Lynas Rare Earths Limited

Lynas Rare Earths Limited

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 21, 2026

Operator

Welcome to Lynas Rare Earths quarterly results brief. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone keypad.

You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star one one again.

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Lynas Rare Earths.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the Lynas Rare Earths investor briefing for the December quarter of FY 2026. Today's briefing will be presented by Amanda Lacaze, CEO and Managing Director.

Joining Amanda on the call today are Gaudenz Sturzenegger, CFO; Pol Le Roux, COO; Daniel Havas, VP Strategy and Investor Relations; and Chris Jenny, VP Sales and Market Development. I'll now hand over to Amanda Lacaze.

Please go ahead, Amanda.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everybody.

Happy New Year, and welcome to what I plan to be our best ever year. As always, thank you to everyone for attending.

As I think you all know, for me, there's not too many more of these briefing sessions, and so I am quite determined that they should all be very positive. Following the announcement on my plans to retire on the 30th of June this year, I have received an overwhelming number of complimentary messages, sufficient to make me blush in some instances.

I would like to thank all of you who have sent me sort of positive feedback following last week's announcement for your very kind thoughts. However, as I've said to everybody, this company is not so key-person-dependent that it should matter.

I'm delighted to see that that has been the market sentiment. We've spent 12 years—I've spent 12 years of my life working to build a strong and resilient business at Lynas, and I am delighted to be leaving the company in excellent shape with the completion of our Lynas 2025 capital program, a very strong balance sheet, a path forward outlined in our Towards 2030 strategy, and a team that is really second to none, competent leadership, but competent people right through our organization.

I look forward to a great, sort of six months leading into the retirement date, and I think as I've said to some, I have suggested to my team that I would expect an excellent farewell tour. Today in particular, I am delighted to be able to present really a very good quarterly result, despite our previously disclosed challenges at Kalgoorlie as a result of the power outages during November.

Production of NdPr during this quarter, whilst it was less than the prior quarter, is as we expected and as we foreshadowed in our announcement in late November. Production of dysprosium and terbium is ahead of our plan for the quarter, but effectively we used up oxalates which had been produced during the prior quarter.

We sort of look at this and average it out over the six months starts to give us a bit of an indication of where we will be able to continue to operate those circuits into the future. During the quarter, we undertook some really substantial maintenance on the kilns, including some 10-year maintenance on a couple of those kilns.

They have restarted in very good order post that maintenance schedule in January. Just finishing up on the operations, as we'd indicated in late November, we had significant power outages in Kalgoorlie during November, which meant that we were unable to produce and get material to Kuantan to be processed in time during the quarter.

We have had much more active engagement with our supplier in this area, and at least two issues that have been identified have been rectified. Having said that, and we've had much more stable supply for a period of time, however, as recently as yesterday, we had two significant power outages.

We continue to assess new off-grid solutions. As flagged previously, diesel generation can give us reliable power, but we are very focused on continuing to reduce our environmental footprint, it is not the most desirable path forward.

We are assessing what off-grid solutions may be available to us. Moving on to sales.

Sales of NdPr were ahead of production of NdPr, and so, you would have worked out, that saw some drawdown of inventory, which we believe we will probably replace in due course. We have not sold all of our DyTb, as we continue to use that material strategically, as we've indicated previously.

It's in very high demand. The sales team continues to negotiate new contracts, particularly looking to how can we acquire high-value NdPr agreements alongside sort of the DyTb which is required by particularly magnet customers.

Just a word on the costs, because I saw one of the early analyses this morning which notionally showed a significant increase in costs. Of course, some of that is related to the fact that production volume was lower, and so therefore things like fixed costs have been shared across a smaller volume.

I would just also caution everyone to recall that this is a cash report for the quarter, and so therefore the cash costs and the actual production are typically about a month apart. I would suggest wait until we put out our half-year to really get a very good fix on the achieved costs within our business.

As we look at the cash flow, of course, we're sitting on very substantial and positive bank deposits. We are still washing out the final Mt Weld invoices, and we've got a few more to go through in this coming quarter as well.

I think everyone understands that the market settings remain positive, and in fact, in some ways have even become more positive during January. NdPr price continues to strengthen.

Frankly, geopolitics continue to be our friend. Although we are yet to finalize various agreements with governments, the policies which have been particularly implemented by the US government have already fostered more functional market dynamics.

