very high urgency for the manufacturing base the technology and defense manufacturing base specifically.

And quite frankly, at the time when we were approached, the answer was we haven't done a lot of work on those, but we believe we can, let us start doing the work. And that's been done over the past year, let's just say. And now we continue to work through, again, validating operational protocols and flow sheets, getting long-term contracts from the manufacturing base as it continues to get stood up here and grows. So it's working congruently with the manufacturing base and the market or intermediaries. A lot of times, the products that we make don't go to OEMs, they go to other material manufacturers that then go into other products.

So piecing that all together for a lot of different elements and a lot of different specifications is complex. We've been able to be -- we've been afforded the opportunity to be able to do that over the past few years.

Next question, as you build out capacity, how are you thinking about strategic partnerships or offtake agreements? And are you seeing increasing demand from OEMs, battery manufacturers or defense-related customers.

Yes to all of the above. Great question though. So from American Resources position, we are targeting feedstocks that meet the needs of the industry today where we see the most important opportunities. So where American Resources, I'll be in Malaysia evaluating [indiscernible] clay mines as well as in other regions of Southeast Asia that have really attractive feedstock potential, meaning they have a lot of yttrium, gadolinium, summarium, dysprosium, terbium which are products that ReElement can produce today. So those are -- and those are necessarily needed within the supply chain. So American Resources looking at deploying capital to take a, call it almost a governance stake in the feedstocks and the opportunities to get these feedstocks into the ecosystem.

And then speaking for ReElement as a member of the team, the focus of the Board of ReElement is around building key production lines to meet the needs today. So first production line coming online as germanium and gallium, second production line is for Magna recycling, third production line and fourth production line are for mixture of carbonate, which are from Iona clays as well as from secondary lines such as [indiscernible] cobalt recycling as well as thermal heat barriers, solitarium, gadolinium and other products, zirconium that come out of those products.

So we're building those key production lines based on the market needs today. And then we can either expand those production lines or build additional production lines for other products such as fifth production line we're evaluating would be with the impermanent from LFP batteries because there's the abundance of them, and we're one of the few players in the industry that can do it cost effectively, very cost effectively today.

And Electrified Materials are wholly own subsidiary is doing a great job of aggregating end-of-life batteries that is stockpiling on its lease at the 135-acre property that is controlled by Electrified Materials today. So we're building those out based on market demand, based on need, as I said, brute force expanding and both companies based on their separate governance structures are focused on those directions to meet the needs of the industry today. Germanium and gallium are extremely important, really focused on developing other feedstock relationships, American Resources evaluating deploying capital to a couple of different projects that can help unlock further feedstock that is desperately needed right now for the customer base.

But the -- from the ReElement side of it is where ultimately the customers get signed because that's where the final products are produced and those conversations are going extremely well. A number of contracts signed and ReElement will disclose that when it feels comfortable.

Okay. With increasing government focus on restoring critical mineral supply chains, how are you positioned to benefit from the federal programs, grants or policy incentives such as the Defense Production Act or IRA-related initiatives.

Yes. One thing I'd like to do is applaud the current administration. I never -- we had public interactions with them. We have worked with them as publicly disclosed. But they're focused on solving this problem for our country. And they're drinking from a fire hose. And so we applaud their efforts.

We can't speak to specific capital to date. ReElement and the Board of ReElement will make the decision when it applies for and how it moves forward on capital strategy. Thankfully, the company is in a strong financial position today. and as well as American Resources is in a strong financial position today. But the -- we do applaud the efforts of the government to get ahead of this problem that we have with the nation given China took these technologies from our country 30 years ago, and they're focused on -- laser focused on bringing it back now, and we appreciate that.

I think one thing that's unique to -- just to touch upon Mark's comments, and we do interact regularly with the Gov they are working extremely hard to address a lot of these challenges. From American Resources and ReElement standpoint, we've been able to advance a platform that opens up the aperture opens up the pressure point, the choke point in the supply chain through refining and then with American Resources, separate business lines, separate company, separate mandate is looking at feedstock aggregations.

Multimineral multi-feedstock refining platform means multiminerals and multi-feedstock. They come from a variety of sources, unconventional recycled and mind. And a lot of things that are mind here, we don't have elements abundantly inherent within our borders. So this is all hands on deck approach and how we collaborate. From our collective standpoint, we want to be good partners with the government, whether that's using -- and we're very sensitive to this. We're all taxpayers here. What's the best use of taxpayer capital. I think what's unique about us is what Mark started this, we want to be cost competitive, meaning we don't need to spend taxpayer money. And that's a unique position for our entire platform.

I think we've put together and we view the supply chain through the refining lens that we have and being able to sequence all of this stuff very cost competitively. And our focus is being good partners for the government to help address some of these challenges. But we're not coming hat in hand saying, "You need to subsidize us. You don't need to spend hard earned taxpayer money to stand us up and make it work. Can the government catalyze businesses and entities? Absolutely. I think you've seen that, and we applaud the government for being able to do that. But I think that's one of the unique things about our platform as well is that we're not dependent on the taxpayer to stand this up, bails out and make it sustainable.

We build businesses, separate to these businesses so they have their own financial structure. They have their own corporate governance. They have their own ability to drive forward in a low-cost manner. And that's -- we think that's important for the long-term survivability of our businesses and ability to thrive in any market environment.

Our next question, will EMCO compete with Mitsubishi to supply feedstock and how can they both exist in this space.

Yes, that's a good question. I mean so and actually a really good question. So part of why we also separated all of our businesses, right? You eat what you kill. That's our philosophy as a company. Nothing is handed to us. Nothing has been handed to us to date. When we started these businesses when became entrepreneurs ourselves. We did it with our own capital. We didn't come for money. So you had to eat what you killed and the businesses are set up to do that as well.

So EMCO will -- I mean, ReElement doesn't own EMCO, that's totally separate businesses. And the reason for that is ReElement will partner with all feedstock providers to it. That's what the Board mandated -- the -- so the businesses -- so EMCO has to compete and provide a cost-effective solution where they both can make money. So it's a good business relationship. No different than if Mitsubishi can provide product to ReElement, that's awesome. That's what we want. That's the relationship. There's no shortage of how much ReElement can process.

We can build production lines very quickly, especially with Marion coming online. Then it's all the infrastructure is there, which is about half of your CapEx, adding production lines 10% of the overall cost of the facility and depending on the size of that, obviously, I'm giving broad-based statements. But the ability to add these different production lines to scale production, volume matters in the commodity world. And so having that additional volume just makes us better.

And so the -- I don't think ReElement is going to turn down material -- definitely will turn down materials from Mitsubishi Materials as a phenomenal relationship in the U.S. as well as in Japan. But then also, it will just -- ReElement would be grateful to continue to expand based on feedstock aggregation and having more feedstock coming in the door.

Yes, I think what I'd add, recycling is very localized, very fragmented and logistics matter. Having modular scalable refining enables us to co-locate. So it makes a lot of sense to partner with a company like Mitsubishi to help them fulfill their mission and mandate and goals. EMCO has its own mandate and goals. And there is some overlap, yet there's a lot of synergies as well. You could say, "Oh, there's rare earth elements in an EV", but you don't put an EV into our chromatography columns. It has to be broken up, broken down, battery, magnet material and coming out of a wide variety of applications power tools, defense technologies, hard disk drives, et cetera, all over the place.

And we see recycled feedstocks in so many different forms. It's why it's not a focus of ReElement at its foundation, ReElement is separation purification, American Resources has its mandate around preprocessing and aggregation and supply of feedstock and matching it with demand. Some unconventional, some recycled, obviously, EMCO focusing on recycled, but there is more than enough material to aggregate, pre-process and refine for -- and a lot of synergies to be had between this great partnership we have with them.

And I'd say EMCO was doing a phenomenal job. Chris [indiscernible] came on board as the CEO and working with our partnership with Black Eon. They're just -- they're out there running their use. It's an aggregation name and then setting up the right long-term partnerships. And given we have a full circular solution, it positions hence really well to thrive on aggregating end of byproducts and cost effectively getting them into the supply chain.

All right. We have time for a few more questions before closing remarks here, guys. And we're action packed here with the question. So what can you share about ReElement/American resources, relationships and success in bridging the critical metals gap ranging from wars in the Middle East and Ukraine as well as AI data centers.

Yes. What I'll say is war in Ukraine, war in Iran, data centers, technology, electrification, all need critical minerals. From defense applications to commercial applications, we're in a growth industry. Now what we're excited about is the Board for American Resources has mandated the focus on aggregation of the feedstock, investing in the feedstocks of best-in-class feedstock, both recycled and [indiscernible].

Now why is it able to do that really, really well is because it has a relationship. It has a commercial relationship with ReElement. ReElement can refine all those materials from antimony to germanium, to gallium to the -- all these different products from the Magna materials to the battery applications, ReElement can refine those. And so it gives a broad breadth of a broad reach that American Resources can target best-in-class feedstocks and invest investment-class feedstock to supply the industry in the base. And that relationship puts American resources in a really strong spot because it has that full life cycle relationship in place that it can make sure these products get all the way through to final product.

