5E Advanced Materials, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the 5E Advanced Materials first quarter 2025 shareholder update call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation and prepared remarks, 5E's executive management team will conduct a question and answer session with the company's sell-side research analysts. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to pass the call over to Joe Caminiti in Investor Relations. Joe?

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for the 5E Advanced Materials Fiscal First Quarter 2025 Shareholder Update Conference Call. During this call, management will be referencing our press release and a presentation that can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. For a copy of our press release or the supplemental presentation, you may contact Alpha IR Group at feam at alpha-ir.com or go to our investor relations page on our website. Please turn to slide two of the presentation where we've presented our legal disclaimers. As a reminder, the remarks made on today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including our expectations of future results, future operational initiatives, cost and cost savings, production capacity, capital expenditures and capital savings, market dynamics, liquidity, cash spending, and other items. Our actual results may differ materially or adversely from those projected or discussed in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause the results to differ materially or adversely from these forward-looking statements are contained in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on September 9, 2024, as updated from time to time in our other public filings with the SEC. The company is under no obligation to update forward-looking statements. This afternoon's conference call is hosted by 5E's Chief Executive Officer, Paul Weibel, Vice President of Engineering and Construction, Rob McClain, and Vice President of Commercial Products, Mark Zamek. Management will first lead off the call by making some prepared comments, after which we will open the call open to your questions. Now, please turn to slide three of the presentation for a corporate update. Now, I'll turn the call over to Paul. Paul?

Thank you, Joe. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. When we last spoke a little over two months ago, we laid out a plan for our next strategic steps that would lay the groundwork in two critical areas, our first phase of commercial engineering and the strategy for customer commitment. I'm pleased to say that since our last update, we believe 5E has made meaningful progress across a number of the key focus areas that have the potential to continue to drive our success within these two critical areas. We are getting closer to the realization of critical project advancing catalysts and that we are in a solid position to deliver on our near and longer-term goals while establishing the foundation for sustained shareholder value creation. We want to use this time to ensure we give timely updates to our investors, stakeholders, and the broader market as we prepare ourselves for the calendar year ahead and target a financial investment decision at the end of calendar year 2025. In this quarterly update call, I'm excited to be joined by two of 5E's senior leaders who are helping advance the company through its strategic roadmap. Today, you'll get the chance to hear from Rod McLean, who serves as our Vice President of Engineering and Construction, as well as Mark Zamek, who serves as Vice President of Commercial Products. Both Rod and Mark are serving in vital capacities within 5E's development, and we're excited at the opportunity to familiarize our shareholders and broader stakeholders with what they are accomplishing now and on a go-forward basis. Each will give you some prepared marks on their respective focal areas across our operational and commercial strategies, and will be alongside me to answer additional questions in our live Q&A session. First, on slide four, I'd like to provide the market with a brief State of the Union on our 5E Boron Americas project as well as the company. This update will include our small scale facility, first phase of commercial engineering, and commercial efforts. As we announced last month, we've made solid steps forward in our plant level operations. This is evidenced most notably by our plant team achieving steady state operating rates with much improved purity for boric acid production and sustainably removing calcium and other metal salts. We have overcome the initial maintenance headwinds from the previous quarter and the growing pains of starting up our facility as operations leadership has applied significant focus and operational rigor to drive improved and consistent operating rates. Specifically, our operations team has worked to improve the overall production process by redesigning and improving the facility's conveyor systems that had previously caused bottlenecks. optimizing the boric acid belt filter feed rates after testing various options to increase purity and yield, programming our crystallization unit such that distillation occurs on a continuous basis, and installing new spray nozzles on our belt filter such that we have optimized flow and have kept sulfur rates below 100 ppm. These were important steps as they have improved boric acid consistency and overall product quality. as well as help to ensure that we can consistently exceed the specifications required for our prospective customers. This effort resulted in a major company milestone last week when we delivered our first truckload of boric acid super sacs to a Western U.S. customer. As disclosed in our press release, we are steadily producing one short ton per day of boric acid, an operating level that was chosen strategically as it optimizes for two of our most critical needs. Firstly, this operating rate is at a level that produces adequate sample product that allows 5E to support our ongoing customer qualification process. Thus far, feedback we have received from interested and prospective customers has been increasingly positive. Second, we believe this production rate strikes the ideal balance for our operating costs relative to our existing liquidity profile. to ensure we are utilizing our cash resources in an optimal fashion as we advance the data collection for our commercial strategy. We've been intently focused on optimizing our organizational plans, striking a sensible balance between scaling up operations and making sure we get the most value out of our capital resources. We have been diligent in our efforts to eliminate unnecessary costs and the burden of any overhead that isn't properly aligned with the company's needs. Part of these efforts, we recently underwent a strategic reduction in workforce to optimize our team, reduce fixed and variable operating costs, and find greater efficiency at current production levels. We estimate this initiative would allow us to save approximately $2.2 million in operating expenditures in the upcoming calendar year. This brings me to our initial discussion on our decision-making and go-forward planning specific to our byproduct strategy. Since I assumed the CEO role in June, we have continued to analyze various byproducts from an economic, technical, and operational lens. Specifically, the two main byproducts of focus have been gypsum and calcium chloride. At this stage, we have made the decision to pursue a calcium chloride byproduct, include this in our commercial basis of design, and work towards partnership and offtake with multiple strategic players. Holistically, we believe it makes strategic, and synergistic sense given the positives that we'll outline shortly. With that said, I'll turn the call over to Rod, who will outline the rationale behind this decision and provide an update on our roadmap to FID.