As I've said on many occasions, our objective is a proper functioning market where materials are valued appropriately, right? What we've seen over the last sort of decade or more really is a situation where that is not the case and where market dynamics are dysfunctional rather than functional.

Whilst we might look at various governments and the sorts of support that they might seek to be providing to industry, as we've said to government, ultimately, our objective is that no government has to write a check because actually the market functions in a proper way. We are seeing significant improvement in market function as a result of the various policies which have already been implemented.

Certainly, as we've seen, that the proper sort of implementation of some of the export controls from China, the demand inside China has increased, and as that has occurred, the price has also started to increase. Even during this month, some of the Chinese rare earths suppliers have signaled a price increase which was published earlier in January.

Bearing in mind that our objective remains to place all of our production outside China at sustainable price levels—that is no government checks ultimately involved—we see ourselves on course to do so and certainly welcome many of the policy initiatives and also the development of a number of options in outside China supply chains. With that, just a reminder, a very good month in terms of actually production, notwithstanding the power outages, certainly in terms of the completion of our maintenance program, and, as I said, the restart of our Lynas Malaysia facility in January, and a particularly good quarter in terms of sales, and we're very focused on ensuring that we continue these positives in 2026.

With that, I am happy to take any questions.

Operator

Thank you, Amanda. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced.

Please ask one question. If you have more questions, please requeue.

To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster.

First question comes from Rahul Anand from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Rahul Anand

Hi, good morning Amanda and team. Thanks for the call.

Look, my one question is around the price and the pricing mix, if you can help me a bit on that. Obviously the REO realized price was significantly above our and consensus forecast.

It was a really good outcome. I guess there was a bit of benefit from perspective of your points noted in the release, which were higher benchmarks, higher dysprosium, terbium, and perhaps a bit more NdPr in the mix.

Can you maybe highlight these points a bit more and maybe help us understand a bit more as to how we should be thinking about perhaps the sales mix on a going-forward basis and then also where we can expect better performance? Thanks.

Amanda Lacaze

Rahul. Look, I think that the first thing is that, as a current producer at scale of separated NdPr and also DyTb, and as an established supplier, every movement in the current market index, which is Asian Metal, delivers benefit to us every day.

That is one of the things which really sort of sets us apart from many others is that we start to bank that value from day one. Having said that, our objective is to continue to add new contracts which either give us a premium in some instances, which is referred to that current benchmark, or indeed agreements which are sort of tied more closely to the sort of floor prices which have been indicated by the agreement that the US government entered into with MP Materials last year.

We're doing both of these things, and we do track—don't ask now, I'm not going to disclose it—but we do track very closely what's the premium that we're achieving versus various benchmarks. We think that the strengthening market and strengthening demand for NdPr are the things that ultimately drive improved financial performance.

Rahul Anand

Got it. That's very helpful.

Thank you very much, Amanda. I'll queue back in.

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please.

Next, we have Neal Dingmann from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Neal Dingmann

Good morning, and good evening for me. Thanks for taking my question.

My just quick question is really around the production mix, specifically you guys are doing a nice job of continuing to grow the mix, and my question is: what is sort of the longer-term target for dysprosium and terbium sales volumes as a percentage of total mix? This looks like that's growing, and I'm just wondering kind of Do you have sort of a target maybe for end of this year or maybe next year on that?

Amanda Lacaze

Hi, Neil. We did put out some, advice on our heavy rare earths investment as we, grow our, as as we invest in further capacity expansion in Malaysia, earlier not earlier this year, late last calendar year in any case.

We we do aim to increase the proportion of DyTb, but I think it is really important to note that it is always, a relatively small volume. A magnet maker typically is using about, um—and Chris Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong—but about 30 tons of NdPr to a to to one of DyTb.

So, what we aim to do is to really be able to utilize that DyTb so that magnet makers and magnet buyers can feel comfortable, and confident to, buy from non-China sources, whereas, up until last year when we when we commenced the separation of DyTb, even if they purchased NdPr from, say, us, they still had to source their DyTb out of China. It's it's less about the specific volume and more about the offer that we can make to our customers.

Neal Dingmann

Makes total sense. Thank you so much, and I'll requeue as well.

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Austin Yun from Macquarie.

Please go ahead.

Austin Yun

Afternoon, Amanda and the team. Just a quick question on the production.

