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spk01: Good afternoon and welcome to the AquaMetal's second quarter financial results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You can submit your questions via the webcast at any time by typing them in the ask a question field. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Glenn Axelrod, spokesperson with Bristol Capital. Thank you. You may begin.
spk06: All right. Thank you, Diego. And thank you, everybody, for joining Aqua Metals' second quarter 2022 results conference call. Earlier today, Aqua Metals released financial results for the quarter end of June 30th, 2022. This release is available on the investor section on the company's website at www.aquametals.com. Joining us for today's call for management is Steve Cotton, President and CEO, Judd Merrill, the company's Chief Financial Officer, and Ben Taker, Chief Engineering and Operating Officer. During today's call, management will be making forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's report on Form 10Q filed today, July 21st, for a summary of the forward-looking statements and the risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. AquaMetals cautions investors not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The company does not undertake and specifically disclaims any obligation to update or revise such statements to reflect new circumstances or unanticipated events as they occur, except as required by law. As a reminder, after management's formal remarks, we'll be taking questions. Questions will be accepted over the telephone from analysts, and all other investors can submit a question using the online webinar portal provided in today's and last week's press release. We will take as many questions as we can in our available time slot. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Cotton, CEO of AquaMetal. Steve, please go ahead.
spk09: Thanks, Glenn. Okay, thanks, Glenn, for taking everybody through the safe harbor. So I'll move on to the next slide, which is our mission, which will be the first slide that I present today. And this is a presentation that's geared towards updates of what we are doing, but also some reminders and new information for those that are new to the aqua metal story. Our mission is to provide sustainable metal recycling for materials that are strategic to energy storage applications. And our technology, which we call Aqua Refining, returns raw materials directly back to the manufacturing supply chain in both a clean way and an economical way, thus reducing reliance on mining to meet the growing demand for energy storage systems that are battery-based. On the next slide, we are the only recycling technologies that are aligned with the U.S. Department of Energy vision, which is to use air and water to recycle and electricity to recycle critical battery minerals. We have PV aqua refining, which stands for lead aqua refining, which is commercialized, and we'll talk about our process and where we are with the first deployment with our first licensee. And we have lithium aqua refining, both of which are room temperature closed loop and fundamentally non-polluted processes. The lead aquifining is commercially proven, and we are deploying that with our first licensee in Taiwan later this month, and we'll get into some more details on that in a future slide. And we've been expanding rapidly into the critical minerals associated with recycling lithium ion batteries, And those periodic table of the elements symbols stand for cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, and lithium, for which you'll see examples in this presentation of what we've been able to accomplish with our lithium aqua refining efforts and the results of extracting those critical elements. Our process is also cleaner and more cost-efficient recovery in a very efficient recycling process as compared to incumbent smelting processes and what we've see out of the marketplace is what we characterize as traditional hydrometallurgical processes as compared to our aqua refining process. We also produce a very high-quality product, and we'll explain that and show you some pictures of the products that we've created already with the lithium aqua refining process. And our entire set of technologies is really well patent-protected, and we'll talk about that in a future slide as well. Moving on to slide five, I want to summarize for everybody our very active Q2 2022 highlights that we've accomplished just this past quarter. First off, all the aqua refining equipment for the lead aqua refining licensee at Acme Metal Enterprises arrived in Taiwan, and installation and commissioning is set to commence this month in July. To date, we have also successfully recovered all the high-value metals and minerals from used lithium ion batteries, including high-purity lithium hydroxide, copper, nickel, cobalt, and manganese dioxide. We made an announcement today that we'll talk about lithium hydroxide, and I'll ask Ben to kind of take everybody through what these minerals look like as we extract them. Third, we approved the bench scale, our clean and economical metals recycling process. Fourth, we initiated deployment