Episode 12 - Coal Country Transmission: Market Troughs and M&A Rumors

This is the Coaltrader Podcast on the Clear Commodity Network, your source for trading and investing in the coal market. Hey, Coaltraders, welcome to episode 12 of the Coaltrader Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Matt Borter, and with me is my partner, Joe Aldina. Joe, how you doing, buddy? Hey, man. I'm good, Matt, sitting here in the house in Washington, DC, but you're in more exciting on virons today. I understand. I am coming to you from parts unknown, but I can't confirm that I'm at an actual coal mine. So this is the first official Coaltrader Podcast that is coming to you from coal country itself directly. So it's a landmark for us. Happy to be here. We've had a great time on the mind visit. Let's just say that some of the broader ideas that I've learned down here are going to be shared in future work that we do. But more importantly, it's just great to get boots on the ground. You're in this case underground. Yeah. I was going to joke, did you learn anything down there? I'm sure you don't have much to learn on the coal mining side, but I'm sure you get some good discussions on the markets and business ideas and some of the coal companies, which I know we're going to talk about today. So that's awesome. But as usual, we'll go through a little market rundown. I know you've got the thermal coal prices up in front of you. So you can help me out here. I'll roll through the thermal markets. I put out a quick update to our subscribers on the coal trader.com on our sub stack earlier this week on Monday. You know, thermal coal is, it's hanging in there, it's doing well. We're going to the shoulder season though. But European prices were up on the week. You can tell me where they're at today, Matt, but they're low stocks, some short covering, EPI 2 in Europe, doing was doing pretty well last time I looked at it. Yeah, I'll travel through those here in a second. Newcastle 6000 K-Cal index is at 11580. So futures curve is in contango. Goes up through about $122, $123 by this time next year. That is down about a percent ish on the week. The next quarter is down a little bit more. It's about 2% on average as much as 3% for the March futures. But even still, when you look at that on a one-month basis, it's up 6, 7, 8% across the board. So generally things are looking pretty good. On API 2, we're sitting in 106, 107, which is, again, much better than when we were in the doldrums at the 90s. Yeah, that's the contract essentially. The April contracts are getting bit up here on Newcastle and ARA, I think Newcastle, the high CVS, the April contract 120 in Europe, 111, that was earlier this week. So hanging in there. Yeah, well, there's some weather over in Europe that it pushed prices up. So the forward curve for API 2, a little bit down a little bit more from that perspective, down 6.5% for the March contract, 5.5% on the week for the April contract. But on a one-month basis, they're up between 7% to 17% over the next 12 months of futures contract. So it was really, it has been a good month for Europe. On the Richard's base side, kind of similar action, really. We're almost up to 100 bucks. The February contract is going to close out the month at 98.90. This month contract is right there at 98.60. That's basically flat on the week. And sorry, down 0.6% on the week, March and April down 3% a piece. But again, plus 10% on the month. It's been a good month for Thermal Cool, really, yes. Yeah. And then the uncertainty surrounding Indonesian production has helped put a bid under that coal. So I have a little bit of a media culpa. We were talking about this before. And it's a lot. And South African prices are up. And we went from dismal to less bad. And that's when you get these pops. I said to Matt earlier, that's just a tough business to be in. So we suggested not playing in Tunggela. Although, to be fair, we said, listen, this is how it behaves. It's kind of a call option on the higher Thermal Cold Price. But we had a moderate, positive view on Thermal Cold Prices. And yeah, prices are stronger, as we said, they would be. They're not a ton stronger. We're still in a low part of the cycle rebuilding. But Tunggela made a nice move. I think what is it? It's up 10% on the month. 43% over 30 months. But just to put that in perspective over that same period, Glencore and BHP are up 50%. So it's maybe not a feather in our cap that we didn't call the turn there. But again, it has such high beta with regard to the Richard's Bay Thermal Cold Prices. And again, like you pointed out, the highest beta occurs when the rate of change flips from negative to positive on that. And when that happens, absolutely. Like Tunggela can rock to the upside. But that's a situation where you don't own it for the assets or for the long term perspective. You literally only own it for a mean reversion trade, which is kind of how you framed it in the report a while ago. But-- Yeah, it's a short term play. So I mean, that's good to know. It's good to keep in mind for the future. It's something you've got to