Electra Battery Materials Corporation

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Elektra Battery Materials Corporation Q2 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Joe Racanelli, Vice President, Investor Relations with Elektra Battery Materials Corporation. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. This is Elektra's first conference call, and we'll be making this a regular occurrence, and it's a reflection of how we continue on growing as a company. Dave Kuntz, Before we begin in turn to call over to try email electricity, I want to point out that we filed our materials and they're available both on seed or net car, as well as our website today, we will be using a presentation. Dave Kuntz, That presentation is also available on our website for those who called the dialed in on under the events section of our website at electro bmc.com. We will be making for looking statements in the safe harbor provisions of those are outlined in our presentation on page two. At the end of today's call, we will have a Q amp a sessions for analysts with accredited firms and for investors who do want to have follow up questions with trainer myself, please let us know we'll be happy to to reply afterwards. So with me today are Trent, as you can see on slide three, is Trent Mill, company CEO. We have Mark Trevizal, who's VP of project development, Craig Cunningham, who recently joined us as chief financial officer, and in Idaho today is Dan Pace, our principal geologist. Mark is at the refinery, and Trent, Craig, and I are here in Toronto. So we've got indication of how we are growing and how we are spread out as a company. So with that, Trent, take over, please.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our call today. So before we open the call up to questions from the analyst community, I do want to highlight here on page four some of our highlights, and then we'll do a round robin with the people that Joe has introduced. So some key developments for us listed here. It's been a busy one. We've hired four new executives to the senior leadership team, many, many more through the ranks, particularly under Mark's watch, building out the refinery. And obviously, commissioning of the refinery project has remained the big focus and the primary focus of our cash resources as well. In tandem with that, though, we've got other developments that are outlined on the next slide. I'll cover in a moment our ESG strategy that's come to the fore for us. And it's also worth noting the exploration work that we've been doing at Idaho, which is finally getting the attention it deserves. In addition to that, we've got developments on recycling at the same MET site as the cobalt plant. We've got news on our nickel study, and of course, potential expansions, expected expansions, in my opinion, in Baie-Concours, Quebec. So I think this progress you can see here in the summary makes it pretty clear we're executing against the strategy as laid out, and let's get into it a little bit further. So slide five, if we may. ESG, it's got to be part of our DNA, right? If we're making zero emission vehicles, then it's our duty, it's our imperative to make the production process as low carbon as possible. And so we've hired Renata Cardoso. She was a sustainability leader at Valley, known around the world. She joined us as VP Sustainability Low Carbon at Q2, and she's already implemented quite a few initiatives for us. Working currently on a sustainability report, it will be our first, and we'll have that towards the end of the year. And I think towards the end of the year, you'll also see a little bit of a roadmap for us on how we expect to attain net zero ourselves. Other achievements, the signing of a benefits agreement with the Métis Nation of Ontario, one of our neighbors up near the refinery. I hope and expect that's the first of many. And the point of these benefit agreements is to ensure mutually beneficial opportunities. There's development, jobs, contracting, and the like. And we've also got a new suite of ESG policies that can be found on our website. So if we turn from there over to slide six, there's just a picture of the refinery. Mark Trevisio, VP Project Development, is now gonna take the call and lead you through the status of that project.