of our first lithium-ion recycling pilot operation, which is located at our Innovation Center in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, and that is slated to begin operations later this year, only in a matter of several weeks. Next, we signed a letter of intent, which was announced today with Dragonfly Energy Corporations. Dragonfly Energy is a lithium ion battery producer, and they would purchase commercial quantities of lithium hydroxide from AquaMetals, sourced sustainably from recycling, to support the ongoing development of their solid-state lithium ion battery technologies in future manufacturing activities. Dragonfly Energy, by the way, is located right here in the Tahoe-Reno area as well. And Aquamentals will also be providing recycling services from scrap materials from Dragonfly Energy as feedstock into our process. Lastly, and certainly not least, is our technology allows us, and we believe only us, to make 100% of our operations using the electron as the reagent instead of fire or chemicals, including our offices and the Innovation Center, 100% powered by renewable energy. So we are already 100% RE today as a company, and we will be operating the pilot plant that we'll be turning on very soon with that covered and to prove that you can truly and sustainably recycle lithium ion batteries with renewable energy sources. Next slide, number six, a little bit more about our deployments in Taiwan. This is slated to have the installation, commissioning, and early ramp of the first phase of deployment happen in a very near-term time period, whereas the installation site is prepped. The team is traveling to ACME beginning in just a matter of days this month. And all major equipment and electrolytes pictured, as you can see, is on site. And the phase one estimated completion is going to be by October of this year, so very quick path to success with our phase one is what we anticipate, and that is commencing again in a matter of days, really. This next slide is a little bit more about Dragonfly Energy. This is a picture of one of their locations here in the Tahoe-Reno area. Lithium-Ock refining uniquely recovers the high-value lithium that's currently lost in the smelting process. Today, of the 5% of batteries that are recycled, that are lithium batteries while the other 95% is in the landfill, there's a total of zero lithium recovery with smelting incumbent processes. Lithium off-refining allows us to recover all, nearly all, of the lithium. Dragonfly would purchase commercial quantities of the lithium hydroxide beginning with our pilot plant for ongoing development of solid state lithium ion battery technologies in future manufacturing activities. AquaMetals will also provide the recycling services associated with the scrap materials as well as spent lithium ion cells that come back from Dragonfly Energy. Dragonfly expects to begin production of its solid state pilot line as early as 2023, which is quite exciting to see such a large facility being planned for 2023 production of lithium being sourced not only as through traditional resources, but through a sustainable method such as aqua metals. So we in Dragonfly are very excited to embark upon this partnership. I'm going to now ask Ben Tacker, our Chief Engineering and Operations Officer, to take us through some of our recent achievements this quarter with the Innovation Center. And I'll turn it over to Ben. Ben, go ahead.
spk07: Thanks, Steve. I'll start on slide eight. On the left side, you can see black mass that we've taken into our innovation center here in the Tahoe Reno area and produced their way of metals and compounds that you see to the right. The metals in particular are extremely high value in the form that we produce because of their purity, and they're able to be sold back into the commodity market or into the battery market. The other three, the lithium, the nickel, and the manganese dioxide are all in compounds that makes them extremely valuable, again, as a commodity versus trying to meet a PTAM spec. This allows us to bypass long qualification processes. It makes it real easy to sell to a large array of customers that are looking for these metals right now. On slide nine, the Innovation Center, we currently have this facility prepped. We've got the utilities put in place. and ready for the equipment to start coming in. All of the major equipment is on order, and we're tracking each piece, and we see everything coming in on time in the August-September timeframe that will allow us to start commissioning this facility in October. And hopefully in the month of November, we're bringing on visitors, potential partners, potential customers that we can show off this facility and show off the product on the at a significant scale on the output side. We've hired the key team members to support this. And we've also started working on offtake agreements. We do have the black mass secured for this operation. And we used the data from our lab scale testing to support the design and the scale of this facility, following a standard chemical industry practice to allow it to scale successfully without issue. And that's it. With that, I'll turn it back over to Steve for summary.