watch every day, every hour if you're trading it. So-- Exactly. We had the earnings come out for ENCOL as well, right? Yeah, we did down against 2024. You know, they couldn't match 2024 levels. And that makes sense because the thermal markets were sliding into kind of early to mid-2025 and then have rebounded a bit. But the year on year comps are not favorable. So that was expected. But they paid a dividend, a final dividend of 161 million Australian. And they can do that. They have-- you know, the business is doing fine, not exceptionally well, but they have tons of cash on the balance sheet. And I know you probably have some ideas on what to do with that, Matt. And I think the answer probably does start with an M as in Metcol. Yeah, that's probably right. So the cash balance, you know, most of the folks that I talked to were kind of underwhelmed by the dividend. You paid out this past quarter, but to be fair, there are some things on the block that would be of interest, I think, to ENCOL over time. And specifically, the Anglo-S, that's that the Anglo-P body deal has fallen through, I would imagine that they're going to take-- kick the tires on it at the very least. And while, you know, purists might recoil at the horror of ENCOL making an acquisition, I mean, putting that cash to work on their balance sheet in a way that is going to be a creative and a short fashion is not a terrible use of money. But with regard to those assets in particular, I would suggest they make sure they're not on fire first. Yeah, not a bad suggestion, although you can get a deal on them maybe if they're on fire. What you don't want to do is pay a lot of money and then have them light on fire. That would be the-- That's right. Yeah, we can. Wrong order of operations, you know. Fire and cold don't get along as it turns out. But that's the risk to it. So I would figure they're just kind of preparing for the possibility of one of those operations coming up for sale that would make sense at a price that is reasonable for them. They don't strike me as somebody who's going to overpay for an asset. So they're very good at the M&A. And we've talked about this before. Yeah, I mean, some of the cash is earmarked for something other than dividends. But look, they can pay a healthy dividend even when earnings aren't fantastic. So I think that's positive. And they've done well. The stock has done well since I've been touting Yan Cole. I do caution people it's not 100% of a dividend play like ARLP, NRP, which people will know I like and I own a lot of. But it pays out when it can. And so it can be a good way to get high dividends. They're not super high right now. Maybe in the low single digits, 3% or something, I think with this ear end dividend, they're physical ear 25 dividends were like in the 18 cents, a little bit above 18 cents a share. Right. So I think it's in weight and sea mode. Because if they wind up not making an acquisition, that is a lot of cash to make distributions with over the near future. So it's kind of weight and sea shoulder season does shoulder season things like all cycles. Yan Cole sitting below $6, which is an attractive price at least to me. But Joe, you also mentioned NRP there. They also reported earnings here today. I didn't listen to the call. I didn't get a chance to. But I guess what it should take us through those earnings and then we'll flip over to the next slide. Yeah. I like NRP a lot. We've talked about it on recent podcasts. It's a big holding of mine. I think the call was what I expected with the exception of the investment into the Soda Ache. to put $39 million into their SISCAM Wyoming soda ash mine. That's a legacy investment that I think nobody loves right now because soda ash prices have been down for the last couple of years. But the big story, the story has always been with NRP that they were going to be able to retire a lot of debt, which they did. They still generated pretty good cash flow of $46 million of free cash flow in the fourth quarter. They have retired all but about 30 million in debt now. So in 2025, they repaid $109 million of debt. They're almost, so they basically have equal cash and debt now, which is kind of what I thought. I wrote about this stock and I said they're going to keep their $30 million cash cushion and they're going to pay down debt conservatively. So even if they could have paid it down this quarter, I wasn't expecting that. But we're still, we're pretty close to a zero debt balance sheet with that just generates sizable free cash flow. I think distributable cash flow above 150 million a year is definitely in the cards. And that's a, that'll be a heck of a return vehicle in, you know, one, one quarter. I think the market started to notice that in December, bidding up the stock. I don't know where it's been since December, but it's up 15% this year. So the, you know, that the, the dividend was a little bit underwhelming, the special dividend, the special dividend, I'm sorry, is based on is a tax top up payment. But, you know, people were hoping for a little bit more income, a little bit more income going