Ionic Rare Earths falls -7% as momentum slips on vague production update

Ionic Rare Earths (ASX:IXR) – a well-known and much-loved rare earths darling on something of a comeback run lately – has slipped -7%, presumably as the market digests what a vague update released on Wednesday actually means.

According to the company, “urgent supply requests from US, European and Asian market” [sic] has led the company to ramp up the production of dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide from a plant the company owns in Belfast.

Except, where those supply requests are coming from weren’t clear. Nor did the company affix any belief that this means material revenue for shareholders to benefit from.

“Samples [were] sent to Western customers in response to customer inquiries” the company also wrote, suggesting any urgent supply requests are requesting small volumes of product (which likely implies those same parties are taking samples from multiple vendors.)

The company pointed to a strategic pivot to defence markets, a very common theme right now among the small-end of the ASX materials sector, but that wasn’t enough to get hype going.

Still, the company has been the beneficiary of recent risk-on thinking, especially under Trump 2.0. The stock has a market cap just shy of $110M and spent much of 2024 in the doldrums.

The share price peaked in 2022 – at less than 10cps, mind you – on the back of COVID supply chain pressures and a then-scarcity of rare earths. But neodymium prices, which tend to control sentiment around the entire REE basket, have since come back down to earth like lithium.

However, IXR has still managed to eke YTD returns of +178% (as at midday AEST on Wednesday), showing that the stock still has some life in it.

What is perhaps most interesting about that is that IXR has nearly 5.5B shares on issue. Likely because of that, liquidity has truly dried up compared to relatively recent past lives – at midday, less than $500K of shares had traded hands.

IXR last traded at 2cps.

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