Okay. Can you provide any granularity or any current government grants or funding mechanisms that you're applying for? If you can't go into those details, can you confirm if you are or are continuing to explore additional funding opportunities through the government.

I mean you can read what the government is doing, they're doing -- they're out there. They're working hard. They're putting out different programs through DOE or Department of War. We want to continue to collaborate with them. We want to continue to work with them. We think they're doing great things. And we'll evaluate the opportunities they present and we'll apply for a certain month. I won't get into detail into which ones or what we're working through.

But we appreciate what they're doing and how they're doing it. We actually love -- as a taxpayer, you have to love their approach. They're not just giving away money. They're looking at investing money to make sure that taxpayers are done right. And we appreciate that. We think that's a smart move. I think it's good for our country. We think it's good as taxpayers. And we'll evaluate the opportunity they present. Do we take government capital, we'll see. We -- but we want that strong relationship and collaboration because we know that they're working really hard and they're grinding away daily at all hours and as are we.

Okay. Next question is aside from the market's perception of the late 10-K. Are there any other negative impacts that the company shareholders can expect?

I mean yes, the auditors are working really hard. They want to get it filed, too. And -- but what we're excited about is the strength of the balance sheet. We have a really low cost overhead at American Resources today. And we have a really, really strong cash balance sheet that liquid balance sheet that we can deploy that capital for the right opportunities. We're looking for the most accretive opportunities for our shareholders based on the Board's direction.

We had a shareholder vote yesterday. Marc LaBerge joined our Board, which we're excited about. Courtenay, Josh and Gerardine are still on the Board and they're setting the direction for American Resource on where to deploy that capital in the most accretive way for our shareholders, but also doing right by our country. We feel that's really important.

You recently updated on x of the strong flow of expired lithium batteries and Electrified Materials material storage. Is there an update on the level of expansion that Electrified materials has completed capacity-wise and if there's any additional milestones, it is targeting over time.

Yes. I mean given props to Chris, this leadership at Electrified materials, I mean he's drinking from a fire hose, but he's sitting after it. He's doing an awesome job, [ Black Ion ] on the team, awesome partners. We're getting batteries small throughout the world that we're stockpiling today. We have all the permits to do that. So we're excited about that. We'll start processing those lithium prices are super strong right now. In our eyes, I guess the industry probably doesn't think so. But at $25 a kilogram or $24 a kilogram, that's a really attractive price for the market.

We don't think it goes much higher. Margins for EMCO and margins for ReElement at those prices are really attractive. There's no limits to the capacity. I mean Chris and team are out there trying to put together as many deals as they can to get as much feedstock in the door as we possibly can and setting up really good structures to do that. I mean there's -- on LFP people get paid tipping fees. EMCO is getting paid tipping fees now. And that's important. We shipped if everybody is getting paid to take these batteries just because we can monetize them profitably, it doesn't mean we should take them for free.

So now we've taken for free, and now we're also getting paid to take them, and then we can turn them into real value. That's the uniqueness of having the relationships and the structure that we created. It enables us to surcharge the overall supply chain and keep costs low.

Yes. One thing to add, too, when you look at, you've seen failures in the battery recycling space. some recently actually. From Electrified Materials perspective, the use of capital, use of proceeds is super accretive because we don't have to develop a lot of times when the recycling. Recycling usually starts with collection and aggregation. The unique thing about how we built Electrified Materials is we started and we've unlocked closed loop refining solutions, leveraging what ReElement brings to the game allows us to acquire and aggregate end-of-life off-markespec recycled inputs that we can cost-effectively bring back the manufacturing high-purity grade.

So a lot of stuff like behind the scenes, Electrified Materials have been benefiting from just stuff falling when it's lap. And now we're at a point in time where we can get more aggressive in the supply chain grow that capacity, continue to build it behind the scenes create what we think is attractive value, put it in a public vehicle is our goal for our investors, we think it would be at an attractive valuation, especially considering comparison to peer valuations and letting it grow because we don't have to develop in R&D for refining or close the loop. We get to leverage our massive industrial and asset base that we've put together over the past decade.

So the use of capital that we spend for EMCO is highly accretive because we're putting it to the preprocessing side of end-of-life for cycled inputs that can feed into and support re elements and American Resources aggregation of feedstock platform that could then refine it, close the loop, keep these things here domestically as our supply [indiscernible].

Okay. I think we have time one more question. What do you think will be the concrete opportunity for American Resources' share price to drive sustainable gains?

One, I mean its ownership I think when -- I mean, based on the offers we've had to take ReElement public, which we're not ready yet. That will be a summer thing. We will provide -- we think that drives tremendous value to American Resources. But most importantly, deploying its capital to opportunistic opportunities. When we started announcing some of these relationships like we have -- just today, American Resources sourced tungsten that it can not only trade but also ReElement could refine through the relationship they have. That unions a really needed product right now. We can solve that.

When we're confident in American Resources, we can source that through our relationships and through some of our previous announcements we've made already. Some of the Ionis we're looking at, I'll be visiting a 6 mine complex that we look to build a concentration plant with partners. We're super excited about that. We think [indiscernible], especially in Southeast Asia are the most attractive feedstock for the rare space. American Resources is putting a huge emphasis on that and hence I'll be traveling over there. I want to put eyes on it, make sure it's done right, make sure it's done from a compliance perspective, correct?

But that's -- we do think that will drive tremendous value. I think EMCO is going to drive tremendous value. We're beating up financing there right now. The business is doing really well. Chris has just been a phenomenal hire we are looking at still recruiting a CEO for American Resources. I would step up the Executive Chairman. That is the goal of the business looking for a commodity-driven partner, and we're excited about that. We're excited about the board we have and help that they're putting forth on that as well.

But I think that -- I think execution of the plan when we said we're going to do, we said we're going to spend these businesses out and deconsolidate them. We've done that. We said we're going to position the company for long-term growth, the balance sheet. We've accomplished that. Now it's executing upon the strategy and continue to build out the team at American Resources to be able to drive this commodity-driven platform. But finding somebody that is laser-focused on cost is us, it's hard. I mean it's -- the Board is helping accomplish that right now, and we're excited for the efforts of the Board and the team.

Yes. I mean I think, again, forward-looking statements here, but we sit in a pretty good position. We're excited about it. We're excited about it. as operators, shareholders and for all of our shareholders. I think when you look at going back to what I previously said, too, is this is an exercise of value discovery and creation, leveraging what ReElement does very uniquely in the supply chain. Mark just said it, some of the offers that we're seeing currently to raise capital, to IPO, to de-SPAC, things like that are very attractive. So if you look at it from that way, we don't think that the stake that American Resources owns isn't even being reflected in the current share price.

And then in that case, you're getting Electrified Materials for free or you could look at it vice versa that you're getting ReElement for free because American resources being valued somewhere close to where we think Electrified Materials is going to be valued in a public market. Again, forward-looking statement disclosures, et cetera, but that all has to come down to our execution and we're comfortable where we sit there. And then from that aspect, we have a lot of good optionality around capital deployment, distribution of value back to our shareholders in the form of special dividends, share repurchase things like that. And if we continue to execute and stand up, Marion, again, for Reelement, primary focus right now, that's just going to translate into more value for ReElement, more value for American resources, et cetera, which benefits all of our shareholders. So we're excited.

Yes. And when the Board of ReElement makes that decision to take it public or liquidate the company sell the business? I don't think they're going to do that, but there's been offers. Like I said -- like Mark said, we don't think American resource has is for defined plan of growth. Now it performs very -- it holds a position in ReElement. We don't think American based on the offers we received, it's multiples above our current stock price just based on relent 1 of the core business itself.

Great. Anything further before we close? We have 30 seconds.

Yes. Real quick, I'll close that with one, thank you all for joining. We don't take your time lightly. We appreciate it. We're thankful for the hard work of our auditors. We're excited to get this thing filed when they get it filed. Hopefully, they're very shortly. Appreciate the teams of all the different divisions. The corporate governance we set up to segregate these businesses to drive in their own direction to build their own leadership team is really, really important.

From a business perspective culture is everything. We're excited about the culture we built at American Resources as I'll say it again, we define ourselves as mediator Sometimes what we've had to buy legacy assets with all legacy assets, clean them up, and we had to find a lot of mantles while doing that. And we don't turn away from that. You don't solve problems unless you can put those to bed and we're doing that and super excited about the relationships we've had with our partners with the industry.

We're excited for the industry to thrive. We're probably one of the few players that want everybody in the industry to thrive, right, because we bring something unique to the space. But we wish the best of everybody, but we're super thankful at American Resources, we're positioned. We're thankful for the leadership team we have at ReElement and where they're driving the business. and the opportunities that we have in front of us. This has probably been the most exciting time in my career, and I'm really thankful for the hard work and the team that we've been able to put in place in all these different divisions and where we're going in the future.

Excellent. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much, and this does conclude our Virtual Investors Live CEO Connect segment Mark Jay, Mark , so happy to have you on our platform again. It was great to see you guys. I'd also like to thank our audience for your participation and great questions as always. And as a reminder, American Resources trades on NASDAQ under the ticker AREC. And if you like what you saw today, I encourage you to visit americanresourcescorp.com further information on the company to sign up to follow the company to receive their alerts as well as follow their social channels to stay current on the latest information and you can also visit virtualinvestorco.com for a replay of today's event as well as our latest segments and events calendar.

