"The global rare earth market is now bifurcating—and perhaps trifurcating"

• Core Shift: As deglobalization fractures critical mineral supply chains, the global rare earths market is bifurcating away from unified Chinese spot pricing toward distinct domestic, export, and regional market tiers.
• Strategic Implication: The definition of "price" itself has changed—material is no longer valued purely on lowest unit cost, but on local physical availability, legal transportability, and compliance with Western security-of-supply mandates.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:33:25 Thank you very much, Scott. We're now going to open the webcast to your questions. To submit a question, click the Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom window. Our first question comes from Neal Dingman of William Blair.

Neal, I've enabled you to speak.

If you just hit unmute, you should be able to ask your question.

neal dingmann 00:34:01 There we go. Can you hear me now?

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:34:03 Certainly can.

Mark Smith 00:34:03 your deal.

neal dingmann 00:34:04 Hi, good, thanks for the time, guys. Mark, I know, could you talk a little bit about, you know, you mentioned the timing, again, I think, and Jim and I talked about this a little bit, key data now is, you know, the timing between now and the, now and the financing, of course, again, is it just the EXIM? Seems like now, having the definitive feasibility study, you'd have most, but is it just now crossing the t's, dotting the I's? I mean, how much more details, will EXIM be looking for between now and then?

Mark Smith 00:34:37 It's a good question, Neal, and we continue to learn more in every discussion we have with EXIM. They're no different than a commercial bank in many ways. They kind of have an idea as to what they'd like to see, and then we talk about that, and we provide it to them, and then they have another idea.

So, we'll continue to go through that process, but we know what the main

pieces are that are remaining. We've got to finish the TRAXYS offtake agreement.

We need to get an almost final, if not final, EPC contract in front of them, and we're gonna be… we're gonna be ready to go. So, I don't… I just don't see any reason why we can't get a lot of that work done in the very near future, and get this in front of the board of directors for EXIM in short order.

neal dingmann 00:35:22 Very good, and then, love to see and, you know, was hoping to see the, you know, now, as Scott, you know, walked through, having the 8 distinct, you know, critical minerals that are in there. I guess my question is, is pricing, you know, once, once that starts, once Elk Hill (Creek) starts producing.

you know, how flexible, I guess, is the best way to ask it. Will you all be? I mean, if, again, scandium prices take off, or dysprosium, you name it, you know, there's going to be a lot of, obviously, upside potential for the mine. How much flexibility will you have to sort of lean into, you know, one or the other? So I guess… I guess my question may be for Scott, just on, operational flexibility, how he sees it once the,

You know, once Elk Hills (Creek) is producing commercially.

Scott Honan 00:36:12 Yeah, I think, Neal, that we have a production process that's built around a mine plan that is intended to deliver a fairly steady, you know, head grade to the operating plant.

That's not to say, though, that that can't be optimized. We have some very good and clever mining engineers, and while you're a little bit constrained in an underground environment as to how you approach the mining, there's a certain sequence you have to have. We certainly have enough information about the ore body that we could… we could target, say, higher-grade zones of Niobium, if… if the Niobium market got… got really hot.

I think the other thing that we've certainly talked about internally is the fact that, you know, our production process is pretty versatile as far as what kind of feedstocks, it could… it could, incorporate and process successfully. So… so there's… there's probably a number of flavors of… of rare earth, concentrates, for instance that might be available in the market that we could buy, and supplement, you know, to the feed coming from our own mine, to prospectively increase our production of rare earths. That might require some capital investment on the back end of the process to ensure we have adequate separations capability to make additional rare products, but it certainly could be done.

neal dingmann 00:37:35 If I could sneak one more in, Mark, just on further off, should we expect those in the, coming months, coming quarters?

Mark Smith 00:37:43 You broke up a little bit there, Neal.

neal dingmann 00:37:46 Further offtake agreements expect, you, you've got, you guys have done a tremendous job already, obviously, locking some things in. Should we expect more in the coming months, coming quarters?

Mark Smith 00:37:56 Yeah, let me… let me discuss that just a little bit, Neal. Kind of, at a very high level, we're going to have two commercial agreements for 100% of the offtake for this mine. You know, 50% of our ferroniobium will go to Thiessen Krroup.

And then everything else will go to TRAXYS once that commercial agreement is, is, finalized.

Within that TRAXYS agreement, and a lot of this is built around the long-term relationship and trust that we have between TRAXYS and NioCorp, is our ability as NioCorp

Or to continue to go out and market those products on our own.

And we may find customers or uses, applications, different strategies that we want to employ because of a growing market or strategic implications for the country, that we want to, you know, really focus our sales on certain customers.

versus others, we will have the right in the TRAXYS agreement to undertake those sales efforts and then sit down with TRAXYS and discuss which party would be better overall for NioCorp and its shareholders. And TRAXYS will be fine, one way or the other, because they'll get the economics regardless of whether they make the sale or whether we make the sale.

So we, we can really kind of lean in on a lot of different areas that we think may have a better future, a better margin, you know, maybe working with a customer that's a better credit risk. So, lots of things that we can use there to optimize our commercial situation.

The other thing that we're doing, and this is based on… after a while, you do learn how not to do things in the business, and so we try to keep those in top of mind as well.

One of the things we're doing with our commercial agreements is we're turning them into volumetric take or pay agreements, rather than price-based take or pay agreements with floor prices.

And one of the big reasons behind that is our confidence, extreme confidence, I might add, in where all of these markets are headed for the products that we're going to be selling. The supply and demand fundamentals are all in our favor and what I don't want to do is to end up with a commercial arrangement where we may get a floor price, which really helps our debt provider get comfort.

But then we also end up having a ceiling price as well. We're going to avoid ceiling prices wherever possible, and make sure that the company can take full advantage of the confidence that we have in where these markets are going. So, we are trying to apply some deeper thinking to how we're conducting our business, and I think we'll end up being very protective, very good markets going forward, and be able to, like you say, lean in where that possibility opens up.

neal dingmann 00:40:59 Fantastic. Congrats on the great announcement.

Mark Smith 00:41:01 Thanks, Neal.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:41:07 Our next question will come from Tate Sullivan of Maxim Group.

Tate Sullivan 00:41:12 Great, thank you for presenting the study and all the details, and can you talk about the planned construction timeline? I think in the study, it indicates 35 months. Back in 2022 is 45 months, I believe.

Is that due to the ramp access, and also is it due to the portal starting construction in February?

Mark Smith 00:41:35 Scott, you want to do that?

Scott Honan 00:41:37 Yeah, certainly, Tate. As I mentioned, you know, we've always recognized the critical path for this project goes through the development of the mine and getting the mine into production, so it's a combination of two things. One is getting that mine portal

started and established. If we can get that behind us, then, you know, the remaining work to get down to the ore body and get the ore body producing goes quicker. I think the other thing here is that, when we had put together various mine plans, including the one in the last study, looking at shaft access, the shaft access and the development from the shaft to the ore body introduced some constraints on our ability to get to the ore body quickly and to ramp up that production. And if you look at our last study, there was a fairly long period, about 8 months or so, where the mine started producing at an initial rate, and then it ramped up fairly slowly to full production.

I think the design we have now gets us there just a lot more quicker, so we get down to the ore body quicker, and, you know, with the ramp access and the advantages it provides, it allows us to get the stoops that we need, into production quicker, and get to that full production threshold just as quick as you could hope.

Tate Sullivan 00:42:57 Thank you, Scott, and one more for me. Mark, can you talk about, I mean, from looking at potential timelines, do you think there's more variability in the mine construction aspect of the work, or in the processing plant construction aspect?

Mark Smith 00:43:11 I think that's a great question, and I don't have a perfect answer, but I'll provide you with some thinking along those lines. You know, the engineering associated with the above-ground project will be a little more straightforward and a little more black and white from an engineering standpoint. But it is a… it is a big project, and it's a complicated project to build, multiple floors in the buildings and whatnot, so it has its challenges. Having said that, though, as confident as we are in our underground mine plan, those of us that have been in the mining industry for a couple of years know that, you know, you never know what Mother Nature's gonna hand you until you open up the ground.

And so there's always those concerns, but I will say that the extra work that Scott and his team have done on the geotechnical, the geotechnical,hydrological, the paste tailings, designs, where we're going to backfill the underground mine. All of that extra work has made us even more confident that, you know, surprises in an underground mine are really not going to happen in our case. But we've all been in the business a long time, we know it can happen.

But I think we've taken every effort possible to minimize, you know, any surprises at the end of the day. And that may, you know, require us to put a little more grout down there, or to add a little…

a little bit more, you know, cement to the paste tailings, but that's what we'll do. Safety will be job number one for our employees. So, not a precise answer, Tate, but hopefully you understand the complexities of both.

Tate Sullivan 00:44:52 Yeah, thank you, and thank you for including the report, the ex-China pricing, and the other sources, current sources of supply, and thank you for taking my questions.

Mark Smith 00:45:01 You bet, Tate. Good to hear from you.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:45:05 Our next question will come from Sandara Iyer from B. Reilly Securities.

Soundarya, if you hit unmute, we should be able to hear your question. Thank you.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:24 Can you hear me now?

Mark Smith 00:45:26 Yes.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:27 Yeah.

Thank you. Thanks for taking my question.

Mark Smith 00:45:31 Yes.

Soundarya Iyer 00:45:31 So… It's mostly around investor skepticism around scandium demand.

just given the size of the market today, I wanted to ask if you're able to share anything on the commercial process with prospective off-takers, specifically that would help investors get better sense of how much Western demand could inflict once a reliable non-Chinese source like Elk Creek actually starts producing.

Mark Smith 00:46:04 Yeah, Soundarya, great, great question, and one that I love to answer, because we're really studying this Scandium market as deeply as we can, and I will be the first to say that this is a product line that has my excitement level just exceptionally high.

Let me start out with just kind of a couple of foundational data points. First one being, up until very, very recently we all understood the Scandium market to be about a 30 to 35 ton per year market. You know, maybe 3 tons a year being produced out of Canada, 7 tons being produced out of the Philippines, and basically the remainder being produced out of China. For some reason now, the USGS has published a report that suggests that the market may be upwards of 60 to 65 tons per year. We're still trying to do the math to figure that out, because we don't know where the extra production may be coming from.

But it is interesting to note that the USGS has identified sources that they think exist, which has almost doubled what the market was in terms of supply prior to this year.

