Largo Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Largo's fourth quarter and full year 2022 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please limit it to two questions. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Alex Guthrie, Senior Manager of External Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our fourth quarter and annual 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. On the call today is Danielle Talicea, Largo's interim CEO and director, Ernest Cleave, Largo's chief financial officer, and Paul Vallant, Largo's VP of commercial. To accompany the call today, we've uploaded a supplemental webcast presentation, which is available on our website at LargoInc.com. Our annual 2022 financial statements related MD&A and most recent AIF are also available on the website, as well as on CDAR and EDGAR. Before continuing the call, I would like to remind you all that some of the information you will hear during today's discussion will consist of forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding future business outlook. Please refer to slide two for a full description of the company's cautionary notes. The agenda for our call today is as follows. Daniel will provide an update on the company's Q4 and year-end progress with an outlook for the year ahead, followed by Ernest who will provide an overview of our fourth quarter and annual financial results, and Paul will close the call with an update on the company's sales and trading progress, the vanadium market, and an update on Largo physical vanadium. Following these updates, we will then open the call for questions. We ask that participants restrict their questions to two and then re-queue if there are additional questions to allow others the opportunity to participate. So with that, I'll now turn the call over to Daniel.

Thank you, Alex, and good morning and good afternoon for those here in Toronto and elsewhere across the globe. As you know, we're going to be discussing our four-quarter and year 2022 results today. Let me start with slide number five. 2022 was a challenging 12 months for us, and it led to an underperformance on both production and cost metrics. In Q4, we produced just over 2,000 metric tons of P205 at a cash cost excluding royalties of $515 per pound. As we noted previously in our pre-reported operational update in January, Q4 production was heavily affected by abnormally high rainfall in December, which flooded the peat and made it difficult to access for ore. We typically have sufficient stockpiles to have a cease with unexpected impacts to the various checkpoints along our operational route. However, our mining contractor transition in September resulted in a lack of stockpiles to help mitigate the impact of heavy rains. These impacts, when combined with preventive and corrected maintenance on the plant facility in Q1-22 and the plant kiln and cooler refractory reinforcement in Q3-22, made for a less than favorable annual production of just over 10,400 tons of B205 at an annual cash operating cost excluding royalties or $5.57 per pound. Production came in 6% below our revised production guidance, and cash costs were 2% above our revised cash cost guidance for 2022. Unfortunately, downspills effect from the rainfall in December continue to impact production in January and February. Despite these impacts, we expect to remain in line with the quarterly production guidance for Q1 2023, likely landing closer to the midpoint of 2050 tons or just under. Since I started assuming the role of interim CEO by mid last month, I have spent a fair bit of time with our operations team in Maracas. And I am very optimistic about the expected improvements in production levels for the remaining of the year. We expect a 10% increase in production in 2023 over 2022, which includes an aggressive high purity vanadium production plan to meet the increased demand and expect to sell over 25 of our production into this sector in 2023. To support this production growth, management changes have been implemented in Maracas, including the promotion of Mr. Álvaro Resende from operation director to CEO of our Brazilian operations and projects. Álvaro has spent the last seven years at our operations in Maraca, and he has the full support of our operations team to get the job done. Cost management is a tough priority for Largo, and we expect cash costs, including royalties, to decrease as the year progresses. With half of the year in 2023 costs being closer to the lower end of our reported guidance range or 485 through 525 per pound of B2O5 sold. Due to elevated operating costs and working capital requirements, as well as growth cap is related to our Illmanite plan, we secure additional working capital facilities in December and January to effectively manage our cash need during this the first half of the year. However, we are in the process of implementing cost control procedures, including an analysis of productivity to identify areas of business where we can reduce costs and improve performance. Today, we're already seeing distribution costs ease and expect to recognize some additional cost savings on some of our key consumables these years. I will let Ernest to discuss these matters in detail later on the call. This is a good moment also to discuss some of our expected catalysts in our key priorities for the remainder of the year. In addition to growing production level this year and increasing our vanadium sales in the high purity sector, Largo Illmanite plans remains on track for completion and is expected to generate a new revenue source for the company. We anticipate providing guidance on Illmanite production for the year closer to the completion of the plan starting in the second half of the year. We also remain on track with the completion of our inaugural BRFP deployment for Enel Green Power in Spain and ship the remaining 612 electrolyte storage containers in early 2023. Provisional acceptance, which includes the completion of our operational testing by Enel, is expected to be completed by the end of May 2023. Also, as Largo Clean Energy and Ansaldo Green Tech continues to focus on the formation of a joint venture for the manufacturing and commercial deployment of BRFDs in the European, African, and Middle East power generation market, as noted in an operational update in January, the company previously announced MOUs has been extended to March 31, 2023 to allow for the negotiation and entering into a joint venture and other ancillary agreements. I think it's safe to say that the manufacture and installation of our first battery project was a significant learning curve for the team at LCE. As you are aware, we have encountered some delays with this deployment, but we are confident that this first battery project will be a crucial step forward for our clean energy business. And we anticipate that the completion of this project will present additional deployment opportunities in the future. With one of our most advanced VRFB technologies and a technical team that is among the most knowledgeable in the industry, we are confident that we have one of the best long-duration solutions in the world. I think it is important to note that we continue to receive and address various inquiries of our product from significant players in the sector. both in the US and in Europe. As our negotiation with Ansaldo progress and we finalize installation of our battery in Spain, I hope to share more with you regarding developments of LCE very soon. Lastly, I want to touch on Largo's continuous focus on ESG principles at the company. We continue to improve our overall ESG performance and public disclosure in 2022, and this is reflected in additional improved ratings and scores. This is most evident in our Standard & Poor's Global CSA rating, having improved approximately by 38% placing the company in the top quartile of its mining peer group for 2022. We look forward to issuing our fifth consecutive sustainability report at the start of the second half of this year. I would like to reiterate our focus to returning to steady state operations and cost management as we experienced in previous banner years. This year, I believe Largo is an inflection point as our production begins strengthening and more of our units are placed in the premium markets. Our Clean Energy Division continues to focus on delivering our first BRFV in Spain, which we believe will unlock additional potential for additional deployments in the future. This time, at an opportune time, as vanadium demand remains quite strong, the long-term market fundamentals for the commodity looks extremely attractive, driven by the resurgence in demand from the aerospace sector and from new deployments and capacity addition for new deployment of DRFBs. As we embark on the next chapter at Largo, I am confident we have the right team in place, and I look forward to assisting the company in advancing our strategy while the board continues its search for a permanent CEO. Underpinned by significant growth in vanadium demand, as we continue the execution on our two-pillar strategy as a Tier 1 vanadium supplier with an emerging clean energy business, I sincerely believe that they will close the valuation gap for Largo and offer considered upside opportunity for new and existing shareholders of the company. With that, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Ernest Cleave, to review our financial performance for the quarter and the year. Ernest.