Key Points
TMC is a deep-sea mining company aiming to extract nodules from the Pacific Ocean.
The company's operations could cause long-term damage to deep-sea life, and the operational costs remain unknown.
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TMC The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC) is trying to do what no metals company has done before. Most dig deep into the ground to extract ore and minerals from the earth. TMC wants to dive into the Pacific Ocean and vacuum up lumpy potato-sized rocks.
These rocks, also called nodules, contain cobalt, copper, nickel, and manganese -- all critical metals essential for clean energy, electric vehicle batteries, and defense technology.
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TMC has not yet started extracting these nodules, nor does it have the regulatory authority to do so. Yet with the U.S. exploring a potentially faster regulatory process, the metals stock could soar over the next decade -- or sink, depending on a few factors that are still unknown.
Image source: TMC The Metals Company.
Deep-sea mining still has more questions than answers
The story of TMC up until now has gone something like this: Interesting idea, but still too many questions and variables to justify moving forward.
The interesting idea, of course, is the surprisingly abundant metal reserves sitting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. These reserves, formed over millions of years through a natural process of mineral accretion, could be less environmentally intensive to extract than traditional land mining. Certainly, many of the problems of land mining -- opening a giant pit in the earth, running carbon-intensive machinery, disposing mineral waste -- could be avoided just by vacuuming them from the seafloor, right?
Maybe.
The truth is, we don't know the scale of long-term damage nodule mining could cause to deep-sea habitats. Early research isn't optimistic, either. A recent five-year study, as reported by Oceanographic Magazine, found that mining equipment in the deep sea caused a 37% decline in animal numbers and 32% decline in species diversity. This study was performed in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), too, a part of which TMC is aiming to mine.
Another unknown is just how profitable deep-sea mining could be over the next decade or so. We know, for instance, that land mining is cost-intensive, and that the cyclicality of the metals markets can spark massive swings in a mining company's profitability. TMC is exposed to these same cycles because it ultimately wants to sell battery-grade metals. While the company has identified about $24 billion worth of nodules in the area it wants to mine, no one knows how much it will cost to collect and process them at commercial scale.
All of the uncertainties around TMC's business are reflected in its sub-$7 share price. Even at today's share price, the company still carries a roughly $2.6 billion market cap, which is pretty steep for a pre-revenue, pre-regulatory mining company. Most investors will probably want to sit this one out, at least until the regulatory pathway is clear. Only aggressive investors should proceed at this point.
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Steven Porrello has positions in TMC The Metals Company. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
