Earnings call transcript: 5E Advanced Materials outlines strategic priorities in Q1 2025

5E Advanced Materials, a leading player in the boron industry, held its Q1 2025 earnings call, highlighting its strategic initiatives and market position. The company’s stock experienced a 6.55% drop to $4.58 by the close of the market, despite a slight aftermarket recovery. The call focused on operational achievements and future guidance as the company targets a 2026 Final Investment Decision for its Fort Cady project.

Key Takeaways

• 5E Advanced Materials confirmed strong project economics with a 39.5-year mine life.
• The company is advancing its Fort Cady project with a $435 million capital estimate.
• Successful qualification of high-purity boric acid across various sectors.
• Strategic focus on securing non-dilutive US capital support and advancing customer agreements.

Company Performance

5E Advanced Materials reported significant progress in its operational activities, including the completion of a pre-feasibility study that confirmed robust project economics. The Fort Cady project boasts a 19.2% pre-tax Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and a pre-tax Net Present Value (NPV) of $725 million for Phase One. The company is positioning itself as a key player in the tightening boron market, with plans to increase its production capacity to meet growing demand in sectors like electric vehicles and semiconductors.

Financial Highlights

• Pre-tax NPV of $725 million for Phase One of the Fort Cady project.
• Total capital estimate of $435 million for the project.
• 19.2% pre-tax IRR, indicating strong project viability.

Market Reaction

The stock of 5E Advanced Materials closed at $4.58, marking a 6.55% decline on the day. However, it showed a slight recovery in the aftermarket session, rising by 1.53% to $4.65. This movement reflects mixed investor sentiment, possibly due to the broader market trends and the company’s ongoing strategic initiatives.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, 5E Advanced Materials aims to finalize its investment decision by 2026, focusing on three primary priorities: securing non-dilutive US capital support, advancing customer agreements, and executing feed and pre-FID workstreams. The company is targeting 70-75% of its production under offtake agreements and aims for an annual production capacity of 130,000 tons.

Executive Commentary

CEO Paul Weibel emphasized the company’s commitment to proving its capabilities, stating, "This is a story of proof, not potential." He also highlighted the strategic importance of boron, saying, "We are building something rare and a foundation for America’s energy and advanced materials future." Weibel underscored the federal recognition of boron as a critical mineral, which he believes validates the company’s technical and market efforts.

Risks and Challenges

• Supply chain constraints could impact production timelines.
• Market saturation in boron supply may pose competitive challenges.
• Macroeconomic pressures could affect project financing and capital costs.
• Dependence on securing customer agreements for future production.

5E Advanced Materials continues to navigate a complex market environment, focusing on strategic priorities that leverage its unique market position and operational strengths.

Full transcript - 5E Advanced Materials Inc (FEAM) Q1 2026:

Conference Call Operator, 5E Advanced Materials: Today, and welcome to the 5E Advanced Materials earnings conference call. All participants are currently in a listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, we will open the call for a question-and-answer session. Please note today’s call is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today’s discussion will include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. For more information on these risks, please refer to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 5E Advanced Materials undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Paul Weibel, Chief Executive Officer of 5E Advanced Materials. Paul, please go ahead.

Paul Weibel, Chief Executive Officer, 5E Advanced Materials: Thank you and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Fiscal 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for 5E, a year defined by momentum, achievement, and meaningful progress toward establishing ourselves as a leading US borate producer. We’ve reached what is, for us, the most significant moment in both domestic borate market and the evolution of supportive US policy. Boron, the fifth element on the periodic table, is now officially recognized as a US critical mineral. On November 7th, the US Geological Survey and the Department of the Interior formally added boron to the final 2025 critical minerals list. That recognition is a major validation of our strategy, confirming what we’ve long advocated: that boron is a cornerstone of America’s energy policy, national defense, and high-technology sectors, while also being essential to glass, ceramics, and agriculture.