spk09: So also in slide 10, there's another view of the Innovation Center, just to give people a perspective of what the other side of the pilot will look like. And on the left there, you'll see where the black mass goes into the process at the beginning of the process. So we wanted everybody to be able to see that view in addition to what Ben just mentioned. I'm going to go now on to slide 11 and summarize what we've just told everybody, and then I'm going to be handing it over to Jud Merrill, our CFO, to talk through our financial results. So, summarizing, Agni Taiwan is on track for Q3 installation, commissioning, and ramp for the lead aqua refining licensing operation, so we're very excited about that. The lithium ion aqua refining pilot is on track, as Ben mentioned, to begin operations in Q3. And we're targeting lithium-ion initial off-refining revenue as early as Q4 of this year. Dragonfly Energy, letter of intent has been signed and announced today. So again, that partnership is one that we're very excited about, and we anticipate that we'll be establishing further feedstock and offtake relationships that we'll be able to announce at a future date. Lastly, all operations are powered by that renewable electricity, and we expect to be the greenest and most economical lithium recycling technology available. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Jud Merrill, our CFO, for the financial overview. Thanks, Steve. I have a few comments on each one of the company's financial statements. First, I'll start with the balance sheet. We did end the quarter with total cash of approximately $6.4 million, and we had working capital of approximately $21 million. Our strong working capital balance keeps us healthy as we move forward with our current activities, even into next year. One of the bigger portions of working capital balance is about $16 million least receivable related to the sale of the plant to Linneco. We are only a few months away from collecting the remaining balance, which we expect to collect either by October 1st of this year or by March 2023, depending on whether Linneco exercises its ability to pay off early or wait the full term. So this puts the collection of these funds in the next two to eight months. There was very little change in the company's liabilities as compared to year-end, and the company continues to be debt-free. There were no other significant changes on our balance sheet, so I'll move to the income statement. During the second quarter of 2022, Aqua Metals continued to focus on their research and development activities related to lithium-ion battery recycling. And also, we focused on the preparation of commissioning that Acme Metals facility. The company was not in commercial production during 2022, and as a result, no significant revenues were generated during the quarter. On the cost of product sales, it decreased by approximately 51% during the quarter to $1 million compared to the 2.1 in Q2 of 2021. And this decrease in this quarter was due to wrapping up of the plant cleanup projects. Research and development costs, which included expenditures related to improving the lithium ion battery, aqua refining technology, during the three months of June 30, that ended June 30, 2022, this increased during the quarter by approximately 196% compared to the three months ended June 30, 2021. As we've talked through this presentation, this R&D is crucial and part of our business strategy and really focuses on further advancing the development of the aqua refining of the lithium batteries. So these costs included expenditures made towards building out our pilot facility, which we said is expected to be commissioned later this year. General and administrative expenses increased approximately 12% for the three-month end of June 30th 2022 compared to the three months ended June 30th, 2021. Increases in this category included changes in stock-based comp and an increase in professional fees. For the second quarter of 2022, the company had an operating loss of $4 million compared to an operating loss of $4.4 million for the second quarter of 2021. And net loss for the second quarter of 2022 was 3.2 million, or .04 cents, or 4 cents per basic and diluted share, compared to net loss of 8 million, or 12 cents per basic and diluted share for the second quarter of 2021. And so finally, on the cash flow statement, so net cash use and operating activities for the six months ended June 30, 2022, and 2021 was 6.3 million and 4.9 million, respectively. Q2 cash needs are actually a little lower than we had in Q1. Q1 is actually typically a little higher, but this quarter's average monthly base cash needs total a little over $750,000 per month. But we do expect Q3 and Q4 to be in that $800,000 to about $850,000 per month range. This increase over the next two quarters is largely due to the addition of more employees and consultants as we invest more in the lithium ion battery recycling technology. Net cash used in investing activities for the six months ended June 30, 2022, was $0.4 million. And it was really made up of three items. First, cash, $1 million cash used towards the purchase of property plan equipment or property equipment. Second, cash used, $0.5 million used towards the warrant exercise in Linaco that we did. And then these two cash uses were offset by 1.1 million proceeds from the sale of equipment. And net cash used by, provided by financing activities was 5 million for the six months ending June 30th, 2022. And that really consisted of 4.6 million net proceeds from the sale of off the metal shares pursuant to the ATM and 0.4 million in proceeds from the lease of the building, almost all of the AT&T seats were the key ones. So our current cash balance, asset sales, monthly lease payments, expected minor revenues from ACME and pilot operations, and the completion of the sale of the plant building keeps our balance sheet healthy and allows us to execute our business strategy throughout the rest of this year and into 2023. And with that, that concludes my remarks on the financials. I will now turn it back over to the moderator for Q&A.
spk02: Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll conduct our question and answer session.
spk01: If you'd like to ask a question via the phone, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You can press star 2 on your phone to remove yourself from the question queue. On the webcast, you can continue to submit your questions by typing them in the Ask a Question field on your screen. Our first question comes from Colin Rush with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thanks so much, guys. Judd, I just want to make sure I understand the cash flow here and how much diligence you've done around being able to collect on that receivable. So it sounds like you're going to be able to collect the vast majority of that outstanding receivable by October 1. And I guess, how confident are you that that cash is available right now?
spk09: Yeah, so we've had discussions with Winneco and their major investor, Comstock, and all indications that we received from them is those funds will be here, and we feel very confident in that. The only question mark is exactly when, because they do have the option to wait until March. If they exercise that option to wait until March, there is a $2 million non-refundable deposit required to be made. So we see cash coming in for sure in the short term. It could be a small amount. It could be the large amount. But for sure, we feel very confident that by the end of the term that we'll have received the full payment on the building.
