Piedmont Lithium Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kathleen and I will be your operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the first quarter 2024 Piedmont Lithium earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star 1 again. And now I will turn the call over to Irene Sanders, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Piedmont Lithium's first quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining us today from Piedmont Lithium are Keith Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide the introductory remarks. Michael White, Chief Financial Officer, will then review our financial results, followed by Patrick Brindle, Chief Operating Officer, who will offer an update on our projects. Keith will then provide closing commentary before we transition to a live Q&A session. As a reminder, today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements relating to future events and expectations that are subject to various assumptions and caveats. Factors that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation earnings release and in our SEC filings. In addition, we have included non-GAAP financial measures in this presentation. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in today's earnings release and the appendix to today's slide presentation. Any reference in our discussion today to EBITDA means adjusted EBITDA. Further, references to shipments are lithium concentrate and metric tons are dry metric tons. Please note that copies of our earnings release and presentation, as well as a replay of this call, will be available on our website, piedmontlithium.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Keith Phillips. Keith?

Thanks, Erin, and thank you all for joining us today for Piedmont Lithium's first quarter 2024 earnings call. As I like to do at the start of these calls, I will quickly reiterate our mission and strategy for those of you who may be new to Piedmont Lithium and our story. Piedmont is one of only three US-based lithium companies in production today. Our mission is to be a leading North American supplier of lithium resources to the electric vehicle supply chain. Our goal is to support U.S. efforts to reduce our reliance upon foreign nations for critical materials and strengthen our national energy security. Piedmont's strategy is based on hard rock production, and that is producing and eventually further processing spodumene concentrate from assets we own or in which we have an economic interest. Turning to the first quarter, the key points you'll hear about this morning are First, that North American lithium is ramping nicely with continued record production. We're really pleased with the path that operation is on. The team is doing a great job. Carolina lithium is now front and center with the receipt of our state mining permit. Alloya is progressing through the approvals process, and we're evaluating non-dilutive funding options. And lastly, we're keeping very focused on effectively managing costs, and we are on track to achieve the $10 million in annual cost savings we identified in the first quarter. Finally, in thinking of our outlook for the rest of the year, I wanted to highlight that 2024 is shaping up as a year of two halves for Piedmont Lithium. As we transition to shipments to our core customers under long-term agreements, we expect Piedmont's supply chain shipments to more than double from the first half of this year to the second half of 2024. Furthermore, our capital and investment spending was heavily weighted to the first quarter of the year, such that second half spending will be less than half of what was invested in the first half. If we get fortunate on the pricing side, we could have a really strong second half of the year. Shifting to slide four, let's start talking about Quebec. North American Lithium is now the largest producing spodumene operation in North America, and in the first quarter of 2024, the production ramp-up continued. The operation achieved record quarterly production, record lithium recoveries, and a record safety performance, truly an exceptional quarter and a tribute to the great work of the entire team up at North American Lithium. Key capital projects at the operation move toward completion, which are expected to result in an increase in production levels and a reduction in unit operating costs. The operational review performed in the first quarter by the joint venture partners, Piedmont and Sciana Mining, affirmed the direction of the operation's progress and the expected trajectories of both production and costs. We are optimistic that full run rate production levels at NAL will be achieved as expected in the second half of 2024. supporting our guidance that we expect to ship 126,000 tons from Quebec this year, with most of our shipments weighted to the back half of the year. Michael will talk more about shipments in his remarks. So the progress that's been made in the past quarter just underscores our excitement about the future of NAL, which is the absolute core asset for us. And with our favorable life of mine offtake agreement for qualified Inflation Reduction Act, IRA material, I believe NAL will be a great asset for Piedmont shareholders for the long term. Now shifting to Carolina Lithium, obviously the receipt of the state mining permit was a significant milestone and gating item achieved. Our team had been working with the state for two and a half years to make sure the project meets the state's exceptionally high standards for development and operations. While it's the project upon which Piedmont Lithium was founded, we haven't talked as much about Carolina in our first two earnings calls while we've been working on this key permit. But I believe it's the key project in our development portfolio. Carolina Lithium is a highly strategic 30,000 ton a year integrated mining to lithium hydroxide project that is well situated in the cradle of the lithium industry along the same resource that was the foundation of both Albemarle and Arcadium, the Carolina Tin Spodumene Belt. Looking at page six, some of the advantages of Carolina lithium is a highlight for those that aren't as familiar with the project. Based on technical studies, we expect Carolina to be a low-cost producer of spodumene concentrate and lithium hydroxide and a key contributor to the North American electric vehicle supply chain. The project should benefit from excellent infrastructure, including low energy costs, minimal transportation distances, a deep local talent pool, and proximity to local markets for industrial mineral byproducts. Carolina Lithium is also located in the heart of the growing U.S. battery belt, with many cathode battery and EV plants under construction or planned. The economics of the project should be compelling. As a U.S.-based project, Carolina is expected to benefit from the competitive corporate tax regime offered in the U.S., absence of significant royalties and the absence of a value-added tax assessed in countries like in China. After-tax returns are what matters, and we are not aware of any jurisdiction that better combines the benefits of significant spodumene resources, deep customer markets, and low royalty and income tax rates. Carolina should also benefit from supportive government programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the Department of Energy's ATVM loan program. Looking at funding this project, we intend to leverage government funding via the ATVM loan program, as mentioned, and potential strategic partners who could provide some combination of capital, offtake, and technical support to reduce our capital burden. We've had a lot of interest in this project from a variety of car companies, battery manufacturers, and investors, and are encouraged by the conversations we've had thus far. As for timing, the ATVM loan and strategic partnering processes take some time to complete, So we'll be refining our timeline for the funding and rezoning of the project. We're focused on moving judiciously and doing this right. Carolina lithium is highly strategic to Piedmont, but frankly, it's also highly strategic for Gaston County, the state of North Carolina, and the entire United States. It's more important to do it right than to do it fast, and we'll always be cognizant of maximizing value for Piedmont shareholders as we advance the process. Let's turn briefly to Ghana and our joint venture project, Avoya. Patrick and our project team leadership were in Ghana in April meeting with the Atlantic Lithium team and had some good technical sessions as the project continues to advance through permitting and approvals process. Amoya is expected to be a large-spodging producer with attractive economics, a high return on invested capital driven by relatively low CapEx and relatively low operating costs. It's going to be a great project for us and our partners at Atlantic Lithium. Right now, we're in the process of retaining a financial advisor to assist in evaluating funding options for our share of the capital. We've received multiple inbound calls from interesting parties, all with the idea of minimizing dilution to Piedmont lithium shareholders. I also want to mention our Tennessee project, which is fully permitted and designed for 30,000 tons of lithium hydroxide production. Tennessee offers an additional opportunity to expand downstream capacity, and we will be evaluating its development timeline given the receipt of the Carolina mine permit. We believe Piedmont is well positioned for the long term with growth opportunities across our project portfolio, with the assets we own or have an interest. Our plan with each of these three projects is to invest in their development strategically and always with the goal of minimizing shareholder dilution. Michael will provide a more detailed discussion, so with that, I'll turn it over to Michael.