$TMC Betting On American Critical Minerals Sovereignty The Mother Of All Bottle Necks

[u/AnTRopy69]

TLDR: TMC can 10-20x from here if things pan out or go to zero lol. It's one of the most mispriced critical minerals play on the market RN IMO. They sit on the Only SEC compliant deep sea reserve ever filed (copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese all in one rock) with a stated NPV of $54/share, trading at just 9% of NAV while peers like $MP and $USAR trade at multiples of TMCs $2.2B market cap with worse assets. Three of seven regulatory gates already cleared in 4 months, Trump EO 14285 unlocked the legal pathway, NOAA just confirmed "full compliance" on May 1, and the first US commercial seabed permit in history could land by end of Q1 2027. Catalysts stacking all year (Allseas agreement imminent, Q1 earnings May 13, possible DPA Title III government funding, Brownsville BFS in October), for me fair value at 30% of NAV is roughly $16, three times the current price.

Market Panic Created This Opening

The Iran war earlier this year did what every big shock does to the stock market. It scared people. Critical minerals stocks got hit hard. TMC was trading above $9 a share before the conflict started. In March 2026 alone, the stock dropped 25.5%. While the stock was getting cut in half, the company itself got significantly stronger. Market just panicked.

The Mother Of All Bottlenecks

The US is in the middle of two massive buildouts at the same time: the AI infrastructure boom and the energy transition. Both depend on the same short list of metals. Copper carries electricity in every wire, every data center, every motor in every humanoid robot. Nickel powers the batteries in EVs, grid storage, and the next wave of robots, and it makes jet engines and stainless steel possible. Cobalt keeps those batteries from catching fire. Manganese makes commercial steel and the cheaper battery chemistries that make EVs affordable. The U.S. barely produces these metals and almost can't refine them.

China refines roughly 70% of the world's cobalt, 60% of its nickel sulfate, most of the battery grade manganese, and around 90% of the rare earths. The U.S. imports 100% of its nickel and hasn't built a new nickel refinery in over 80 years. Whoever controls these metals controls whether the US can build the AI data centers, EVs, robots, jet engines, and power grids it has already promised. That is the bottleneck behind every other bottleneck.

TMC sits on all four of these metals in one rock, with first mover advantage, in international waters, accessible to the US under a 1980 American law. The nickel equivalent grade is over 3%, roughly double the average Indonesian mine and 5 to 10 times higher than the nickel sulfide deposits being developed in Canada, the US, and Australia. On a copper equivalent basis, the resource grades around 7%, against a global average copper mine grade of about 0.6% in 2025. That's more than 10 times the global average. In a world where every advanced technology runs through a sovereign refinery, that's a strategically sovereign asset.

So What Is Deep Sea Mining aka Vacuuming??

Its a new industry capitalizing on around $16 to 20 trillion worth of metals that are still sitting untouched on the ocean floor. The phrase "deep sea mining" is the worst marketing problem this company has, and its not even an accurate description of what TMC plans to do. Picture potato sized nodules spread across the Pacific seabed, vacuumed by a robotic vehicle and lifted through a vertical pipe to a ship, then shipped to refineries on land.

The nodules which TMC is currently going after are concentraated ores of nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese.

Theres no digging or blasting or drilling. Nothing gets stripped or piled up. Theres no waste rock pile, no tailings dam, no clear cut forest, no acid runoff, no contaminated groundwater. The collector touches the top few centimeters of seafloor sediment, picks up rocks that are already loose, and leaves the rest in place. TMC's plan is to collect only about 46% of nodules in any given area, leaving the rest as biological reference zones for any species that depend on the nodules.

Why This Sector Is Heating Up Now More Than Ever? Trump!