spk08: Okay. That's super helpful. And then on the technical side, I'm curious about kind of the hydroxide volumes that you guys are producing. And one of the issues that we're seeing coming up with some of the newer technologies is really what's in that 0.1% of contaminants. Given the kind of robustness of this process, I'm curious what you can say about your ability to control and remove particular contaminants within these concentrates?
spk07: Yeah, so the contaminants, I'm probably not going to go into the specifics of the contaminants, but what we do see is that we are able to meet the industry specs. We've set out some goals that are in line with those industry specs, but we expect to be able to exceed those goals significantly when we reach the pilot unit. because of some of the lessons learned. So I see our purity going up, but based on the initial samples and testing that we've done both internally and externally, we're quite excited that we won't have any problems meeting customer specs with impurities.
spk02: Okay, perfect. Thanks, guys. Our next question comes from Amit Dayal with HC Wainwright.
spk01: Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. With respect to this pilot facility coming up for the lithium-ion recycling, how big in terms of volumes, capacity, any indications of how big this facility will be?
spk07: The facility is designed to process 100 tons per year initially. That will allow us to reach a significant scale on a monthly basis, significant amount of product of each one of these metals coming through as a result we'll end up with tons of materials of cobalt nickel in the middle of 2022 we intend to start wrapping towards 1 000 tons per year rate with the with the goal of getting to a significant revenue and a significant volume through our pilot operation understood
spk05: So this is 100 tons of black mass, right, you're talking about? That is correct, yes. Okay, got it. What are the expenses required to, you know, set all this up initially, CapEx for this?
spk09: Emmett, this is Judd. So we, you know, made public that, you know, our initial R&D budget for this year is $3 million. And so a lot of that, what Ben was talking about, that 100-ton annual capacity is covered in that R&D budget and covered in that cost that we're talking about for this year. Okay, got it. Thank you for that.
spk05: Just moving on to the aqua refining offering, any new potential customers? Maybe you could talk about the pipeline for that offering.
spk09: Sure. So for the lead aqua refining, the real eye on the ball right now is to get the Acme Taiwan showcase facility up and running. But we have had and continue to have engagements with various players in the marketplace that are interested in lead aqua refining. And as I've said before, it's typically in greenfield new builds. But there's also opportunities for us to be looking at pilots, of lead aqua refining even within existing facilities. So we continue to work on that sales funnel, but again with the eye on the ball of success with the Acne Taiwan deployment. But stay tuned to see more news potentially on the lead front as we continue to work through that sales funnel. On the lithium side, we've already announced our collaboration development agreement with Linoco. So in addition to our pilot operations that will be happening at our innovation center, we have great opportunity with Linoco to expand and scale within the facility that is formerly the off refinery. And that's about 140,000 square foot facility less, you know, just about a mile away from our innovation center. And we see opportunity on how we work out the commercial arrangement with Linoco. We have not announced yet. How that will look that's the next step is what the commercial arrangements will be And that could be licensing joint venture Co processing it and that business model is something that we will share as soon as we finalize what those agreements look like with Linneco We are also looking at doing venture opportunities partnership opportunities organic plant builds of our own elsewhere But it's really one step at a time. And we're going to get the pilot up and running and scale that to demonstration quantities as Ben had mentioned while we explore these opportunities. And at the appropriate time, we'll be able to announce what those next steps look like for the lithium aqua refining deployment.
spk05: Thank you for that. And with respect to Dragonfly, do you have any sense of how much volume they can sort of take from you guys?
spk09: So we... In the earlier days, we'll be able to provide them some samples of the lithium hydroxide very soon coming off of our equipment. And as we scale, you know, it will scale to tons of availability as they begin to develop their solid state lithium capabilities. And ultimately, they will outpace with their growth probably our ability to supply lithium. However, our ability to scale and keep up with their demand as well as other parties' demands should begin to really ramp up as we partner with Linneco and deploy in future deployments. We see the lithium hydroxide partnership with Dragonfly as a great start, and really it's a co-development start. with ultimate supply that goes into their new product, again, where they're going to be taking the raw materials and doing the cell manufacturing right here in Tahoe, Reno. So it's a great sustainable local source for them. And it's also a great opportunity for us to work with others to also provide those great materials that are coming off of our process, inclusive of the metals, as well as lithium hydroxide.
spk04: Understood. That's all I have. Thank you so much, guys.