forward without the Wyoming soda ash. And that could have popped the, the special dividend a little bit. But, you know, this is still a great stock. It's a hold for me. And, you know, I don't see any, I don't see any red flags. So in fact, you know, the stock went down to 116 or, you know, it was down to 113.50 today, something like that. That would have been a great buy. That's where I have a buy order in, we're almost back up to 120. So the market is shrugging, shrugging off any concerns today, which is, which is good. I think NRP is, is a great business and, you know, great long-term hold. Yeah, I added to it today, but it happens to be the end of the month, you know, when I put money into savings. So it was a great day to do it. I also actually bought a little ARLP as well, which, you know, because those, those two companies give me a better return than putting it in the bank here at this point of time. Yeah, that's a heck of a lot better than holding cash. And, you know, you get some upside, you know, alliance almost at 26.50 on alliance units. That stock ripped up to almost 28. It was in the 27's there last week. I had actually cut a bunch up at that level just because, you know, there's some part of my, my holdings that I'd made, you know, it's gone up, not quite 50% like 40% on it. So it made sense to me to actually pull it back, but I bought some back today and, yeah. Yeah, and I, I think you can trim, you know, I tend to tend to trim less than Matt, but you, you definitely can trim and make some money and, you know, it'll, it'll trade up and down or, you know, probably around the, around the dividend because it's a dividend play. So, you know, up in the high 20's, you can definitely sell low 20's, you know, buy and keep a core position to, to collect the dividend. That's a, that's a good way to go. Yeah, I mean, I, I plan to prune a lot and it's not like I'm operating, you know, my savings account doesn't operate in size or anything. So, you know, there's not a huge tax liability for me to, you know, take off, you know, a couple of percent of it and then put it rotated into the other, you know, so what's up and buy what's down. That's what I think. But they did, they did one thing that sort of puzzled me. They made a, was a $39 million investment in the Soda-Age business in size camp, given that they were at a generational bottom. I mean, I guess it does make some sense to invest counter-sickly, but that was a bit of a head scratcher for me with that last, you know, 30 million of debt there to pay off. Yeah, I think nobody was, nobody was expecting that, but, but yeah, you know, they're operating things for the long term. It is, it is the right time to invest counter-sickly if you're going to invest and that business is due to, to stabilize and rebound a bit. I would be lying though if I said I knew much about the Soda-Age business right now. It's generally low levels and everybody across the world has been hammered and so, you know, just cyclically it's about due for rebound. And this has been going on for the last couple of years. Yeah, well, I happened to the, read a couple of things on the Chinese Soda-Age business. Apparently they've been like other commodities dumping a lot of that into the market. And so it's another, I think it's another, just another classic case of China winds up with a, with a slowing discretionary market domestically and then dumps the, the excess capacity in the case of Soda-Age, you know, a lot of that goes to make all of them a belled glass and that sort of stuff. So if they're, if your consumer market is slowing in a, in your, you know, command economy, then the rest of that comes out to the broader market. And that's what I believe is affecting Soda-Age prices. I'm not sure when that's going to stop. I mean, usually when China starts to do something that becomes a trend. So I think they mentioned on the call that they don't expect any distributions from that asset this year. They were, look like they were also kind of bearish on the coal markets, but I don't think they necessarily should be. No, I think they were a little too bearish, but you know, you have a conservative management team that's been burned before and I like them being conservative. But you know, maybe a little more, a little more optimism would be good on the, on the calls. It's all good. It's our, we'll chalk it up to a conservative West Virginia outlook just in general. So it's hard to get ahead to a, too far ahead of yourself, but that's actually a pretty good segue into the met side because, well, shoulder season is here. So the February contract which ended at, you know, 239 or so rolled over to March today and March is at 220 dollars. So it's a, it's a pretty sizable drawdown. Physical markets have been assessed at about 235. I'm not quite sure where that's going to square up over the next, you know, when, when the physical assessments come in on Monday. If they drop down to 220 or if the futures bump up, you know, or split the difference with the physical, but the forward curve is clearly expecting a return to, let's call it the