Now, the reason why I spent just a little bit of time on that is that that's all kind of interesting and fun to think about, but when we think about just one application of Scandium in the world today, and it's a real application that's being used today, and it's in the solid oxide fuel cell business. In order to support the growth that the solid oxide fuel cell business is suggesting is going to occur in power generation, and they certainly have good reason to believe that with all the AI and data center power generation requirements.

Just one application there, those solid oxide fuel cells will then need about 400 tons of scandium per year to meet their production requirements for those solid oxide fuel cells.

So that alone, you know, is going to create just a tremendous amount of demand for this… for this new product, that… that we're all pretty excited about. Now, we've kind of got that baseline figure, which is… far exceeds anything that's produced today. Then you start talking about things like, defense applications. You know, we just had announced the, the MOU with Lockheed Martin for 15 tons per year. We know that there's going to be more demand from Lockheed and other prime defense contractors as they continue with their lightweighting, as they continue to figure out that scandium aluminum alloys are cheaper, they're easier to work with and perform many additional duties over what they're using in the fighter jets today, which would be composites. So, we know that that demand is going to grow.

We're looking at various automotive uses. We've got Project Pivot that Scott mentioned over in the UK. We're actually working with Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover. We've actually made the first Scandium-aluminum part for the front suspension of their DBX model, and they're doing destructive testing on that now, and then the next part that we make will actually go into one of the Aston Martin DBXs in the automobile industry, just based on the market reports that we have you know, could consume upwards of 3,000 tons of scandium per year. So when I take a look at the demand side of this scandium.

business, and then I think about, you know, literally the win-win-win-win that the automobile manufacturers get by utilizing Scandium-aluminum alloys. They get lighter weight, they get better corrosion resistance, you can weld it. It's cheaper when you use it with recycled aluminum than just using aluminum by itself.

You got all of these things, including a CO2 emission reduction that they get on that part, so they get to lower their overall CO2 emissions for their corporate reporting purposes. Every single one of those things is a very positive outcome.

And we think the automobile industry is likely going to become a huge user of Scandium. So, we're really excited about the Scandium business, and we want to make sure that we show everyone that we can be a reliable producer, and I think we differentiate ourselves in that method, or that way as well, because by virtue of the fact that we're underground mining, you know, a single ore body, bringing everything up to the surface and running it through a metallurgical plant, and we're there primarily for Niobium, which is a fabulous market all to itself. By virtue of the fact that we're producing niobium, by definition, we'll be producing scandium.

And I think a lot of the end-use applications look at that as a reliability improvement over a primary scandium production facility, because, you know, we have these multiple products, and by virtue of producing Niobium, all the other products come out. So, I threw a lot out there, Soundarya, I hope I didn't confuse the situation too much.

But hopefully you can hear just a little bit of excitement in my voice about this Scandium market and where it's going to go. It's really an exciting place to be right now, and I'll finish it by saying that the United States Department of War understands the importance of scandium, and it's high, very high on their radar right now, in terms of importance to the security of our country.

Soundarya Iyer 00:52:07 No, thank you, Mark, for that comprehensive answer. It makes a lot of things very clear for me.

Just one more, on the sequencing between EXIM facility and the potential equity component. Will exam require any evidence of committed equity before the loan closes, or?

Mark Smith 00:52:33 I think it's going to be an interesting situation. We have talked with EXIM significantly over the last 3 years and 1 month now, and they have come around in a big way

to this idea of loan authorization with conditions precedent. And one of the areas that they are… they certainly seem to be very open to, is the idea of loan authorization with a conditioned precedent to raise any remaining equity after the announcement of the EXIM loan authorization. So, we'll continue to work with EXIM along those lines. That is not something that they have historically done, but under the leadership of John Jovanovich and Brian Greeley, they are very commercially astute.

They understand how these markets work, and when it's a good time to raise equity and when it's not. And I think we have a much better sound box to bounce things off of with the new administration than what we have seen historically. So, I think that that possibility is certainly there.

Having said that, I also know that capital pools form when they're ready to form, not when I want them to form. And so, if the capital is available, you know, the company will always take a hard look and try to make the best decision possible on behalf of our shareholders when it's the right time to raise any equity. So, lots of optionality there.

Soundarya Iyer 00:54:07 That's very helpful, so congratulations on getting this through. I'll pass it over.

Mark Smith 00:54:13 Thank you, Soundarya. Good to hear from you again. It's been a while.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 00:54:18 Our next question will come from Iiko Ele from H.C. Wainwright.

heiko ihle 00:54:26 I assume you can hear me okay?

Mark Smith 00:54:28 Yep, we can hear you, Heiko.

heiko ihle 00:54:30 Mark, Jim, Scott, team, thanks for taking my questions. Is there a way to expand into more products and diversify just a little bit more? I mean, obviously you've, you know, you've gone from 3 to 8. Is there a way to go further downstream, and just conceptually, how much more can Elk Creek even grow? I mean, you're looking at a 40-year mine life here. How much more can Elk Creek grow before you oversaturate your own production, or at least start moving down your own pricing?

Mark Smith 00:55:00 Yeah, good, good, good consideration, good thinking, heiko. Scott, I'll have you kind of go over some of those extra rare earth products, which we know are there, they'll be in the concentrates that we're going to be making anyway, and we just need to separate them. Do you want to cover those?

First, and then I can start talking about some of the downstream activities that we're engaging in.

Scott Honan 00:55:23 Certainly, Mark.

I think, when you look at what we've presented here in this webinar, the product mix when it comes to rare earths is a… it represents a bit of a trade-off, so we've targeted specifically the magnetic rare earths, which is where about 80% of the value lies. And, we produce… we have to separate those from the balance of the rare earths.

And we make specific decisions about that to make the best use of capital on the project. So, for instance, we have lanthanum and cerium. We don't do anything to try and recover those. They're very low-value products. They'll cost more to recover than what their value would be.

The samarium, europium, gadolinium sit in between neodymium, prasodymium, and terbium dysrosium on the periodic table, so we have to separate them out. We recover them together because we didn't want to put the additional capital into the project to have two more solvent extraction circuits to make those three as individual products.

But it would certainly be not a difficult exercise to do that engineering, to have that solvent extraction capacity and make those products if we were able to get the right pricing for those products.

For the heavy rare earths and yttrium. the, you know, the Holmium and everything heavier than Holmium, it's really quite small quantities. It would be, you know, a challenge for us to try and make any kind of business out of those heavy rare earths, but the yttrium is certainly interesting. There's a couple hundred tons of yttrium, prospectively.

We'll make all those together right now as part of the project and send them to someone else to separate. But again, at the right price, we would probably need one additional solvent extraction circuit to separate out the yttrium and turn it into a product.

But, but, you know, just aside from those rare earth products, I think once we get the plant up and running, we have a mineral resource and a reserve here that could certainly support a higher production rate than what we have in this current study. Now, that would require, again, some capital to expand mine production and some capital to expand production in the surface plant, but it's fairly easy to see how that could be done, to say, you know go 2X from the current plant and double the production output.

Last thing I'll mention is that, and, you know, this goes to almost more of an environmental matter than a production matter, but, some of the products that come out of the plant, calcium carbonate, for instance, iron oxide are actually fairly high purity products in their own… in their own right.

Now, we use those, to make the paste backfill material that goes underground and fills the voids that we create by mining and supports the structure of the underground mine.

But we certainly are in discussions with some folks that could potentially take those products off our hands. And the advantage would be then that, you know, we need to keep enough on-site to sustain the PACE backfill activity.

But it would be a situation where it might generate some extra revenue, and it certainly could defer or delay the cost of surface tailings and impoundment facilities.

Mark Smith 00:58:50 But then I…

I would just add to that, heiko, that, you know, we really were looking at the SEG con and the Heavy Rare Earth Con as leaving them there, and that was largely driven by the prices of, you know, the samarium, the europium, and the gadolinium.

At the time, and then on the heavy rare earth concentrate, you know, leaving that as is and not separating it because things like yttrium, which were in there as well, just didn't have prices that would support any capital expenditure for that. That has changed, just like all the other rare earth elements right now, and we're seeing a very strong bifurcation of pricing for things like samarium and Yttrium, which, as you know, our Department of War needs in a big way, and Yttrium is becoming a lot more important, right up there in terms of importance along with Scandium right now. With the right situation and the right price supports we can easily take the samarium out of that SEG con, we can easily take the yttrium out of that heavy rare earth con, and we can have two more products, but we're not going to do those at a losing proposition. We'll only do that as a profitable proposition, but that would add more products to our list. And then, the other way that we can expand the product horizon a little bit is to just you know, take the existing products, like Niobium is a very good example to start with here. We plan to make ferro niobium, which, you know, 90-92% of all the Niobium sold in the world today is sold in that form.

It's basically sold to the steel industry, it's an alloying agent, and it strengthens regular steel into high-strength, low-alloy steel.

But there are many other markets out there for niobium that we are aware of and we're pretty excited about. You can make Niobium pentoxide in NB205, and that can be in different purity levels, so it has different applications, and the margins on the high-purity NB205 are significantly greater than ferro niobium. You can also get into Niobium metal, where your margins are probably the highest in the Niobium industry.

But what we wanted to start out with was a simple product that has pretty broad ranges for the specifications, that's the ferro-Niobium, and we want to make sure that we get good at that to start with and generate revenue as fast as possible. So, we'll start out with ferroniobium, but we have every intention, once we get good at that, at looking at some of these NB205 and Niobium metal downstream applications. And in Scandium, we're already into the downstream markets there. We're doing some testing of scandium metal production right now.

Scott and I just witnessed that last week at the contractor's facility where they're doing that. That looks very, very promising, because there are customers for Scandium Metal right now. I mean, they will place a contract with us right now for Scandium Metal, because you can't find Scandium Metal outside of China, and China's being very selective on who gets any of their Scandium metal on an export basis. And then, of course, the Scandium aluminum master alloy.

We bought that business and intellectual property last year. We've relocated the business to a more suitable manufacturing facility, and now we're purchasing Scandium feedstocks so we can start making Scandium-Aluminum Master Alloy, and we have customers waiting for that product to be produced. So, yeah, there are many, many ways yet that we as a company can continue to take the foundational elements that we have and pursue these downstream activities where margins generally increase, and we find that to be quite exciting.

heiko ihle 01:02:49 In 23 years in this industry, this might be the longest, in a good way, answer to a single question on a conference call I've ever gotten.