spk03: Thanks.
spk02: Thank you. Our next question comes from Sean Severson with Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.
spk03: Sean, if you're speaking, we can't hear you. You might be muted.
spk04: Can you hear me?
spk03: Now we can. Mr. Somerson, it looks like you have a poor connection if you want to call back.
spk06: Why don't we take some questions online, Steve, while Sean reconnects and gives him time to do so. We've got a few questions in the queue, so I'll just get going with it. There's probably three or four questions that are really around your current financial position and your working capital needs, and maybe Judd can answer sort of summarize for our audience a finance plan or a cash flow plan to make sure that you've got the necessary resources to continue and then grow the business beyond the stated cash position.
spk09: Yeah, big plan. I'll try to answer those questions. Yeah, so the end of the quarter with the $6.4 million increase, And we've been watching to make sure our expenses stay very much in line. We actually, if you look at 2020, 2021, and so far, the first two quarters of 2022, our expenses have been fairly close overall. So that's one way that we manage cash very diligently. As I mentioned, we do have the sales. We did sell 1.1 million of assets in the first half. We have another million or so of assets that are held for sale that we expect to collect some of that on. So all these things add to our cash balance, these payments on the building. The biggest chunk that I've already kind of talked about is the $14 million that's still due on the building that we expect to collect in the next two to eight months. So if you add all those together and our current spend rate, to get us up to this initial pilot plant and start generating revenues in 2023. We see that rate takes us all the way through this year and even into the end of 2023 just from those sources of cash. And we haven't really talked about what we expect the revenues to be. We haven't given any guidance on that. We're not planning to do that today, but there will be some revenues coming in. And so that will also be another source of cash. So we feel very confident. It's something we look at very closely. I will mention, too, there's another source of cash out there, it's non-dilutive, that we're very serious about, and those are government grants and government loans. And we've spent a lot of time internally looking at these. We've actually hired consultants who are experts because there's a large amount of these government grants that are available right now that just have become available that very much fit the battery recycling, you know, business model, fits what we're doing. So we're going to be very active going after those things. And those would be, you know, we don't need those necessarily now for our current cash needs. But those would be for when we want to expand and grow, and that's what we're looking at. That's a big source that we're very serious about.
spk06: Thanks again, Judd. And actually, it's a good place to start from your last point on the grants, because we do have a question regarding to grants. So maybe you could give the audience a better understanding of sort of the the milestones that you have to hit or what specific type of grants are available that Aqua Metals would be able to apply for?
spk09: Yeah, so the ones that we're looking at are mainly from the Department of Energy and from the infrastructure money that was passed by Congress and the President last year. Those funds are being funneled through the Department of Energy. There's some other sources, but that's kind of the main one. And there's some very large dollar amounts, you know, $50 million plus that are focused on the battery recycling portion of it. That is the piece that we're looking at. There are some smaller ones that we've looked at from time to time, you know, very small, you know, hundreds of thousands to low billions. You know, if we qualify for those, we'll apply for them. But it's the larger ones. And we're currently in the process of getting through all – like, we understand what some of the criteria are to applying for these in terms of, like, getting certain partnerships in place, getting certain documentation in place. And so we're going through that right now. As they become available, we will apply for them.
spk06: Okay. Thank you for that. Next question is, how does Aquamentals plan to use or to access the 100% renewable energy as discussed in the press release?
spk09: Yeah, so already NV Energy supplies us with a good renewable energy mix. Ben, I believe that's around 30 to 40%.
spk07: It's in the mid-30% range.
spk09: Yeah, so we're getting a core set of renewable energy from that source. But in our drive to make sure that we reach ultimately a net zero recycling operation and company-wide net zero, one of the key first steps is that renewable energy credit area. And that's where, because our process is powered by electricity, we can buy electricity renewable energy credits, which we've already secured. And as I mentioned earlier today, the company is already operating not only the Innovation Center, but our corporate offices on renewable energy through the acquisition of those renewable energy credits. And we think that that's kind of a great, unique advantage to off-refining using the electron as a reagent, because you can't buy renewable energy credits for fossil fuels and things like that, which power the incumbent recycling technologies, or for chemicals, for that matter, in the standard hydro processes. So that is how we have the renewable energy credits set up today, and that's our focus. And we'll be providing more information in the coming weeks and months on AquaMetal's journey and pathway to be a net zero company. And we find that that is going to be a very important aspect because as we engage and talk with potential joint venture partners and feedstock suppliers and offtake partners, that is really any of those companies are all on that same drive towards net zero. And we're going to be the partner of choice, we believe, because we have the ability to achieve net zero, particularly starting with that renewable energy on where we are already as we sit today.
