Lightbridge Corporation

And welcome to the LightBridge Corporation Business Update and First Quarter 2021 Conference Call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matthew Abinati, Director of Investor Relations for LightBridge Corporation.

Thank you, Catherine, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. The company's earnings release was distributed after the market closed yesterday. and can be viewed on the Investor Relations page of the Lightbridge website at www.ltbridge.com. Joining us on the call today is Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer, along with Larry Goldman, Chief Financial Officer, Sherry Holloway, Accounting Manager, Andrei Mushikov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations, and Jim Fornoff, Vice President for Nuclear Program Manager. I would like to remind our listeners that any statements on this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about the company's competitive position and product and service offerings. During today's call, words such as expect, anticipate, believe, and intend will be used in our discussion of goals or events in the future. This presentation is based on current expectations and involves certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ significantly from such estimates. These and other risks are set forth in more detail in LightBridge's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. LightBridge does not assume any obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to our first speaker, Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer of LightBridge. Hello, Seth.

Well, hello, Matt, and thank you. Thank you all for joining us to discuss LightBridge's first quarter 2021 results. We enter 2021 on a very positive trajectory in terms of our fuel development activities, highlighted by our announcement yesterday that we have successfully demonstrated our proprietary manufacturing process for three-lobe, six-foot rods using surrogate materials. The surrogate rods were manufactured through our co-extrusion process at a length designed for small modular reactors, or SMRs. Andrei Mushakov will provide an overview of this process after my remarks. This manufacturing is important for LightBridge for many reasons. We are beginning to physically produce rods utilizing our technology. Between production of rods and our two gain vouchers, This is all beginning to move to tangible products that are backed by our extensive patent portfolio. We are designing light bridge fuel to enable small modular reactors to more efficiently load follow, ramping up and down in power as renewables are available, replacing fossil fuel plants. In addition, we expect this technology to reduce the cost of generating electricity from an SMR which strengthens the business case for deploying large numbers of SMRs to deliver reliable power and meet climate goals. Our development steps are also applicable to the existing large light water reactors. Last month, DOE awarded LightBridge a second gain funding voucher to support development of LightBridge fuel in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, PNNL. The scope of the project is to demonstrate LightBridge's casting process using depleted uranium, a key step in the manufacture of LightBridge fuel. The total project value is approximately $664,000 with three-quarters of this amount funded by DOE for the scope performed by PNNL. We expect the project will begin later this quarter. We are pleased with our ongoing efforts at Idaho National Lab, or INL, performing under our funding voucher from the Department of Energy's GAIN program. We are designing an experiment for testing our fuel samples in the Advanced Test Reactor at INL. We anticipate our work under this voucher will be completed in the second half of this year. Being awarded two funding vouchers by the federal government through the DOE with access to their teams of experts and world-class facilities, which are unmatched in the private sector, allows LightBridge to take meaningful strides in our fuel development program. In addition, these funding awards further validate our patented fuel and patented manufacturing process, fitting in strategically with the goals of the federal government. We are seeing an increasing understanding in the Biden administration that nuclear energy must increase to meet the administration's zero emission goals. In fact, you may have seen news reports that tax subsidies for existing nuclear facilities might be included in the upcoming infrastructure bill. It's becoming clearer that there is a paradigm shift in the way governments around the world are looking at nuclear power. In the last year, the U.S. government, through the Nuclear Fuel Working Group, outlined a bold plan that commits to federal funding of R&D for advanced nuclear energy, as well as lifting of the ban on investment by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation into advanced nuclear energy projects for export. From there, the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act was included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last fall, focusing DOE efforts on demonstration of advanced reactor concepts, including nuclear fuel technology. And this month, the European Commission announced that it will include nuclear energy in the European Union taxonomy regulation, which steers investment into low-carbon projects. All of these developments matter in setting the stage for attracting greater investment in nuclear energy technology development. Investors in nuclear tend to follow government actions when leveraging their investments, so we expect these changes will lead to more meaningful investment in the nuclear power industry. LightBridge presents a unique opportunity in the nuclear industry. Our fuel design marks the only truly new fuel design since the dawn of light water reactors in the nuclear industry. These are significant changes that will bring significant safety and economic benefits for both existing and new reactors. In many ways, light-bridge fuel can help the nuclear power industry reduce the costs of generating electricity and operating nuclear plants. Over the long run, we expect a transition from most nuclear energy being generated in large reactors to much more generation from larger numbers of small, modular reactors powered by light-rich fuels, offering superior ramp rates for load following with renewables, while providing a meaningful increase in power output. And with that, I will turn the call over to Andrei Mushakov, Executive VP for Nuclear Operations, who will update us on some recent news and review our near-term research and development opportunities. Andrei?