Mark Smith 01:02:59 You know me, huh?

heiko ihle 01:03:00 So, by longest, but I really mean most comprehensive, so thank you for that. One thing, I'd be lying to you if I told you I've read through the whole study, but I did sort of skim through a couple of pages, and one thing that popped out was the gas line. It was 18.4 in the study, I think it was page 379.

You said you expect to connect this to a distribution pipeline 30 miles away. Are all arrangements to actually get this done related to terms, pricing, you know, how much you can get already done?

Or can you give maybe a bit more color on power generations and the factors that may sway you into a certain direction of how to do it?

Mark Smith 01:03:41 Sure. Scott, you want to start that one?

Scott Honan 01:03:44 Yeah, certainly, heiko. We're in a unique position where our project is located, in that we're, we're close to actually 3 natural gas, you know, transportation pipelines.

There's one to the east that's only about 5 miles away. There's not a lot of capacity on that line, but we'll access it to provide power during the construction period.

The two larger lines are one that's about 28 miles to the south in Kansas, the Rockies Express Pipeline, and then there's a Northern Natural Gas/Black Hills alternative forest about 30 miles to the west.

We went through a competitive process with those two larger pipelines to see… really to get the best deal we could on gas delivered to the site, understanding that in today's environment, we're going to be responsible for the capital cost of those pipelines.

And as part of the competitive process, we established terms around the cost of the pipelines, as well as the subsequent transportation fee we would pay to have the gas transported from a main pipeline to our site.

You know, going through that process has resulted in what you see in the study, where we're focusing on this opportunity to the west, bringing in a 12-inch diameter pipeline to our site to provide gas for both the process and for power generation. And just to put a point on the power generation, that's about 15% of our natural gas need is going to be dedicated to generating power for the site.

So, you know, I don't think it's… I don't think we're at the point, heiko, where we have definitive contracts in place. That takes a little bit of time, but we are pretty far down the process with a particular provider and supplier of gas, and there's a contract to finish there, but we don't expect that that will take much long, and certainly we would expect that to be in place here later this year.

heiko ihle 01:05:50 Awesome, I think I've, taken up my spice in the, time of the question queue. I'll get back at you. Thank you, guys.

Mark Smith 01:05:55 Thanks, heiko.

RedChip Companies, Inc. 01:06:01 Thank you to our many participants today. If there are any further questions, please direct them to NioCorp at

jim.sims@NioCorp.com, or aguthery@NioCorp.com. Once again, that's jim.sims at NioCorp.com, or aguthery at NioCorp.com. Once again, thank you for attending, and thank you, Mark, Scott, Jim, and Alex for presenting.

Mark Smith 01:06:29 Thank you, Barrett. Thanks. Thanks, everybody.

Scott Honan 01:06:32 Cheers.

 

 

Good day, and welcome to today's webcast with NioCorp Developments. This is Barrett Boone with RedChip Companies. Today's webcast will cover NioCorp's recently published 2026 technical report for its Elk Creek Critical Minerals project in Nebraska.

All participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will open the webcast to your questions.

You may submit a question at any time by clicking the Q&A button on the bottom of your Zoom window and typing in it. I will now hand the webcast over to Jim Sims, NioCorp's Chief Communications Officer. Jim, please go ahead.

Jim Sims 00:00:43 Thank you, Barrett, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. It's a big day for the company. The team today, we're going to walk through a supplemental presentation during today's webcast to accompany our overall discussion in the Q&A session. NioCorp's news releases, presentations, SEC filings, including the technical report supporting the updated Feasibility study, are all available now on our website at NioCorp.com and on CDAR.

On the webcast today, we have Mark Smith, Executive Chairman, President and CEO of NioCorp, and Scott Honan, Chief Operating Officer of NioCorp, and President of Elk Creek Resources Company.

Before we begin today, please note that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements, including those regarding NioCorp's future financial and operating results, expectations, plans, and prospects.

Any statement that is not a historical fact should be considered a forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed.

For a description of these risks, please refer to the cautionary notes in today's presentation and to the risk factors in NioCorp's filings with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and on CDAR+.

Today's discussion may also reference market and industry data drawn from third-party sources which the company has not independently verified, and which are subject to uncertainty. Lastly, all dollar figures today are in US dollars, unless otherwise stated. Following today's prepared remarks, we will open the webcast to your questions.

Let me now turn the webcast over to Mark Smith. Mark, please go ahead.

Mark Smith 00:02:20 Thank you, Jim, and much like Jim just alluded to, this is a very, very important time in the company's history. This is quite the effort that the company has undertaken here, and along those lines, I'd like to start out by thanking Scott Honan, our COO, the entire NioCorp team, including our board of directors, who have all been just phenomenally supportive in this effort. I want to thank the literally hundreds of consultants that we have used to put this entire independent study together, and in particular, the 15 qualified professionals who have signed their name and certified the technical competency and accuracy of this report. Very, very important, and it's just a huge responsibility that those QPs undertake when they do that. And then certainly, last but not least, I want to thank our shareholders for their patience as we worked our way through this process. As Jim noted, we did file this report on CDAR yesterday.

If the report is not on our website yet, it will be up there today, and I encourage you to take a look at that 500-plus page document. One of the things that's very important to me personally in every one of these efforts I've ever undertaken is that… and my entire NioCorp team can attest to the fact that I'm always pushing to get things done. Let's get things done, let's get things done.

But when it comes to a feasibility study, a technical report like this, quality needs to be paramount. And we will always choose quality over speed when it comes to doing a feasibility study.

And so, you know, again, thank you all for your patience while we undertook this effort. It did take a little more time than what any of us had anticipated, but I know after all of the years I've been working in project financing and fundraising, that that short amount of extra time, in this case, is going to pay very good dividends for us as we move into the full project financing, including EXIM and additional equity fundraising. So, thank you for that. I think it will pay dividends now with this high-quality study. You know, we basically, you know, undertook the feasibility study update for two reasons.

To start with, and that was to do some additional drilling out on site, we wanted to have tighter hole spacing so that we had better definition of what the ore body contained in between all the other drill hole samples that we had. We undertook that effort. The results were outstanding. Once again, every time we put a drill bit in the ground, we find out something even better about this ore body, and that just continues to be the case.

This is an outstanding ore body.

Second, we had a new process flow diagram for our metallurgy and, we needed to have the process flow diagram converted into an actual feasibility study level engineering design. So, after 12 years now of working on this metallurgy, and really optimizing it, I think, you know, to almost the highest extent possible, where we're getting, you know, high 80s, low 90% recoveries of all of the elements that we're going to be pulling out of this ore body and selling.

We're now in good shape because not only do we have a demonstrated metallurgical process, we now have the engineering designed to support that effort as well. And then, just because, again, quality is paramount, we undertook, during the feasibility study engineering effort and the drilling effort, we undertook some other additional studies just to make our technical program that much more robust. So we did some extra geotechnical studies, some geo-hydrologic studies. We did a lot of work on pace tailings and a lot of work on grouting. which will make for a better mine plan, a safer mine for our employees, and a longer-lasting mine over the long run. So, again, really, really a solid effort here, and I want to make sure we send out that thank you to everybody.

So, Alex, let's go to slide 4.

And we'll start out with one of the main drivers here in terms of improvements to the feasibility study for 2026 versus 2022.

We will now have 8 different products that we'll be selling as a result of underground mining and surface processing activities.

You can see that we will be producing niobium, scandium, and titanium.

Which, of course, was in the 2022 Feasibility study, but will also now be producing the neodymium, prasodymium high purity oxide, dysprosium high purity oxide, terbium high purity oxide, and then, as a result of how one goes about processing rare earths and what comes out first in solvent extraction, we'll also be producing two different concentrate products. One is called an SEG, or samarium europium gadolinium carbonate concentrate, and the other one is all the other heavy rare earth elements in a carbonate form, again, concentrate style. What you can see on the right here is the life of mine gross revenue. The circle on the left shows the 2022 feasibility study where we had Niobium, scandium, and titanium as part of the overall revenue, just a little under $22 billion for that Life of Mine gross revenue.

And then the figure to the right, which, by the way, is to scale, so that you could actually visually see what the additional revenue means in terms of a to-scale picture here.

We'll have life of mine gross revenue as a result of the 2026 Feasibility study of a little over $37 billion with multiple products here, Niobium, scandium, the, the, rare earths, and, and the titanium.

And that $37.4 billion is about 1.7 times greater than the $21.9 billion, so a huge impact on the revenue side of the equation, given the additional products that we'll be able to produce from this ore body.

Next slide, Alex.

If we start heading into the overall economic highlights and some of the numbers associated with our economic model.

I'll start out over on the left here, and this is a life of mine margin of $560 per ton. That is one of the highest that I've certainly seen in my career in the mining industry.

And we get that by simply taking the $815 gross revenue per ton figure and subtracting the $255 OPEX per ton and keep in mind that that $560 per ton margin is 41% greater than the margin we showed in the 2022 feasibility study.

So again, really, you know, getting those extra products in, getting the extra revenue in, really bolsters the economics here quite significantly.

Then we can focus on some of the numbers to the right. I know I like to focus on the $4.1 billion pre-tax NPV, utilizing an 8% discount rate. We've got $519 million per year, average annual cash flow over the life of the mine. If we head over to the right, you can see the $608 million, EBITDA over the, annually over the life of the mine. We've got a 40-year mine life and, we've got a total upfront capex estimated at $1.85 billion. So clearly, the capex number has gone up, as has the NPV, as has the margin, as has the revenue, as has the EBITDA, as has the cash flow. But that capex number, I think we were all concerned about what inflation would do, and this is largely driven by inflation more than anything else.

But we do need to remember that we've added some additional processing to what we had before as well. We've got the solvent extraction for the rare earths, we have the chlorination for the Niobium and the titanium.

And again, can't forget about that horrible thing called inflation. But a $1.85 billion CAPEX number, and we still end up with a less than 3-year after-tax payback with these numbers as a whole. So, very, very strong, economics, very robust economics, I would say.

Next slide.

So one of the things that is really starting to catch people's attention in the market right now is an absolute bifurcation of pricing between things that are coming out of China and things that are not being produced outside of China. And this is quite a compelling number, and it appears to have very good traction, and we think it's going to last for quite some period of time.

If we take a look at Scandium as an example.

Scandium being sold… being produced and sold within China is actually upwards of $800 to $850 per kilogram right now. NioCorp is actually out purchasing scandium on the open market today, because we are demonstrating the ability to produce scandium metal.

And we, of course, own a business that can make the master alloy, Scandium aluminum master alloy, and we're actually out on the market purchasing Scandium to feed those businesses.