There is a clear necessity to secure and maintain a reliable domestic borate supply chain and for the U.S. to remain an important global exporter of high-quality borates. 5E is a proud leader in the effort to maintain the United States’ position of strength in the borates market, and with this designation, we believe it brings meaningful economic advantages that include expanded access to federal funding and financing, as well as strategic partnerships that will accelerate the development path for Fort Cady. Before I dive deeper into what this means for 5E, let me summarize the quarter’s key highlights. First and foremost is that boron was added to the U.S. critical minerals list, which confirms the importance of Fort Cady’s positioning as the leading advanced-stage boron project in the U.S.

Two, the addition of boron to the list expands our eligibility for federal funding programs, including EXIM, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, the Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital, and the International Development Finance Corporation. Three, continued customer validation, with full-scale product testing underway with multiple Tier 1 specialty glass manufacturers. Four, progress on feed engineering, supported by our application to the EXIM Engineering Multiplier Program for a $10 million loan facility. Finally, we remain on track towards final investment decision in 2026. These achievements build directly on what we discussed during our year-end 2025 call. Our foundation is strong, our milestones are stacking, and we’re steadily moving towards construction readiness. Before turning to our progress, I want to briefly address the broader borates market because understanding that context helps highlight the opportunity 5E is stepping into.

Legacy producers continue to face rising operating costs, decreasing grades, and depleting reserves that have created a market opportunity for 5E, a new generation boron company to be built on innovation, operating efficiency, and long-term resilience. Market research, insight, and customer discussions highlight a clear tightening of supply and demand in the borates market, with an expectation of demand outpacing supply. Demand for borate materials continues to accelerate across EVs, wind, nuclear energy, semiconductors, defense applications, ceramics, and specialty glass, exactly where boron’s thermal, optical, density, and hardness properties are essential. 5E is uniquely positioned to step in and fill the market deficit with a project that has logistical advantages and a flowsheet and process that is modern, low-cost, and high-value, underpinned by resilient domestic boron supply that supports both commercial and national priorities. Market participants are increasingly viewing 5E as a strategic partner for the future.

When combined with the US critical minerals designation, these market dynamics further strengthen 5E’s position and reinforce Fort Cady’s importance to the US supply chain security. As the only pure-play US advanced-stage domestic boron asset, Fort Cady now qualifies for several federal funding and grant programs designed to rebuild American mineral supply chains. These include the US Export-Import Bank, where 5E already holds a $285 million letter of interest under the Make More in America initiative, a program specifically created to support US manufacturing exports, infrastructure, and supply chains. EXIM’s Engineering Multiplier Program, where we have applied for a $10 million loan that has the possibility to finance a significant portion of our feed activities on a non-diluted basis. The Office of Strategic Capital and the US International Development Finance Corporation, where Executive Order 14241 defines a mineral largely with reference to the USGS list.

The Executive Order delegates the Defense Production Act lending and investment authorities to the Secretary of War and the CEO of the DFC and requires the establishment of certain mineral funding mechanisms, including the Department of War, Office of Strategic Capital. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 authorized $5 billion for investments in critical mineral supply chains—sorry, $5 billion for investments in critical mineral supply chains made pursuant to the Industrial Base Fund—and up to $100 billion in principal amounts of direct loans and guaranteed loans for critical minerals and relative industries and projects. The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office, where in addition to Title 17, the innovative energy and innovative supply chain prongs are enhanced by this designation given the explicit reference to the statutory reference of critical minerals being the USGS list.

5E is ideally positioned to benefit as a shovel-ready advanced-stage project aligned with national priorities. Access to these programs has the potential to strengthen our balance sheet, reduce equity dilution, and accelerate execution. That’s a direct result of the federal government recognizing what we’ve built and our strategic domestic resources and reserves ready to move into production. Operationally, our team continues to execute with precision, maintaining strong alignment with our milestones and reinforcing the quality of our technical and commercial foundation. As we discussed last quarter, our pre-feasibility study confirmed strong project economics of 39.5-year mine life, a 19.2% pre-tax IRR, and a pre-tax MTV of $725 million for only phase one of the Fort Cady project. Those fundamentals continue to anchor our forward plan. We’ve now successfully qualified our high-purity boric acid with multiple customers across sectors, including specialty glass, fiberglass, ceramics, agriculture, defense, and advanced materials.