low 200s by the time we get into April and May. So those contracts are at $210. But the, the March contract is down 11% on the week. That should give you an idea about where we, where we are in the, in the market. Well, hey, we, we called that, you called that, we talked to, you know, you and I both, we talked about the seasonality, even though there's actual seasonality. It's buying patterns. Exactly. It's, you know, for, for Metcola, it's just because that's when, that's when the steel, steel makers come into secure that are raw materials. They do that basically and, you know, two times during the year, about six months apart. And that period lasts for about three months, sometimes it drags on a little bit. But that period is over and ended with Chinese New Year, Indian mills seem to be reasonably well supplied. The, the one thing that I continue to hear and then I've heard down here, you know, at the mines as well is that low-vol continues to be tight, you know, regardless of whether the, the futures and the physical, you know, the assessments done at the trade magazines, whether those, those entities are going to mark prices down continually as we head back into, you know, April, May, you know, and June, I've got my, you know, sort of pencil circled around 185. I think that's where we bought them. But the bigger takeaway there is that would be a higher low. I think that's, I think that's where we're headed. I don't think we're headed back to 175 or wherever we bought on last time because, I mean, even BHP reported here recently and they made zero dollars at their Metcola business, which are premium international assets. So unless both the trade magazines and end users want more supply to be taken out of the market, which would make for higher highs when supply does ramp up, you know, I would think we're, we're going to see a number that get penciled in at the bottom that's going to make more sense for producers this time around. If you're listening, Matt Warder from down, down the coal mines, buyers, Metcola buyers, you know, show, show, show some love. Exactly. You know, NRP, but, but then our P and warrior tend to be awfully bearish on the, on the broader market on their calls. And I think, you know, in terms of steel, that's fine. It's fine to, to be not pessimistic, but not optimistic about steels, prospects in 2026. China's, China's exports are still incredibly high. That has to work itself out. But trade cases are pending, you know, countries are taking a tariff actions against Chinese imports, trying to right size their own industry. And that's part of the reason why India has taken over as the price setter for the spot market. So, although, you know, you look at the Chinese steel industry and it's, it's a dog patch. I mean, you know, negative 30, 40% margins. And in the coaking coal prices there reflect that. In their, you know, 987 yuan at an 8 to 1 ratio or whatever is a terrible, you know, dollar per ton figure for the seaboard market. But. The truth is they're importing so much Mongolian material, so much Russian material, and using so much domestic material that the 10 million tons that they bring in from some combination of Australia and Canada and not even the United States right now, they have to pay a premium for that in the global market. It just is what it is. You come out to pay for strength, then you're going to pay the biker. What about the lower price, lower premium products, and I'm thinking high-vol A because we had alpha report today and they're down a lot. Yeah, I'll go through those numbers here in a second. Let's see, let's start with second tier HTC over the past month. It's down 12% to 18780. Semi-soft is still kind of hanging in there in the low 140s, high 130s. That's down around 8% on the month if we move into where I think it's headed. When I look at the US, US Low-Vall is still sitting at 192.65, which on the East Coast, which is crazy with physical prices at 235. I've written a number of times, and I always pound my fist on the table whenever this big discrepancy between PLV and US East Coast Low-Vall happens because you don't pay for a US East Coast index that is assessed without a spot market. When there's no transactions, the coal doesn't lose its value. The CSR is about 8% to 10% lower than the Australian benchmark, but it does have much lower ash. It does have comparable sulfur. It has much more fluidity. A lower r-new as well. All of those should command a not a premium over the PLV price, but it should be maybe a 5% discount to PLV. Maybe an 8% discount to PLV. Not this $40 swing one way or the other. It's just absolutely preposterous that the US East Coast continues to be priced this way. And all that said, the high balls are even worse. High ball A is sitting at I think 15750 on one of the physical assessment, which is basically flat over the past month, flat over the past quarter, and down 15% over the past year. So it's gone nowhere. And largely that's due to the ramp up of Warriors Blue Creek mine in Alabama. High ball B is set at 147. So it also hasn't gone anywhere. I mean, the the relativity, if