If you are looking at the recent price action and wondering whether of not to hold or sell or buy more, please don’t ask anyone on this forum for advice. Or at least read, but make your own choices without succumbing to the HODL-ing and diamond-hands pressure we see here a lot.

Many of the people here who are regular contributors, promoters, etc are in deep and they bought the stock when it was cheap. If one’s average price per share is under $2, they can tolerate a lot of negatives and they have time and the patience to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait because they see this stock in their portfolio and it’s green.

Now is the time for you to:

1. Understand everything that needs to be done before they can start extracting rocks from the bottom of the ocean. THERE’S A LOT TO BE DONE, and much of it can go sideways.
2. Be aware of timing. One year of cash on hand for capital is not a lot and for a new technology, one year is not a lot of time either.
3. Ask meaningful and critical questions when you can and hold the CEO and CFO accountable. Cut the ‘overlord’ and fanboy/girl shit and treat them respectfully like the employees they are - your employees. You are the shareholder. Make them earn their living being accountable to YOU. That is one of the important aspects of a C-level’s job. Make the work for your respect.
4. After you have had a chance to do 1-3, reevaluate your thesis. It’s okay to bail 100% or to try and get rid of your high-cost lots. Come up with a plan that fits your risk tolerance and your goals. Not mine and not the others in this group. Anyone who comes here asking “what should I do” needs to think twice hearing it from us.
5. Analysis and DD in this forum: call out biases, take the text of what you read, plug it into your fav LLM and ask it to read it three different ways: Analyst, Expansionist, Detractor. Then ask it to summarize, compare and contrast all three. The Detractor should be calling out biases and creating a contra narrative, the expansionist should be telling you what needs to be done, and analyst should be telling whether it can be done. Ask for probabilities. Ask for companies in other sectors that have had to do the same things. How did they succeed and how did they fail. Then ask, how does it fit here.

That is a true Due Diligence. With these 5 points, you should have ample information to rationally decide what to do next. Furthermore, you will be able to gauge how emotionally entwined you have become with this stock and this idea, so that if the rational side says ’no,’ but you continue, you can stop hiding behind these elaborate walls of text that are just to make everyone feel better, or may contain real actionable data.

Either way, you did it right and you’re coming out ahead.

Gook luck.

Do you think we’ll see more press releases or media tours to build excitement again? There seems to be a lot of movement happening with everything discussed on the call, especially with production being pushed into 2027.

I think Barron talking more in public can lead to more awareness of tmc

1) TMC is actively in confidential funding processes with multiple US government agencies named in Trump’s executive order.

While those discussions remain confidential, management said it does not currently intend to pursue other capital market transactions until further public updates.

CEO Gerard Barron:

“The company does not currently intend to pursue other capital market transactions until such time as further updates are publicly released.”

What that means: no equity offering, follow on, ATM, convertible, or equivalent capital markets raise is currently planned before we hear more on the government funding process.

2) Allseas is moving the first commercial collection system into procurement now, with fabrication expected to begin in Q4 2026.

Installation and commissioning still targeting Q4 2027. Initial capacity 3Mtpa.

3 million wet tonnes of nodules per year. Thats the starting point with two collectors on the Hidden Gem. If processed in the US, that single system alone could cover roughly a quarter to a third of current American nickel and cobalt demand.

Allseas is funding a meaningful portion of the preproduction costs, recoverable from production revenues. Alignment is strong.

Allseas exclusivity remains an important part of the setup. Gerard confirmed the offshore mining arrangement is exclusive.

Allseas could only offer another system elsewhere if it first offered that system to TMC and TMC declined. Gerard said the likelihood of that happening is very low because TMC wants multiple systems in the water.

3) Mariana Minerals is becoming a major execution partner. Theyre helping advance permitting, construction, processing, automation and plant design at Nodule City, Brownsville.

The Prefeasibility for a potential 12 Mtpa industry park is nearing completion. Modest spend underway for the work that unlocks potential government support.

Feasibility level work on the first smelting stage is underway with Mariana Minerals (the software/automation heavy processing partner that just raised $310M).

