Lightbridge Corporation

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the LightBridge Corporation Business Update Conference Call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matthew Evanenti, Director of Investor Relations for LightBridge Corporation.

Thank you, Liz, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Joining us on the call is Seth Gray, Chief Executive Officer, along with Andrei Mushikov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations. and Jim Fornoff, Vice President for Nuclear Program Management. 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 in 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 that differ significantly from such estimates. These and other risks are set forth in more detail in Lightbridge's filings 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, and thank you, Matt. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are in the process of finalizing our audit and fiscal year 2021 financial results, which is why we have not yet issued our earnings press release. We anticipate that our results will be completed and disseminated in a press release next week, and in any event will not be issued late. At Lightbridge, we go on and have excellent progress to report, but we are mindful that this is a tumultuous time including nuclear power facilities in Ukraine under threat by Russia's military, endangering people in our industry there, and of course, so many other people. LightBridge reached many goals in 2021 that will support our long-term upward trajectory. We completed our first gain voucher with Idaho National Lab to develop the experiments to irradiate material samples of LightBridge metallic fuel in the advanced test reactor. We also began work on our second gain voucher in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Lab to demonstrate our casting process using depleted uranium, a key step in the manufacture of light-rich fuel. We anticipate completing this work in the second half of 2022. We successfully demonstrated our proprietary manufacturing process using our high-temperature co-extrusion process for three-lobe, six-foot-length surrogate rods, which is the typical length of the fuel rods used by small modular reactors now in development and licensing. Performing these initial fabrication development activities with actual nuclear-grade zirconium alloy and with surrogate materials instead of uranium allows us to use a broad range of suppliers and is a cost-effective approach since it doesn't require procuring uranium material. Andre will discuss these items shortly. As part of our fuel development work, we expanded our patent portfolio by successfully obtaining seven new patents in 2021 in the United States and in key foreign countries. As of December 31st, 2021, we held five U.S. patents and more than 140 foreign patents with 15 pending patent applications. These patents helped safeguard our intellectual property which is an integral component of the company's plans to monetize lightbridge fuel technology in the future. We anticipate that fuel development milestones over the next couple of years will include an agreement to manufacture our nuclear fuel material samples for capsule irradiation in a test reactor, while continuing to develop and optimize our nuclear fuel manufacturing processes using depleted or natural uranium, and initiating the design and manufacturing of a multi-lobe fuel rod with enriched uranium for fuel irradiation experiments in a test reactor. We are actively working with the U.S. government and the private sector to reach these key milestones. The benefits of nuclear energy have come into focus over the last year like never before. Accountability for achieving the net zero carbon targets being set by countries and companies around the world continues to drive the momentum toward more nuclear industry-friendly policy decisions. The horror in Ukraine, and before that, the energy crises experienced in some parts of the world, have amplified concerns from policymakers about energy security. These unfortunate events have only amplified the fact that energy security and energy infrastructure will be meaningful priorities which bodes well for nuclear power. Only nuclear power can expand the availability of clean and reliable baseload electricity without carbon emissions while weaning countries off dependency on fossil fuels from countries that threaten their national security. There is a growing consensus that nuclear power, with its clean emissions profile, reliable and secure baseload capability, and low levelized cost, will play a major role in achieving decarbonization goals. Throughout 2021, the United States, as well as the United Kingdom and France, reaffirmed their commitments to nuclear power by developing plans to support their existing reactor bases and are currently reviewing their policies to encourage even more nuclear capacity. In fact, the European Union demonstrated strong support for nuclear energy by agreeing in principle to include certain nuclear energy activities in its taxonomy for sustainable finance. Its inclusion will identify nuclear power as a climate-friendly investment and could result in increased investment in nuclear power technology. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's annual Regulatory Information Conference was held this week. We were heartened by Commissioner Barron's speech in which he gave strong support for the effort within the NRC to move toward technology-neutral, performance-based regulations for advanced nuclear fuels. Next week, I'll participate in an important session at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Dr. Sheta Chakraborty, who is an independent member of Lightbridge's Board of Directors and chairs our ESG committee, will lead this session. She also serves as president of U.S. Operations at We Don't Have Time, the world's largest climate action review platform dedicated to connecting key thought leaders about climate change initiatives. Part of my message that I look forward to conveying is that Lightbridge is a clean tech company because nuclear is a clean tech energy industry. With this technology that Lightbridge is bringing, We think many more people can start to see it that way too. Lightbridge Fuel addresses concerns that people have about nuclear power and together with small modular reactors can really help nuclear power grow and help others accept nuclear as a clean tech industry. It makes us stand out because as far as we can find, Lightbridge is the only pure play listed nuclear company in the world. While this is a time of great opportunity for our industry, I again want to acknowledge people in Ukraine who are operating nuclear facilities under the most difficult of circumstances. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Andrei Mushakov, Executive VP for Nuclear Operations, who will review our near-term research and development opportunities. Andrei.