We're seeing prices for Scandium range anywhere from $3,000 to as high as $6,500 per kilogram right now, and it's a very good example of this bifurcation of what is being made and sold in China versus what is being made and sold outside of China.

Turbium is another very good example. Turbium inside China goes for about $1,000 a kilogram. Outside of China, it goes for about $4,500 to $5,000 per kilogram.

And dysprosium goes for about $250 a kilogram inside China, and it goes for about $1,250 to $1,500 outside of China. So there's an absolute bifurcation, very clear and evident, and we do, as I mentioned feel like this bifurcation could last for quite a while, because it takes a while to get these projects that everybody is supporting. It takes a while to get these projects built, up, and operating. We think that, in combination with the Section 232 duties which are available to the President right now, tariffs, which are available to the president right now, Project Vault, as well as the G7 support pricing discussions that are occurring and gaining a lot of traction, are all going to help support this bifurcated pricing structure that we're seeing between China and the rest of the world.

Next slide.

So, what do we have going forward here, now that we've got the Feasibility study done? Well, that feasibility study was a huge piece of what EXIM was looking for as part of the loan program that we're undertaking with them. We met with EXIM for about 2 hours yesterday, going over as much of the feasibility study that you can in a 2-hour period.

They will be looking at that document now EXIM for the next week or two, and we'll set up another, probably, all-day workshop with EXIM and all of their consultants to go over the feasibility study in detail and answer any questions that they have.

But a huge, huge step forward in the right direction here.

As everyone knows, we continue to work on our off-take agreement with TRAXYS. That is all continuing to move forward, albeit a lot slower than what I think anybody anticipated, especially me.

But I had a couple of very good phone calls with TRAXYS just this last weekend, and we hope to have that agreement finalized. There's just 2 or 3 points that are still in discussion between the two companies, and I don't see any reason why those can't be cleared up and finalized in short order here.

The next item, though, is quite an undertaking, and this is where we have to continue with our engineering effort. We have to go from feasibility study to detailed engineering, and we have to put the company and our EPC contractor in a position that we can actually write an EPC contract and have something that both parties are willing to sign, and something that EXIM is willing to agree to as part of their loan undertaking for this project. So this will be quite an effort. We're already… we have draft contracts that are already written.  We're sharing those with the EPC contractors. We hope to have a lot of that effort behind us by the end of August or so, and then we plan to sit down with EXIM, the EPC contractor, as well as NioCorp with EXIM, and make sure that EXIM is as comfortable as we are with those agreements. So you can see we're on a very fast track moving forward now that that feasibility study is there, and we can use that information to support a lot of the efforts, including off-take agreements and EPC agreements. And then finally, the EXIM Bank loan and any remaining equity that's required. Let's talk about that for a minute. We all are aware of the fact that we have written documents from EXIM saying that they would loan up to about $800 million.

And they specifically said a 65% debt-to-equity ratio in that correspondence. So we are, with the new feasibility study, the new economics associated with that study, and the new CAPEX estimate.

EXIM will be making another evaluation to determine what level of debt-to-equity they are willing to support for this project.

And I don't have any reason to believe that that, amount of loan figure will not increase accordingly. Again, final evaluations have to be made by XM, but the robust economics here clearly will support greater than $800 million in loans from, from XM, so we're anxious for that process to get going.

Again, we met with XM for about 2 hours yesterday, talked to them about their next steps and timing for those next steps. They are very, very energized about all of this. They're as excited as all of, all of us are about this feasibility study being done, because now they can really start to move on several fronts, and we're going to have more meetings with them in the next couple of weeks.

And the comment that was made by the highest-ranking EXIM employee there at the meeting yesterday was that NioCorp remains the highest priority for EXIM right now, in terms of critical, strategic mineral projects. So, we have their attention, they have the data that they need.

We'll go through this additional, you know, due diligence process with them, and they will make a final determination in short order on how much that loan can be, and what percent debt to equity that we'll end up with at the end of the day.

Once those decisions are made, then we'll know what additional fundraising, if any, we need to do on the equity side. So, that's kind of a short description as to where we are now and that the Feasibility study is done.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Scott to get into some of the more technical parts of the feasibility study, changes and whatnot. Scott, the floor is yours.

Scott Honan 00:18:53 Thank you, Mark, and I'd like to start just by echoing something that you said at the top of the webinar. I'd just like to thank our NioCorp Nebraska team, the local community around Elk Creek and Tecumseh, Nebraska, the good folks at Kruger Farms and the 15 QPs that certified our Feasibility study report, I'm really grateful to have a strong team like this that has worked so hard to make today possible.

When we look at our project as it stands today, we have definitely built on the 9 previous technical reports we've done on the Elk Creek project and all of the engineering and testing and mine design that have gone along with that. But we have, we've continued through this design process to de-risk the project, both from a technical perspective as well as from economic perspective, and I wanted to highlight a few areas where we've made some changes to the better for the project.

The first area is just in terms of mine access. In our previous study, we'd presumed that we would access the mine with a twin shaft arrangement. We've now replaced that with a twin ramp from surface.

The twin shaft idea was certainly technically viable, economically reasonable approach. It did require us to use a freezing approach to freeze the ground so that we could sink the shafts through the ground safely.

However, putting in shafts is an exacting science. A vertical shaft in a mine has to be perfectly vertical, there can't be any deviation, and shaft access does require some specialized equipment, both in the shaft and on surface, that's only made by a few manufacturers around the world.

So, we're now moving from that to a ramp access from surface. We started that work here in February, establishing the mine portal, where our twin ramps will originate from.

And putting in the ramps is definitely an improvement in that the ramps can tolerate some up and down and back and forth as you advance, and they are a quicker way to get to the ore body than the shaft approach.

Kind of building on that, in terms of project schedule, I'd like to thank the folks at Amplify Mine Planning and Dumas, who put together the new mine design and mine plan. And again, just building on the access question, we now have a design that gets us down to the ore body and into full production in 35 months. That's… that's definitely an improvement over our previous study.

And I think we've always recognized that in looking at this project, that the critical scheduling path runs through the mine. You have to get that mine established, up and running to get the entire project producing and making products.

So it's been really gratifying to see that taking this approach gets us there faster, and when we get there faster, we start generating revenue and getting a return for our shareholders.

Inside the mine, we've changed our approach to material movement. So, previously, everything would have been moved around underground using diesel equipment, and then hoisted to surface through the vertical shafts in a thing called a skip.

With the Ramp approach, we've also changed our design, our philosophy around material movement, and we've embraced the idea of the RAILVEYOR for moving material from the mine to the surface plant.

The RailVER is a… is a… it's a very nice piece of technology. I had the opportunity to visit a RAILVEYOR installation down in Missouri, and I was struck by how simple it is, both mechanically and operationally, how easy it is to operate and maintain.

And, you know, one of the questions I ask myself when evaluating a new technology is, you know, if this thing breaks, can I go to Elk Creek Welding and have it repaired? And the answer with the RAILVEYOR is certainly yes.

So I think we have here certainly a lower cost, more efficient way to move material out of the mine that'll serve us well as we put the mine into production.

Sure. Energy supply has been… has been a difficult proposition, particularly in Nebraska. Like a lot of places, we've seen a situation where a lot of big data centers have gone in, power supplies are stretched a bit, and the situation with the local utilities is a little bit tougher than it was a few years back.

And we were in a situation where getting connected to the local power grid was going to be an expensive proposition, both in terms of the capital cost to bring in a power line, as well as the capital cost to put in a large substation at the site.

We really did evaluate a number of options here.

And I think, you know, where we have landed now is that our best proposition is an on-site microgrid. So, what that means is we'll have a series of small natural gas-fired generators that will power the site, both during the construction period and during operations.

And a third-party company will own, operate, install, and maintain this equipment. We just get power through the fence to power our activities. And the third party can do this at a cost that's really right at the same benchmark as we would get from the utility.

So, we have a good solution there. We will certainly still need a natural gas connection from a local pipeline to the site. That's underway. But that part of it has been certainly a design change, but I think certainly one for the better.

And when I say that, I'm very focused on the reliability of our power supply. Certainly, when you have people in an underground mine, you need to have power, and it has to be there all the time.

I was fortunate enough to visit a very similar type of microgrid system that powers the Pittsburgh airport, and has been doing so for 5 years. And really, I felt that if you can have one of these systems to power a big airport like that, we can certainly use it to our advantage at the Elk Creek Project.

The other big change is on the processing side. So, certainly we've added equipment to the production process to produce rare earth products, but we've also changed our approach to the front end of processing the ore.

In the prior project design, we had a couple of upfront steps. The first was leaching with hydrochloric acid, the second was leaching with sulfuric acid.

And the acid demand, you know, in that approach was quite high. It required us to have an on-site acid plant, which, again, was both technically and economically feasible, although acid plants are a very particular technology and do come with some considerable maintenance considerations.

Stepping back, we had, we ran a demonstration plant and evaluated different ways to get at the pay metal and the ore.

And what we came up with is a much better front end to the project. So, what we have now is a calcining step and a step to remove calcium and magnesium. This reduces the mass of the ore that the rest of the plant sees by about half, and it takes out all of the acid consumers in the ore, or at least most of them.

After those first two steps, we then return to the idea of hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid leaching to get at our pay metals, but we can do that at a much lower acid consumption than we had previously.

And as a result, we no longer need an acid plant on site. We will recycle our hydrochloric acid and simply neutralize sulfuric acid. So it's definitely a change to the better on the process side of things, reducing our acid consumption and simplifying our production process.

Finally, as I mentioned, we've added or expanded our product suite to include the rare earth products that Mark mentioned at the top of the webinar.

We're really leveraging our expertise around rare earths as a company, and we're taking advantage of all the good work that we did at our demonstration plant, where we built a small-scale version of our production process, we ran it continuously, and we're able to take all of the data generated from that plant and incorporate it into the current design.

What distinguishes us on the rare earth side of things, you know, as separate from a lot of other development stage companies, is that we are actually going to produce fully separated, high-purity, rare earth products that can go directly into the supply chain for making rare earth permanent magnets.

And in addition to that, because we have all the rare earths present in our ore body, like any rare earth ore body we have the upside ability to take samarium, europium, gadolinium, perhaps yttrium, and separate those out and make those products as well. That could be a future capital project at the site, again, to deliver some more revenue and value to our shareholders.

At the end of the day, folks, we have a better project here. It's a better revenue distribution across a broader product portfolio, and we have a project that's not reliant on a single element or product to sustain our economics.