you look at that chart, just continue to go down. And the only thing that makes them go up is when POV goes down. That's never before happened in history, which should tell like if something has never happened before in history, it should tell you that it is an outlier. You know, my contention is that US medical prices should price off of different parameters anyway. But low ball at least, low ball and mid ball should trade within 8% of a tough way where the premium low ball is. I'll step down off my soapbox because we've got some earnings on that front to get to get through. But I do expect better realizations once some tons open up for US East Coast level, which I expect to probably happen, call it the middle of the year July, August, September, sometime like that. I don't think there are any tons available in the U East for low ball until at least July. I remember there are anybody say there. They're out there for it. So with that, we had two, you know, a couple of companies, report earnings on the peer play met side. First off, Ramacov reported on on Wednesday posting a 14.7 million net loss for the quarter, which is about 26 cents per share. Analyst expectations were 24 cents. Revenue also missed by about 510 million. They posted 128 million in revenue for Q4. This is pretty, although it's a miss, I'm going to put that in air quotes. It's pretty on point. I mean, those were pretty decent estimates. Q4 is always a little slow as alpha noted in their call. I didn't really see anything that was particularly onerous here. The costs around $92 a ton looked good. They said to Elk Creek, they got down to $80. That's going to be pretty strong. They're making $24 a ton cash margins, which is great. They have about $521 million in liquidity. They're going to increase production a little bit here, I think, in 2026. So by large, I think the net business is in good shape. We just need some higher prices. In particular, we need pricing dynamics on the U.S. East Coast to improve. If that means shaking the tree on getting Argus to recognize any spot cargo is to take place. I'm not sure what you have to do to make that happen, but if any producers are out there listening, let's get the ball roll. I know two or three different entities that placed tons that were not the low-volts spec at above $220. This past quarter and Marcus didn't mark up the price. A class didn't mark up the price. It just goes to show you that whatever is written down on paper is not necessarily true of what's happening in the market. If you can't trust those assessments, which I don't think you can, then I'm not sure how much they're worth at that point in time. Well, yeah. You got to go out to the co-fields. It's a specialist market. It's a bilateral market, and that'll make sense. I agree. Remko looks pretty good here for 2026. The stock has sold off a lot, but that was the critical minerals. Maybe that was the critical minerals. Animal spirits, I'll call it. Not a bad pun here with a good underlying coal business and some of the animal spirits cleared out of the way, maybe returning, maybe not. Looks decent here. Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with evaluation that sits below $16 a share. I think that it's a buy there. But what I would caution would be that we're still at the beginning of shoulder season, and it doesn't end until June or July. We could have a further drawdown because prices are going to come down as well. What I've told readers is that I picked up a little bit, but I have no intention of sizing anything up until we get to June or July. I'm buying it to be in the habit of buying things on red days. I think there are going to be more red days for the whole sector. This doesn't speak to valuation. This doesn't speak to the quality of the coal or the quality of the operations. For Remko, it certainly doesn't speak to what kind of value you can describe to the rare earths at Brook. This is what happened seasonally from a macro perspective. We had tailwinds for high-short interstocks for small caps when we were on the way up and prices were going up. Now we have headwinds. Those factors are not doing so well. Don't want to have too much and then just wind up getting macroed for the next three or four months. Sometimes it's even worse to have a big position where the price just eats glue for three months. Both of those outcomes are comparatively negative. There's other stuff to do when in the markets when that happens. Each glue is no good. Speaking of red, I want to get you talking about AMR here, Matt. I want to take this opportunity to take a quick break to hear from our friends and sponsors at the ClearCommodity Network at clearcommodity.net. Wonderful guys who host our podcast here and we'll be back in just a moment. In mining, the difference between a good project and a great investment often comes down to one thing, visibility. Terra Hutton is a Sweden-based online mining investor platform built to make the invisible investable because a great project without a story is just data. Drill results, spreadsheets and technical reports that never