We do have a closing bell segment today at 4. So if you guys are available tune in, to have you join us, and I want to wish everyone a great rest of your day.

Thank you, Jenene.

Okay. We are ready to get started. I'd like to welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today for today's live virtual Investor CEO Connect segment. My name is Jenene Thomas. I am CEO of JTC IR, and I will be the moderator for today's event.

I'm very pleased to host American Resources Corporation. They are a leader in the critical mineral supply chain focused on building a secure, sustainable and domestically driven infrastructure and electrification ecosystem. Tongue twister, sorry about that. The focus for today's event will be a shareholder update.

So joining us this afternoon, we have Mark Jensen, he is CEO; we have Mark LaVerghetta, he's Vice President of Corporate Finance and Communications; and Josh Hawes, he is Director of American Resources. So welcome, gentlemen.

Hey, Jenene. How are you doing?

We're great. Doing well. So happy to have you, and we're excited to showcase American Resources today. So for the CEO Connect session, we will have Mark start with the corporate and shareholder update. We'll do a moderated Q&A, and then we will open it up for a live Q&A from our audience.

And before I get started, I want to remind our audience and American Resources is publicly listed on NASDAQ and trades under the ticker AREC. And during today's discussion, the company will be making forward-looking statements, and we encourage you to view the latest SEC filings on the company's website.

So Mark, we are going to dive right in. I want to turn it over to you to kick things off.

Yes. Thanks, Jenene, and thanks, everyone, for joining. American Resources as a company, we started a number of years back and have been laser-focused on creating an innovative platform where we can build out businesses and grow our business, focusing on trend lines and opportunities that can be sustainable for the long term, creating high-margin value for our shareholders. If you look back to the business over the last few years, you could see a pretty dramatic transition from where we started. Under the humble roots of a mining company that took over really distressed assets and honestly, a very distressed area of the country in Eastern Kentucky that we had to transform these assets and work really hard to try to create a sustainable business and an opportunity there.

What we were able to do was to very quickly realize innovation and opportunity. And you can see that through the recent developments in the business as we build this out to create a platform that not only can disrupt the industry, but create tremendous value for our shareholders. And we are extremely proud of the efforts of our team and the work that we put forth in all aspects of our business. Despite challenging environments, economic challenges, and headwinds at times in the industries in which we operated, we were able to persevere, fight through it and create a platform of opportunity that can create tremendous value for the long term in operations and value through multiple companies and multiple platforms.

I've got the honor of being the CEO of the company for -- since inception, being one of the largest shareholders, having a significant amount effort and passion put into this business and thankful for the team that we've been able to build. Where we sit today is a completely different business than where we started. We have some of the most innovative technology. We've distributed the value to ReElement to our underlying shareholders. We still maintain a large stake in it. But what we have in front of us is an absolutely tremendous opportunity to unlock value under the American Resources platform.

Have a great honor today to be able to announce that Josh Hawes will be stepping in as the CEO of the company. He's been a Director of the company for about the last year or so. This transition will take place over the next few months. I'll be moving to the Executive Chairman level and focusing day-to-day on ReElement while also supporting Josh and the team at American Resources as we build this into a very strong platform around feedstock and innovation around the mining industry, around monetizing asset bases and investing into high-value feedstocks through its leverage relationship with ReElement.

This is a great honor for me. There's very few people that I wanted to bring into this spot, and our team collectively thought that Josh was going to do a phenomenal job. He's had significant industry experience around the industry, built a phenomenal business before and joined us when he saw what we were building here at American Resources. And excited to have him joining us as not only a Director of the company, but also now as the CEO as we make this transition. Josh, I'll let you say a few words real quickly, if you'd like.

Yes, Mark, thank you. Obviously, it's a tremendous opportunity plus honor to get a chance to be able to take to the next level, what you and the team, the amazing team have created. And so I'm excited to be able to build on that. And the growth plan that we have to be able to capture more market share is just a really unique opportunity that's based upon the foundation of not just where the industry is going, where this country is going, but as well with what you've created and what we could capitalize and now leverage on that. So it's an exciting time, and I count myself to be extremely lucky to be kind of now a part of the team. So I'm excited.

Excellent. We appreciate your efforts. We appreciate your efforts over the last year or so and excited to work together here in the coming years as we continue to build this business and continue to grow it for the shareholders.

Secondly, the next appointment we have is that the Electrified Materials level, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Resources. We're excited to announce that [ Chris Resca ] will be stepping in as the CEO of Electrified Materials with the goal of completing its capital raise, which we are in the SEC review process right now from the Form 10, filing an S-1 to go public. And then we will eventually spin off a certain percentage of that company to underlying shareholders as well. Once that capital raise -- if that capital raise gets completed, which we are confident that it will. We're super thankful to have Chris on the team as well.

We're at a position in this business where we need to continue to expand. We have a strong balance sheet. We have a tremendous amount of opportunity in front of us to leverage what we built around the entire complex, but most importantly, leverage the high-value technology we have at ReElement Technologies and the effort that the team has put forth there. We have more opportunities than we can count. We have more partnerships than we can count and making sure we execute upon that requires a strong team, and we're excited about continuing to bolster this team and build this team to create value for everybody, the shareholders of American Resource which own a significant stake in ReElement as well as the ReElement Technologies shareholders and then Electrified Materials as well.

Further than that, we also have a portfolio of assets, including Royalty Management Corporation, which we think is a highly valuable entity that American Resources is still a shareholder of as well as they continue to build their book of business that we can create that value under the American Resources platform. I think there's very few small-cap, microcap companies that have went through a transition that we went through successfully and been able to build a team that are focused on shareholder value, about creating value at the market value level. Without focusing on just raising capital every step of the way, we fought the hard fight to position this company to where it's at today and excited where we're going.

Looking at multiple opportunities, I was in Laos and Southeast Asia recently looking at mines that American Resources can invest in. We're evaluating a number of other additional lines that we're looking at right now that American Resources can invest in because we have what nobody else has in the world. We have an efficient and effective refining platform that's highly scalable at ReElement Technologies that nobody else can compete against. And we will displace the monopoly within the world supply chain today. And by doing that with American Resources leading the way on feedstock development for us at our own resources that we have in West Virginia and other regions as well as globally that we are developing with partners and investing alongside with partners to create that value from ReElement's refining platform.

ReElement, we own 19% of. Super proud of the company and what it's accomplished. The team has done an amazing job of being a midstream refiner across a multitude of products from a product diversification perspective. There is not one element price-wise that could cause the business to collapse. We have a strong book of business across multiple products, multiple platforms around the commercial industry as well as the defense industry. And we're super thankful for the collaboration and the recent announcement with the Department of War, having warrants for an equity stake in ReElement and what that can mean for the growth of the business going forward.

As you see over the next few months, we'll be showcasing what the strategy of American Resources is and the opportunity we have in front of us, and we look forward to sharing more as we continue to ramp up the business, grow the business, build out the business at the American Resources level as well as ReElement Technologies.

This is a monumental day for me. I've been at this -- started this business from the ground up with my team. And now to hand it over in the good hands of Josh alongside working alongside of him with our team. We're super thankful to add this additional team member that will make us better, will make us stronger and help us move faster. And so we thank all of you as shareholders for the support that you've given. We appreciate the efforts and the passion that you've all had, good and bad, at times. But thankfully, we're here to win the fight. We're here to put up a fight. We're here to continue to grow this business to create value. And we'll open it up to questions here.

Great. Well, my congratulations. It's been such a plate having you on our platform for 5 years, seeing what you've built. You have so much to be proud of. Josh, congratulations on your appointment. So I look forward to having you on in the near future.

I think what we'd like to do now is just do kind of first, I have a ton of questions. As you know, I always do, Mark. So look, we'll do like a rapid fire Q&A and then open it up for questions from our audience. So I've prepared a few for this because I think there's a lot that we can dive into that I'm excited to get to.

So my first question is, given the recent announcements regarding the Department of War, how do you expect this to play out for American Resources on a go-forward basis?

Yes. I mean if you look at it, I mean, American Resource, one, owns around 19% of ReElement Technologies. I think what we're thankful for is the Department of War recognized what we built. They recognize the high-value technology that we have. They recognize that the efficacy of the technology and the scalability of the technology. There is no other technology in the world that has the product versatility and scalability that we have in a cost-effective way. So I think that's extremely meaningful.

But I don't think it just ties into ReElement alone. I think it also plays into the core business of American Resources. We have our own properties. We have our own ore bodies that have already been mined that need to be concentrated. And we have a really strong team working on that concentration step and ReElement's already proved that it can refine this material from unconventional resources. But at the same point, we can call it unconventional, but there's many rare earth mines out there that have a lower part per million that we have that has to go through that mining and extraction step. We don't have to. It's already been done. Now we just have to concentrate it and refine it.

And the beautiful aspect of it is with ReElement technologies, we can refine not just the rare earth magnets, but the other defense metals that are extremely important today that ReElement has a significant customer base forward. Looking at yttrium, gadolinium, germanium, other elements that nobody else really talks about, but are in strong demand, and we can eat the entire apple. We can separate and purify all those elements from our ore bodies to make this very, very economic for our shareholders and create a supply chain for our customers and the national security stockpile as well.