Thanks, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin my remarks on slide number six, if you would turn to that. As we assessed calcium chloride, our analysis focused on the pillars of technical and operational ease. logistics, commercial, and economic variables relative to gypsum. After laying out the pros and cons, we firmly believe moving forward with our calcium chloride is the optimum direction for the company. Calcium chloride is now included in our commercial basis of design. At commercial scale, we have targeted selling 38% calcium chloride in solutions And this is based on market feedback and initial samples provided to customers. Our market research has identified solid demands for this in the southwestern United States as it supports various industrial and agricultural industries. At a basic level, calcium chloride is used for dust control, de-icing, is commercially commonly utilized in oil and gas and used in various food and agricultural applications. From a technical perspective, maintaining and selling calcium chloride in solution is a simpler process when compared to refining a high-grade gypsum. Operationally, we believe this focus on calcium chloride will allow us to reduce head count at a commercial scale reduce complexity of having to produce two high-grade solid in large quantities, improve safety given that we will not have to utilize sulfuric acid, and yield less maintenance costs and requirements. More importantly, however, is that we anticipate achieving about a 15% reduction in commercial CapEx as this focus has the potential to reduce the amount of solid handling equipment required to produce gypsum and simplify our design. These anticipated capital and cost savings, coupled with what we believe to be a strong commercial market that can drive cash costs competitive with gypsum, have supported our strategic decision to move forward with calcium chloride. Next, if you'd move to slide seven, I'd like to take a moment to discuss our progress for our commercial design and the next critical steps and timeline expected for the next 12 months as we look to achieve FID. The first phase of commercial engineering continues to progress well with material project documents established. These include our project management system, project charter, project strategy, a detailed risk register, and a project execution plan. Now with the intention to scope, optimize, and reduce capex by incorporating calcium chloride into our basis of design, we now anticipate receiving our capital estimate from Fluor no later than spring 2025. Obtaining the capital estimate will then drive a refresh of our technical report before we stage gate to Fel III. also known as feed engineering. We anticipate the feed engineering process will be a seven to eight month process, which will allow us to target financial investment decision in the late calendar year 2025. I'll now pass the call over to Mark to discuss our commercial progress and strategy. Mark.