Previously, you've said the production rate will suit the market conditions, and we have seen that the market is quite supportive, driven by both fundamentals and the macro events. I'm just keen to understand in the near term, talking about next six months, what's the achievable production rate from your whole facility?

Is that 10.5 the running number to think about the kind of near-term cap? Any color would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you, Austin. Thank you for asking yet again for guidance [laughter] which certainly what we have provided very clearly is the fact that we've made investment in our production facilities to be able to deliver 10,500 tons per annum of NdPr.

The operations team continues to work on ramping up to that number, and our objective is to get there as soon as possible. Other than that, I'm not going to give you a date on which that will occur.

Effectively, what it requires us to be able to do is to be able to produce sort of really quite reliably between 30 and 33 tons a day. We are on track to being able to do that, but until we have demonstrated our capability to produce at that 10,500-ton run rate, we don't finally say, yes, Lynas 2025 is absolutely completed, but we are in good order to get to that sort of target.

Austin Yun

Got it. Thank you, Amanda.

I was really just trying to understand if there's any other near-term hurdle, planned maintenance that we need to be aware of, but yeah, thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Austin, as always, [laughter] external factors tend these days to trip us up a lot more than internal factors. Things like power at Kalgoorlie.

If we cannot get Kalgoorlie producing reliably because we keep on having power outages, then that absolutely makes it difficult for us to achieve that sort of average daily run rate. There are always external risks, and we seek to manage them absolutely as best we can.

We have a plan. We have a very clear target, and 10,500 tons is the objective.

Austin Yun

Thank you, Amanda.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Austin.

Operator

Thank you. Just a moment for our next question.

We've got Paul Young from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Paul Young

Morning, Amanda and team, and hope you're well, and Happy New Year. Amanda, back on projects and just ramp-up.

I see Mt Weld ramp-up is going really well. I think you said it's running at 70% of nameplate, which is a pretty quick commissioning and ramp-up, albeit it's a pretty small project, but not nonetheless complex than others.

When you expect to get to full capacity there, and to be able to test Kalgoorlie cracking and leaching, to your point, if power supplies reliably, you can actually start out really testing the kiln at full capacity, or just with the market backdrop and everything else in the timing with the refinery expansion, do you expect to maybe stockpile concentrate? Just curious around when you can achieve nameplate and what the strategy is as far as really testing Kalgoorlie cracking and leaching.

Thanks.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Paul. I don't think that it's proper to describe Mt Weld as a fairly small project.

[laughter] It is a very substantial project, and yes, we are very pleased to be running at 70%, but I would note, and this is particularly recognizing sort of the efforts of our team, that start-ups are never completely trouble-free. Even at Mt Weld, where we are very confident about our asset and really have a lot of experience sort of making that shift from what was indeed a little plant to now a much larger, more complex plant that's using more and different mineralogies, certainly has presented the team with a number of challenges.

If at present or up until we commissioned the new plant, we were actually producing, even from the old plant, two grades of con, one which was slightly higher grade for Malaysia versus one in Kal. At present, that's not the case.

We're basically producing all at the same grade. In terms of Kal, if we said everything is perfect outside, we would actually say that the kiln and the cracking, the actual cracking and leaching process in Kalgoorlie has proven itself to be working as designed, and so therefore we wouldn't see that there was any significant challenge to being able to ramp that up.

The area where, in terms of the ramp-up from commissioning, that has presented us with the most challenges is the production of the mixed rare earth carbonate, which is actually a completely new circuit in our flowsheet. Over the last year, the team has made quite a lot of process improvements there in particularly to improve quality.

Some of the early material that we were sending up to Lynas Malaysia was not on spec for a variety of different areas. I think that we've now got ourselves to a position where we're pretty confident about most of the quality specs, but it actually has been the area that has challenged us the most other than our inability to be able to put together sort of long runs because we keep having these power outages.

We do need to be able to continue to ramp up Kal, and that remains at the heart of us getting to the 10,500-ton run rate. Having said that, I can also tell you that the Lynas Malaysia facility, and particularly cracking in Malaysia, continues to improve, is significantly ahead of where we were performing even a year ago, certainly 2 years ago.

Therefore, sort of really balancing the two facilities, we are confident that we continue on a good pathway towards reaching that 10,500 tons.

