TMC the metals company (TMC +3.00%) -- that's not a description, that's its actual name -- stock surged 13.7% through 11:40 A.M. ET Thursday, and it's not hard to figure out why.
This morning, TMC subsidiary TMC USA filed the country's first-ever "consolidated exploration license and commercial recovery permit application submitted under NOAA's new consolidated application and review process," requesting permission to begin exploring for minerals on the seabed.
Image source: Getty Images.
Details, please
For those not in the "know" (heh), NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency under the Department of Commerce. Primarily concerned with monitoring things like weather and global warming, NOAA also has responsibility for managing fishing and other marine resources.
The present consolidated application "covers areas previously applied over in April 2025," but also more than doubles the territory to be explored, to about 65,000 square kilometers in the Pacific Ocean. TMC says the area may contain more than 800 million metric tonnes (Mt) of high-grade nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese nodules that it could recover.
NASDAQ: TMC
Key Data Points
What does this mean for investors?
TMC notes that past exploration has included its recovery of some 3,000 Mt of polymetallic nodules. That sounds like a lot, but it's less than 0.038% of the metal TMC thinks is out there and potentially available to mine.
It's hard to say how long it would take TMC to mine all this metal, or how profitable the operation would be. But the first step is to get permission to go out and look, and confirm the company can recover the metals profitably, safely, and without damaging the environment too much.
That process has now begun. Next, we'll see if TMC wins NOAA approval to do the actual mining.