Thanks, Rod. First, let me express that I'm excited to be a part of this company as a seasoned participant in the boron value chain, and I believe 5e is a well-positioned new entrant to the marketplace. I'll begin my remarks on slide eight. As Paul mentioned, last week we completed a major milestone and delivered our first truckload of product to a customer in the western United States. Our first truckload sale was comprised of 22 super sacks and will be a credit against small scale facility operating costs. Additionally, we also successfully shipped a super sack to a large domestic cellulose insulation manufacturer for testing purposes. As we think about our commercial development, our strategy will be to focus on customer segmentation by targeting customers with high margin profiles and with low cost to serve. At commercial phase one, we only have 90,000 tons of production, with this production level creating increased optionality as we can be highly selective on where we allocate those first 90,000 tons. Our intended customer base will support industries that include wind energy, LCD glass, insulation, traditional oil and gas, cellulose insulation, and construction. There are so many industries where boric acid is critical, and we believe we have the luxury to be selective. Recently, we hired Kenneth Hu as Vice President of Commercial Products Asia. Kenneth will serve as my counterpart with a specific focus on the Asia Pacific market. Kenneth also carries multiple decades of meaningful and direct experience in the global sales and marketing of borates for both producers and consumers. We believe the addition of Kenneth to our team aligns directly with our expanded commercial strategy. By also targeting the APAC region, we have the opportunity to conduct another layer of strategic market segmentation for our volumes, ensuring that we have a solid balance of diversification across a consistent growing demand and robust pricing profile. This aligns well as we strategically target customers that carry high margins and low overall costs to serve both in APAC and here domestically. As a West Coast project with a logistical advantage to California ports, the strategy to service the APAC region is aligned with 5E's goals. For context, Asia constitutes the largest center for global borates demand, and we believe the market is opportunity rich with many potential buyers and targeted industries. Success in this market can create expanded pathways for significant long-term returns for our business. While to date, our commercial focus has largely been applied toward U.S.-based customers, our broader strategy and vision calls for 5E to be a global leader, and that means we need to ensure we are participating everywhere there is solid demand for our production capabilities. Between Kenneth and I, 5E now has the ability to geographically cover more than 80% of the global break demand. This will be a key strategic driver, and we're excited with a quick success we have seen with our efforts. With a firm strategy for targeting customers, our attention now turns towards heads of agreement and offtake agreements to firm up our pipelines with bankable customers. We currently have a line of sight to offtake to the first 25 to 50% of our 90,000 tons, and we are targeting having tonnage committed for the full phase two by spring of 2025. Having these types of agreements in hand will strengthen and establish a greater degree of predictability to five E's forward economics, which in turn improves our ability to obtain the required capital to finance the project. We believe that offtake agreements and HOAs that go above and beyond our first 90,000 tons will strengthen 5E's legitimacy in the market as a global operator, demonstrate the confidence customers have in our business, and the need for 5E to come online at commercial scale. In turn, we anticipate that successful execution in this arena can solidify a pathway to long-term shareholder value creation, de-risk the overall corporate profile, and further strengthen 5E's legitimacy as an investable entity in global capital markets. I look forward to keeping our shareholders and stakeholders updated on our commercial progress as we move forward. And with that, I will pass the presentation back to Paul.