Most notably, we have advanced to full-scale testing and furnace trials with a Tier 1 specialty glass manufacturer, following a successful shipment of 20 tons of boric acid from the port of Los Angeles to Taiwan. I can confirm that as of last week, the shipment had arrived in Taiwan and will be deployed in a live testing environment in the near term. Additionally, we supplied an additional 1,000 pounds of boric acid to a domestic boron carbide manufacturer. China currently controls much of the boron carbide supply chain, and we’re excited to do our part in reshoring domestic boron carbide production as it is critical to our national defense. On the back of the 20-ton shipment, we’re also preparing additional product shipments for other LCD glass producers, reinforcing both the scalability and reliability of our operation.

Each one of these milestones builds customer trust and advances us towards long-term offtake agreements, a key bridge between development and commercial operations. Looking at the market opportunity, the critical minerals designation aligns perfectly with broader U.S. industrial policy. Boron is essential to technologies that support advanced manufacturing and enable the energy policy objectives. Everything from permanent magnets, semiconductors, EVs, wind turbines, and defense armor systems to advanced glass and composites, which 5E positions as a strategic enabler within multiple national frameworks. From a development standpoint, our trajectory remains clear. We are nearing completion of feed-ready engineering deliverables, advancing strategic financing discussions, and negotiating offtake terms. Each step brings us closer to our goal of a 2026 final investment decision.

As we move through these milestones, our goal remains consistent with what I outlined in our previous call: to progress methodically, de-risk every stage, and build a capital structure that supports long-term value creation. The remainder of fiscal year 2026 will be focused on three primary priorities: one, securing non-dilutive U.S. capital support through EXIM, OSC, DFC, and DOE programs. While skeptics may have heard this previously from 5E, the recent designation is a major catalyst and milestone to having a much more broader and in-depth discussion on financing our project and providing access to larger pools of capital. Two, advancing customer agreements in commercial offtake contracts, where we expect a more detailed negotiation to commence before year-end. Three, executing a rigorous and diligently planned feed and pre-FID workstreams to ensure we are construction-ready in 2026.

Additionally, we have commenced the workstream to upgrade our mineral resource statement on the back of securing and recording the remaining federal load claims for the rest of the colmonite mineralization of the deposit. Further, we have begun steps to build a portfolio of intellectual property on our proprietary mining techniques and processing solutions. These steps position 5E to cement our mineral tenure for the long term, become the premier ISL borate producer in the United States, and transition confidently into construction and ultimately commercial production, delivering long-term value for our shareholders and strengthening America’s domestic mineral independence. In closing, this quarter truly represents an inflection point, one that underscores our growing momentum, validates our strategy, and sets the stage for sustained growth and value creation. The federal recognition of boron as a critical mineral validates years of technical work, market engagement, and policy advocacy.

It affirms that what we’re building at 5E matters, not just commercially, but strategically. As I said on our last call, this is a story of proof, not potential. And now, with federal alignment and growing customer traction, we’re proving that 5E is positioned to become America’s trusted borate supplier of advanced materials. Thank you to our employees, partners, and shareholders for your continued commitment. We’re building something rare and a foundation for America’s energy and advanced materials future. With that, we’ll open up the call to any questions. Thank you, Paul. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star 2. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, and then return to the queue if you have additional questions.

Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Tate Sullivan of the Maxim Group. Tate, your line is live. Thank you. And Paul, congratulations on having boron be on the critical mineral list. You highlighted the potential in your last call and how you were part of that process. So congratulations. As part of being on that list, is there any word from or previous comments from the Defense Logistics Agency that there may be a government stockpile of boron going forward or any boron derivatives? I think the trend has been to, in the past, stockpile carbide. On the USGS commodity summary, there was a pretty large award, maybe about a year, year and a half ago, to a company through DPA for domestic production of boron carbide. Obviously, that’s a supply chain that’s dominated by China.

