Lightbridge Corporation

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Lightbridge Corporation Business Update and Fiscal Year 2023 Conference Call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matthew Abinante, Director of Investor Relations for Lightbridge Corporation.

Thank you, Abigail, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. The company's earnings press release was distributed 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 Andrei Mushakov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations, Scott Holcomb, Vice President of Engineering, Larry Goldman, Chief Financial Officer, and Sherry Holloway, Controller. 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 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. Good morning, Seth.

Thank you, Matt. And thank you all for joining us to discuss LightBridge's 2023 results. I am pleased with the momentum building within the nuclear sector. And the pivotal role Lightbridge is poised to play in this transformative period. Our advancements in fuel technology, combined with a growing network of strategic partnerships, position us to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the emerging global mandates to greatly expand nuclear capacity. In 2023, Lightbridge achieved several key milestones and made important advancements in our ongoing fuel development efforts. Earlier in the year, we strengthened our leadership team by welcoming Sherry Goodman and Dr. Scott Holcomb to our team. Ms. Goodman, a recognized national security expert, joined LightBridge as an independent director, bringing invaluable insights into the intersection of energy and national security. As our new vice president of engineering, Dr. Holcomb brings extensive expertise in nuclear fuel and materials development and management of interdisciplinary teams of engineers and subject matter experts, further bolstering our nuclear fuel technology leadership. In December, we announced an agreement with Centris Energy to conduct a front-end engineering and design study for a Lightbridge pilot fuel fabrication facility in Piketon, Ohio. Centris currently hosts a U.S.-based production facility for high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALU, partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy, DOE, on the site. The key objective of the FEED study is to determine the scope of work, cost, and schedule estimates, and identify key risk factors for establishing a lightbridge pilot fuel fab facility. The results of this study will form the basis for a decision on the way for establishing a LightBridge pilot fuel facility for manufacture of full-length fuel rods for demonstrating and licensing LightBridge fuel in commercial reactors. We also entered into an agreement with the Potesti Nuclear Research Institute, known as RETEN, ICN, based in Romania, to assess the compatibility of LightBridge fuel for use in CANDU reactors. This study will identify any critical parameters for further evaluation and design. The findings will guide future economic evaluations and support navigating potential regulatory licensing related issues. If feasibility of using light-bridge fuel in CANDU reactors is confirmed, we believe this type of reactor may offer an opportunity for faster time to market due to the unique design and operating conditions of CANDU reactors. Last summer, we announced a research study led by Texas A&M University and including Lightbridge, NuScale Power, and Structural Integrity Associates as part of the DOE Nuclear Energy University Program R&D Awards. This project focuses on thermal hydraulic modeling and testing which aims to increase the understanding of the overall performance of light-bridge fuel under simulated normal and off-normal conditions in new-scale SMR. This follows a similarly structured study with MIT announced in 2022 that focuses on neutronics modeling and safety evaluation of light-bridge fuel in a new-scale SMR. In an effort to better communicate our fuel development progress to industry, investors, and other key stakeholders, LightBridge is adopting the Technology Readiness Level or TRL system. We are using the TRL framework to plan our development in a logical and efficient way. The TRL system was originally developed by NASA and is widely recognized across technical industries. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, includes a nuclear energy agency, which provides a standardized TRL framework for assessing and communicating the maturity of nuclear fuel technology. As with NASA's TRLs, this framework encompasses a scale from one to nine, with TRL one representing the initial concept or theoretical stage. and TRL 9 denoting a technology that has been proven in its operational environment. Utilizing the TRL system allows LightBridge to map the development of our nuclear fuel technology against a clear standardized metric, enabling stakeholders to gauge progress in a structured and transparent manner. Currently, we believe LightBridge fuel is positioned at TRL 4 to 5, indicating a significant phase in our development process. At this stage, Lightbridge Fuel has moved beyond TRL 1 to 3, theoretical research, and entered into the realm of validation in a laboratory environment, or TRL 4, and preparations for validation in representative operating conditions, or TRL 5. This signifies that the core principles underlying light-bridge fuel have been successfully demonstrated through a number of computer modeling analyses and initial proof-of-concept experiments. We expect our ongoing project at INL will generate in-reactor data to further validate thermophysical properties of our uranium zirconium alloy in coupon samples, which supports late stages of TRL4. As a next step, we plan to conduct a radiation testing of rodlets with our uranium zirconium alloy to verify the technology's performance under conditions that will closely simulate operational scenarios. This work will support TRL-5. This will signify a pivotal transition from conceptual designs and laboratory tests to in-reactor testing in representative and actual conditions the fuel will experience in commercial reactors. This phase is critical for demonstrating our fuel's design, materials, performance, and identifying potential challenges, allowing for adjustments and enhancements before advancing to system prototype demonstration in operational environments, which make up TRL 6 and 7. Achieving TRL 4 to 5 is an important milestone that validates light-bridge fuel and our achievements thus far and sets the stage for subsequent development steps, moving us closer to commercialization and widespread adoption of our advanced nuclear fuel, which will be TRL 8 and 9. I'll turn the call over to Andrei Mushakov, Executive VP for Nuclear Operations, to review our ongoing fuel development activities. Andrei?