We've made improvements to the mine and the surface plant, and those have resulted…

resulted in higher efficiencies in the operation and higher yields to the product. And now we also have a shorter time to commercial production.

Next slide.

One thing I like to talk about is what's happened to our resource and reserve as a result of all the good work that we did last year at the site with an extensive drilling program.

So now we have 45.9 million tons of proven and probable reserves, 40-year operational life.

And in the process of doing the drilling last year, we have established a proven reserve, which is the highest category of reserve that you can have on a mining project.

This is a very important step for us, and it was important because not only does it increase confidence in that underground mineral reserve, but it's something that the EXIM Bank was looking for us to do.

I think it's important for folks to understand that the drilling we did last year was what's known as an infill drilling program. So, we certainly knew where the ore body was, and we had a certain level of confidence in it. Really, that program was intended to put holes in between holes that we already knew a lot about.

When you tighten up hole spacing that way, you increase your confidence, and you get to these higher level of resource and reserve categories.

A nice side benefit of the drilling that we did is we did get a substantial increase in our inferred resources category. That wasn't part of the initial plan, but it's always good when it happens. And it just points to the fact that we have a tremendous ore body at Elk Creek that remains open in a number of directions, and certainly has the potential to become bigger with more technical work.

In terms of the resource now, we have 21.7 million tons of measured resources, 187.4 million tons of indicated, and 169.2 million tons of inferred.

And I think what you can read into those numbers is, you know, we've talked about a 40-year mine life, but again, with some additional work, we could certainly convert more of those resources into reserves and certainly extend the mine life beyond the 40 years that we're talking about here.

Our product portfolio remains the same, and I'll just highlight to everyone that we're now reporting everything in imperial units.

We did that because at the end of the day, we're building a project in the United States, and the people that are going to be using the tools are going to be used to doing everything in Imperial, so we've made that unit conversion to make it easier for the eventual construction of the project.

We'll make a little over 8,000 tons a year of ferroniobium. That's our backbone product. That's what our entire production process is built and based around.

We'll make 118 tons a year of scandium, and just a lot of exciting things happening in the scandium world these days. I'm sure everyone has seen our recent announcement with Lockheed. We now have NioCorp Advanced Metals and Alloys (NAMA) with the ability of producing scandium aluminum master alloy, and we've got some great things happening over in the UK with Project Pivot, looking at incorporating scandium into aluminum that's used in automotive platforms.

We have our, our, 3 magnetic rare earth products that, certainly are in high demand, here in the United States right now.

We're making a samarium europium gadolinium carbonate, or SEG carbonate.

That'll have a market for it, certainly, but that again goes back to what I said about some upside here, and that with some additional capital and testing work, we could separate those rare earth products into individual oxides as well, and get some more economic benefit from our ore body.

We'll make a heavy rare earth carbonate, which is all of the rare earth elements heavier than chromium on the periodic table, including yttrium. Interesting things happening in the yttrium market these days. Again, an element that certainly the federal government here in the U.S. has some interest in. And again, something we could do in the future as an expansion or improvement project to target that element and recover it as a separated product.

And rounding out our product portfolio is just a little over 59,000 tons a year of titanium tetrachloride, a higher value version of the titanium product that we've made previously, and a feedstock that's used to make titanium pigments and titanium metal.

Bottom line here is we have a strong project with a long life and the potential for an even longer life with more technical work. Lots of upside here, and certainly I can't wait to get underground and see how big it really is.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Barrett.

NioCorp to Host Webcast on Aug. 11 to Discuss Elk Creek Feasibility Study Results
#NioCorp #NB

https://niocorp.com/niocorp-to-host-webcast-on-aug-11-to-discuss-elk-creek-feasibility-study-results/

Grok-Mark A. Smith’s dual role creates a structural alignment that gives IBC (IAALF) preferential positioning in the emerging U.S. aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) supply chain.

The key overlap 
Mark A. Smith serves as:Chairman and CEO of IBC Advanced Alloys. 
Executive Chairman and CEO of NioCorp Developments Ltd. (NASDAQ: NB). 

NioCorp is advancing the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project in Nebraska, one of the most advanced potential primary U.S. sources of scandium (alongside niobium and titanium). The project is expected to produce roughly 100 tonnes per year of scandium oxide once financed and built. NioCorp has also acquired technology and equipment (via its NAMA subsidiary from FEA Materials) to convert scandium oxide directly into aluminum-scandium master alloy, and it has received U.S. Department of War (formerly Defense) Title III funding and is collaborating with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works on Al-Sc components. 

niocorp.com 

IBC and NioCorp have operated under a joint development agreement on scandium-containing aluminum alloys since 2016. Recent milestones include successful commercial-scale casting of 0.2% Al-Sc alloy at IBC’s Franklin, Indiana foundry (confirmed by independent testing to meet specifications on the first attempt) and earlier master-alloy work. 

metaltechnews.com 

Why this is an advantage 
Direct access to future domestic feedstock — Once Elk Creek produces scandium, IBC sits as the natural downstream partner for turning master alloy into finished 0.1–0.8% Al-Sc alloys and near-net-shape parts. Smith has publicly framed IBC as the piece that completes the “mine-to-finished-alloy” domestic chain that the U.S. currently lacks. 
Aligned incentives and information flow — As CEO of both companies, Smith has full visibility into NioCorp’s timeline, offtake discussions (including Lockheed), process development, and government funding. This reduces coordination friction that independent parties would face. 
Complementary capabilities already demonstrated — IBC brings existing U.S. casting, forging, heat-treating, and machining infrastructure plus metallurgical expertise. Chris Huskamp (recently appointed to IBC’s board; former Boeing Associate Technical Fellow and co-inventor on scandium-aluminum alloy patents) adds further technical depth and customer-network access. 

ibcadvancedalloys.com 

Strategic timing with U.S. policy — The U.S. currently imports essentially all its scandium and has almost no domestic capability for master alloy or finished Al-Sc product. Pentagon interest in light-weighting for aerospace and defense (plus Chinese export restrictions) makes a fully domestic chain highly valued. IBC’s role as the finishing step is repeatedly highlighted by both companies. 

Caveats 
This is still early-stage and contingent. NioCorp must complete project financing and construction (multi-hundred-million-dollar effort). Commercial volumes of Al-Sc parts at IBC remain prospective rather than contracted at scale. Related-party dynamics require careful governance, and IBC’s primary near-term business remains specialty copper alloys. Success depends on execution by both companies and continued policy support. 
In short, Smith’s simultaneous leadership of the upstream critical-minerals developer and the downstream specialty-alloy manufacturer is the clearest “insider access” advantage IBC holds in the Al-Sc opportunity. It is not a guarantee of commercial success, but it is a genuine structural edge that independent foundries lack.

NioCorp Developments Ltd. (NB) is gaining attention due to its strategic positioning in the U.S. rare earth supply chain amidst rising concerns over reliance on China. Recent developments include partnerships for processing facilities and strong analyst support, despite challenges in stock performance.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NB/

Grok-Recent developments for NioCorp Developments Ltd. (NB) involving partnerships tied to processing and downstream facilities focus on building a vertically integrated U.S. supply chain for scandium (and related critical minerals) from its Elk Creek project in Nebraska. These aim to move beyond mining/processing ore into oxides toward alloy production and end-use applications, reducing reliance on foreign (especially Chinese) sources.

niocorp.com

Key partnerships and processing-related advances

FEA Materials LLC acquisition (completed December 4, 2025): NioCorp (via subsidiary NioCorp Advanced Metals and Alloys LLC / NAMA) bought the manufacturing assets and intellectual property of Massachusetts-based FEA for $8.4 million (all-cash). FEA’s proprietary process converts scandium oxide directly into 2–4% aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) master alloy, skipping the usual intermediate step of making pure scandium metal first. This positions NioCorp to produce master alloy in the U.S. once Elk Creek is operational, supporting a potential first fully domestic “mine-to-markets” scandium supply chain. The company is also evaluating further downstream steps such as finished aluminum-scandium alloy parts (casting, forging, machining) for defense and commercial OEMs.

niocorp.com

IBC Advanced Alloys collaboration: Ongoing joint development work has produced successful commercial-scale castings of 0.2% Al-Sc alloy at IBC’s foundry (Franklin, Indiana). Independent testing confirmed purity and specs. This validates the ability to make alloys suitable for casting, forging, extruding, or additive manufacturing into functional parts for aerospace, defense, automotive, and electronics. It complements the FEA technology by demonstrating practical downstream processing capability in the U.S.

niocorp.com

Lockheed Martin (Skunk Works) partnership, supported by U.S. Department of Defense funding: In 2025, NioCorp’s Elk Creek Resources Corp. received up to $10 million under the Pentagon’s Title III / Defense Production Act program. Part of this funds joint work with Lockheed Martin to develop and prototype scandium-aluminum alloy components for advanced fighter jets and other aerospace/defense platforms (tests targeted around 2027). The funding also supports process engineering upgrades at the planned Elk Creek mineral processing plant (e.g., potential rare-earth products, improved yields) and demonstration of converting scandium oxide to high-purity metal.

reuters.com

Related offtake/marketing partnerships that support processing scale-up

These help de-risk financing for the ~$1.1 billion Elk Creek mine + processing facility (targeted EXIM Bank debt support of up to ~$800 million):Expanded non-binding term sheet with Traxys North America (April 2026) for offtake/marketing of remaining planned products (ferroniobium, scandium oxide/metal/alloys, titanium products, and potential rare earths) over the first 10 years of operations, plus a possible up-to-$30 million equity investment. Combined with existing deals (e.g., ThyssenKrupp for 50% of ferroniobium), this could cover essentially all planned output. Traxys is also linked to U.S. government initiatives like Project Vault for critical minerals sales.

niocorp.com

Existing binding offtakes already cover significant portions of niobium and scandium production.

Overall context: The planned Elk Creek processing facility will handle ore to produce niobium (ferroniobium/pentoxide), scandium oxide, titanium products, and potentially magnetic rare earths (e.g., NdPr, Dy, Tb). The partnerships above extend that into downstream alloy and component processing in the U.S., aligning with efforts to onshore critical minerals supply chains. Progress remains contingent on full project financing, construction, and definitive agreements.

