Morning Roundup: December 27, 2023

At the SPAC of Dawn

Among the de-SPACs buffeted by the month’s tip into positive economic sentiment was one of the companies that helped boost the enthusiasm of the last SPAC cycle in the first place in MP Materials (NYSE:MP).

The rare earth materials miner reached above $59 in 2022, two years after closing its combination with Fortress Value, but it had been generally sliding since. That trajectory broadly mirrored a drop in peak rare earth mineral prices once EV makers started hitting their own production bottlenecks, but a more favorable overall outlook evidently has more traders betting that demand will pick back up.

MP Materials is up about +31.9% since Thanksgiving, while VanEck’s Rare Earth/Strategic Metals ETF, which indexes a wide range of the company’s listed peers, is only up +9% over that same period. MP’s rare earth de-SPAC peer Lifezone Metals (NYSE:LZM) also continues to hold steady above $9 five months after closing its combination with GoGreen.

News and Rumors

• Bloomberg: Parts ID Inc. (NYSE:ID), a publicly traded operator of ecommerce websites focused on automotive parts which completed its combination with Legacy in 2020, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday.

International SPAC News

• UK-listed SPAC Bowen (LSE:BWN) has signed conditional, non-legally binding heads of terms to acquire 93.49% of the issued share capital of Minnadeooyasan-Hanbai.

Scheduling Notes