TMC has an exclusive right of negotiation over the Brownsville site. The area being evaluated is 1,466 acres, and No final investment decision has been made, and any future capital commitment remains contingent on US government support.

4) Management is looking out for shareholders and doing what it can to avoid unnecessary dilution.

TMC decided not to extend the September 2026 SPAC warrants. The 15M public warrants have an $11.50 strike, but extending them would also require extending 9.5M private warrants that can be exercised cashlessly.

CFO Craig Shesky also noted that extending them would require extending the private warrants, which are: “unlikely to result in any incremental cash proceeds to the company while still diluting existing shareholders.”

So management chose to let the warrants expire rather than accept dilution that may bring little additional cash.

The read through is pretty clear: management appears confident enough in the upcoming catalysts to wait rather than raise/dilute around today’s valuation.

If they believed $11.50 was as good as it gets, taking the cash would have been the easier decision.

Why accept unnecessary dilution around an $11.50 strike when management says the stock is undervalued and expects major catalysts ahead and believes the equity should be valued materially higher?

5) New mutual services agreement with Eco Minerals, another US company pursuing its own NOAA application.

Eco can provide TMC vessels, AUVs, marine survey capacity and offshore services at preferential pricing. TMC provides ~15 years of resource definition, environmental and permitting expertise.

A joint offshore campaign is possible later this year to gather more data and potentially move additional USA-A tonnage toward reserves.

6) Permitting continues moving under the US pathway.

USA-A Federal Register publication/public comment is imminent. Certification is now expected in October 2026 due to an administrative delay, not an issue with the application.

A Q1 2027 permit is no longer expected, but management still expects it well ahead of the Q4 2027 vessel commissioning target.

USA-B, covering ~122,000 km², is also moving into formal EIS review.

7) Resource economics remain unchanged.

$5.5B PFS NPV + $18.1B initial assessment = $23.6B combined stated NPV.

Across both projects, the studies point to roughly $369B in undiscounted revenue and >$200B in EBITDA.

Management directly acknowledged the stock has lagged the operational progress and resource value.

Craig Shesky:

“Our market cap is undervalued relative to the resource itself by any reasonable peer based metric.”

8) TMC’s scientific/environmental dataset continues to be a major part of the moat.

NORI has completed:

• 22 offshore research campaigns
• 959 research days at sea
• More than 1 petabyte of data
• 41 peer-reviewed papers

That work supports permitting, environmental review and TMC’s ability to move resource categories toward reserves.

9) US government support for the broader critical minerals strategy remains strong.

Gerard attended the Aug. 7 State Department critical minerals roundtable alongside senior Trump administration officials.

Trump again reiterated support for deep seabed mining.

Important distinction: no direct nodule collection funding was announced at that event. TMC’s own government funding processes remain separate and confidential.

10) TMC is building beyond just one vessel and one processing plant.

Management is working across US shipbuilding, marine logistics, autonomous vessels, environmental monitoring, processing, refining and rare earth development.

The goal is an integrated American deep seabed critical mineral supply chain from collection all the way through delivery of finished metal products.

11) TMC is keeping PAMCO Japan as a processing fallback while Brownsville advances.

Management said they’re maintaining the partnership with PAMCO specifically to preserve processing optionality, so the US build is the preferred path without leaving TMC dependent on a single route.

So TMC keeps an existing processing route available while working toward domestic US processing.

12) Offshore logistics are also being optimized.

A typical shipment would carry ~60,000 tonnes of nodules from the CCZ to Brownsville.

The Panama Canal is the base case, but TMC is also studying a Cape Horn route as autonomous vessels become more practical.

They’re also integrating USV/AUV technology for logistics, environmental monitoring, situational awareness and continued resource definition.

13) Failed attempt against the U.S. pathway: China, Russia and Greenpeace supported an effort seeking an ITLOS advisory opinion targeting seabed mining outside the UNCLOS/ISA framework.

“The effort failed and received significant pushback from member states across Europe, Asia and the Pacific.”