fully connect. And a great project that isn't online might as well not exist at all. Terra Hutton brings mining projects into the digital spotlight and combining data, narrative and context in one place. So investors can see not just what a project is but why it matters. Whether you're evaluating early stage exploration or more advanced development assets, Terra Hutton helps turn complexity into clarity and information into insight. Visit Terra Hutton online and start discovering the stories behind the data. Hi, I'm Rory Johnson, host of the Oil Ground Up podcast. I'm also the founder of commodity context and have been an oil market analyst for more than a decade. What I love about the oil industry is that it is both unquestionably essential to our modern life and the supply, demand and pricing of this indispensable product is driven by an ever-changing cornucopia of geological, geopolitical and technological developments. Listen as I speak with experts across the industry to explore everything you've always wanted to know about what's moving the market for Black Gold. Find the oil ground up podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and at clearcommodity.net. Brought to you by the ClearCommodity Network, digital news on the physical markets. So speaking of stocks in the red, what about AMR today? People people not loving the results. You know, down three, a little over 3%, 162 was down in the 150s. I think some of your orders got filled. Is that right? Yeah, I did. And I put out a note to paid subscribers that, you know, my plan initially was to build up toward a full position, you know, as we got down to 250. And my, my limit orders were increasing in size all the way down. But particularly the last two tranches were pretty big ones. I actually canceled those and redistributed them all the way down to $100 to share. Not because I think that's what Alfa's worth, but it's still really early in the shoulder season, like I said. And the, you know, the market may push us there. If, if similar factors and sectors aren't performing well either. So, you know, there's just a little caveat for people who are, you know, enthusiastic about the companies, but, you know, don't, if the macro is not working in your favor, and certainly from a seasonality perspective, that's not working in our favor either. Don't get, there's plenty of time. Don't, don't get too big. Alfa's, we already knew what Alfa's results were, which were pretty in line with what we thought, you know, when we adjusted our model, you know, we do have $28.5 million. Really, we were listening to Call for, you know, what they had to say about the market. They're ramping up the Kingston Wildcat mine, which will put another 500, 500,000 tons of low-vol production into the market this year. So they're becoming more leverage to low-vol, which is where we want to be. So I thought that was pretty encouraging. You know, Dan Horn, pounded the table on the discrepancy between Australian and US indices as well. And noted that they had a, you know, a big chunk of their contract tied to PLV, not tied to the US East Coast index. And it's important because it's telling Argus and Platt basically in no uncertain terms that they need to price a little bit better. If I were them, I'd just price it at 8% of the index and leave it at that because that's what you're paying for. You're paying for carbon, you're paying for strength contributing properties, fluidity, those sorts of things. Well, then they could charge people extra for their special East Coast index, Matt. That's how these things go. Yeah. And Alpha has more flexibility than other companies due because they have such diverse productions. So they can sell, you know, mid-vol blends that capture comparatively higher prices, you know, given their strong high-vols and, you know, mid-vol, Tom's Creek, you know, and the increase in low-vol production from Wildcat that they're going to guess, that they're going to get here, you know, over the next 12 months. But in general, you know, they were pretty clear that the cadence of cost was going to be Q2 and Q3 should be really good. Q1 and Q4, which, you know, have more holidays in them. They have more minor vacations. Those will be down a little bit. They also added some clarity on the domestic side about half of their domestic volume was high-vol. Now, keep in mind that you get a higher price for high-vol in the domestic market than you do in the export market right now, which is getting torched by warrior-met coal selling new tons, you know, into the market. So that was wise of them. They're going to capture a better revenue on that in general. I think the average price they sold at for domestically was like 136, which implies like 150, you know, kind of 150 for low-vol and 125 at the mine for high-vol, which is significantly above the FOB port equivalent right now. So I thought it was a good call. You know, the fact that the stock sold off, you know, 3, 4% today and is down at 160, isn't indicative of their performance or what their performance is going to be this year. It's indicative of the