Thanks, Mark. Now turning to slide eight, I'll spend a few moments speaking to our capital and funding strategy. During our last earnings call in September, we noted that 5E had submitted its initial application to the Export-Import Bank of the United States for a loan-back guarantee for project debt financing. During the quarter, we received a non-binding letter of intent that outlined the potential for the creation of a $285 million debt facility that would backstop a private sector loan or capital commitment as part of XM's made in america initiative the potential debt funding guarantee if obtained is expected to cover a substantial portion of our development capital needs for phase one of our commercial project achieving this loi from xm is a very important step towards getting the project financed at the best terms additionally the loi potentially enhances our credit profile providing a possible means to securing the capital necessary to construct a commercial facility and positions us in our goal to produce for customers and generate cash flow at phase one commercial. Our next step in ensuring that we utilize this positive development from XM is to submit our formal application to XM, which is expected to come shortly after the company completes our first phase of commercial engineering design in early 2025. While this development marks a solid step forward in our funding strategy, we note that this is just one avenue that we are pursuing and that our multi-pronged approach to tap federal funding apparatuses and other non-dilutive royalty structures and other private capital sources for both shorter-term and longer-term capital solutions remains open and ongoing. We continue to pursue multiple funding resources through our open applications to the U.S. government, specifically with the U.S. Department of Defense in association with the DPA, as well as open applications submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy. While we await further clarity on the status of these funding applications, we continue to advocate for congressional backing and its support of domestically produced boron and its derivative products. Additionally, we continue to work with our partners in Washington to increase the likelihood of boron's inclusion on the USGS's critical minerals list, which would further strengthen 5E's ability to tap federal funding and finance 5E for commercial production. I'll wrap up my prepared remarks with a summary here. In just a few short months, 5E has made significant progress on some of the most critical elements of our strategy and go-forward plan. Our production levels of boric acid at our small-scale facility have achieved consistency and stability, coinciding with an improvement in overall quality. We are producing at levels that optimize for the needs of our ongoing and advancing customer qualification process, as well as our current liquidity profile. Given the unique attributes of our ore body, we will now include calcium chloride as a byproduct in the basis of design for phase one of commercial engineering. This, in turn, is expected to simplify our operations and reduce capex, where we expect to establish a stronger IRR profile for the business. We are making solid advancements in our commercial strategy and have been able to utilize the improved production levels and increased product quality to build a more robust and strengthened customer pipeline. We've been shipping larger volumes of boric acid to an expanded level of interested and potential customers, consistently meeting their desired specs, and have successfully sold our first full truckload of super sacks. We firmed up our strategy to segment customers and are making solid advancements towards securing offtake agreements with a collection of customers that each sell into industries with significant growth potential and robust long-term demand forecasts. We have improved our commercial team with the addition of two highly skilled professionals who each bring multiple decades of experience in the global borates market and possess the necessary commercial relationships to help us execute effectively across our commercial strategy and maximize the economics of production capabilities. We've expanded our commercial focus into the APAC region where roughly 60% of the global demand stems from and between the US and APAC. We cover approximately 80% of global demand. While we are seeing solid support from U.S. federal agencies and domestic consumers of boron and its specialty derivatives, we are working to ensure that we participate wherever our product and capabilities command the greatest degree of value. We're going to be a global business, and that means 5E is going to pursue global demand that maximizes our profitability while fostering sustained shareholder value creation. We have line of sight on offtake agreements for approximately 25 to 50% of our first 90,000 tons, and we are working to commit tonnage for phase two by the spring of 2025. And finally, we have seen progress being made across our capital funding strategy. We've been utilizing the funds from our prior capital raise to advance our most critical initiatives, operationally and commercially, and position the company to deliver on pre-feed engineering work and an updated PFS in 2025. We succeeded in obtaining an LOI from EXIM that could provide the credit enhancement support for a meaningful project debt facility that would cover a significant portion of our commercial capex. In the near term, we expect the following catalysts to include finalizing initial offtake and heads of agreements for both boric acid and calcium chloride. Next, the shipment of 18 tons of boric acid across the Pacific Ocean that will undergo tank testing at a large global specialty glass manufacturer, capturing additional offtake agreements from customers that are advancing in our pipeline. And last, the final capex estimate in 2025, which we expect to be meaningfully lower than the previous estimate in our prior technical report. We're excited about the progress made in just a few short months and look forward to keeping the market informed of the upcoming developments in near-term value unlocking catalysts. As always, I'd like to thank the entire 5e Advanced Materials team for their hard work and contributions as we seek to build long-term value for our shareholders. With that, we will open up the call to your questions. Operator?

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Once again, please press star one if you have a question or a comment. First question comes from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed.

Thank you. On the first truckload of 22 Super Saks, I mean, is that first truckload sale, you said, so first revenue in this current quarter? Is that correct?

That is correct, Kate. 22 Super Saks, and then we're not going to report the revenue at this time. It'll be ultimately a credit back against production costs of the small-scale facility, and as you can see in this quarter, we're now starting to break out fixed and operating OPEX in one line on the income statement.

how will that work legit? But is it still, I mean, do you get a check from the entity that you supplied it to? But then the accounting, it's just a credit against that, the cost.

Correct. Yeah. No, those, those super sacks are monetized and kind of as alluded on the last call, you know, you can use 22, you know, it's 22 super sacks. And so each month, you know, you kind of, We can toggle production rates, but if product's not going out specifically for our customer qualification, we're still running. And so we'll look to strategically make sales at optimal prices and realize the value.

And then you mentioned potential catalysts going forward, the 18-ton shipment for tank testing. Is that customer qualification as opposed to a sale?

Correct. That'll be customer qualification. And in that situation, that customer, you know, we obviously will be providing the product. Hopefully there's offtake behind that. And then that customer is taking care of the freight.

Are you currently at the small scale facility currently producing calcium chloride? Did you say, or is that more of an engineering effort going forward for the phase one product?

So we've actually produced it in smaller quantities in our lab. You know, once you isolate the calcium and you remove the metal salts, it would be a matter of adding more HCl. But the small-scale facility today was designed for gypsum, and that's what it's producing today. Okay.

And that lasts up to the seven- to eight-month timeline for the feed engineering process. study, is that consistent with what you thought about in terms of the feed for the last couple of years in terms of the timeline?

Yeah, I think, listen, we needed to get firm on our byproducts. We needed to know that is a gypsum or calcium chloride. And once we kind of lifted that veil and we did the market study and we did the pros and the cons, at that point in time, it's like, we can kind of really truly run. We've been running on the boric acid side, but now, you know, this slightly changes the design a bit, but I mean, in the overall scheme of things, it's a pretty me, we expect it to be a decent reduction in capex. And so once you can kind of stage gate and your PSDs and your P&IDs are completely locked down, No change is going to ensue. Then you stage gate into cell three. You reduce any change orders, and you let four and our owner's team really run.