Grok-Positive demand tailwinds for IBC Advanced Alloys as an existing/approved supplier of copper alloys (and related products) to the U.S. Navy’s submarine programs and shipyards, with potential for expanded domestic production amid heavy foreign reliance on key materials. IBC (TSX-V: IB / OTCQB: IAALF) is a U.S.-based (Franklin, Indiana) manufacturer of copper and copper-alloy products, including aluminum-nickel-bronze, copper-nickel (Cu-Ni), aluminum-bronze, and other specialty alloys used in marine/naval applications. These go into components such as valves, pumps, fittings, shafting, bearings, propellers/propulsion systems, hull/structural hardware, and related parts valued for seawater corrosion resistance, strength, and resistance to biofouling/cavitation.
Existing Position and Direct Relevance
IBC has supplied copper-alloy products to the Navy for years, including for Columbia- and Virginia-class submarines. It is an approved forging supplier to both primary builders: General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding (the exact recipients of the $76.6B awards for 5 Columbia-class and 9 Virginia-class boats, plus infrastructure).
Defense work already accounts for a substantial share of capacity (recently cited around 40%), with the Navy as a major customer. Recent financials show stronger demand for copper alloys (especially aluminum-nickel-bronze) driven by the naval defense sector, supporting revenue growth after softer periods.
The multi-year, high-volume production locked in by the contract (work through ~2038) increases the need for continuous supply of specialty alloys and forged/cast parts. Broader Navy shipbuilding goals (targeting a larger fleet) and industrial-base investments further amplify this.
Growth Opportunities and Strategic Fit
The Navy currently imports ~90% of the copper-nickel (and related copper-nickel/aluminum-bronze) alloys needed for shipyards. IBC is actively expanding sales to the Navy, discussing capacity increases with shipyards and defense officials, and positioning itself as a domestic source. This aligns with onshoring and supply-chain resilience priorities.
Management has outlined growth stages that directly target naval demand: expanding near-net-shape castings; launching/increasing copper-nickel and aluminum-bronze production; further Navy sales; and potential radial forging for the rounds, bars, and hollows (1–6 inch diameters) used on submarines and ships. Planned investments (e.g., vacuum-cap furnace estimated ~CAD 5M and a larger radial forge) would enable more specialized in-house production of these alloys.
Continuous production of both classes (plus the existing pipeline of Virginia- and Columbia-class boats) creates multi-year visibility for suppliers. Delays or bottlenecks in the programs have historically shifted pressure upstream to materials, forgings, and castings—areas where qualified domestic suppliers like IBC can benefit.
Caveats and Scale Context
IBC is a relatively small supplier in a large industrial base. The $76.6B primarily flows to the two shipyards (and their major subsystems/workforce), so IBC’s share would be a fraction of overall materials spend. Impacts depend on winning additional or expanded orders, successful capacity investments, and execution amid any program delays (as seen historically with Columbia-class). The company has also pursued other defense/aerospace work and commercial markets, and previously wound down its beryllium-aluminum casting business.

Bottom line: The award reinforces and potentially accelerates multi-year demand for the exact types of copper alloys and forged/cast parts IBC already supplies to Electric Boat, Newport News, and the broader Navy submarine effort. Combined with the push for domestic sources (given heavy import dependence), it supports IBC’s stated growth strategy in naval defense, though realization depends on order flow, capacity scaling, and competitive positioning rather than automatic large contract wins. Recent company commentary and results already link rising naval demand to improved sales momentum.

Grok-Summary of Mark Smith’s July 23, 2026 Virtual Investor Conference Presentation (with Jim Sims’ Context)

Overall Tone and Strategy

Mark Smith presented IBC Advanced Alloys as being in a growth/turnaround phase, driven by a strong copper supercycle, defense demand, and vertical integration strengths. He outlined four main growth stages focused on copper and copper-nickel (Cu/Cu-Ni) alloys , while highlighting aluminum-scandium (Al-Sc) as a promising parallel opportunity. Important note (per Jim Sims, IBC’s IR): Smith’s comments, including timelines and “near future” references, are aspirational rather than formal guidance.

Copper-Focused Growth Stages

These form the core near-term to mid-term strategy:

• Stage 1: Launching near-net-shape copper alloy cast products (already driving revenue growth and higher margins).
• Stage 2: Copper-nickel alloy production (vacuum cap furnace for gas-sensitive alloys; collaborating with DoW on funding/acquisition).
• Stage 3: Further capacity expansion and product mix optimization in copper/copper-nickel.
• Stage 4 (3–5 year horizon): Adding a radial forge for higher-value downstream copper-nickel products (bars, rounds, hollows).

Key positives emphasized:

• Copper supercycle tailwinds (demand up sharply; prices trending higher, driven by U.S. consumption).
• Defense/Navy demand now ~40% of production capacity; 42 shipyards operating or under construction.
• Monthly sales recently at $2M+ (up significantly); gross margins improving to 25–55% with better product mix.
• Foundational business (long-term customers in electronics, power generation, etc.) remains solid.

Aluminum-Scandium (Al-Sc) Opportunity

Presented separately as a high-upside strategic initiative tied to the U.S. Department of War onshoring of the scandium supply chain:

• Technical milestone: First pour of end-use Al-Sc alloy met every specification on the very first attempt.
• IBC’s role: Downstream specialist (master alloy → finished alloys and parts for aerospace/defense primes).
• Advantages: Lightweighting, lower cost, and easier manufacturability vs. composites.
• Outlook: “We’re very excited about where this market is gonna go, and we hope to report some very good news on that in the near future.”

Additional Growth Driver: Space Sector Expansion

Smith specifically noted expanding product offerings into the space sector (both commercial and government programs). Customers in this area are seeking IBC’s technical expertise and materials for components, adding another high-potential end market alongside defense/Navy work.

Financial and Operational Context

• Focus on disciplined execution: Debt reduction targeted for visibility in calendar 2027 (working hard in fiscal 2027 H1).
• Lind Partners funding used for feedstock and equipment repairs to support growth without excessive dilution.
• Overall optimism around sales momentum, margin expansion, and multiple growth levers (copper cycle + defense + Al-Sc + space).

Bottom line: Copper and defense provide the immediate foundation, while further downstream expansion of Cu/Cu-Ni products, along with Al-Sc and space sector product expansion represent longer-term upside. Smith is bullish on execution, but as per Jim Sims, these are aspirational targets. Progress will depend on continued sales growth/production, DoW support, and successful product qualification.

July 30th, 2026~China’s Rare Earth Curbs Put $6.5T of Tech at Risk [2026]

China Rare Earth Export Controls 2026: Tech Risk

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China tightened its grip on rare earth and critical mineral exports twice within five weeks this summer, and the fallout is landing on an industry that rarely thinks about mining: computer hardware. On June 22, 2026, Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce placed 10 U.S. companies under new export restrictions. By July 24, it had blocked shipments of dual-use materials to 14 firms across the European Union. Between those two dates, the International Energy Agency issued a warning that got procurement teams’ attention: full enforcement of China’s rules could put $6.5 trillion of downstream production at risk worldwide.

None of that is abstract for anyone who builds, sells, or buys a GPU, a CPU, or the machines that make them. Gallium, germanium, and a cluster of rare earth elements sit quietly inside the hardware supply chain, not as the silicon itself but as the polishing compounds, RF chips, magnets, and optical components that keep fabs and finished products running. This is what actually changed under the china rare earth export controls regime in June and July 2026, what remains unverified despite the alarming headlines, and what it plausibly means for the price and availability of the chips inside everything from a gaming PC to an AI chip-packed data center rack. The short version: the risk is real and growing, but the pass-through to your next GPU purchase hasn’t shown up at retail yet.

What China Just Did in June and July 2026

The current escalation traces back to June 22, 2026, when China’s Ministry of Commerce, known as MOFCOM, tightened export restrictions on 10 U.S. companies, barring anyone, anywhere, from supplying them with China-origin dual-use items. Reuters and the Washington Post both named MP Materials and USA Rare Earth among the affected firms, two companies central to Washington’s push to build a rare earth supply chain outside China. Beijing described the move as a direct response to earlier U.S. restrictions on Chinese firms.

Two days later, MOFCOM published Announcement No. 26 of 2026, a rule that took effect July 1 and formalizes a reporting and reward mechanism for anyone who flags suspected violations of strategic mineral export controls, according to a summary from the licensing-compliance platform Certivo. That marks a shift from a pure licensing regime toward an enforcement regime with built-in incentives to report noncompliance.

The pressure did not stay confined to the United States. On July 24, the New York Times reported that China’s commerce ministry had prohibited shipments of dual-use materials or products to 14 companies inside the European Union. Combined with the U.S. action a month earlier, the pattern shows Beijing widening its list of restricted trading partners across two of the world’s largest hardware and electronics markets within five weeks, using rare earth and critical mineral export controls as leverage in a broader trade dispute.

The IEA’s $6.5 Trillion Warning

The starkest number in the entire episode came from the International Energy Agency on July 16, 2026. In a report covered by Reuters, the IEA said full implementation of China’s rare earth export controls could put $6.5 trillion of downstream production outside China at risk, spanning the automotive, high-tech, defense, and energy industries. It was the clearest sign yet that china rare earth export controls had moved from a trade-policy footnote to a headline risk factor for global manufacturing.

That figure deserves a caveat the headlines often drop: it describes exposure under a scenario of full enforcement, not a confirmed current loss. China remains the world’s largest producer and refiner of rare earths by a wide margin, and the IEA’s number measures concentration risk, not a bill that has already come due. Still, the warning lines up with a theme S&P Global raised the same week China moved against the 10 U.S. companies: tighter rules widen the price gap between Chinese and Western material markets and increase pressure on manufacturers to build supply chains that don’t run through China at all. For an industry that has spent the past two years reacting to AI-driven price spikes in memory and storage, a new structural risk sitting upstream of chip fabrication is not a comfortable addition to the list.

Why Rare Earths and Gallium Actually Matter for Your GPU

It’s tempting to assume rare earths are the reason a graphics card costs what it does, and that’s mostly wrong. Leading-edge CPUs and GPUs are still built on silicon, not rare earth elements. The real exposure runs through something more specific and more interesting: compound semiconductors, wafer-processing chemistry, and the electromechanical parts bolted onto finished hardware.

Compound Semiconductors: Gallium and Germanium

Gallium’s main hardware role is in gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN) compound semiconductors, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2026 Mineral Commodity Summary. GaAs goes into high-frequency RF chips, laser diodes, LEDs, photodetectors, and solar cells; GaN is used for power electronics and radio-frequency devices that need to handle higher voltage and frequency than standard silicon can manage. Germanium plays a similar supporting role through silicon-germanium (SiGe), used in high-frequency transistors, plus fiber optics and infrared optics. None of that is the transistor channel inside a mainstream CPU or GPU die, but all of it shows up somewhere in the RF front end, power delivery, or optical interconnects of modern computing hardware.