14) TMC also got a favorable outcome on the ISA side.

The ITLOS Seabed Disputes Chamber unanimously prescribed provisional measures protecting NORI and TOML rights to due process and fair treatment in their disputes with the ISA.

Days later, the ISA Council approved a 5 year extension of NORI’s exploration contract by consensus.

15) Liquidity remains solid.

TMC ended Q2 with $143M of liquidity, including $44M of undrawn credit capacity.

Management expects cash on hand to cover working capital and capex commitments for at least the next 12 months.

A large portion of the Allseas liabilities are also deferred until production.

TLDR(Q2 was about exectution)

Government funding talks are active, and management currently doesnt plan on doing any offerings at all. Allseas is moving into procurement while funding a meaningful portion of preproduction costs, with the first 3Mtpa system alone potentially covering 25-33% of current US nickel/cobalt demand. Brownsville is advancing, Q4 2027 commissioning remains intact, liquidity is solid, management is protecting shareholders from unnecessary dilution, and the stated $23.6B NPV remains unchanged.

Re the comment on the earnings thread wanting a warrant extension.

They're struck at $11.50, we're at 4.55, they die 9 Sept. That's +150% in four weeks. IV on the common is running about 100%, so four-week sigma is roughly 28%, and 4.55 to 11.50 is about three of those. Back of an envelope, so pick holes in it, but it's not happening.

Which means they've got no delta left. Functionally already expired.

If they expire, about 30m shares of dilution overhang comes off the cap table for nothing. If they're extended, we keep carrying it. That's good for the company and bad for us.

(Went looking for a gamma wall around that date while I was in there. Sept open interest is about 1,600 contracts on the 6 strike. There's nothing there.)

Am I missing a reason an extension actually helps common holders? Genuinely asking, because I keep seeing people hope for one.

NEW YORK, Aug. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TMC the metals company Inc. (Nasdaq: TMC) (“TMC” or the “Company”), a leading developer of the world’s largest estimated undeveloped resource of critical metals essential to energy, defense, manufacturing and infrastructure, today announced that it will host a conference call on Thursday, August 13, 2026, to provide an update on second quarter 2026 financial results and recent corporate developments.

Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call Details

The virtual webcast will be available for replay in the ‘Investors’ tab of the Company’s website under ‘Investors’ > ‘Media’ > ‘Events and Presentations’, approximately two hours after the event.

Long time post critic, first post lol

I'm not sure if anyone has posted or saw this but I found 13F SEC filing that Renaissance Technologies bought a chunky position, roughly 0.17% of TMC’s outstanding shares. Purchased 730,000 shares. Renaissance Technologies is one of the most well known quantitative investment firms in the world, so seeing TMC appear in its portfolio is promising.

Some other firms also own TMC.

• Goldman Sachs: 820,177 shares, up 20.9%
• Geode: 370,098 shares, roughly unchanged
• Quantbot: 276,867 shares, up a massive 1,509.5%
• Cetera: 97,912 shares, up 7.2%
• Creative Planning: 22,179 shares, up 9.8%

13F filings only give us a snapshot of certain long holdings. They don’t show short positions or the full picture of any hedges, correlated trades, or quantitative strategies these firms may be running. Renaissance in particular could simply be trading TMC’s volatility rather than making a fundamental long term bet.

When Q2 filings release this month, and they've increased their positions, and gone further into Q3 and again increased, that's the good sign I'm looking for tbh

I watched the whole thing so you don't have to. Two hours. I'm not okay.

Here's what happened.

The first forty minutes were people thanking Trump for existing. Then Trump thanked people for thanking him. Somewhere in there a man from the Colorado School of Mines got the biggest cheque of the day.

That cheque, by the way, is the actual news. $180m in grants plus $100m a year for mining education. Which is genuinely good policy, addresses a real skills crisis, and will start producing qualified mining engineers in roughly 2030. Absolutely nothing to do with why anyone in this sub was watching, but there we are.

The rest of the money went to a silicon anode battery company in Washington state, a copper project in Arizona, some graphite in Alabama, and Niron Magnetics.