So we believe this partnership with the Department of War is a big deal for our company. We're thankful for the efforts of the Trump administration. I will say that I get calls for 6 in the morning to 11:00 at night from them. They work extremely hard. They have passion, they care. They want to solve this problem and they want to solve it today, and we're thankful to be part of that solution with them.

Maybe add a little bit of color around that as well. the process with the Department of War and ReElement was very in depth from a due diligence standpoint, not only through the Department of War, but also using private industry partners to get a really good look under the hood on what ReElement solves for not only the domestic supply chain, but the global supply chain segues very well into how that plays into American Resources.

And as everybody's always heard, rare earth elements aren't rare. What is rare as economically viable process engineering to refine those inputs, a diverse set of inputs into monetizable, high-value, high purity products that downstream manufacturing requires. We could have kept ReElement inside of American Resources, kept it alongside our resource base at American Resources, our byproduct alternative feedstock that Mark just mentioned. But as we drove innovation, it was really understanding what this platform technology was capable of.

Today, we operate a multimineral, multi-feedstock platform. So we needed to spin it out, let it stand, let it fly on its own to deliver those products. And they're -- like I tell -- I say it a lot of times, there's a lot of value and bites of the apple across the value chain that still need to be developed. And American Resources sits at a very interesting point in driving that value for our economy and for our shareholder base. Like I said, rare earths aren't rare, but we do need to procure feedstock. So our ability to do that, if you want access, if you want to bring -- if you want to put U.S. equity stakeholder engagement at the source of the mineral, American Resources can help facilitate that. It's a business that ReElement does not need to get into as a pure-play refining platform, but leveraging that ability across a variety of different inputs, both recycled and virgin or concentrated, ReElement has a ton of opportunity to drive a lot of different businesses or a lot of different value opportunities to leverage that ability, what ReElement brings. So it's great.

And then on Josh's appointment, just to add to what Mark said is I was talking to Josh earlier this morning and wanted to make sure he was understood. We're not dropping this one on Josh's lap and saying good luck. This is given the recent developments with the Department of War, we have so much on our plate. We need to build our team out and bolster it with great talent, and Josh is going to do just that. And like Mark said, we need to grow and we need to build around our platform of assets.

Great. All right. Thanks for that, both of you. Okay. So my next question, I'm sure everyone that's on this event, and we have quite a few on that have dialed in. So there is more attention on the rare earth sector now more than ever, and it's a high-profile, widely covered in the news. And American Resources should be at the epicenter of that conversation, and we're not seeing it. So when do you anticipate seeing that catalytic shift and the market attention toward the company and its technology?

Yes. I mean, we don't pay a lot of PR firms. We don't pay a lot of obvious. We're not -- we put our money into technology and team, building out this team and building out the capabilities of our product lines. That's more important than hype. Let's see how it shakes out over the next year. Let's see who wins, let's see what loses.

We want people to win. Don't get me wrong. We want to create an industry, but we don't need to be in the media every day. We need to be executing. And that's what we've been focused on. We don't -- I mean, I don't think we've ever really went out there and paid for a new story other than putting out press releases, but we're laser-focused on the execution side. I think our partners that we're building and the relationships we're building will come out very soon and will continue to come out as we've been announcing. And that will showcase who we are. But the capabilities of our technology, capabilities of our process, capabilities of American Resources and the team, it's going to speak for itself.

Great. All right. So my next question, American Resources has historically focused on economically viable solutions across the commodity supply chain and prioritizing the highest value opportunity. So how do you view the company's long-term strategy and value creation now, particularly as you transition from disrupting coal to advancing proprietary critical mineral technologies.

Yes, absolutely. So I mean if you look at -- where we have to focus our energy is -- and everybody has a limited amount of time in a day. I think our team maybe tries to maximize that. But we have to focus on the highest value denominators. And that's what we've done. I mean at the end of the day, it's -- as we develop technology and we develop processes to produce concentrates to evaluate mines, to process this material, what we built is a platform under American Resources and invested in high-value opportunities. I mean, that's where we're going to continue to focus on. I mean, there's -- if we don't continue to innovate and continue to adapt, we die. And we've survived a really long time in really challenging environments to be where we're at today, and we're going to continue to do that.

With ReElement's technology, American Resources now can unleash the beast, and that's what it's getting ready to do. It has the technology and the capabilities and the partnership with ReElement that it can invest in feedstocks that nobody else can because nobody else can refine it. And more importantly, you can leverage that relationship to create value for our shareholders. If I said today I was going to go invest in another coal mine in Kentucky, I'd be nuts. The value is in what we're investing in, in the regions of the world that want people to invest into them. And we're really excited about that opportunity today. We're really excited about the opportunities we have in front of us, and it's vast.

I mean, Josh has got a lot on his plate right now and a lot on our plate that we're going to work on collectively to build this -- continue to build the feedstock consortiums and feedstock partnerships and invest into this development. And the partnerships we have on the concentration steps are absolutely remarkable to make this extremely economic for our shareholders. And that -- we're going to continue to do that. We're going to continue to adapt new technologies. We're going to continue to work with new partners. We're going to continue to look at creating the most amount of value for our shareholders and unlocking that value for the investment community for our customers, for the government, for our military and then continue to build it out every -- from every platform we can from an Allied Nations perspective.

Great. All right. So you've discussed reserve reporting, putting value on the balance sheet and generating your own concentrates from coal waste to supply ReElement. What is the expected time line for these milestones?

Yes. We've -- so -- we purchase things a little bit differently than most. I mean, we haven't spent a ton of money on putting together reports. That sometimes means something, sometimes don't. We focus on proving them out, though, proving out the reserves ourselves, proving out the economic viability of it, selecting the right technology to on market because it's one thing to have something, it's another thing to be able to produce it. It's -- if you can't get it out of the ground and you can't concentrate it economically, then it doesn't mean anything.

And it's -- I can say I have multiple billions of dollars, and we actually probably do have billions of dollars worth of rare earth value in our reserves, but it's already been mined. If you go out and try to mine some of this material from some of these other places that have been announced, you're never going to make money. So you have to figure out the technology landscape to be able to do that. And we're working with the best of the best to do that right now.

And so we are going to do some reserve reports and some analysis, and we have some engineers working on that, which will prove out that we have not only mined material that is economically viable, but we have a vast amount of that. And we also have partners that also have that are asking us to partner with them from landowners and everything else across the country and then also internationally that want us to tackle this problem. But we're not going to go conventional. We're never going to be conventional. That's not who we are. That's not how we got to where we're at today. We're always going to be a little bit on the cutting-edge side of it and focusing on that to make -- but -- if we're looking for a pretty reserve report that says we're worth trillions of dollars like everybody else puts out, we're not going to do that. We're just going to execute.

Got it. Okay. Next question, across all your platforms, how do you plan to approach financing?

Yes, that's a great question. Super exciting question today. One, we're well capitalized in American Resources. We did an up round with a very strong investor at American Resources. I don't think the public markets are quite reflecting that. I think we're trading in a basket right now. I think we're way undervalued based on where we're at today, and I think the execution of this team will showcase that. But we're very thankful for the investors -- 2 investors that participated in that round and who they are.

So American Resources is well capitalized, but also the ability now to leverage that using non-dilutive capital, tax-exempt bonds. We're looking at other mechanisms, other international support, government support. We've announced partnerships with [ XMBank ] on some things. I think there's a lot of opportunity for us at the American Resources level.

Super thankful at the ReElement level, we just signed a $200 million term sheet on -- the up end of that valuation is around $1.3 billion. We're finally getting recognized for what we built, our shareholders are, and we're really thankful for that. Really strong investor. We'll share that here more shortly. And we're -- I think that's going to enable us to truly execute along with the Department of War, $80 million that we're moving towards closing with and going very well. And we're super thankful for the really hard work of our government.

EMCO has selected an investment bank, looking at doing a public offering as part of the spinout with [ Mr. Dresco ] running that. We're really excited about what the opportunity is on the preprocessing step on the recycling step of what EMCO can do as well. So from a capital perspective, we're very well capitalized. We are being very thrifty on how we spend money still, making sure that we're using it the appropriate way and looking at the best opportunities to utilize that capital and then leverage that capital thereafter.

So how would you explain the broader vision here? Specifically, how the relationship with ReElement leverages governance around feedstock, secures long-term supply and supports your major growth initiatives?

Yes. We have what nobody else has in the world. Nobody else has a versatile, scalable platform of technology that can produce multimineral, multi-feedstock. That's huge. Now what ReElement knows it needs is it needs feedstock. And so the -- and we want stable feedstock partnerships. And so when we started working on this plan with Josh, with the team, with Mark and everybody else, we put our heads together and came up with a business model that we generally think is a phenomenal platform of how do you leverage best-in-class technology with a very strong backbone of team that understands how to evaluate opportunities.