Wafer Polishing and Permanent Magnets

The rare earth connection is even less visible and just as real. In its 2026 comments to the U.S. Trade Representative, the Semiconductor Industry Association said cerium is used for wire bonds and for chemical mechanical planarization, or CMP, the polishing step that flattens silicon wafers between fabrication layers. SIA’s filing also described rare earths broadly as critical inputs into semiconductor manufacturing equipment, servers, mainframe computers, networking gear, and AI data centers. Then there are the magnets: neodymium and dysprosium-based permanent magnets drive the actuators in hard disk drives, the motors in cooling fans, and the coils in speakers. None of it is the headline ingredient. All of it has to show up on time for a factory line, or a finished PC, to ship.

Gallium and Germanium: The Chip War’s First Front, Revisited

This isn’t the first round of this fight, and that history matters for judging what comes next. China’s controls on gallium and germanium exports date back to August 1, 2023, the opening move in what trade press at the time called the chip war’s mineral front. Both metals are highly concentrated in Chinese supply, and the initial restrictions triggered sharp price spikes as buyers scrambled for non-Chinese sources of the compound semiconductors that depend on them, a dynamic Rare Earth Exchanges has tracked closely since.

There was a truce, of sorts. On November 9, 2025, China suspended its export ban on gallium, germanium, and antimony to the United States as part of a broader de-escalation package agreed between the two countries’ leaders, temporarily unwinding restrictions that had reshaped global materials markets for more than a year. Licensing controls remained in place even during the suspension, and analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have since described the pause as a reprieve rather than a resolution.

What’s happening in June and July 2026 is a return to escalation, this time centered on rare earths more broadly rather than gallium and germanium specifically, and aimed at a wider set of targets that now includes EU firms alongside American ones. One industry estimate attributed to the trade group SEMI put the 2023-2024 gallium and germanium restrictions at reducing global semiconductor supply capacity by 18 to 22 percent, a figure worth treating as directional rather than precise, since it comes from a secondary trade summary rather than a SEMI report reviewed directly for this piece.

NdPr Prices Are Already Moving

Rare earth pricing data offers the clearest real-time signal of stress in the system. A July 2026 market note tracked the NdPr alloy benchmark, the neodymium-praseodymium blend used in high-strength magnets, at roughly $133.02 per kilogram on July 1, up 21.4 percent from a June benchmark of $109.55 per kilogram. That’s a one-month move, not a slow drift.

What’s missing, as of late July 2026, is a confirmed link between that input-cost spike and an actual increase in retail GPU, CPU, or motherboard prices. No mainstream wire report reviewed for this piece ties the rare earth export controls directly to a specific percentage increase in finished hardware pricing yet. That gap between rising input costs and stable shelf prices is exactly where the 2025-2026 memory shortage started too, before it eventually showed up in what gamers pay for a graphics card or an SSD.

Timeline: China’s Critical Mineral Export Actions, 2023-2026

The table below lays out how the current standoff developed, from the original gallium and germanium controls through the two most recent escalations and the enforcement deadline still ahead.

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How This Compares to This Year’s RAM and NAND Shortages

Hardware buyers in 2026 have already lived through one version of this story. AI-driven demand pushed RAM prices up sharply enough to hit five separate gaming platforms this year, and a NAND flash shortage roughly doubled SSD prices for PC gamers, as Tech Insider covered in its earlier reporting on the RAM shortage and the NAND shortage behind rising SSD prices. Neither of those price shocks originated from Chinese export controls; they were driven primarily by memory makers reallocating capacity toward AI data center demand.

Rare earth and critical mineral restrictions are a different mechanism sitting further upstream, closer to raw material extraction and refining than to chip fabrication capacity itself. But the pattern buyers should recognize is the same: a supply-side shock shows up first in commodity or component pricing, takes a quarter or more to reach finished-product shelf prices, and disproportionately hits whichever hardware segment has the thinnest buffer inventory. For memory, that meant gaming PCs and consoles absorbed price increases before hyperscalers felt much pain, since AI data center buyers had locked in longer-term supply contracts. If rare earth and gallium-linked costs follow a similar path, the components most exposed early would be RF modules, optical transceivers, and storage hardware built around permanent magnets, rather than the GPU die itself.

It’s worth noting what hasn’t slowed elsewhere in hardware during this same window. AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D gaming CPU launched on schedule at $499 in January 2026, a modest $20 premium over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, with AMD’s VP and GM of Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics, David McAfee, marking the launch by calling it simply the world’s most advanced gaming processor getting faster. That routine, on-schedule launch is the baseline the rare earth story would have to disrupt to become a consumer-facing crisis, and as of late July it hasn’t.

Critical Materials Inside Your Hardware

The materials caught up in China’s 2026 export controls touch more of a modern computer than most buyers realize, even though none of them are the primary semiconductor material. The table below maps the elements most frequently named in 2026 export control announcements to the hardware components they actually support.

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AMD, Nvidia, Intel and TSMC: Who’s Actually Exposed

No 2026 public statement from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, or TSMC quantifying rare earth or gallium export-control risk to their own chip production turned up in the reporting for this piece, and that itself says something: the major chipmakers have not treated this as an immediate crisis worth a public statement, at least not yet. That doesn’t mean exposure is even across the industry.

The starting point is each company’s manufacturing model. AMD and Nvidia are fabless, meaning they design chips but contract out fabrication almost entirely to TSMC in Taiwan. Intel runs an integrated device manufacturer, or IDM, model, operating its own fabs in the United States, Ireland, and Israel alongside newer capacity investments. That structural difference matters less for rare earth and gallium exposure than it does for other supply risks, since the materials in question tend to enter the rare earth chip supply chain through specialized component suppliers, packaging houses, and equipment vendors rather than through the wafer fab operator directly, whether that’s TSMC or Intel itself.

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Where exposure concentrates is in the layers around the chip: RF front-end suppliers for networking and wireless components, optical transceiver makers for data center interconnects, and the CMP slurry and equipment vendors that supply every fab regardless of whose logo ends up on the finished die. That makes the risk more of an industry-wide tax on production complexity than a single company’s problem, and it’s why a regulatory filing from an industry association, rather than a chipmaker earnings call, has been the most detailed public statement on the issue so far.

The Japan Precedent: What Zero Shipments Signals

If you want a preview of sustained pressure rather than a one-off restriction, look at Japan. Reuters reported on July 20, 2026, that China’s exports of controlled rare earths and minerals to Japan stayed extremely limited through June, with zero shipments of gallium, dysprosium, terbium, or yttrium recorded for the month, a pattern Crux Investor says has now run for months. That throttle is tied to a separate diplomatic dispute between Beijing and Tokyo rather than to the U.S. and EU actions covered above.

Japan is an instructive case because it hosts major optical component, image sensor, and materials science suppliers that feed directly into global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Zero shipments for a full month is a stronger signal than a licensing delay or a paperwork slowdown. It shows Beijing is willing to let a restriction run at full effect against a G7 economy for an extended stretch, not just as a brief warning shot. That’s the scenario U.S. and EU companies newly added to MOFCOM’s list in June and July should be planning around, rather than assuming a quick resolution to China’s rare earth export controls.

Industry Pushback: What Chipmakers Are Telling Washington

The most detailed public accounting of chip industry exposure to critical minerals supply chain risk in 2026 didn’t come from a press release. It came from a filing. The Semiconductor Industry Association’s 2026 comments to the U.S. Trade Representative, submitted in response to a critical minerals request for information, laid out gallium’s role in GaN and GaAs production, germanium’s role in SiGe chips, and rare earths’ role across semiconductor processing, manufacturing equipment, and the servers and networking gear that run AI data centers.

That level of detail, aimed at trade regulators rather than the public, suggests the industry views the rare earth chip supply chain as a policy problem to be managed through Washington rather than a supply crisis to explain to customers or investors just yet. Analysts framed the stakes in similar terms the same week China moved against the 10 U.S. companies: tighter Chinese controls widen the price gap between Chinese and Western material markets and increase pressure to build supply chains outside China, a process industry groups have been requesting funding and policy support for since the original 2023 gallium and germanium restrictions. The gap between quiet regulatory lobbying and public silence from the chipmakers themselves is itself a data point worth watching through the rest of 2026.

What Happens Next: Enforcement and the November Deadline

Two dates matter more than any other for tracking where this goes next. The first already passed: July 1, 2026, when MOFCOM’s Announcement No. 26 reporting and reward mechanism took effect, giving Beijing an enforcement tool that relies partly on outside tips rather than government inspection alone.

The second is coming: **November 10, 2026, when a second wave of rare earth controls covering holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium is scheduled to take effect, after previously being suspended.** Those five elements serve more specialized applications, including lasers, nuclear and electronic components, and advanced optics, than the materials targeted so far this year. Whether that wave proceeds on schedule, gets delayed again, or gets folded into a broader diplomatic deal similar to the November 2025 truce over gallium and germanium will say a lot about whether 2026’s escalation is a negotiating position or a durable new baseline the hardware industry has to plan around.

Predictions: Where This Goes Through the Rest of 2026

Based on the pattern set over June and July, here’s how the china rare earth export controls standoff is likely to develop through the end of the year.

• More trading partners get added before year-end. The restricted list grew from 10 U.S. companies in June to 14 EU firms in July inside of five weeks; nothing in the current pattern suggests that pace slows before December.
• The November 10 second wave proceeds largely on schedule. Unless a diplomatic reset similar to the November 2025 gallium and germanium truce materializes first, expect holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium controls to take effect close to their scheduled date.
• Input costs keep climbing before retail prices do. NdPr and gallium-linked material costs are likely to keep rising through the third quarter of 2026, but expect a lag of a quarter or two before that reaches finished GPU, CPU, or motherboard pricing, mirroring how the RAM and NAND shortages played out earlier this year.
• Western chipmakers accelerate non-Chinese sourcing deals, but capacity doesn’t arrive fast. Expect more supply agreements tied to rare earth projects in the U.S. and allied countries, though new mine-to-refinery capacity takes years to scale, not months.
• Expect continued lobbying, not public alarm, from major chipmakers. SIA-style regulatory filings are more likely than earnings-call warnings from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, or TSMC in the near term, unless enforcement visibly disrupts a specific product line.

