Piedmont Lithium Inc.

our story. Piedmont is one of only two U.S. domiciled. It's the lowest risk and most commercially scalable raw material resource. Our goal is to play a key role in U.S. efforts to reduce our country's reliance on foreign nations for critical materials, which is crucial to the future of our nation's energy security. Turning to the key themes for the second quarter today, you'll hear about North American lithium achieving steady state operations and other positive things happening in Quebec. We'll also discuss our decision to consolidate our U.S. lithium hydroxide development strategy. We'll talk about our refined commercial strategy for the second half to improve pricing realizations while meeting shipment guidance. Our progress toward our $10 million 2024 cost reduction plan. And finally, an update on our theme from the first quarter, a year of two halves with a significant curtailment in capital and investment spending in the second half and also a significant increase in spodumene shipments in the second half of this year. Those are the key points we'll cover and the through line you'll hear throughout this call is strategic perseverance. Like many others in the lithium market, our focus in 2024 has been to position Piedmont to weather the prevailing pricing down cycle, preserve our assets, and fortify the upside potential of our global portfolio. Our second half 2024 plans are designed for two things, smart capital deployment and cost savings, so that when the lithium demand crunch hits and the market turns, as we believe it will, Piedmont will be in a ready position to leverage our business. So let's look at our key focus areas by project. North American lithium, already the largest lithium operation in North America, continues to demonstrate its potential as an excellent asset. In the second quarter, NAL again broke production records while reaching new highs in lithium recovery and mill utilization rates. The focus in the second half of the year is to continue steady state operations and drive reductions in unit operating costs. The Sciana management team is also planning an update to NAL's mineral resource update following additional high-grade drill results in the second quarter. Obviously, as mineral resources and reserves grow, the potential for further growth in annual production at NAL will be evaluated. NAL has successfully cleared the gates of both operational restart and ramp-up and is positioned to capitalize on any future lithium price recovery. For our Awoya joint venture in Ghana, we have mandated the financial advisor to help secure our share of the project's construction capital. That process has kicked off, and the early feedback from potential offtake partners is very encouraging. With approvals at Awoya ongoing, we expect advances to Atlantic Lithium to reduce in the near term, and since the offtake from Awoya will no longer be required as feedstock for Tennessee Lithium, an offtake partner funding opportunity has been created for Piedmont. In the United States, we've made a strategic decision. Given market conditions and the receipt of the Carolina mining permit in the second quarter, we've made the decision to consolidate Tennessee Lithium's planned lithium hydroxide capacity into a second train in North Carolina. Our plan is to construct the trains in a phased approach. We believe developing Carolina Lithium as a multi-phase larger operation is the right move for Piedmont and our shareholders to deploy capital and technical resources more efficiently. The bulk of the front-end engineering work completed for the Tennessee facility is directly transferable to Carolina. They were always planned as twin facilities. And the 60,000 ton per year air permit that we continue to pursue with North Carolina's Division of Air Quality would support the increased tonnage. With the receipt of the Carolina State Mining Permit, we've taken the opportunity to re-engage in active discussions with potential strategic partners. As you might imagine, the idea of an integrated spodumide hydroxide project in the southeastern United States holds great appeal for a number of important players in the supply chain. In the near term, our key areas of focus will be funding, permitting, and approvals. However, we are progressing our development of Carolina on a conservative timeline with an eye on the dynamic market conditions. Ultimately, higher lithium prices will be required to support the development of lithium projects, ours and others, that will be necessary to meet projected demand. I'll speak more about our thoughts on supply, demand, and the market shortly. Now, Michael will provide a detailed discussion of our second quarter financial performance. Michael?

Thanks, Keith. Turning to slide six, I'd like to provide a high-level review of our second quarter results. We shipped approximately 14,000 dry metric tons for the quarter and recognized $13.2 million in revenue, resulting in a realized price of $945 per metric ton. This compares to a realized cost per metric ton of $900. Included in the realized price per ton were logistics costs, which are many times recorded as an offset to revenue depending on who bears responsibility for shipping, and a downward provisional pricing adjustment associated with shipments in prior quarters. We ended the quarter with $59 million in cash, and second quarter gap net loss was $13.3 million or a loss of 69 cents per share, and adjusted net loss was 12.7 million, or a loss of 65 cents on an adjusted per share basis. Turning to slide seven for sources and uses of cash, our beginning and ending cash positions for the quarter were 71 million and $59 million, respectively. During the quarter, and as part of our 2024 cost savings plan, we reduced CapEx to a modest $3 million. We expect further reductions in CapEx in the third and fourth quarters of 2024, which I'll discuss shortly. Within investments and affiliates was a $5 million investment in North American lithium, which includes completion of the crushed ore dome and MARC's finalization of restart CapEx for the operation. Let's move to slide eight. It's imperative that we are appropriately managing our costs during the down cycle. And while we do not know how long the down cycle will last, we are committed and taking action to right-sizing our cost structure in a thoughtful yet agile manner. Let's break this down into two areas. First, on our last earnings call, we discussed the commencement of our 2024 cost savings plan with a target of more than $10 million in annual run rate savings associated with our operating cost structure. Additionally, the plan included reductions in both CapEx and cash investments and advances to our joint ventures. I'm pleased to note that we have achieved our $10 million run rate target, and we have been able to greatly reduce our second half 2024 CapEx and joint venture spending by supporting certain cost reductions and cost deferrals to 2025, and in some cases, beyond 2025. We expect to recognize the majority of our annual cost savings in the current year. As noted on this slide, actions to reduce our annual run rate savings included headcount reductions made during the first quarter, office consolidation at our headquarters in North Carolina, and cutting of certain third party and internal spending. Second, we are evaluating further reductions within our operating cost structure and capital expenditures. and we are working with our joint venture partners to lower planned expenditures during this down cycle. Lastly, we are executing our consolidation strategy of Tennessee lithium into Carolina lithium, as Keith previously mentioned. Now let's turn to slide nine for the second half outlook. We are maintaining our full year outlook for shipments of approximately 126,000 dry metric tons in 2024. As reported, we shipped approximately 30,000 tons in the first half of the year. We plan to ship approximately 96,000 tons in the second half, which aligns with the production outlook and customer allocation of tons from our joint venture at North American Lithium. Of course, certain factors including shipping constraints and customer requirements may impact the timing of future shipments. Patrick will provide a more detailed commercial strategy update in a moment. The key takeaway in our CapEx and investments outlook is that project-related expenditures are greatly reduced compared to the first half of the year. Capital expenditures remain on track for our guidance of $3 to $5 million in the second half of the year and relate mainly to Carolina Lithium. Our joint venture investments in Q2 were lower than anticipated. Further, with the restart of North American Lithium's capital program having been completed, and the ongoing approval process at AWOIA, we expect our joint venture funding to reduce substantially in the second half of 2024 compared to the first half. Given those considerations, we have provided tighter ranges for our full year guidance in these areas. As always, our outlook is subject to changes in market conditions. And with that, I'll turn it over to Patrick Brindle for a review of operations and project updates.