So American Resources will invest into the feedstock. We'll look at opportunities to take minority stakes. It doesn't intend to run every mine. It obviously is developing its own resources that it has, and that could be a very large opportunity for us, but also the ability to invest and take minority stakes in these mines that need ReElement's refining and get very good deals for it because of that, we're going to leverage the technology the best we can and make money for American Resources shareholders, that's our job. And get favorable governance provisions in there to make sure we get that feedstock as well, make sure that some country that we all know of doesn't come in with cash and try to steal that feedstock away from us. If we're investors into it, we can control that feedstock, and we can make sure that it gets to ReElement and it gets to our commercial and military-based partners to ensure that we have a strong business and a reliable stable business for our customers.

Great. So when you break down the components, like cash on the balance sheet, American Resources' ownership stake in ReElement and the company's remaining platforms, how should investors think about the total underlying value of the business?

The -- we are extremely undervalued. It's not -- I mean, nobody is giving us any credit for what where we're going, and that's fine. We'll get there. This is not a sprint, it's a race. We think -- I mean, one, ReElement, we think, is a beast. We know what it's worth. We know where it's going. We think it's worth more than what we just signed the term sheet at, and we're highly confident on where we're going there.

You look at the cash on hand, I mean, we're sitting on essentially every dollar we raised after fees. So we haven't deployed a lot of that capital yet. We're working on opportunities to do so, being conservative with that capital, and that's the right thing to do, evaluating the best opportunities that creates value.

But then what nobody's valuing is the opportunity to monetize these reserves and to invest in really high-value projects. I mean, we have a number of opportunities that we've signed already that we -- American Resources has sourced for ReElement, and we have pre-equity options in those opportunities to invest in those companies. That's value. That's a huge value. And we're going to continue to leverage that because American Resources has a phenomenal team and a phenomenal platform to go source those opportunities, let alone our own reserve base. As I said, we're not going to put together the fanciest reserve report that some big engineering firm got paid a couple of million dollars to say good things because you pay them a lot of money. We're going to do it the right way, and we're going to showcase what our reserves and our capability of concentration steps can create with the best-in-class partners on that concentration set.

I believe this -- given the mix of elements in these feedstocks, from lithium to yttrium to gadolinium to rare earth metals for magnet material and the heavy rare earths specifically that are present there are really, really attractive. I mean, you're looking at from a [ magnet grade ] rare earths from an interest in dysprosium and terbium, you're looking almost a 35% heavy split, which is huge. And that's what everybody needs right now, and they're really high in value.

The concentration steps we're working on right now will help us unlock that and create tremendous value. We think American Resources is probably 1 of the most undervalued opportunities today. When you look at the peer group, we're trading at a huge discount to them. And that's fine. We'll get there, and we're confident we will.

All right. Our next question here. So if ReElement completes an up round at a higher valuation, how should that translate to American Resources' value given the company's ownership position?

Yes. I mean, we just signed a phenomenal term sheet with a phenomenal investor. We couldn't be more thankful. I mean, he is as strategic as anything that on the up end, values it at $1.3 billion today, $1.3 billion. We think at the time of public offering -- and that should be -- we think it's going to be a significant premium, multiples of where we're raising this capital. Obviously, that transitions -- I mean, American Resources is 1 huge shareholder of it, but the more capital that -- and the more expansion that ReElement has, the more feedstock American Resources can feed to it. American Resources isn't going to feed a lot of feedstock to other customers because there's nobody else that can do what ReElement can do. So we're excited that ReElement is extremely well capitalized now because that gives it the ability to expand, and that gives American Resources the ability to expand and produce more materials that can feed directly into the ecosystem.

Yes. I think another way to look at it, Jenene, is between cash on hand and value of ReElement based off of the recent up round that Mark just mentioned, you're probably somewhere in the ballpark of $3 a share. So anything above that right now is being attributed to the value of our own concentrate that American Resources produces for ReElement Technologies as well as feedstock aggregation to supply into ReElement.

I think as we've articulated here, those opportunities are very -- are ample. I think the recent announcement with Uzbekistan for sourcing tungsten, where American Resources was granted sole buyer opportunity for that feedstock to bring into the United States, tungsten feedstock to create high-purity tungsten that go -- that is becoming more of a highly prioritized critical mineral, given the needs of downstream manufacturing for industries like shipbuilding. I think there's a lot of value. And then as Mark just explained as well with the Department of War, with the capital on hand by the strategic investor, being able to build out the platform more meaningfully, having the opportunity to potentially IPO ReElement sometime next year at a higher valuation, I think that looks pretty attractive. And as Mark says, we think it's 1 of the most discounted from a relative to its peer group stocks in the critical mineral ecosystem right now in the public markets.

Yes. I'd say I would just add on that tungsten real quick. I had the opportunity to sit with Secretary [ Lonic ] in Korea, the APAC CEO Summit with 16 of the largest Korean companies. And ReElement/American Resources being in there with them. The amount of shipbuilding that is needed from U.S. and allied nations is massive, and tungsten is a key component of that.

Thankfully, Josh is working on a really strong tungsten opportunity. This tungsten opportunity was actually brought in by our investor in ReElement. So not only an investor, but also a strategic partner to unlock this. That in itself could be a company. That in itself could be something you focus 100% of your time on. Thankfully, we have a phenomenal team and a phenomenal investor base that is helping us develop these opportunities, these broad opportunities across the entire spectrum of elements that are needed to create this value and have the diversity of product mix as well, which is super important.

So kind of as a follow-on also. So the market appears to be undervaluing asset such as coal waste monetization, mineral brokering, electrified materials and international partnerships. When do you think that disconnect -- why do you think that disconnect exists today?

I think a lot of it comes to -- I mean, we came out of the coal industry. We looked like that for a long time. That's not what we are anymore. We don't look like that anymore, I don't think, but it's a transition, right? A lot of people didn't understand how our technology can be as good as it is. Thankfully, a lot of people know how good it is now. And we've had -- we give tours at ReElement about 3 days a week. It's kind of exhausting. It's great, but it's exhausting. And that's because people want to see it. They want to see what it does. And when they walk out of it, they're like, "oh, it, this is a game changer. Pardon my language.

The opportunity we have in front of us is to unlock that now. And that's where I don't think -- I mean, one, I don't think we're getting full value for that. I think on the coal waste side, a lot of people call it coal waste, we got to come up with a better name. It's a [ shetty ] name for a product. But it's -- the mix of elements are absolutely phenomenal. And because they've already been mined, you -- I don't know what anybody thinks of mining them. Mining is one of the hardest industries in the world. It's not just taking an excavator and digging a bunch of dirt out of the ground. It is really, really hard to run a mine.

The beauty of the [ MRC ] that we can produce from these tailings that are already been extracted is you eliminate the hardest part of the process, which is mining. Now we're just working on the concentration steps, and we have one of the best partners that I could think of helping us on the concentration steps right now that hopefully we can announce shortly that will unlock this and can do it in a modular basis, which is absolutely phenomenal. Once it's into a concentrated solution, AREC eats it all up. Or ReElement eats it all up and turns it into separated purified oxides very, very efficiently. That's a huge deal. And that's what we're focused on. And that's why, honestly, why we brought Josh on so he has the bandwidth to help us to drive this and bring it in and continue to bolster our team to make this happen not 3 years from now, but next year.

I think another reason, Jenene, to add to that, is we were early. But we knew we needed to be early. We were looking at rare earth and critical minerals and producing our own concentrates back in 2017 with the thesis that we were going to get to this point sooner or later. And here we are, timing is everything, right? But we've had to pivot around American Resources a little bit as we saw higher and higher value opportunities.

And I've said this before to the current shareholders. You can't do mining half ass, and you can't be disruptive technology half assed. You have to pick 1 path and go full steam ahead, and that's what we've done with ReElement. But here we are at this inflection point now where we've proven that platform out. The Department of War just took a stake in ReElement. We're 1 of 5 companies that the Department of -- our U.S. government owns or partially owns.

We've proven it out now, and now it's time to go back to how we started this, produce our own concentrates and build value around that. We knew we were early. I said that when the market moves, they're going to have to go to entities that actually do things that actually produce monetizable, high-purity products. Well, the market's moved, and it's moving very aggressively today. And it's coming right to our doorstep with ample opportunity, and that is a great -- given the amount of value that you can build across that supply chain, it's a great position for American Resources to be in.

Great. All right.

I was just going to say, being -- I'll give you a very distinct answer. Being on the buy side and sell side for 19 years and then being in this space for the last 7 to 8, and I can tell you there's 1 critical thing that everyone missed, which is why ReElement was doing it the whole time. And it's that transition in narrative. The narrative when this all started was, do you have the stuff? Then it shifted to can you do the thing? Here is the crazy part. Everyone forgot this has to be actually sold to a customer that uses it in a commercial form.

When Mark -- when both Marks talk about the fact that like they made the bet early to be able to prove that they can do it, it was to a commercial standard that is actually sellable. So when Mark talks about we have the technology, that is the game changer. People can talk about how like, "Oh, we purified something." That's great. Did you not just get it through the standard? Did you also remove the impurities that are with it? With all of my background in the space, I would not be coming on unless this was undervalued to be able to drive the next legacy stage of value from the tech that they have. And that was a key component for me, was that I went around to the whole space and there were people that yet, they are trying to refine or there's those that say that they do and they really don't. This group is actually refining a sellable commercial-grade product. So to Mark's LaVerghetta's point, this is why DOW took a stake in 1 of 5 companies.