Paul Young

Okay. Thanks, Amanda.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Daniel Morgan from Barrenjoey.

Please go ahead.

Daniel Morgan

Hi, Amanda. You said earlier in the call that you are yet to finalize agreements with various governments.

Sounds like that's multiple governments. Can you just talk about what is the nature of what you're seeking?

Is it offtake, as you talk about with the Department of War? Is it price protection agreements, or is it something else?

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Daniel. I think everyone, even with a passing analysis of the rare earths market, would recognize that the feature which was by far the most significant for the deal that the US did with MP was the price protection agreement.

I think that we can see that a lot of other things, even though that deal did include capital injections, etc., that the private markets will stump up the equity for a functioning market where you can see that there is a business that can be a successful business. That has been the positive effect of the price protection agreement.

We have encouraged privately and publicly sort of other markets as they're considering their policies. If you think about the sort of notification which has even come out of the Australian market, the Resources Minister a couple of weeks ago talking about the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve was really talking about managing with floor and ceiling prices.

I note that Scott Bessent spoke in Davos yesterday. He was talking about the conversations at the G7+ meetings and about putting in place floor and ceiling prices to ensure that you've got a positive functioning market.

In a couple of instances, it is also relevant, say for example, in the US, whilst there's significant investments being made in future capacity, there is a current requirement for product particularly for the defense industry, which is really the objective of a number of the Chinese policies is to ensure that no Chinese product goes into defense applications. That's why in some instances, it's also relevant to be considering whether a physical stockpile is of benefit to the government.

Essentially, it is the functioning of the price market. For us, we don't need governments to be buying our product.

We need customers to be buying our product, and we need those customers to buy our product at prices that properly reflect the cost of doing business. Really that discussion around policy and policy execution is the most important discussions that we are having with government.

Daniel Morgan

Okay. Thank you very much for your perspective.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Daniel.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Chen Jiang from Bank of America.

Please go ahead.

Chen Jiang

Good afternoon, Amanda. Happy New Year.

[laughter] Hi. We will miss you after this financial year, for sure.

Thank you for taking my question. One question for me is about your lost production.

I guess with your capacity 10.5 thousand-ton NdPr and cracking and leaching plant is running well from January at Malaysia, and Kalgoorlie power situation kind of resolved or stabilized, I guess the production loss from December quarter can be recovered in third quarter and fourth quarter of the financial year. I guess we shouldn't assume the production is lost, but delayed into the rest of the financial

Amanda Lacaze

year.

Chen Jiang

Is my understanding correct? Delayed, yes.

Chen, yeah.

Amanda Lacaze

I think we're pretty confident about, always with the qualification that to get to 10,500 tons, we must have MREC coming out of Kalgoorlie. If we have no power, then we can't have any MREC coming out of Kalgoorlie.

That is absolutely our number one constraint over time. Yes, it would be our expectation that we should be able to now continue with an orderly ramp-up towards the 10,500 tons.

Chen Jiang

All right. Thank you very much, Amanda.

I'll pass it on.

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Reg Spencer from Canaccord Genuity.

Please go ahead.

Reg Spencer

Thank you. Amanda, I'd just like to start by first saying congratulations on your tenure at Lynas and what yourself and the rest of the team has achieved over those years.

It's been a long journey, and at times I think we all agree hasn't been necessarily an easy ride, but, yeah, congratulations, and hopefully you get to put the toes up at some point in the next few months. [laughter] I should try to dial in a little bit earlier, because right at the back of the queue now.

My question I have, because most of the other questions have been answered, relates to the magnet plans for JS Link and Noveon. Clearly, the market is moving ahead in the West.

It seems to be almost every second day a new magnet plant being announced somewhere. Have your plans and your conversations with both JS Link and Noveon moved ahead, and are we getting closer to a point where we might be able to get some detail around what those plans might actually look like on execution?

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Reg. Thank you for your very kind comments, and, yes, we'll make sure that we have time to actually celebrate the past 12 years in good order before I ride off into the distance.

[laughter] So, yes, discussions with both JS Link and Noveon are progressing. I might actually invite Chris Jenny, who leads our Sales and Market Development area, to add some comments on that.

Chris Jenney

Thanks, Amanda, and thanks, Reg, for the question. The discussions continue with both JS Link and Noveon, just looking at what is the best partnership model based on the current geopolitics, but also the current dynamics of the market.