Thanks, Michael. We can now turn to slide 11 for an update on operational performance at NAL. As Keith noted, ramp up at NAL has gone well. Commissioning of the crushed ore dome this past quarter represents the completion of the capital spending of the NAL restart program that began in 2022. Steady state production at full run rate was achieved in June 2024 ahead of our second half 24 forecast. Given its history, North American lithium may be the least understood asset in the industry. It's the largest active lithium operation in North America, with arguably the best location among all Canadian spodumene projects. Significant capital has been deployed at NAL over the past 15 years, and we are operating today with an improving cost profile thanks to management's tremendous efforts. So, after two years of very hard work, I'd like to extend a special congratulations for achieving the ramp up milestone to Siona President Sylvain Collard and his team, including Sal, Philippe, Sebastian, Lynn, Jean-Luc, Bernard, and Patrick, and many others who played a role in getting us to this point. I'd also like to thank James Brown for his service as Siona Mining's interim CEO during the past year. and to welcome Lucas Dow and his role as Cyona's managing director and CEO. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership and demonstrating the full potential of NAL over time. Moving to slide 12, NAL increased production quarter on quarter by 23% to 49,700 tons of spodumene concentrate. Lithium recovery and mill utilization achieved new quarterly highs of 68% and 83% respectively. With ramp-up effectively completed, we expect continued steady state production levels for the remainder of the year with incremental improvement to quarterly utilization rates. NAL's drill program also returned additional positive results in the quarter with assays identifying multiple new high-grade lithium zones beyond the current ultimate pit shell. Management will use these data and focus on the potential for a significant upgrade to NAL's mineral resources estimate. Turning to slide 13 for discussion on our commercial strategy and shipping plans. The forward price curves on this slide for CME lithium hydroxide and GFEX lithium carbonate have been in contango for most of 2024, and this trend appears to continue into 2025. Starting earlier this year, we began working with a trading partner to capitalize on this situation. We've structured spot sales beginning in Q2 of this year so that we can mitigate downside price exposure and avoid the M plus one settlement pricing in a falling price environment, which had negative consequences for us on shipments we made in 2023. We've noted that most of our 2024 shipments will be back loaded to the second half of this year. Our target is to ship 96,500 tons from July through December. NAL is expected to produce at full run rate for the rest of this calendar year, which supports our sales target. Also, to help reduce our cost of sales, we are planning to make fewer shipments going forward with larger cargo volumes per shipment. We're working in partnership with our Siona Quebec joint venture to co-ship cargo sold to Piedmont with cargo sold to third parties. Depending on the size of each shipment, we estimate that this may save us as much as $60 per ton on a CIF basis. Moving ahead to Ghana, in Ghana, the application to ratify the Awoya mining lease has been submitted to the Ghanaian Parliament. We're continuing to wait on the outcome of that process, which we expect will be positive in due course. However, that timeline is now subject to the country's legislative processes, which are outside of our control. Meanwhile, as Keith mentioned, we have mandated a financial advisor as part of a funding strategy to raise our share of the development capital for AWUYA on a non-dilutive basis to Piedmont shareholders. Our general strategy is to mirror the efforts made by Atlantic Lithium to offer long-term uptake in exchange for funding to support our capital contribution. Our process is going well with initial outreach calls completed, and we will continue with these efforts. Finally, and sadly, on July 9th, 2024, Atlantic Lithium reported a fatality at the Awuya Project site. Following the accident, the Minerals Commission of Ghana conducted an investigation, and since that time, Atlantic Lithium has resumed operations in accordance with the Commission's recommendations. This has been a difficult time for our partner, and we send our deepest condolences to their teammates, family, and friends. lastly in north carolina the second quarter receipt of our state mining permit marked a significant milestone for carolina lithium which allows us to renew possible strategic conversations on the project but as keith noted at the top of the call the development timeline for carolina is dependent upon appropriately favorable market conditions which don't exist at the moment We have been in a reduced spend posture at Carolina for a number of months and will continue to maintain this position in the current market. During this time, we plan to focus on advancement of our remaining permits and approvals, work on phase development planning, and engage in strategic partnering conversations with interested parties. That concludes our commercial and projects update. With that, I'll turn it back to Keith for an update on the market and our funding strategies.