Lightbridge Corporation

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Lightbridge Corporation Business Update and First Quarter 2026 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, Didi, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Our earnings press release was distributed yesterday and is available 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 Mushikov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operation, Scott Holcomb, Vice President of Engineering, Larry Goldman, Chief Financial Officer, and Leslie Mills, Controller. I want 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 future goals and events. 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. Hello, Seth.

Hello, Matt. And thank you all for joining us to discuss light bridges first quarter 2026 business update. We have made meaningful progress on several fronts in 2026 we expanded our intellectual property protection across three major jurors jurisdictions. We advanced our fuel qualification program through a new engineering partnership for thermal hydraulic testing. We deepened our engagement with the broader nuclear research community. And we continue to grow our in-house engineering organization. Lightbridge now employs over two dozen full-time engineers across neutronics, thermal hydraulics, fuel performance, fuel assembly mechanical design, licensing materials, high performance computing, and program management. And we are still hiring. We received patent allowances from three major jurisdictions this quarter. each protecting a distinct dimension of light bridge fuels architecture across key global reactor markets. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office issued an allowance covering fuel assemblies comprising helically twisted fuel assemblies arranged in a mixed grid pattern, protection directly relevant to pressurized heavy water reactors, including Canada's CANDU fleet. we secured broader claims covering mixed grid assemblies without specifying particular grid configurations consistent with our approach in other countries. The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a notice of allowance covering fuel assemblies and nuclear reactors incorporating our spirally twisted multi-lobed fuel element technology, also designed for pressurized heavy water reactors including can-do type designs. This is part of a patent family that now includes five U.S. patents. And the European Patent Office issued a notice of allowance covering our multi-zone fuel element design, specifically fuel elements with variable radial zone thicknesses along the axial direction that enable precise control of neutron flux distribution throughout the fuel cycle. including elements produced via additive manufacturing. This patent allowance extends protection across 39 contracting states, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and all major European nuclear markets. Together, these three allowances deepen a worldwide patent portfolio spanning the United States, Canada, Europe, and other key potential markets for light-bridge fuel and reflect the genuine technical novelty of what we are building. I'll now turn to Andrei Mushakov, Executive Vice President for Nuclear Operations, to walk through the program highlights in detail. Andrei?