That customer has reached out to a couple of the other borate producers. Kind of our understanding has been a bit ignored. We partnered with them, went through the initial qualification process with smaller samples, and now they are piloting production, looking to move to full scale. That was the 1,000 pounds as part of that pilot process. I think, listen, to get back to your question, I think the stockpiling of carbide has occurred in the past. Not sure if there’s stockpiling right now, especially given what is happening on the midstream with that producer. I think the plan is to ultimately get off of China and domesticate that supply chain. Thank you. Then separately, in the 10Q, I saw some language about the horizontal wells, two horizontal wells that you’re drilling. Is that for resource expansion and definition work?

Is that for flow testing? And have you started flow testing, if that is part of the process? No, this is actually validating the commercial design. We drilled in July and into early August two horizontal laterals. We had four injection recovery wells. Each of those wells were going down to about 1,500 ft total depth vertically. We have had about 1,080 ft below ground. We sidetracked off those two wells with 1,500 ft laterals. We got a minor modification from the Environmental Protection Agency to get permission to do that. Our commercial mine plan contemplates 4,000 ft laterals. If you think about scaling and proof of concept. We have run about six or seven cycles on those wells. The results have been really good.

One of the things that, as we’re coming up on two years of operating the small-scale facility here in January, one of the things we saw with the vertical wells is you’d have head grades that would be consistently at 5%, and then they’d jump to 7-8%, and then back down to 3%. You had a bit of variance. From a geology perspective, our deposit was a lake millions of years ago, and it evaporated. It is pretty homogeneous. The mineralized zone is 1,300-1,500 feet underground. That gives us the ability to take a horizontal well and run kind of for a couple thousand feet through high-grade colmonite zones. What has happened now, as we’ve tested these wells, all samples, like from a head grade and boron percentage in solution, the variance has gone away.

There is a much higher rate of efficiency from a mining process in that we are consistent. As you think about your design going into feed engineering, the basis you are going to give your EPC contractor, we now have a really high degree of confidence on what that bell curve looks like from a boron and solution percentage, as well as our metal impurities and our calcium to boron ratios. It just gives us a much better position to have a successful feed program and ultimately design a plant at commercial scale that is going to work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Heiko Ile of HC Wainwright. Heiko, your line is live. Hi, Paul. It is Case. Heiko is on the plane right now listening to the webcast. Thank you for taking our question. No problem. Good to chat, Case. How are you? Doing great.

Thanks for asking. Earlier on the call, you discussed several government programs that supported boron. Could you give us some color on maybe the percentage or in dollar terms that you think we could see from such programs? It seems pretty pertinent given the long-term demand drivers are pretty obvious. Yeah. Great question. Listen, I think now that you have this critical minerals designation, it really opens up all aspects of the capital structure from the loans to, well, you saw what happened with MD, where they came in, and now they’re a 10% shareholder. And they did the preferred. I think I would get asked previously at different conferences, and as we’re talking to investors, is that a possibility? My kind of first response was, listen, we need to get the government to acknowledge boron as a critical mineral.

Now that we’ve done that, I think we can really have a much more in-depth discussion on, hey, what’s the right loan we want to go after? We have the LOI with EXIM. Now you can kind of run parallel processes as you go get the debt. Obviously, the debt helps geared IRRs, so you can optimize your cash flows through the loans. Then you can have the conversation about, hey, what does the balance of the equity look like? Could you have a conversation with OSC on potentially providing some of that capital? On the back of that, I would say we have a $435 million capital estimate. That’s the sky’s the limit. In the interim, had a call today on, we are a member of Cornerstone Consortium.

What we’re doing on the wellfield side is both innovative and, to a certain extent, we’re proving that the horizontal—we know the vertical wells work. We’re proving that the horizontal wells are actually a better design. The results are already speaking for themselves. Hey, can we go get smaller grants now through Cornerstone on the mining side? I think on the back of some of these executive orders that kind of came out earlier in the year, now you’re getting through, CRs have been passed. People are returning to their desks. You can actually go have those conversations. Absolutely. Thank you. One more question. You mentioned some of the fluctuating head grades on the call. From a geological point of view, what exactly is this based on, and how does it impact your internal model?