Love it. All right. Thanks, Josh. All right. So investors often describe the company's model up as having a baseload and equity upside structure, stable value creation from coal waste with high margin upside from services tied to ReElement. Do you agree with that framework? And how would you articulate it?

No. I mean, I don't really. Not at this point. I think ReElement is going to be a major owner of critical minerals and resources and be a producer of it as well. So it's got -- I think ultimately, I think it's going to be a race. So I think it's going to be a race to see who's worth more. I mean, ReElement on the tech side and AREC on the feedstock acquisition side. I think that's going to be a fun challenge for the companies to see who creates more value.

I think ultimately, it's -- I mean I was in Southeast Asia, I've been to Africa 9 times. We've looked at many sites here in the U.S., looking at antimony mines to germanium mines to heavy rare earth mines for [ ionic clays ]. We're going to pull trigger on a few of these, and that's going to create a massive value. I mean you look at these mining companies like MP that has a mine, maybe someday becomes a magnet company. All these others out there that are investing into a sole-source mine, that's not our plan. Our plan is not to run 1 mine. Our plan is to take equity stakes and governance positions in these feedstocks to make sure we get the material and the diversified material that we need to create tremendous value while we continue to build out our own reserves and expand our production, which could be rapid.

But I think it's -- I think, ultimately, they're going to be looked at as two separate companies with very strong ties and relationships to one another. And I think it's going to be a race to who creates more value. I think Josh is up for the competition.

Right.

Game on, baby.

Perfect. All right. So as American Resources begins establishing consistent revenue margin expansion, how do you expect the market to value your role across the critical mineral supply chain?

I mean, I think if -- I think what's interesting about it is I don't think it's necessarily just our role. I think it's our relationships and the collaborative partnerships that we have, and we have many. And we don't talk about them all publicly. Honestly, we don't we have even have time to draft press releases recently. I think it's the ecosystem we're building. I think that's really important. It's not just about what we can do. It's about what can our partners help us do and help us be better at to unlock the supply chain.

I mean, this is a massive challenge. This is the national security commercial supply chain that was completely disrupted this year. I mean, we had company -- I had companies calling me asking me for magnets. I don't produce magnets. I produce high-purity separated oxides or trisulfides, whatever you need on an element form. But this is a big serious issue we need to address. And we are thankful for how supportive the administration is not just for us, but across the entire ecosystem. I know they're working with other companies, too, and we're thankful for that. They need to.

We need to create this ecosystem. And from the feedstock side, we have a really cool announcement coming out on Thursday. Super excited about who we're partnering with there. And a lot of other partnerships coming out here very shortly that we're building this ecosystem to create the supply chain that will create tremendous value for our shareholders at ReElement and American Resources.

But we have -- I mean we -- like I said, we have mining companies that are approaching us every day asking us if we can refine it, but then they also need capital to grow. And we have that capability now with American Resources. Every single one of them wants money. Now how do we make sure that it gets financed and gets financed appropriately and it's a good feedstock for what the industry needs? That's where we do our due diligence and do our work. But that's a huge value. But the value is being created with -- internally and with our partnerships that we've been able to establish because people want to partner with our companies.

Yes, Mark, I'll just add, I think that one of the amazing things of what you guys have built and what I'm so excited about leveraging is the fact that we now have with the portfolio companies, the subsidiaries, all that good stuff, it's a complete commercial solution. And it's not just random vernacular and why we say that there's a customer at the end of this, and they ask for help. And that's the point. Like, I love this team because they are very synergistic. They look to JV with everyone. And I will tell you in this space, it's extremely rare. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to join is because you now have a platform for a complete commercial solution. That is -- it's rare. No one really likes to help out. And now you've got a group that's saying hey, man, are you online, guess what? I got a refiner. Are you a refiner and you need feedstock? Guess what? You're going to need a little bit of this aspect of technology that fits there with our group in terms of ReElement, and we fit right in.

And then even on the downstream, it's paid, you need supply in a commercial grade form. So it's really the platform as a solution that is really exciting. And it's off of what the team built. I mean, this is just -- all this is Stage 2. It's not people -- I will say, it's undervalued. People don't get it, which we're going to fix that. But this is just Stage 2, whenever Mark says, we're on to the next and going to grow even further.

Yes. I think it's also important, Josh, to make a great point. Our -- we are not a single asset platform, right? Like we are -- we've gotten to view the supply chain through a very unique lens of actually producing high-purity chemical compound that manufacturers need, and then we can build capacity very efficiently alongside with the growth of demand. We don't have to go get out over our skis, CapEx, huge projects, risk our shareholders.

And -- but the other thing is this is a multi-asset platform. It's not just 1 mine or 1 magnet company or whatever.

Or 1 mineral. You said that earlier, right?

Or 1 mineral, right? This is multiminerals. So we're able to unlock the Western supply chain in a derisked portfolio of assets.

And by the way, for the logic of that, Jensen mentioned this earlier. The reason you want to be multimineral is that the end solution with the actual real customer surprise, surprise, they don't just buy 1 mineral. Usually, these solutions have like 5 at a minimum. So the team has been very strategic about which ones that they ended up choosing to be able to support those who actually needed it to go into a product.

Excellent. I have to warn you guys -- so we have an unprecedented amount of questions that have come in. I feel like we're going to be here until Thursday. But if you have time, I know we were going to plan to have this be an hour event, but I just want to do a time check. I think if you guys are okay, we should just keep this going because there's a ton of really good questions that are coming in.

Yes, we can extend it for another 15 minutes after.

Perfect. All right. So when do you anticipate revenue generation from the ongoing forward-looking initiatives at American Resources? And what should we expect in terms of timing and scale?

Yes. We're getting ready to start on the feedstock side of selling feedstock to ReElement as part of that on the mining side as well. The royalty streams that we have in place as well, we hope to start kicking in, in the new year. There's -- the mining industry on the legacy business that we get royalties from is challenging at best on the coal side, but we do think we'll collect some royalty streams kicking in next year when the market stabilizes a little bit. But on the feedstock side, we have numerous feedstock relationships and the technology and the equipment expansion at ReElement will start being meaningful revenue.

Great. All right. So ReElement is recognized as one of the few groups able to recycle magnets economically at scale. So what does that competitive advantage mean for American Resources' long-term strategic position?

Yes. So one, I mean, obviously, ReElement not only recycles, we separate and purify. The one thing a lot of people talk about, we don't produce mixed rare oxides. We produce separated purified oxides, usable material. Everything we produce is in a usable form, that's key. ReElement does the work, American Resources also helps aggregate. So a lot of the relationships were brought in by team members of American Resources on sourcing feedstock and sourcing supply, and it will help get -- it will help that and sell it to ReElement as part of the overall process as well, which is a revenue driver for American Resources.

All right. So you've spoken about addressing the choke points in the supply chain and gaining a unique lens into the critical mineral landscape. So how does that perspective shape your strategy compared with others in the industry?

Yes. I would say we had -- one thing that's been super important for us. One, we spent a lot of time and energy developing the technology before anybody cared about this industry. And so as Mark said earlier, we're early because we started developing this for various different applications. We're trying to create a separation technology 10 years ago when nobody cared about it. Nobody talked about rare earths back then really in any meaningful way. And so we were developing the process before it was relevant.

And today, it's obviously quite relevant and needed dramatically. But to be able to separate and purify those materials is the absolute key point, versus just talking about what we're doing. As Josh said earlier, it's producing a product that people can actually buy. But that's differentiating the company. That's what's going to create value for our shareholders. And it's not just on the recycling side of magnets, but it's also thermal heat barriers. It's the ore bodies. It's separating the yttrium [ homeom ] materials, the [ SEG ], [ SEG PUS ], germanium concentrates, germanium and gallium concentrates. We are looking at investing in those from American Resources, and we're willing to fund development at the American Resource level, and then ReElement will sign the long-term offtake as part of that development as well. And then we have customers on the back end that will buy the product off ReElement.

Got it. Okay. So just even with some of these questions, I've seen that we've had as time has gone on, where more and more people have joined. So if it's something that you've answered already, we can kind of get it to the point. But I think that some of these -- I can't tell who was on and who asked the question. So I wanted to just make sure we get to as many questions as we can and get them answered.

So our next question is, please explain [ RMCO Holdings ] and the relationships to American Resources and ReElement.

Yes. RMCO is an awesome company. So we -- American Resources sponsored this back many years ago. The company is public now, one of the few small companies that's paying a dividend on a quarterly basis. Josh is actually on the Board of RMCO as well. But great business that's building. It's continued to incubate and continue to build it. It does -- it has partnered with ReElement on PGMs. It's doing some technology IP development as we speak. I think it'll talk more about that soon, hopefully publicly.

But it's got a -- it's a superb partner. It's looked at investing in various mines as well. It's got some ownership stakes in a mine in Jamaica and in Africa as well. So there is similar relationships there. But American Resources has around 8% ownership stake of Royalty Management, and we think Royalty Management is way undervalued. I think by no means would it liquidate that investment anytime soon. And I don't think the Board would be overly supportive of that. We think it's a tremendously undervalued company as well.