season. And that's the thing to really, to really kind of take home. But other than that, I thought it was as usual, you know, dandered a great job kind of articulating what the broader market has to say. And I think our view of, you know, what this year is going to look like is very congruent with theirs. I think we're all on the kind of same page. And yeah, I don't know. I thought it was a good call. So I thought Ramp goes was okay. Honestly, I thought everybody did pretty good considering, you know, how kind of lackluster Q4 was. So, you know, on that note, it's probably a good time to take some reader questions. We don't have a whole lot of time left. So we might have to get to them next, next go around. But let's, whichever ones you think are most important here. Let's go through. Well, the most important question was for me from Frederick about rating your baseball knowledge, Matt. And I have to say, he says, he says it's poor, very poor, unblemished by success. And Frederick, I have news for you. If you think Matt doesn't know about baseball, I know absolutely nothing. I know beer hot dog, you know, first, base, second base. That's about it. But, but yeah, I appreciate, you know, great, great questions. Well, just for the record, okay, I finished second in my fantasy baseball league last year. I had the present, present, some mind to draft Pete Crow Armstrong in the 13th round where he was going incredibly undervalued wound up being the number three player in fantasy in the country. So, I think I did pretty good. And I think I'll do pretty good this. That means absolutely nothing to me. I might as well be speaking Greek. So, you know, I'll just kind of go from the top here then on some of the questions. The there's one on China coming back to the Met market. And whether that's going to help the high ball coals and their price gap to the no, I'll just I'll just go out and say it. Absolutely not, not going to happen. They have plenty of domestic material they're buying from Mongolia and Russia. They go into the market to get Canadian coals and Australian coals to contribute to their shortfall in their own domestic high strength coals production. And that's it. Not until their steel price steel market gets better. Are we going to see anything remotely resembling them improving the high ball market? Yeah, I agree with you for what it's worth. You're the Met Group. But I agree. Cole Jabba asks about coal companies buying power plants in the US. Is it a workable business? And he says he or she says, "Hallador did it." That's true. I think it is a good business. I think power markets have been tight. I think if you can get into power assets at a reasonable cost, I think it makes a lot of sense, especially as kind of the coal sector has consolidated a bit. It locks in supply. And it's just it's a good business to to be in. And ARLP did this as well. They bought in with a private equity consortium into a power plant. And you can play you can play it one of two ways. You can play the merchant model or you can just kind of play it on a more readable dividend kind of business as power power markets offer offer both depending on how the power is sold. So yeah, I don't I don't hate that at all. I think you know the coal guys have thought about it over the years. And I you know they didn't get into it because they really know mining I think and not the not the power side of the business. But ARLP and hallador did it successfully just go hire some power traders. I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with it. But I do think their instincts are that they're they're better coal miners than they are power producers just in general. So you know I hear what you say. And if I were if I were a producer, I'd probably be reticent to tackle on another skill set, you know, on the operations because coal mining is hard enough. But for hallador made sense for lines made sense. I don't know if you know I don't know if that makes sense for Peabody. Yeah, it's it's steel by deal. I don't know, you know, Peabody might be if if Peabody could buy something in out west by their assets that make a buck a ton the PRB assets that really just don't have a very sexy margin and they could sell that power. Maybe again, yeah, it's I mean the cats have the bag on that story. So you got to worry about what the purchase price is into the power asset. But you know that could be an interesting strategy out in the PRB where you got the coal is locked in by the railroads. Maybe I mean I'd rather see the government support a power a new power plan out there with an I with an I to you know put some rarers processing out there. You know, Metallium is a company that built their technology around the processing rarers from coal fly ash. There's certainly a lot of that sitting around out there. But you have to have you got to have a plan and you know a lot of those power plants are far away from operations. So it honestly just depends. Yeah, you're out there listening and you have a lot of money. You want Matt and I to do something, you know, give us a call. We could we're open to develop