You mentioned having more clarity on the bell curve to see what’s going on. Great technical question there. When we say head grade, we’re talking about what’s the boron percentage by weight in solution that’s coming and being extracted from underground to surface. When we start an injection recovery cycle to go mine the boron, we’re starting for our permit with 95% water, 5% hydrochloric acid. Just HCl, it’s no different than the muriatic acid I put in my swimming pools as a conditioner. That, with the water and increases in temperature, creates the ability to leach the colmonite. When we inject, we let that then sit underground. What happens in that 24- to 48-hour time period is that HCl reacts with the colmonite and dissolves the minerals.

When we come up above ground, what ends up happening is we catch multiple samples of solution. We send them to our lab on site, and we run an ICP analysis on that. What happens is you can see what is your HCl concentration in that solution. Before you injected, you started at 5%. When we test in the lab, it is about 0.25%-0.5% HCl. That HCl has now been reacted and replaced with dissolved boron in solution. Because boron’s super soluble, i.e., with temperature, the more you can dissolve, the better head grade you can get, you can supersaturate and outperform on the mining side. Our base case is changed from 9%-10% head grade. We have proven the solubility curve out on the low end.

Ultimately, what we’re focusing here on the next month and a half, two months is really vetting that out on the commercial design. Economics for the that’s in the PFS remain intact. I think we’ve had some really initial good results where we’ve gotten kind of right around that 7% head grade. We’re limited today on the temperature we can actually inject at the small-scale facility. One of the items, and this is kind of teasing out the next call, is we have downhole heaters on order. They’re used in oil and gas. Every day, they can get up to actually 300 degrees Celsius. That’s not the temperature we need to mine at. We’re going to kind of hang it right around 60-180 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just a reminder that if there are any further questions, you can still join the queue by pressing star 1 on your phone keypad now. Our next question is coming from Dimitri Silverstein of Water Tower Research. Dimitri, your line is live. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my call. Quick question. When you talk about one of your goals for 2026 is to secure offtake contracts, and you’re working right now to have your products trialed. Is there, in your mind, a sort of percentage of your annual production that you would like to have under offtake agreements and long-term contracts? At what level, in other words, would you feel comfortable deploying capital? And how do you see maybe a steady state business operating between offtake agreements and selling on a spot market? Great question, Dimitri. Glad to have you on the line. Yeah.

I think the first kind of group we proposed to, we pitched about 20% of our production, so about 24,000 metric tons. There are two or three other customers in queue. I think what we’d like to get to is a bankable portfolio that consists of about 70% of our production under offtake agreement, maybe 75%. You want to take advantage of the spot market, and specifically distribution, because they are not bankable customers, but they ultimately do provide a higher price in the spot market. That is how you can—there is boron is used in 300-plus applications. The way you can kind of scale is ultimately through those distribution channels where you have smaller participants buying it, but they are buying at much higher prices. As we are thinking about that offtake portfolio, you target 70% of the 130,000 tons under contract.

You keep another 25-30% for the spot market. Understood. That is very helpful. Thank you. Just a point of clarification. When you talk about making the final decision by the end of 2026 or talking about offtake contracts by the end of 2026, do you mean your fiscal year or the calendar year? Great question. That was a reference to calendar year 2026. Calendar. That is what I thought. Okay. Thank you very much. No problem. Thank you very much. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Paul for any closing remarks. Thank you, everyone, for your time, interest, and dialing today for our Q1 2026 call. We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us to become the newest borate producer in the world.

We have a proven asset and a strategy to modularly expand the asset over the next several years. We’re looking forward to sharing this journey with all of you in the coming quarters. Thank you for dialing in. Have a great day. Thank you, Paul. Thank you to everyone for joining today’s call. This concludes today’s conference. You may now disconnect.

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