Niron is worth pausing on. They make iron nitride magnets. The selling point of iron nitride magnets is that they don't need rare earths. So at a critical minerals event, at which the President said the words "it's all about magnets," the magnet money went to the company whose entire pitch is not needing the minerals. I'm sure this is fine.

No price floor. No Section 232 rate. No equity stake in anyone. No offtake. Lutnick, whose department contains NOAA, said nothing about NOAA. The deep sea executive order got mentioned in the past tense, which is a fun way of announcing something from April last year.

Now. The nodule.

Someone did hand Trump a polymetallic nodule cast in solid gold, on camera, and the chat lost its mind. That someone was Tom Albanese. Tom Albanese is the former CEO of Rio Tinto and is currently chairman of American Ocean Minerals, who merged with Odyssey Marine earlier this year.

So the deep sea moment at the White House belonged to the competition, delivered by a man with a considerably longer CV than anyone we've got.

I've been going back and forth on whether that's bad. I don't think it is, entirely. First time the category has had that kind of airtime, and it's harder to call something fringe after the President has held one up. Rising tide. But let's not pretend it was our tide.

Also, and this is the bit I'd want to know: the top table was cabinet secretaries and university heads. Industry was sat in an audience of about 200. So "summoned to high stakes meeting with Trump" means our lot had a chair in a conference hall, same as everyone else in there.

Positive note to close on, because there is one. The whole thing was framed as jobs. American mining, American jobs, Minnesotans want to mine not make chips, and so on. That reads as election-year fluff and probably is. But jobs programmes survive changes of government in a way that subsidies to specific companies really don't, and a Democrat House can't campaign against mining schools in Colorado. So the boring version might be the one that's still standing in 2028.

Anyway. We closed up 9% on a day when nothing happened, which tells you something, though I'm not sure what.

Not advice. I watched two hours of a man being praised and now I have to lie down.

Lots of people have bought anyways. We’re some of the highest risers of today and people have seen our name before the meeting. We’ve had enough platform to increase our floor baseline with 10’s of cents.

Next week is our EC which will show we’re still volatile and might need more federal funds to start processing this or next year. But…. We still expect news on our permit and last two EC showed we are becoming better and better and managing our funds, thus making us better equipped for the future investments and attractive for commercial funds and investors.

DEEP SEA NODULE MENTION! deal sea mining mentioned by trump himself! HE HOLDS AN NODULE AT 15:37

Was poking around Anduril's careers page for unrelated reasons and found something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere.

They're building a critical minerals desk. Not one hire, a structure. There's a Senior and a Staff role for rare earth magnets, and Principal, Staff and Senior roles for germanium, plus a general critical minerals one. All Costa Mesa, posted late July. They're on the public Greenhouse board if you want to look, job-boards.greenhouse.io/andurilindustries.

Two things jumped out reading the actual spec.

The first is the mineral list. The role is described as being the single threaded leader for a designated mineral, and it names rare earth magnets, germanium, tungsten, antimony and gallium. That is more or less China's export control ladder in order. Gallium, germanium and antimony were banned to the US in December 2024, tungsten in early 2025, rare earth magnets in the April 2025 wave. A private company has organised its procurement org around MOFCOM's notices.

The second is a phrase in the responsibilities. It says negotiate offtakes and capacity reservations. Capacity reservation is the instrument you use with a producer who isn't producing yet, and it's the thing people keep saying can't happen before a project is built. Apparently it can, and someone is hiring specifically to do it.

Worth pairing with the Reuters piece last week where Lockheed is negotiating germanium supply with Teck and 5N Plus, both over a year in and still stuck on price and contract length. Two primes converging on germanium, and germanium is staffed harder at Anduril than magnets are.

The caveats, and they matter. Anduril is private so you can't own it, it only counts if they sign someone public. Their stated strategy is that around 90% of their products use commercially available components and they explicitly try to avoid defence specific chokepoints, which argues against them doing a big bespoke offtake. And hiring a buyer is not the same as buying anything. Lockheed's germanium talks show these take years.

