TMC the metals company Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Metals Company's second quarter 2024 corporate update conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Greg Shetsky, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Please note that during this call, certain statements made by the company will be forward-looking and based on management's beliefs and assumptions from information available at this time. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control. Additionally, please note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Our remarks today may also include non-GAAP financial measures, including with respect to free cash flows, and additional details regarding these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, can be found in our slide deck being used with this call. And you can also follow along with our slide deck or joining us by phone. You can access it at any time at investors.metals.co. I will now turn the conference call over to our chairman and CEO, Jared Baron. Jared, please go ahead.

Thanks, Craig. And thanks to all of you for joining our second quarter conference call. During this call, we're going to spend some time setting the record straight on some exaggerated claims picked up by media on the topic of so-called dark oxygen. It's funny that studies like this, similar to the non-event of alpha radiation in 2023, are usually coordinated to come out around ISA meetings. We believe this is another example of activism disguised as science. Rest assured that we have the data to counter on this topic, and we look forward to filing our rebuttal soon, and we're pleased to see that other scientists have already begun doing the same. We'll also spend some time discussing the progress achieved and the progress ahead from the ISA Council on the Mining Code and what the draft review process looks like when TMC expects to launch its application for an exploitation contract prior to the next ISA meeting in March. But I'd like to start with our improved liquidity position. We had liquidity of $40 million at the end of June, but this liquidity has increased in August due to the upsized borrowing limits on our credit facilities. We also used our ATM opportunistically in the second quarter, raising $2.6 million at an average share price of $1.61. And we will continue to be judicious if we elect to use this in the future, depending on market conditions. Borrowing capacity from our unsecured credit facilities has increased by 7.5 million, by 2.5 million each from myself Allseas and Eris Holdings, the family office of our director and largest shareholder, Andre Kaka. We believe we've shown in the last few months that we can reliably draw on these facilities whenever needed, and we intend to draw several million more from Allseas facility this month. Our credit facilities are being used as intended as a bridge to what we believe will be attractive financing options after we are able to share more information on some of the strategic developments our team has been working on. We appreciate the further support from our largest shareholders to keep our progress on track and minimize dilution amidst a difficult market. This next slide is a summary since our last quarterly update in mid-May. This quarter, I was very pleased to welcome two new directors to our board, both of whom are leaders in their respective fields. Steve Jurvetson brings invaluable expertise in disruptive technologies, including investments in pioneering technology companies like Tesla, Planet Labs, SpaceX, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems that fits well with our mission to revolutionize how critical minerals are sourced and ultimately recycled. We also welcomed sustainability leader, Brendan May, whose council has been sought by leading companies to help them build bridges with the environmental community and As a former CEO of the Marine Stewardship Council and the Europe Chair of the Rainforest Alliance, we look forward to his help engaging key stakeholder communities. Geopolitical tailwinds continue to create a favorable environment for our industry, as evidenced by the US House proposed allocation of Defense Department funding to assess the feasibility of refining nodule products domestically. Keep in mind that we are eagerly awaiting a response to our application for a Defense Department grant for $9 million for similar feasibility work. And my dance card in D.C. has certainly been filling up, including an invitation to speak at a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill in September regarding critical minerals. As the U.S., China, India, Norway, and Japan intensify their focus on sea floor resources, We see a growing recognition of the strategic importance of diversifying supply chains away from single jurisdiction terrestrial sources. Additionally, the International Seabed Authority recently progressed the consolidated text draft of the Mining Code. And we will also see a new Secretary General in January following the election of Brazil's Leticia Carvalho. On a personal note, I had a chance to meet with Ms. Carvalho and I really like her. And I'm pleased that she, like us, believes that adopting the regulations is the best way to fulfill the ISA's mandate under UNCLOS. Now onto the agenda. During this call, we're going to touch briefly on our value proposition before reviewing industry headlines. And we will then provide an update on our Nori project progress as well as regulatory progress before ending with financial highlights and answering any questions. So why nodules as opposed to other resources on land or sea? Well, we believe we'll need many new types of sources of metals in the coming decades, but nodules in particular are special. Sourcing battery metals from nodules requires no digging or blasting or drilling while producing no tailings or near zero solid waste. And these little rocks contain high grades of four metals in one ore body. And given that they're far offshore, We also don't have to displace any human communities nor build the costly fixed infrastructure necessary to access mineral resources on land. And this is why we can take a capital-light approach, which is a rarity in the world of resource projects. As we've said many times before, our resource is an outlier among the world's nickel projects. Not only are Nori and Tommel ranked by mining.com as the largest two undeveloped nickel projects in the world, that the nickel equivalent grade of roughly 3% with our four key metals in one resource means we can achieve profitability across the metal price cycle. There is also a remarkable correlation between a nodule's mineral composition and the composition of EV battery cathodes and wiring. Rich in nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese, these nodules closely fit the requirements for the majority of electric vehicle battery cathodes being sold today. and many of those that are expected to be sold in the future. Some studies estimate that fully autonomous vehicles will require as much battery power for computing as they will for the powertrain, and that means nickel batteries with higher energy density to alternatives like LFP should come to be in high demand. And while EV demand estimates are changing all the time, the metallic composition of nodules means that they are also remarkably suited for use in diverse and other applications across the energy infrastructure and defense sectors. And despite short-term price softening, copper is expected to be a key beneficiary, not just as part of the clean transition, but also a beneficiary from the data center needs of AI-focused industries. This is where it's so advantageous to have a basket of metal products, each of which has exposure to sectors which will be geopolitically critical in the coming decades. And I'd now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Craig Shefsky, to discuss some headlines around the industry.