Piedmont Lithium Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Kayla and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Q3 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'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press the star and one. I will now turn the call over to Aaron Sanders, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Piedmont Lithium's third quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining us today from Piedmont Lithium are Keith Phillips, President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide the introduction and corporate and operational updates. Michael White, Chief Financial Officer, will then review our financial results. Keith will 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 shipments of spodumene concentrate and 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 thanks, everybody, for joining us today for Piedmont Lithium's third quarter 2024 earnings call. We're going to jump right in today to discuss what has been a successful quarter for us. Challenging, but successful. If you've been on our first two calls this year, you've heard our theme of a year of two halves describing the expected market difference between our first half and second half shipping volumes, capital and investment spending, and commercial strategies. And we're happy to report that we met or exceeded our goals in Q3. So the key points we'll discuss on this call are, number one, our refined commercial strategy. We were able to execute a record quarter of customer deliveries while also improving profitability per ton during the quarter. Our ability to hedge against the futures market resulted in a realized price that was comparatively one of the best in the industry. Part of the strategy we executed was the important move to consolidate and commingle shipments to reduce transportation costs. Number two, North American Lithium once again achieved quarterly production records as well as reduced unit operating costs, supporting our successful quarter of deliveries to customers. Lastly, we improved our cash position with a heavy focus on disciplined spending across OpEx, CapEx, and investments in affiliates. Now let's move to slide four for a quick project update. North American Lithium is already the largest lithium operation in North America. Again, this quarter, we set new production records and reduced operating costs during the third quarter. I'll talk more about NAL production on the next slide. CYANA also increased the mineral resource estimate, including a significant increase in the mineral resources in the measured and indicated categories in accordance with your code requirements. With the updated MRE completion of major capital projects and operations at steady state, the joint venture is well positioned to consider potential brownfield expansions to this asset. Turning to our joint venture project in Ghana, Awoya. Awoya received a TPA permit during quarter three and the mine operating permit in October. These were major regulatory milestones. Meanwhile, the next major requirement in the development timeline is parliamentary ratification of the mining lease. We expect this ratification will occur in the first half of 2025, but the project timeline is also subject to prevailing market conditions. As we noted in our last call, we have engaged a financial advisor to secure funding for our share of Avoya CapEx. There is broad interest from potential parties. However, we are taking our time with this process given current market conditions. At Carolina Lithium, we recently received some very positive news in the form of the final guidance provided by the U.S. Treasury Department regarding the Inflation Reduction Act's 45X tax credit. The new guidance supports the application of the 10% manufacturing credit to direct and indirect material costs. We're very pleased with this decision which should materially improve the after-tax economics of U.S. projects like Carolina Lithium. With regard to funding, we continue to engage in discussions with potential strategic partners and to evaluate broader funding strategies. To that point, I'd like to take a moment to clarify the status of our ATVM loan applications where there seems to be some confusion in the market. The Department of Energy's ATVM loan program offers the potential for long-term, low-cost financing for projects like Carolina Lithium. Certain of our peers have received sizable ATVM commitments, and we think Carolina Lithium is ideally suited to capitalize on the program. We have been in discussions with the DOE for several years and had previously submitted ATVM loan applications for both Carolina Lithium and Tennessee Lithium. As we disclosed in our 10-K in February, those applications were both withdrawn in 2023, as we began to reevaluate development priorities and schedules. We are once again in the pre-application process in consultation with the DOE Loan Programs Office and will submit a fresh ATVM application at a future date. Our current focus, however, is ongoing work related to advancing permitting, specifically the air and water permits, as we take a measured approach to further approvals and a phased development during the current market downturn. Carolina Lithium is a highly strategic project and important to America's energy national security, but a project of this scale will require stronger lithium markets to underpin the best funding profile. On slide five, we dive a little more deeply into NAL's operating progress this past quarter. We're very pleased that the project has continued to improve quarterly production volume with more than 52,000 dry metric tons of spodumene concentrate produced in Q3, a 5% increase quarter over quarter. Mill utilization also increased to a record 91%, a nice gain from the previous quarter, driven largely by the availability of the crushed ore dome, which was commissioned in Q2. Recoveries held steady at 67%. In parallel, cost per ton decreased 11% quarter over quarter, or 15% if you exclude the impact of inventory adjustments. We're excited to see that trend. Last, but certainly not least, NAL achieved an incident-free safety record in September, with no lost time injuries, no modified duty injuries, and no medical aid injuries. You can also see on this slide Cyana's fiscal year 2025 guidance regarding production sales and operations, all of which look excellent. Now I'll turn it over to Michael, who will provide a detailed discussion on our Q3 financial performance. Michael?