I think what feeds into that is the increased appetite for OEMs to create the non-China supply chain. We're working with a number of magnet maker, metal maker partners, not just JS Link and Noveon, to make sure we can link up those OEMs to them, magnet makers and metal makers, to basically supply our oxides into.

We will keep you updated as we progress, but it's, yeah, interesting times, and, yeah, we'll update you as we can.

Reg Spencer

Thanks, Chris. Interesting indeed.

Not a lot of metal makers out there, actually. I see one just got bid for today.

Look, appreciate the questions, and thanks, Amanda and team. I'll pass it on.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Reg. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Scott Ryall from Rimor Equity Research.

Please go ahead.

Scott Ryall

Hi, Amanda. Thank you very much.

You've mentioned a couple of times the electricity situation in Kalgoorlie, and it is one of the hardest places, as I understand, to get ultra-reliable electricity in Australia at the moment. I guess my question is: what's in your control for actually solving the issues versus third-party control?

Is it the government, or is it your electricity supplier that you're most pressuring, I guess, at the moment? Over what time period do you think you'll be able to resolve this on the assumption that at least part of it is third-party pressure that you have to apply?

Is it something that you can solve over 12 months, 24 months? I'm just after a broad estimation there.

Amanda Lacaze

We are actively engaged, Scott, with both the government and with the power supplier. Given Western Power is a government-owned enterprise, clearly these two things go hand in hand.

I think that you're right when you say Kalgoorlie is challenged, and we're certainly not the only industrial operator in Kalgoorlie that has suffered as a result of power outages. I would also say that the state government absolutely recognizes that, and has, I believe, sort of a specific project team to address how to improve this.

However, from public commentary, they've talked about sort of that timeline being somewhere in the range of 2029 to 2032, this clearly doesn't align to our requirements. Our team continues to work on what are alternate power solutions, which would be either completely off-grid or maybe a combination of grid and off-grid activities, because we would want to be able to put a solution in place, we'd be aiming to do it within, I guess, the next 12 to 18 months, as opposed to the next 2 to 3 years.

A diesel power station can be put in place pretty quickly, and if we get to a position where that's the only way that we can assure power reliability, then we will do it. We would rather look at a better medium-term solution than burning diesel.

We've decided not to proceed at this stage with a diesel power station, but that can change, and it can be implemented pretty quickly if it does change.

Scott Ryall

All right. Excellent.

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Scott.

Operator

Thank you. Just a moment for our next question, please.

Next, we got Regan Burrows from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.

Regan Burrows

Hi, Amanda and team. Congratulations on the quarter despite the disruptions there.

A lot of the questions have sort of focused on Kalgoorlie and the ramp-up there. If I could just sort of summarize and sort of make sure that we're understanding it correctly, excluding the power outages that we've seen at Kalgoorlie, and once you get Mt Weld up to sort of 100% run rate, are there any bottlenecks within the entire business in reaching that 2.6 thousand-ton per quarter rate, or is there anything else that we're missing there?

Amanda Lacaze

Oh, Regan, there's always a bottleneck, right? In fact, it's a measure of progress of your operations that you find new bottlenecks, because as you resolve one, then the bottleneck moves around, and you find another one.

At this stage, we remain focused on ramping up Mt Weld, and as I said, even though we've had a very positive ramp-up to date there, notwithstanding that we're only 3 months into that ramp-up, and we are still identifying bottlenecks and issues to be resolved as part of a normal ramp-up. In Kalgoorlie, likewise, as we continue to increase production, we will discover new areas that we need to improve.

However, as I indicated earlier on the call, we have our sights set very firmly on the 10,500 tons, and the way that we get there will be by optimizing each of the production facilities, recognizing that, yes, there will be various bottlenecks either internally or externally at each of those facilities. There'll always be a bottleneck.

If there's not, then we're not moving forward, actually.

Regan Burrows

Great. Thanks.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Regan.

Operator

Thank you. Next, we have Dim Ariyasinghe from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Dimel Ariyasinghe

Hi, Amanda. Thanks for the time.

Just a question on Japan. Earlier in the year, China imposed additional controls on the trade of rare earths into Japan.

I figure the market is still trying to work its way through implications, but can you give us any indication on how your Japanese partners feel, if there's more upside potentially ahead for perhaps 7,200-ton volume arrangement, yeah, anything? How is that progressing?