All right. Can you explain the progress and plan on extracting rare earth minerals from the coal waste that American Resources controls? And if any plans to access other coal waste not owned by us?

Yes, we've been approached by a number of companies that want to partner with us on that. So American Resources will work on that, and then ReElement will do the refining once American Resources does the concentration step. But to put in perspective, most mines, you go into either a side of a mountain or into the mountain, and you have to shoot and blast that material or go in with a continuous miner, mechanized equipment, hire a whole bunch of people and send them -- and file for a bunch of permits to be able to do that, and it's a very arduous process. Mining is not easy. Mining is really, really hard, very expensive. Most of the expense -- when we run mines, I would say we were -- just put in perspective, I was mining coal and selling it for around $70 a ton. My extraction cost was about $45 of that. That's -- it represents usually over 50% of your overall product value is on the extraction event.

American Resources has almost 0 extraction cost. It's already been mined. It's just landfilled. And actually, it's already been somewhat concentrated because you've already taken the coal out of it. The coal -- when people talk about [ MREC ] from coal material, it's the overburn under burn, it's the clays that capture this material, that's where it typically sits. A lot of people talk about fire clays and stuff to that extent. Our West Virginia property, we have 550 parts per million that's sitting on the side of a mountain. That's 1 excavator and 1 guy in a truck can deliver to the concentration step. That's not extraction. That's moving it, costs no money.

And then what the focus is now is on the concentration steps, and we're working with the best and the brightest in the industry to optimize that concentration step to be able to bring it to a product that ReElement can refine, bringing it from 500 parts per million to anywhere from 2% to 60% to 70%, depending on the product mix and the cost of those events. And we're working through that with engineers. We're working through that with strategic partners to minimize that cost, maximize the value for American Resources and then also produce a cost-effective product for ReElement to sell to its customers.

Okay. So given the current financial results, the suspension of collaborations, a significant stockholder deficit and the heavy dilution from recent financings, can you provide a clear concrete time line for when each of your business segments, ReElement, Electrified Materials and Mining, is expected to generate meaningful recurring revenue? And what specific milestones should shareholders expect in the next 6 to 12 months that will reduce the need for further dilution?

We've done 3 capital raises over 6 years. I wouldn't call that heavy dilution.

Not at all.

I would actually say that we've done an up ground recently with a nameplate investor, I think that's a ridiculous question. But nonetheless, I think we've created tremendous value for our shareholders through ReElement Technologies, our ownership in it through pivoting away from coal to focus on high-value opportunities. I mean, I don't want to invest another dollar in the state of Kentucky. I think it's a horrible place to invest. I want to invest into areas that can create value, that understand companies that are investing money into regions of the world and focus on creating high-value return for our shareholders.

Electrified Materials, we're working with an investment bank to spin that off as a preprocessing step for ReElement. We talked about that. And I think we've given a pretty big overview of what American Resources and ReElement are doing.

Let's see. There's -- just -- there are a couple that I'm going through that. I know that you've answered recently. So okay. Could you describe processes continuing to be put in place to -- in order to handle further refining scale for ReElement?

Yes. I'm not sure I understand the question, but we are scaling aggressively right now. Our Marion side as well as other locations, we've ordered the equipment. We've done the necessary renovations in Marion, our Marion facility. We're evaluating a couple of different opportunities here in the U.S. as well.

But scaling our technology is quite different than scaling solvent. We don't produce really toxic water out of the process like solvent does. We don't create a lot of emulsion or air events. So it doesn't require the same -- it doesn't create the same issues that those other -- that solvent extraction creates. We're using closed leap column-based systems that are using very, very specific resins, and we're optimizing that constantly.

So I mean despite the fact we're scaling aggressively, we still think we're in the second inning of a 9-inning game. We know we have additional opportunities to optimize the process, and we continue to optimize that process from resin development, from resin sizing, from column sizing from a number of columns from the simulation movement to the continuous chromatography.

And also on the recycling side. We're super excited that we recycle most of our water and recycle most of our chemical in our process and do that very, very economically. Super thankful for Marion. We're working on an economic rider to get our energy costs down about $0.045 a kilowatt. We're confident we can get to $0.05, we think we get to $0.045. That's huge. We don't use a lot of power, but every way we can save $1 and do it the right way in a safe way is really important.

Yes. I think one thing to add, too, Jenene. I mean our Noblesville facility is flexing right now. as Mark just mentioned, it's a unique attribute of the technology platform, very flexible, flexing from about 50 metric ton capacity right now, to somewhere around 400 metric ton capacity at our Noblesville facility. And that -- it's not just the capacity increase, it's showcasing and delivering these high-purity products like germanium, gadolinium, yttrium, the heavies as well as the lights.

Where we do it and how we do it. Like I said, we don't have to get out of our skis and take on massive CapEx projects and put shareholders at risk and wait for downstream manufacturing to catch up. So we build capacity based off of contracted offtake. And then up at Marion, starting to flex now with the Department of War commitment. I think we've put it out in recent press releases, too, that we've identified or ordered over 60% of the identified equipment for that. Like I said, market is moving, and the market is moving fast. So that initial phase of scale continues to increase. We're probably starting to butt up against 4,000 metric tons of annualized capacity going into our Marion facility here in Phase 1.

Right. That was the timer for the call. So we will go -- we'll take a handful more questions here, like we talked about. So the next one, is the Department of War deal a contract at this point or still under due diligence?

I mean I think until the deal is closed, it's always under due diligence, but we are reviewing contracts as we speak, and we're super thankful for the -- think this -- they're working hard. I could say, I -- we answered the phone at all hours of the night, based on their efforts, and we can't applaud the Trump administration more than -- given their work ethic and the efforts they're putting forth here to solve this very complex supply chain issue.

Especially going to shut down.

Absolutely.

All right. Next question. What does the current build-out at Marion look like? Mark mentioned recently in an interview that the company was shooting for 15,000 tons using 70,000 square feet with 5,000 earmarked for Vulcan. Is this on track, and what do your time lines look like?

Yes. It's on track. I mean, the Vulcan partnership is slated to start in 2027. We're obviously focused on producing for [ POSCO ] sooner than that, this -- in 2026. We've ordered, as Mark said, over 60% of the equipment, probably more than that now for initial phase. But it's -- thankfully, it's a modular design and build out. So we have a lot of equipment being built in multiple places and being delivered on a daily basis as well. And then we're also -- we've also expanded our Noblesville site from 7,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we just don't take up that much space.

All right. I see some, just working through some of the VP questions here. This, I guess this kind of goes to one of your other questions. So -- or other comments. So I think it's good for you to address this, Mark. So the question is, I understand your priority is not marketing. But do you not think that greater publicity would invite a deluge of shareholders, both institutional and retail, and increase the amount of capital invested for you to succeed in all of your priorities? For reference, consider the share price quintupling on October 10th, but quickly limited back down and this being due to specifically the Truth Social posts about China.

Well, we brought on Josh, he's more of a face guy than me. So that's one of the solutions, I guess. I mean execution matters, right? I mean we're -- I think we could go spend a bunch of money on PR to get on FOX News and all that kind of stuff. I don't know what -- I mean, I think it means more if we deliver for our customers and solve this really complex issue. That's more focused. That's our focus right now.

I mean, we'll continue to share our partnerships and continue to work with our partners to build out capacity and do it as aggressively as we can. I think that will speak more. I mean, if anybody thinks this is a sprint, we've been doing this since 2017, and we're still building, still growing. And I think we've created a tremendous amount of value around the entire platform. And ultimately, we think that will be recognized. I mean, between the shareholders that got ReElement shares, American Resource still owns ReElement shares and then the value we're creating at American Resources right now, we think it's going to be tremendous. But it's talking means less than doing.

Yes. I mean, talk is cheap, right? We try to focus on things that we can control. That's execution. I think a lot -- when you're talking -- you listen to the talking heads that are on TV or on LinkedIn or whatever social platform you look at, they still think you got to solve the problem through bringing more mines online, bring more supply online. But at the same time, we want higher pricing. So everybody's got an opinion. We're focused on things that we can control to solve problems and actually do it.

Okay. Next question.

I would add to that, just to brag on these guys. They can't really say it themselves, but being a director and working close in D.C. it was noted very much so that they did not play that game. So some of the fruits of the labor that you're seeing today was that recognition that these guys didn't do that. So won't go into too many specifics other than, that it probably led to some of the stuff that you see even now that's happening and even new announcements coming.

Great. Yes, there's definitely the real deal. All right. Next one. How are you approaching the ongoing critical mineral and tariff negotiations between the U.S. and China?

Cost structure. We want to win. We want to beat China's cost structure. We're going to optimize every single day. Our technology team lives in that facility, I think. It's about -- I mean, we don't -- we actually -- we're quite different. We don't push for subsidies. We don't push for that -- the market interference. We want to compete. That's -- we want to compete based on cost. We want to compete based on quality. And that's really our focus.

If China and U.S. -- hopefully, we don't have trade wars, Hopefully, we get along with people throughout the world. That would be a good thing for society. If we don't get along then, we'll continue to do we do. If we do get on, we'll continue to do what we do. And that's innovate and bring new technology to the space to cut cost structure to beat based on performance, not based on subsidies or tariffs. Now I'm actually supportive of President Trump's doing to level the playing field across all industries, but we don't need it in ours. ReElement doesn't require that.