What It Means for Builders and Buyers Right Now

For anyone shopping for a GPU, a prebuilt gaming PC, or planning enterprise hardware procurement this summer, the honest answer is that nothing about pricing has changed yet because of rare earth export controls specifically. The verified 2026 reporting reviewed for this piece does not show a confirmed retail price increase on GPUs, CPUs, or motherboards tied to the June and July restrictions.

What has changed is the risk profile sitting upstream as china rare earth export controls keep expanding. NdPr pricing moved more than 21 percent in a single month. China let shipments to Japan run at zero for a full month. Two new groups of companies, one American, one European, got cut off within five weeks of each other. None of that guarantees a GPU price hike by the holidays, but it’s the same kind of early warning signal that preceded this year’s memory and storage shortages. For enterprise buyers, that argues for the unglamorous stuff: confirming supplier diversification for RF and optical components, asking hardware vendors directly about magnet and CMP material sourcing, and not assuming current GPU and CPU pricing is a stable baseline for planning into 2027.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did China actually restrict in June and July 2026?
On June 22, 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce tightened export restrictions on 10 U.S. companies, including MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, barring China-origin dual-use item exports to them. On July 24, it extended similar restrictions to 14 companies in the European Union. A new reporting and reward enforcement mechanism, MOFCOM Announcement No. 26, took effect July 1.

Does this mean GPU and CPU prices are about to rise?
Not confirmed yet. Rare earth input costs like the NdPr alloy benchmark rose 21.4 percent in a single month through July 1, 2026, but no mainstream 2026 report reviewed for this piece ties that to a specific increase in finished GPU, CPU, or motherboard retail prices.

Are rare earths used to make the silicon inside a GPU or CPU?
No. Leading-edge logic chips are built on silicon. Rare earths, gallium, and germanium matter more for compound semiconductors like GaAs and GaN, wafer-polishing chemistry, RF components, and magnets in drives and fans, rather than the core transistor material.

Is this the same as the 2023 gallium and germanium controls?
It’s a continuation, not a repeat. China first restricted gallium and germanium exports on August 1, 2023, then suspended the ban to the U.S. on November 9, 2025 as part of a diplomatic de-escalation. The June-July 2026 actions expand the pressure to rare earths more broadly and to a wider set of countries.

Which chipmakers are most exposed?
No 2026 public statement from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, or TSMC quantifies their exposure directly. Exposure runs mostly through fabless companies’ packaging and RF suppliers, and through the equipment and materials vendors that supply every fab, rather than concentrating in one company’s wafer production.

What is the IEA’s $6.5 trillion figure actually measuring?
It’s a July 16, 2026 IEA estimate of downstream production outside China that would be at risk under full implementation of China’s rare earth export restrictions, spanning automotive, high-tech, defense, and energy sectors. It’s a risk exposure estimate, not a confirmed current economic loss.

What should I watch for next, and when?
Watch November 10, 2026, when a second wave of controls on holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium is scheduled to take effect after a prior delay. That date will be a strong signal of whether 2026’s escalation continues or eases.

Where can I track rare earth pricing directly?
Market trackers publish NdPr alloy benchmark pricing regularly; it stood at roughly $133.02 per kilogram on July 1, 2026, up from $109.55 per kilogram in June, according to a market note reviewed for this piece.

A quick read with coffee.....

FORM YOUR OWN OPINIONS & CONCLUSIONS AS ALWAYS:

🔥 JULY 30th, 2026 — CRITICAL MINERALS WATCH REPORT

“China Is Weaponizing Supply. America Is Short. Elk Creek Is Needed .... LIKE NOW!!!!”

China’s July export‑control blitz has detonated across the global supply chain: zero shipments of gallium, dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium to Japan; 10 U.S. firms and 14 EU firms slapped with new restrictions; NdPr spot prices spiking 21% in a single month; and the IEA warning that $6.5 trillion of downstream production is now exposed. Beijing isn’t hiding the strategy — they’re weaponizing minerals to choke Western aerospace, semiconductors, EVs, and defense platforms. ***"And while MP Materials and USAR are literally named in the sanctions, Elk Creek sits on Niobium, Titanium/TiCl₄, Scandium, NdPr, Dy, Tb, and potentially Sm/Gd — the exact metals China is tightening the noose around. Washington knows it. The Pentagon knows it. The White House knows it. Yet NioCorp still hasn’t dropped the DFS or Traxys binding deals????"***

ROIC.ai’s July 27th analysis made the situation brutally clear: the U.S. cannot meet Trump’s 2027 critical‑minerals cutoff with existing domestic supply — not even close. Titanium, Niobium, Scandium, rare‑earth magnet metals, samarium, gadolinium are all overwhelmingly refined in China. The Pentagon’s 162‑Day Reckoning memo frames it as battlefield vulnerability, not economics. SRN News went further: Trump may be forced to temporarily allow Chinese minerals because the U.S. industrial base cannot meet the deadline. That’s not weakness — that’s urgency. It means the U.S. is scrambling to qualify domestic suppliers immediately**, and Elk Creek is one of the only projects capable of hitting six critical‑mineral categories at once.**

Scandium is the quiet force‑multiplier behind next‑generation aerospace and defense systems — it strengthens aluminum for lighter airframes, improves thermal stability for hypersonic skins, boosts conductivity for RF filters and radar housings, enhances laser components, and enables corrosion‑proof structures for ISR, EW, and classified platforms — but none of these sectors can adopt ScAl at scale because there’s no reliable domestic scandium supply, and no scandium supply can scale because industry won’t commit without guaranteed ScAl demand. That’s the chicken‑and‑egg loop Lockheed, NAMA, and IBC are positioned to break the moment NioCorp delivers the DFS and Traxys offtakes, unlocking a U.S. scandium pipeline that finally lets defense and industry deploy the material they’ve been waiting decades to use.

This is exactly why Warstopper is mapping samarium, gadolinium, titanium, magnesium, and specialty steels. Why NSFF exists. Why Title III is expanding. Why Project Vault and Project Pivot are accelerating. And why Lockheed’s advanced programs — including Skunk Works — quietly provided Washington with a non‑public list of critical materials required for future platforms. The public parts of that list match Elk Creek almost point‑for‑point: titanium for airframes and hypersonics, niobium for high‑strength alloys, NdPr/Dy for actuators and guidance systems, and scandium for next‑generation aluminum systems. Combine Elk Creek’s feedstock with IBC’s vacuum‑cap furnaces and NAMA’s commercialization channel, and you get a domestic ScAl pipeline the Pentagon has been trying to build for a decade.

And yet — despite the geopolitical meltdown, despite China’s tightening chokehold, despite the U.S. openly admitting it cannot meet the 2027 deadline without new mines — Elk Creek remains “potential supply” until NioCorp finally publishes the DFS, signs the Traxys binding offtakes, and secures EXIM’s FID. Traxys is already DFARS‑clean, already supplying DLA/DoD, already plugged into defense procurement channels. They are the backdoor that gets Elk Creek metals into the Pentagon without waivers. Everything around NioCorp is screaming GO — but the catalysts remain stuck in silence.

And that’s the July 30th reality: a fully de‑risked, DFARS‑clean, multi‑metal National Strategic Asset supplying niobium, titanium, scandium, magnet metals, and potentially samarium/gadolinium into Pentagon price‑support lanes would not be valued like a $4–5 junior — it would be valued like a cornerstone of America’s battlefield supply chain. China is weaponizing minerals. America is short. IMHO- Elk Creek is needed & NioCorp needs to stop fumbling and finally pull the damn trigger!!!

Waiting... waiting.... c'mon already! Let's Goooooo team Niocorp!

And that’s as of July 30th we are all still waiting because: Once NioCorp finally locks the DFS and Traxys offtakes, Elk Creek stops being a stalled promise and becomes a fully activated National Strategic Asset — feeding niobium, titanium, scandium, and magnet metals into DFARS‑clean pathways through NAMA, IBC, and Lockheed Skunk Works, aligning perfectly with Warstopper, NSFF, Title III, Project Vault, and the Pentagon’s 2027 mandate. Proving that the catalysts were never missing, only waiting for NioCorp to ignite the chain that turns Elk Creek into one of America’s most important multi‑metal supply engines. "All Aboard!"

Chico

Mark Smith Predicts Copper Supercycle Will Power New Growth at IBC Advanced Alloys

FRANKLIN, IN – (July 27, 2026) – In this replay of an OTC conference presentation, IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. (“IBC” or the “Company”) (TSX-V: IB; OTCQB: IAALF) Chairman and CEO Mark Smith forecasts how the rapidly growing copper supercycle is expected to potentially power new sales growth at IBC Advanced Alloys.

A replay of Mr. Smith's video presentation can be seen here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-A8CNQoTRc 

For more information on IBC and its innovative alloy products, go here.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors:
"Mark A. Smith”
Mark A. Smith, CEO & Chairman of the Board

Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your own research and due diligence.

I spoke with a RedChip representative yesterday regarding the timing of NioCorp’s updated feasibility study and later received a follow-up email.

Both the call and the email indicated that NioCorp management was still targeting the end of July for the feasibility study’s release. RedChip had reportedly received that timing from management approximately one week ago. The target remains subject to change, and no specific release date was provided.

Based on my memory of the call, I was also told that RedChip expects to host a conference after the feasibility study is released. That detail was not included in the follow-up email.

The conference detail is based on my recollection of yesterday’s call, so the wording may not be exact. Nothing in this post should be treated as a direct quotation, an official company announcement, or a guarantee regarding timing. NioCorp’s SEC filings and investor-relations releases remain the official sources.

Not financial advice. Do your own research and due diligence.

Walrus

Speaker - Mark Smith

CEO & Chairman of the Board • IBC Advanced Alloys Inc.

https://www.virtualinvestorconferences.com/wcc/eh/4814904/lp/5431637/ibc-advanced-alloys-corp-otcqb-iaalf-tsxv-ib

Quick Breakdown of the Deal

• Closed: ~February 20, 2026.
• Structure: US$1.25M advanced (net of fees) for a Convertible Security with US$1.5M face value (includes US$250k pre-paid interest). 24-month term.
• Repayment Schedule: Monthly repayments of US$75,000 on the Face Value begin after the first four months (i.e., starting around July 2026) and continue until the Face Value is repaid (or converted).
• Pre-paid interest accrues monthly, with Lind having periodic conversion options on accrued interest (subject to approvals).

This is a standard feature of Lind-type facilities — interest is effectively pre-paid via the discount/face value uplift, and cash repayments (or share repayments) kick in after an initial grace period.