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you, Dim. Look, I think as we look at the actions that the Chinese have taken since April last year, they announced very substantive controls in April last year, and I think we all saw the outcome of the fact that they announced the new licensing framework before they'd implemented the systems to be able to manage that new licensing framework.

Since then, notwithstanding various other announcements and commentary, and we had sort of a further set of comments from the Chinese in I think it was in October about further constraints, effectively, the things which have been implemented in China are now really those April controls and a series of non-price controls with respect to the export of knowledge and equipment. When we say that it's not really clear what the further commentary earlier this month with respect to China and Japan really means, it's because it's not clear that there is more than what was already previously been disclosed, which were significant controls on what's termed dual-use materials, which is essentially those with heavies.

We have been very actively engaged with our Japanese partners for many years on ways that we can increase supply of heavies into the Japanese market. We continue to be focused on that, because it's that which really gives particularly magnet makers and non-Chinese customers the confidence to be able to go forward.

We're not seeing anything over and above what had already previously been disclosed, but we are seeing now that the Chinese are getting their administrative systems in place, and some of the benefit to that is that exports have started to flow again, particularly of sort of magnets, but we've not seen a significant effect from the announcements earlier this month. Is that helpful, Dim?

I don't think we can see anything more than that at this stage, and what we do see is that all of it, as I said in my opening remarks, geopolitics do remain our friend.

Dimel Ariyasinghe

No, no, that's really helpful. Yep, laying in, and, yeah, thank you and congratulations on an amazing career.

Thanks.

Amanda Lacaze

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Chen Jiang from Bank of America.

Please go ahead. Oh,

Chen Jiang

thank you so much, Amanda, for taking my follow-up question. Just a comment in the release about the increasing share of rare earth sales at prices independent of the market index.

I guess the most you are referring to the heavy rare earths dysprosium and terbium, but they are also, I guess, increasing NdPr pricing independent of China's benchmark. I'm just wondering if the increasing NdPr sales independent of China's benchmark is your new contract.

Which means that is the contract sales outside of Japan, or even in Japan, you can have prices independent of China NdPr. Thank you very much, Amanda.

Amanda Lacaze

Yes, yes, yes, yes. [laughter] But, yes, our objective is that it is not just on the heavies.

Our objective is that by having the heavies, we are able to agree contracts with target customers outside of China and Japan, and that we are able to agree those at the sort of price levels which have been signaled very strongly into the market as price levels which are sustainable both from a supplier and also a customer perspective. Yes, we are starting that process.

Some of those contracts are relatively low volume at present, expected to grow over time, but we are aiming to write contracts which are either independent of the Asian Metal index or utilize sort of the floors and ceilings that we see being signaled into the market elsewhere. Ultimately, heavies on their own don't significantly shift the dial for Lynas.

We need to understand that today we are still very heavily dependent upon NdPr to drive value in our business. Using all of our skills and portfolio capabilities to do that is our core objective.

Chen Jiang

Understood. Thank you very much, Amanda.

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Chen.

Operator

Thank you. We just have a follow-up question from Paul Young.

Please go ahead.

Paul Young

Hi, Amanda. A quick question on the heavy rare earth circuit and the expansion, and this is certainly not big picture and this is certainly, I don't think, material, but just to confirm on the timing of the expanded circuit and the first production of samarium, which I think in your release you're saying is Q4 2026.

I think the prior guidance was April 2026. I just want to confirm, are you referring to December quarter of '26?

A modest delay, and if so, is that because of, I think you're calling out, just procurement of

Amanda Lacaze

major No, it's Q4. It is Q4 this calendar year.

It's no delay.

Paul Young

It is Q4. No delay.

Okay. Great.

Thanks for confirming. Thanks, Amanda.

Amanda Lacaze

Thanks, Paul.

Operator

Thank you.

Amanda Lacaze

Okay. Natalie, no, I thought maybe not, because I think there's another briefing that's starting at midday, I want to give you enough time for a nature break ahead of that.

Once again, thank you all for joining us today. We are pleased to have been able to deliver the results that we have delivered, and we are pleased to be looking into a market which is looking pretty positive in terms of its various settings, and look forward to seeing all of you in the next couple of months when we release our half-year results.

Thank you, all.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call.

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.