Thank you, Paul. Once again, if you have a question or a comment, please indicate so by pressing star one on your touchtone phone. Once again, that's star one if you have a question or a comment. We have a follow-up coming from Tate Sullivan. Tate, please proceed.

Great. Thanks. What did you mean when you say you can cover 80% of the BOR8 demand? Does that mean you have touch points with customers globally accounting for that 80%?

Mark, do you want to take this one?

Yeah, sure, Paul. So the BOR8 market is dominated by The Asia Pacific market, China being a big part of that, and the U.S. market. So when we say we're covering 80% of the global market for borates, we have a representative that we've hired a couple weeks ago, Ken Atu, who has 17 years experience from Rio Tinto, and he's handling our Asia market for us. That's 60% of the total offtake globally for borates. And I'm managing the U.S. market, which is 20% of the global offtake for borate. So between the two of us, we'll have, yeah, touch points and customer contacts across those two geographic regions, totaling 80% of the total global borate market. And the reason we've kind of focused our resources in that way is because those are not only high demand markets, but low cost to serve markets and high margin markets. Markets like Europe have very high cost to serve, high regulatory pathways to get product into Europe and very low price points. So we're not focusing on Europe, likewise with South America. So we've chosen to basically optimize our approach to cover APAC and the U.S. to maximize shareholder value for 5E. Okay, great.

And then going, Paul, for the financials going forward, the operating costs for the facility in 3Q, is that a normal operation? You said from here you'll have deductions in that operating cost level, or will that line item be consistent given the one ton per day, one ton output?

Yeah, so it'll be consistent with what you saw in Q1, but obviously we made the strategic reduction kind of optimize what the team looks like and, you know, quantity of operators per shift, also some maintenance personnel as we've just, you know, as we've gotten six months in, we've just gotten more efficient. And so, you know, that should be kind of similar to a little bit less. And then any sales of products as we progress would be credited against that. So it'll be that to see. it should improve kind of quarter over quarter.

I see. And just a couple more modeling questions. How many pounds per sack, roughly, of boric acid?

That's an interesting question because we've been kind of working through finding the right super sack. You're basically right at these were kind of 1,700 to 1,800. Obviously, it's 22. We'd like it to be a perfect... 2000 pounds, which is the, you know, us equivalent of a one short time. Uh, we've now kind of identified a super sec that is quite ideal. So, uh, you know, the plan on a, on a daily basis can, can hit that one time. And so, uh, you know, that should be the ideal target would be 2000, but this first one was like about 1750 would probably be your average.

Okay, well, thank you. And then maybe a little too early given, I mean, the feed will come with integrating the calcium chloride, but I mean, have you roughly with one ton of boric acid production, what would the potential yield of calcium chloride be to be determined in terms of the volume?

No, so I can speak to that right now. And we're kind of seeing it with our mass balances. So on a pure kind of, It's probably on a 100% calcium chloride basis, you're a little bit like less than one for one. You know, you're probably, because this is, and I look at this more on the 90,000, but for every 90,000 tons of boric acid we'll produce, we'll produce about 75,000 tons of pure calcium chloride. at a hundred percent so then when you obviously that's not how it's sold it's sold in 38 which is diluted down with water so it you know you're approximately like 190 000 on that commercial scale on a tonnage basis so uh you know where we would look like is if we something we'll assess plants designed for gypsum we kind of want to focus on the boron uh But down the road, we're going to take a look at, hey, can we get the calcium chloride out of that small-scale facility? And if that would be the case at a ton a day, you're probably maybe two tons in solution, give or take, on the calcium chloride side. Okay.

All right. Thank you for answering all my questions. Have a good night.

No problem.

We have no further questions in queue. I'd like to turn the floor back to Paul Weevil for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for your time and interest in 5e Advanced Materials, Inc. We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us as the newest BORIC asset producer in the world. We have a proven asset and a strategy to modularly expand the asset over the next several years. Our commercial and operational strategies are advancing. We're capturing a growing level of regulatory and government support, which has helped create additional low-cost funding pathways. We're looking forward to sharing this journey with all of you in the upcoming quarters. Thank you, and have a great day.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.