projects in Wyoming to monetize better monetize PRB coal. Drop us a lot. And we can certainly evangelize for sure. We're close to out of time here. We got time for one more question and then everybody who wrote in I sure you will we'll get to him here. It's on the next one. It's just sometimes there's a lot of news and it takes time to get through everything. So we'll definitely pick about here next time. But what's what's one more that we can address before we close up shop? I'm taking a I'm taking a look through and you know let's let's go with something on Met coal and let's see I mean we got we got Met coal Met C intrinsic valuation Met coal operations only from Joe Y. I feel like we've kind of gotten this question before. You know I wonder about it too with when the stock was flying high with critical minerals it was clearly disconnected from on fundamentals. And we kind of talked about this under 15 where it's at now. Looks like a pretty good value on the fundamentally on the Met coal assets. But what do you think, Matt? I mean, when I do a discount of cashflow on their minds that they have in a run-em-it-mid cycle, I get somewhere between $16 to $20 per share just for the Met business, depending on what your underlying assumption is for the price. It's $250 to $275. I tend to think it's more the higher side because I still bullish Met coal here at the moment. Unless something changes will be for the foreseeable future. And then Brooke, I don't know. I mean, how do you value something that is still speculative asset at this point? For me, I'm comfortable just saying it's five bucks. And I'll put that up in the air. So in my mind, this is more like a $25 stock. When it gets above that, it's because it's been highly shorted in the past. And people have just gotten their face ripped off when the rarer's hit the news cycle. You know, Randy loves to talk about this project. And, you know, I don't know exactly how it's going to work out. But I know they're going to try to do something. I'm pretty sure they'll wind up with some government money at some point in time. So it's not something that I would want to short. I think they're better shorts than coal periods stop out there in other sectors that are just more defensible and clear. Coal is cyclical. And any company that's in a news cycle in one of these small industries that could just rip your face off. If it catches a bid because it's on the news, it just seems to be a bad idea to try. Yeah, but we were talking about the leverage. There's leverage in AMR too. So you get, I mean, for me, I don't try and short these things. I just look at the these opportunities to buy when I think leverage and price and seasonality has pushed these stocks down too far. Yeah, it's easier just to trim a position when it's up that it is for me to even hedge it. So it's, you know, the ball on the options chains for some of those equities is just so high that you have to overpay for options protection anyway. So rather like, you know, sell the ball, you know, sell puts in something that I want to own, then, you know, then then hedge out. I'll hedge it with, you know, hymns or something that's said, you know, has as terrible prospects. But that's that's kind of how I think about it. Well, good, good, good thoughts, Matt. And we, we got through a couple questions, but you know, a lot of news and some earnings. And so I think that was, it was a great roundup. Anything else? Last, last words for our listeners? No, I don't think so. Not this week. You know, I would expect markets to kind of behave as they have here recently, you know, thermal calls probably going to be sideways to down Metcule. I think it's definitely going to be down over the next, over the next few weeks. So it's, you know, it's a good time to like, you know, make sure your sizing isn't going to hurt you and, you know, get a two point where you just don't have to worry about it. But, you know, we, for me, it's like, I know what my shopping list is, I know I want to be sized up in, you know, when we get to July and, or maybe August. So just take your time getting there. I'm certainly going to do that. And, you know, we'll continue to bring you as much news in market Intel as we possibly can. So, you know, that's pretty much all there is for my desk. Joe, anything else from you? Yeah. No, nothing else from me. Safe travels, Matt, from your undisclosed coal mine up to PDAQ. The great white north to the great white north for some drinking, I assume. Probably, probably more drinking than, than anything else. Yeah. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at that. But it should be fun, at least, to, I always love my visits up there and it would be catch up with a lot of, you know, other mintwood friends who were also in attendance looking forward to it. But with that said, we better close up shop. Joe, as always, thanks to you for, for being here for us. And then folks, you could follow us on, you could follow me on Twitter @MFWater. Go read our stuff at thecultrader.com, at thecultrader.substac.com, and at the rearer of straighter.substac.com.