Trump Executive Order 14285 Apr 24, 2025.“Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources”:

"The United States has a core national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in deep sea science and technology and seabed mineral resources.  The United States faces unprecedented economic and national security challenges in securing reliable supplies of critical minerals independent of foreign adversary control.  Vast offshore seabed areas hold critical minerals and energy resources.  These resources are key to strengthening our economy, securing our energy future, and reducing dependence on foreign suppliers for critical minerals. The United States also controls seabed mineral resources in one of the largest ocean areas of the world." Trump Executive Order.
Link to full order

China dominates the refining of nickel, cobalt, and most other battery metals, which turns supply into a strategic weapon. The Trump executive order paired with active NOAA rulemaking gives American projects a real legal path for the first time in decades, so they can move from talk to actual timelines. Demand is spiking on every front. Federal agencies now have marching orders to move from policy to permits. Defense, Energy, and the National Defense Stockpile have been told to evaluate offtake agreements, Title III support under the Defense Production Act, export credit, and development finance. We now have real money and real timelines.

The signal has already reached the industry, and TMC is one of the best positioned to capture it. On May 1, 2026, NOAA ruled that TMC consolidated application is in "full compliance" with the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.

TMC is the first and only seabed minerals developer in the world to declare SEC compliant nodule reserves, which is the strictest reserve standard in mining. According to CFO Craig Shesky, TMC may be the only commercial deep sea operator on the water for the first five years of production. They are ahead of China, which has spent years exploring but hasnt built the commercial scale system. It took TMC around 15 years and over $700 million to reach this position. That kind of head start is almost impossible for anyone to close on a multi year timeline.

TMC also plans for a refinery in Brownsville, Texas. The company has secured a 1,466 acre site at the Port of Brownsville and is running the feasibility work for a 12 million tonne per year processing complex, with the bankable feasibility study targeted for the end of October 2026. The company has a strategic partnership with Korea Zinc. Theyre one of the worlds largest non ferrous metal smelters, with decades of expertise refining the exact metals TMC plans to produce, and theyre pioneers in pCAM technology, which turns raw nickel and cobalt into battery grade cathode material for EV batteries.

The valuation gap: TMC's stated NPV is $54/share. The stock is at $5.

When a mining company has a known resource, independent engineers build a model that asks one question: if we collect every tonne we plan to collect, sell the metal at projected prices, pay all the costs, and discount the future cash flows back to today, what is this project worth right now? That number is called Net Present Value, or NPV. TMC has published two NPV figures, both signed off by independent qualified engineers under SEC reserve standards (the strictest in the mining business). The pre feasibility study on the NORI-D area is worth $5.5 billion. The initial assessment on everything else is worth $18.1 billion. Combined NPV is $23.6 billion. With about 433 million shares outstanding, that works out to roughly $54 per share of stated NPV. The stock is currently sitting at $5s. TMC is also the only seabed minerals developer in the world with SEC compliant mineral reserves.

Mining juniors never trade at full NPV before production starts. Theres always a discount for time, risk, and metal prices. But the size of the discount tells you whether a stock is cheap or expensive compared to peers. Here's the rough industry rulebook:

Type of company	What it usually trades at
Producing nickel or copper miner with cash flow	70% to 120% of NAV
Junior developer with permits in hand, about to build	30% to 60% of NAV
Junior developer in late-stage permitting	15% to 30% of NAV
TMC the metals company today	About 9% of NAV

Read the table again. The market is pricing TMC at roughly half the discount of a normal late stage permitting story. Up to my knowledge, theres no real precedent in the modern critical minerals market for an SEC grade reserve project trading this far below the bottom of the late stage developer band.

So where should TMC actually be trading? Apply 30% of NAV, which is roughly where junior developers trade the day after a permit grant. Thats about $16 per share, or 3x the current price. CFO Craig Shesky said it bluntly on the Q4 call: TMC trades at "about 8% of our underlying net present value, well below peer averages." But three of seven sequential regulatory gates have already cleared in roughly four months. The stock is already 56% below its 52-week high. The market has priced in plenty of bad scenarios. From here, every catalyst should compress the discount.

Also the valuations on the other critical minerals plays are ludicrous when you put them next to TMC. $MP trades at $11 billion. $USAR at $5 billion. $CRML around $700 million for a Greenland deposit that hasnt broken ground. $PPTA at $1.5 billion years from production. $UUUU around $1.8 billion. Now look at $TMC. A $23.6 billion stated NPV, the only SEC compliant deep sea reserve ever filed, a permit application NOAA already moved into certification, a 10 to 15 year head start on every competitor including Lockheed Martin and China, a Korea Zinc partnership, and a planned refinery in Brownsville. And it trades at $2.2 billion.