spk06: Perfect. Thank you, Steve. Question about the letter of intent announced earlier today. Can you just take, I guess, the audience through the steps that need to occur from conversion from a LOI to a final legally binding document?
spk09: Yeah, so just from a commercial perspective, I'll comment and then I'll ask Ben to kind of comment on what the technical flow will look like. But on the commercial perspective, the letter of intent is basically the meaning of the minds as far as how we would proceed. And we'll work out the definitive agreement with Dragonfly and that will have details in it about when and how much lithium hydroxide will provide them. And ultimately, what our volume commitment will be over probably a multi-year period. And we'll set up that commercial definitive agreement. We don't anticipate that to take too terribly long. So probably we'll be reporting on that between now and the next quarterly update. And then I'll let Ben speak to the kind of the technical process of how we would get it from the pilot operation over to them and and how that analysis might look.
spk07: Yeah, thanks, Steve. So as we ramp the pilot later this year, that'll allow us to give material to Dragonfly that'll allow them to go through a vendor qualification process. We've already started meeting with them. We've been at joint technical meetings with them where we've discussed specifications, things like that. So we understand their requirements. And again, we see no issues meeting those requirements. Later this year, we should be well on our way on the vendor qualification process to support them going forward.
spk06: Okay, thank you. Next question is, you mentioned the supply of black mass that you've already secured for your pilot plant. Can you talk a little bit more about where that supply comes from and your strategy around a diversified list of suppliers for that black mass?
spk07: Yeah, this is an area where we've been quite aggressive. Above our agreement with Lineco, we have multiple suppliers already qualified, and we have several more that are in the works being qualified. So we've already announced that we've got our feedstocks secured through the next 12 months, and we see that just becoming more and more secure as we go forward. This also has allowed us to prove that our process, our technical process, can work with a variety of different black mass providers. And each one has their own way of processing and developing it. So it's been a great advantage for us to have multiple suppliers on board.
spk06: Thank you, Ben. Question around patents. Can we just update the audience on the aqua refining patents? Are there any patents given a new entry into the lithium ion space and how investors should think about patents and if there's any patent applications for the mining industry?
spk09: So we have always taken our patent portfolio quite seriously and have well over 70 patents that have already been issued and allowed for aqua refining in general. inclusive of which includes portions of the aspects of copper recovery and things like that for the lithium process. But we've also applied for provisionally not only one, which has gone into a pending status, but another set of patent material for the lithium aqua refining suite. So we feel that prosecution of that IP, prosecution being defined as getting the patents issued and allowed, is a critical part of our strategy, particularly in the lithium refining space, because there's going to be many companies that are in this space, and employees move from company to company, and you need to make sure that you very carefully protect your patents. You might find other companies talk about how they have trade secrets. We believe that the value creation and enterprise value ultimately is also in the patent portfolio. We do choose where we put things into the patents, which is where you publish it publicly. and other areas that we do keep as trade secrets on our own. But the core patent is also critical if you're going to be considering licensing the technology in any business transactions. And as I mentioned earlier, with lithium op refining, we intend to operate as a licensor, but also as an operator and a joint venture partner. So that IP portfolio is a very critical aspect of our strategy. And I think it's unique to AquaMetal.
spk06: Perfect. There's no more questions in the online portal. Maybe Sean's back on. We can take his phone question and then, if not, end the call.
spk01: Thank you. We do have a phone question from Sean Severson, Water Tower Research.
spk02: Please go ahead.
spk03: Sean Severson, your line is open. Hello.
spk04: Hello.
spk01: Okay, Mr. Severson, it still sounds like you're in a very poor connection. Thank you.
spk03: Yeah, it looks like we can't hear Sean, unfortunately.
spk01: Okay, there are no further questions. I'll hand the floor back to our speakers for any closing remarks.
spk09: Well, I appreciate everybody joining the call today. Stay tuned for more developments as they happen. And we feel that it's going to be a very busy rest of the summer and fall as we get through the materials that we've taken you through today with the pilot and the deployment in Taiwan and further commercial opportunities that we have on our funnel. And we look forward to reporting those to our shareholders and stakeholders and interested parties. If anybody has questions in the meantime, feel free to contact us, and we look forward to our next quarterly update call. Thanks again.
spk01: Thank you. This concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.
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