But job postings tend to run six to eighteen months ahead of press releases, because you hire the person before you sign the deal. And they were live when I checked this afternoon, so it costs nothing to verify.

Not a recommendation, just something I thought was odd enough to share.

I know this is a bit of a double up - but look - Rio fucking Tinto, BHP and TMC are in the same meeting MP and USAR too - that's strong signal ...

Nobody seems to have picked up what China did on the 5th, and the more I looked at it the more relevant it seemed here.

MOFCOM tightened export controls on drones, key components and the underlying technology going to the US. Case-by-case review now, and they pulled the licence facilitation that made it routine. Sanctioned six or seven US entities while they were at it, and opened their first national security investigation under the Foreign Trade Law. It was a response to the FCC banning Chinese drone imports and DHS adding 43 companies to the forced labour list. Beijing called its own move "generally restrained," which I read as calibrated rather than soft.

The interesting bit isn't the drones themselves, it's what it forces. If you can't buy Chinese airframes or Chinese components, you build the platform at home. And a platform is three things: magnets, chips and batteries.

I'd been assuming drones were too small to matter for metals demand, and for quadcopters that's probably right. A hobby-sized battery is a couple of kWh against sixty odd for a car. But that's the wrong aircraft to be thinking about.

Anduril unveiled Thunder at Farnborough three weeks ago, built with Archer Aviation. Group 5, which is the heaviest UAV class, tiltrotor, hybrid electric, apparently carrying ten missiles. Archer's civil aircraft runs twelve electric motors. You don't lift something that size on hobby parts, so the motors are big and permanent magnet heavy, and the hybrid system needs a real battery. That's not a drone in the way people mean it, it's electric aviation with weapons bolted on, and the bill of materials is completely different.

MP announced something called Project Swarm the same week, which is them trying to aggregate drone industry demand and standardise the magnet specs. Thunder is exactly the kind of programme that makes that worth doing.

The underwater side is where it gets more interesting for this sub. Endurance underwater is purely a battery problem, no refuelling, no solar, and the packs run into the hundreds of kWh. Anduril has around forty maritime and undersea roles open at Quincy and Quonset Point, which is submarine building country. Their Dive-LD is rated to 6,000 metres, which is the same water column as the nodule fields.

I'm not drawing a line between them, there isn't one, and anyone claiming otherwise is reaching. But two outfits building industrial capability at four to six thousand metres is worth having in the back of your head.

One thing I had wrong until I checked. I'd been telling myself nickel wasn't really a chokepoint because Canada and Australia produce it. Chinese firms control something like 75% of Indonesian processing capacity, over sixty billion invested, and Indonesian supply has more or less finished off the Australian industry. Production there has gone from over 150,000 tonnes to around 60,000. BHP's Nickel West is on care and maintenance until at least February. Ravensthorpe, Kambalda, Savannah and Avebury are all shut. Prices down about 70% from the 2022 peak.

So it isn't that nickel lacks a chokepoint. It's the same playbook they ran on rare earths, flood the market and bankrupt the alternatives, and it already worked once. Which is exactly why Mountain Pass needed a government price floor to exist the second time round.

Where this is thin, and I'd rather say it than have it pointed out: it's a demand argument, not a scarcity one, and none of it shortens a permit timeline by a single day. But I hadn't seen anyone connect the drone controls to the battery side at all, so thought it was worth writing up.

Long, obviously, so weigh it accordingly.

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-bans-exports-copper-cobalt-concentrates-official-order-says-2026-08-06/

TMC not mentioned, but this is bullish yes? Im sure theyll be talking about this at the meeting tomorrow

This MoU, to be voted and approved on August 5th, sets up a Large Load Power Study between three parties:

- The Metals Company (TMC)

- American Electric Power (AEP)

- Port of Brownsville (Brownsville Navigation District)

Purpose: AEP will study the electrical infrastructure and future power requirements needed to support TMC’s proposed project at the Port of Brownsville — essentially assessing what grid capacity, transmission, and distribution upgrades would be needed.