All right. Next question. For those shareholders that were holding shares on date of record December 31, what are the shares of ReElement called in the account? I have clients with nontrading shares called [ 8 ] American Resources, are those ReElement shares? If not, then what is that company sitting in the accounts? And what is a specific benchmark for ReElement that you're looking for it to have its IPO?

I don't know that answer. Call your broker, your transfer agent. I apologize. I just don't have no idea. I think each broker calls -- each firm may call differently. I have no idea.

In terms of timing for ReElement IPO, we are targeting mid next year, second half of next year, mid next year. Some things could pull that forward. We're going to evaluate market, the current market environment and everything else that we have going on to make sure that we're creating the maximum amount of value for shareholders.

All right. Next question. How can I get invested in ReElement now?

Invest in American Resources. We just completed our fundraising. American Resources owns 19% of it. We just signed a term sheet with a very, very strong partner, one that we're extremely excited about, and ReElement's extremely well capitalized right now. But American Resources has some exposure to it.

Mark LaVerghetta and I were joking today that is a very interesting arbitrage with where AREC trades today versus what's happening privately with ReElement. So it's very good advice, Jensen.

Maybe the company under its new leadership will take that as well. And maybe we'll buy back shares at some point under that [ arb ]. That's what Josh and I were talking about.

We will tease the Street.

All right. Our next question is, have you provided test material from AREC Properties to ReElement for processing?

We have. We produce high-purity ND and NDPR from it. And -- but more importantly, we can produce the other elements as well. We've -- subsequent to that have started producing yttrium, gadolinium and other elements that come out of the heavy rare earths, the [ DY TV ]. That's what's attractive about the material is the wide spectrum of elements.

One thing I think is really important. A lot of people talk about, can you separate all 17 rare earths? 1 of those 17 is basically nonexistent, so that's a ridiculous question. Two, over half of them are worthless, so you don't really care to. Insolvent, you may have to. I don't know, I don't run a solvent plant, nor do I ever want to, nor will I ever do it. I don't need to. The -- but in our technology, we separate and purify the elements that actually make people money and that the defense industry actually needs. That's the uniqueness of our technology. We don't need to separate all 17, but we can separate the ones that matter. And that's what's important, the ones that we can actually make money on. And that's what's attractive about, what AREC has.

Yes, we're not a science experiment. This is a for-profit business.

Okay. Just -- there are -- a lot of people have some good questions, but we've answered them already. So I'm just trying to -- all right, so we do have time now for I think for two more questions. Our next question is, can China copy ReElement's refining technology?

Let's catches. And then violating our patents, which they probably don't care about. But the -- I don't think so. I don't -- we -- I mean when you look at chromatography -- and this question actually comes up quite a bit -- is people ask about people -- other people claiming they're using [ Ion Exchange ] or some version of chromatography. Chromatography is like buying a car. You either buy a Ford Focus or you can buy a Mercedes Benz. Nothing against Ford, great company, I drive a Ford F-150. But they're very different, very different aspects and different utilization.

And that's the difference between what we drive is we utilize a very efficient form of commercial chromatography. Bill Smith joined our team out of retirement from Eli Lilly. World renowned expert in it, to help build and manufacture most of Eli Lilly's facilities. [ Dr. Wendong ], I mean, she is the world-renowned expert and deserves a Nobel prize for what she's accomplished. And that's my -- one of my goals in life is to make sure she gets that through execution of our business to showcase what she knows about chromatography and how to design chromatography and how to do it efficiently. And then tie in [ eating ] and the rest of the technology team that we have that really understand how to make chromatography efficient and utilize it effectively.

It is not -- you don't just plug chromatography and it works. That's so far between. I mean, the new simulation software with AI added to it will continue to drop our costs. That's why I say we're in the second inning of a 9-inning game. But most people think that chromatography is analytical lab-based chromatography, that's just flat out ridiculous. I can show you where it's used in the sugar industry, very low-margin high-volume business. I can show you where it's using the insulin industry, high margin, lower volume, still big volume.

But I can show you what we're doing today too. Come see our facilities, welcome people to do it and see what we produce and see the versatility of our technology and how we operate it. A lot of people trying to use chromatography either try high pressure or all these other things that just aren't designed for commercial applications, and that's why they're failing. But we're okay with people trying to violate our patents because we won't protect them. But if you want to try to use other versions, you won't be able to compete.

Great. All right. I think we've hit that time. So I want to ask Josh. I'm sure this is news to everyone, so I'm sure they want to hear a little bit from you. Any closing remarks? I'd love to have you back on our platform and we can -- want you have more time in the role. But any closing remarks before we pass it over to Mark Jensen?

Yes. I -- first off, thank you for letting me join. It's been awesome to be able to watch these as a director and encourage the team from that perspective. But I think most importantly is what is that path for AREC going forward. And for us, it's about market share with the minerals that we end up choosing to play on. Both Jensen and LaVerghetta have said it best. We go after the stuff that has margin. We go for stuff that we can actually sell.

And so what that means for us is really a 3-pronged stool pillars. And the first one is we're going to pioneer that legacy resource recovery in our coal tailings. Very excited. Mark already said it, we've actually proven that we can do it. They just don't have enough people at the moment, and we're going to fix that to be able to show that there is an amazing U.S. domestic resource to be able to address some of these things. And then second is we're going to have a disciplined global feedstock acquisition strategy. It is amazing whenever [ Gov ] says, yes, we like the technology, whenever you're delivering to people during -- by the way, these QA and QC is quality assurance and quality and controls, these things take time. When everyone's like man, why are we not there yet? You'd be shocked like the guys that actually buy something, it takes a while. So when Mark says people are always at the facility visiting, it's not just people looking through the window.

And so that third pillar that we're going to concentrate on is really capturing that full commercial value in the midstream on the left and on the right of ReElement. And look, we're going to do some fun stuff on the physical and digital midpoints. There's going to be great announcements on, like Mark said, deals that are coming out, new technologies, JV partner technologies. This is inning 2 of a 9-inning game. And we're going to stay in the lower quartile to be able to compete with China, no matter if we become best friends just like we did with Japan after World War 2. This is about making money in business and these guys have figured out how to be able to live in that lower bucket in terms of cost.

And so I'm excited about being able to join the team and look forward to being invited next time and being able to talk with you, Jenene. I don't know if the questions were great, by the way. Although some of the ones that came in, really good ones. LaVerghetta, you and I need to figure out how to be able to answer all these people's questions. I really like some of these. So this is great. And Mark, thanks for letting me come on and participate with you on this as well.

Absolutely. Josh, again, congratulations. I really cannot wait to have you back on, so we'll make that happen soon. Mark, you're a star. Always happy to have you on, such a pleasure. It's been 5 years you've been on our platform. I think you -- American Resources, I think, has used it the most. And you can tell by how many people joined today and how many questions. Next time, I think we're going to have to make it a 2-hour event so we can get to everyone because Josh, you're right. There are excellent questions here. So Mark, I want to give you some closing remarks, and then we're going to have to close out this session.

Yes. Thanks, Jenene. I appreciate that. And Josh and Mark, thanks for joining as well. And to all those that have joined, thank you. It means a lot to us. We work really hard. We're passionate about it. We care about it. And it means a lot to us. It means a lot to our families. It means a lot to your families, and we don't take that lightly. You can invest in any company. We're thankful for you investing in ours. For those that aren't invested, we hope you do. For those that don't like us, sorry.

We'll still perform, we'll still execute, and we're here to win. We're excited about where we're at. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead of us. We're building a tremendous team. We're thankful for the new additions. We're thankful for Josh joining, for Chris joining. We're thankful for the opportunity we have. I think it's going to be an exciting year ahead for us and a lot of opportunity for the company and thankful that we're able to continue to grow and take advantage of opportunities, but also be a solution to the national security supply chain.

Having 2 brothers in the military and a 9-year-old son, it means a lot to us to make sure that our war fighters have the tools that they need and the equipment that they need to be successful. And we want to make sure that if we can help provide that solution, that's really important to us, and our team takes that serious. We have a lot of military vets that work for us. And I can tell you, their passion is real. And they're dead set on winning, they're dead set on succeeding and they're dead set on making our country safer. Thank you.

Well, I enjoyed every minute of this session. And as I said, I can't wait to have you back. Congratulations on your progress so far, the work that you guys are doing is incredible and really important to the country. So thank you for that.

And with that, this concludes our Virtual Investors CEO Connect segment featuring American Resources. I would like to extend a huge thank you to Mark Jensen, Mark LaVerghetta and newly appointed CEO, Josh Hawes, for joining us today. I'd also like to thank our audience for your participation. And great questions, as always. Really appreciate that. And as a reminder, American Resources trades on NASDAQ under the ticker AREC.

And if you like what you saw today, I encourage you to visit americanresourcescorp.com for more information on the company to sign up, to follow the company, to receive their alerts as well follow their social channels to stay turn on the latest information. And you can also visit virtualinvestorco.com for a replay of today's segment as well as our latest events calendar. So I wish everyone a great rest of your evening, and I really appreciate you joining us today.