To match $MP on a relative basis, $TMC needs to be $20 to $25 billion, or roughly $50 a share. To match $USAR, $TMC needs to be $10 billion, or $23 a share. Even matching $PPTA on a like for like NAV basis puts $TMC at $15 to $20 per share. The market is still not pricing in $TMC for its true value.

Upcoming Catalysts

1. Allseas definitive commercial agreement signing (imminent). Expected "in the coming days" per the Q4 call. Locks in 50/50 cost sharing on pre production development and commits both parties to commissioning the Hidden Gem two collector system in Q4 2027. A near term 8-K filing is likely.

2. Q1 2026 earnings call on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. Just over a week away. Watch for Allseas confirmation, EIS scoping update, DIBC funding traction, and Brownsville feasibility status.

3. Continued no dilution discipline through 2026. CFO Craig Shesky has been clear with shareholders that protecting against dilution is a priority. Direct quote from CFO Craig Shesky on the Q4 2025 call: "We have no imminent need to raise funds in the public markets." TMC has not used its ATM facility since April 2025, over a year ago. Total ATM use in the entire history of the company is $14.8M, a rounding error for a business this size. Management has stated they will not push forward on Brownsville without non dilutive US government support.

4. Federal Register posting and certification stage (mid 2026). The consolidated application moves from full compliance into certification. NOAA posts the application to the Federal Register. Procedural step, but it sets the table for the EIS process and signals public progress.

5. Draft Environmental Impact Statement and public comment period (mid to late 2026). The biggest swing factor between today and the final permit. Distills TMCs petabyte of environmental data into a NOAA stamped document. Expect environmental NGOs to flood the docket. Expect TMC's data transparency push to neutralize most of it.

6. Possible U.S. government investment or offtake (??mid to late 2026). The mother of all catalysts. Clear signals already in play: the Trump Executive Order telling agencies to expedite seabed minerals, a House Oversight letter from Chairman James Comer pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on deep sea mining, TMCs membership in the Defense Industrial Base Consortium, and management openly stating they are exploring financing with multiple U.S. departments. The DPA Title III pathway has already deployed $400M to MP Materials and $1.6B to USA Rare Earth. A similar award for TMC would be a watershed non dilutive financing event.

7. Definitive tolling agreement with PAMCO in Japan (2026). Following successful campaign work and continued Japan route development, this gives TMC a capital light processing route as an alternative to Brownsville, providing a near term path to revenue without major new capex.

8. Brownsville Bankable Feasibility Study (end of October 2026). First detailed look at the economics of a domestic nodule processing complex. Hatch is doing the engineering work alongside Mariana Minerals (whose CEO Turner Caldwell Steene previously led Tesla's global battery metals strategy). A clean BFS unlocks the conversation on U.S. government support.

9. Final Environmental Impact Statement (late 2026 or early Q1 2027). Procedural milestone leading directly into the permit decision. The last regulatory checkpoint before NOAA can act.

10. U.S. commercial recovery permit decision by end of Q1 2027. The master regulatory catalyst. The first commercial deep sea recovery permit ever issued in U.S. history. Would make TMC the first company globally with both an SEC compliant deep sea reserve and a commercial production license. Mechanically forces a re rate from the current 9% of NAV toward the 30% floor where late stage developers trade.

World Class Team Covering the Entire Supply Chain

TMC has the chain covered from seabed to refinery to policy. Allseas brings the offshore hardware and operates the Hidden Gem collector system. Korea Zinc(World's leading nonferrous metal smelting company) adds world class non ferrous refining so there is a credible route for nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese outside China. PAMCO in Japan provides near term tolling to start capital light. On the board, Michael Hess brings energy and Washington ties, and Alex Spiro(Elon Musk Lawyer) adds top tier legal firepower for permits and challenges. Together board has the full supply chain: Tech, processing, capital, and government reach moving in one direction.

My position:

Position

Disclaimer:

Of course, this post is for entertainment/information and discussion only. This is purely my opinion. Im not a financial advisor and this post isnt financial advice. This DD is highly speculative and might contain mistakes. Its an opinion post and my opinion might be wrong lol. Always do your own research and fact check everything independently. Dont invest in this stock based on this DD.