Al Root

The wild trading in MP Materials stock over this past year has settled somewhat. Wall Street still sees a bright future for the company headed into 2026.

Tuesday, William Blair analyst Neal Dingmann launched coverage of the rare earth metals producer with a Buy rating and no formal price target. A Buy at Blair essentially means the broker expects the stock to outperform the market.

MP shares were up 2.9% at $67.24 in Tuesday trading, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 0.3% and 0.7%, respectively.

By now, investors might be familiar with MP and rare earth metals, elements that, while not used in significant quantities, are critical to manufacturing everything from iPhones to fighter jets. China dominates rare earth production with an estimated 85% of global processing capacity.

China's dominance has been a problem, especially for the Defense Department. That's one reason, in July, it announced a blockbuster deal with the company, which included an equity investment, a price floor for rare earth materials, and a guaranteed customer for production coming from new capacity.

It's hard to understate the impact of the transformational deal. Before the announcement, the average analyst price target for MP stock was about $27 a share. Now it's about $79. MP stock has risen from $25 to $100, then to $67 over that span.

The $52 jump in the average analyst price target is worth about $11 billion in market value.

The defense agreements "reduce risk," says Dingmann, one reason he likes the stock. He also sees the potential for additional supply deals that could send shares higher.

While Dingmann doesn't have a formal price target, he feels 30 times his estimated 2030 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, is reasonable given the growth. That implies a stock price of about $80.

Wall Street expects MP Ebitda to rise roughly fourfold from $250 million to $1 billion between 2026 and 2030. Growth is primarily driven by capacity growth over time, rather than by the state of the commercial market in the future. MP can always sell its rare earth magnets to the U.S. government. Still, there should be ample demand from anyone building modern technology.

Today, all 17 analysts covering shares rate them Buy, according to FactSet. Before the deal, 67% rated shares Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 55%.

Things have gotten a lot better for MP. Wall Street sees things getting better down the road, too.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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January 13, 2026 10:59 ET (15:59 GMT)

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