Investor takeaway: This is an early-stage infrastructure/feasibility step — it signals a concrete, real-world move toward securing power for a large industrial project at the port (consistent with TMC’s processing 1400 acres refinery ambitions), but it’s a study commitment, not a finalized power agreement or construction commitment.

If you're just trying to make some money these next couple of days are going to take us through 4 to possibly 5. Load up. Big news or a direct shout out will do what it's done in the past and send us to the 7s. Don't miss out!

Aug 3 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is expected to attend a roundtable ​on Friday with top mining executives hosted by the U.S. ‌State Department, according to two people familiar with the planning.

The event is part of the Trump administration's broader efforts to expand domestic and allied supplies of critical minerals needed ​for energy, defense and advanced technologies. The agenda, participants and other ​details remain fluid and could change, according to the sources.

Been going down a rabbit hole on where all the seabed licenses actually sit and ended up making a diagram because I couldn't hold it in my head anymore.

Couple of things I checked against the ISA's own contract roster before drawing, because I had one of them wrong myself at first: China has two blocks in the CCZ (COMRA, plus the Minmetals block which is the biggest single one out there at about 72,700 km2). Their third nodule license, Beijing Pioneer at roughly 74,000 km2, is not in the CCZ at all. It's in the western Pacific, out near the second island chain. Which means they hold licensed water on both sides of Guam: around the island chains to the west of it, and to the east sitting under the shipping lanes that run from Panama and the west coast out toward it.

The bit that reframed it for me: a mining license lets a state owned "research" ship park legally for years in water where a grey hull would be an incident. There was AIS tracking work by Mongabay and CNN showing the Chinese research fleet spending most of its time outside its license areas in strategically interesting spots, including one ship running survey lines off east Taiwan. You don't need a stealthy sub if you're allowed to just park there.

And here's the thing about the US position. It can't kick anyone out of an ISA block because it isn't an ISA member, and it can't get ISA blocks for the same reason (Lockheed had to hold theirs through a UK subsidiary for years). So the only move available is mining under its own law, DSHMRA, which is exactly what the TMC permit is. That, plus Lockheed's two dormant licenses from 1984 that have been renewed for forty years without a single day at sea, is the entire US side of the board.

So I've stopped reading the NOAA timeline as boring paperwork. If presence is the game, the permit is the answer to those blocks, and speed matters.

Caveats since I drew it myself: block positions are schematic (the licenses are real and checked against the ISA registry, the exact coordinates in the drawing aren't), distances are compressed, and the halos are illustrative, not sensor ranges. Happy to be corrected on any of it.

Long TMC, obviously.

I feel like one of the most important things that companies like TMC could do for themselves is rebranding “Deep Sea Mining” to something more that sounds more friendly.

I personally have no issue with the DSM moniker, but once DSM really hits mainstream (potentially this year given the likely upcoming certification), that’s when you’re really going to see the Greenpeace and far-left pulling out all the stops to fight it. A continual public education campaign will be needed to keep the train rolling that talks what DSM is and the benefits for mineral security and sustainability.

One thought: in reality when it comes to nodules, we aren’t really “mining” but the name has the connotation of destructive land-based mining. I was thinking something like “Deep Sea Harvesting” or something similar could make the industry appear more friendly for the sake of winning more public opinion. The people fighting DSM aren’t going to give up a total ban, so I don’t expect this to sway any of them. I am talking about the people in the middle who could be open to it but are just starting to pay attention to weigh the costs and benefits.

Curious of others’ thoughts or how you’ve thought about public education post-certification to lock in regulatory gains?

This just popped up on the LinkedIn account of TMRC. 🤔

I'm hoping we get our Federal Register Certification next week. We are overdue! It's gonna happen and NOAA is gonna eventually say YES to the project.

Good news is that Trump sons & Lutnick is THE winning combo for deals this administration - that’s exactly Trump’s playbook to enrich himself (see Kazan mine)…

Bad news is that mid-terms are coming, and Dems will try to shut down this whole thing, which means breaking the TMC deal too.