TMC the metals company Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the metals company first quarter 2025 corporate update conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode after the speakers presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone, you will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised to withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Craig Szewski, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Michelle. 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. You're welcome to follow along with our slide deck or if joining by phone, you can access it at any time at investors.metals.co. And I'll now turn the conference call over to our Chairman and CEO, Jared Barron. Thank you, Greg.

Well, usually our first quarter conference calls are a bit quieter as they occur roughly six weeks after our year-end report. But we have just experienced a six-week period in which our company and this industry have taken some historic leaps forward. While the Trump executive order on seabed minerals had been rumored for some time in the media, the filing of our application months ahead of expectations was not. And I'd like to personally thank our team for the tremendous efforts to get these three applications over the line in an accelerated fashion. Given all of the de-risking milestones achieved since our company's inception, We believe that the one thing previously holding back our stock price was the lack of a clear regulatory pathway. And we believe we now have it. And frankly, I don't think the market has accurately priced that in. Despite a nice run up this year, we believe that the spring remains tightly coiled for this stock. Still, we were cognizant that another key overhang of the stock was fundraising. And we've seen short interest tick upward. And even after some incredible achievements, we did not want to drift into summer without shoring up the cash balance. So this week, we did just that through a $37 million registered direct offering from Michael Hess and Brian Pace Braga and an existing strategic investor in TMC. These are all parties that want to be with us for the long haul and are ready, willing, and able to roll up their sleeves to help us continue to create shareholder value through significant experience and networks in the resource space. both offshore and onshore. Michael Hess from the Hess corporate family has 15 years of exploration and production experience as both an investor and operator, along with deep relationships across the United States. And Brian Pace-Varga is a longtime investor in TMC, former board member when the company was known as Deep Green, and continues to be a valuable supporter of the company and a good friend. And I'd like to take this opportunity to officially welcome our newest member of the executive team, Rutger Bosland. Rutger joins us from our partner All Seas and was the pioneering engineer and technical lead on the development of our nodule collection system leading up to the successful test in 2022 in which we lifted over 3,000 tons of nodules to the surface. And as our chief innovation and offshore technology officer, Rutger is already playing a key role in optimizing the performance of our commercial scale module collection system. The teams at TMC and also ALSEAS are excited about the continuity maintained on this project as we work together to drive toward commercial readiness. So here is our agenda for today and while the milestones achieved in the last two months are historic, we are just getting warmed up and I'm very excited about some key catalysts in the near term. Later this quarter, we expect our applications for exploration licenses and a commercial recovery permit to be deemed substantially compliant and complete, respectively by NOAA, which kicks off the next stage of technical environmental review. Also this quarter, we expect further detail from the Commerce Department and NOAA on tangible actions to expedite these review processes. and look forward to providing a more definitive step-by-step permitting timeline to the market soon after. We will continue to explore alternative financing sources with U.S. government departments and agencies as directed in the executive order, as well as strategic partners to prepare for commercial production. But let me be very clear. The equity round just announced is more than sufficient to get us past the expected review process on a commercial recovery permit. Finally, we are pleased to announce that our PFS will be completed next quarter for the commercial recovery area over which we applied, allowing us to reflect new assumptions made possible by our U.S. permitting strategy. Further, with this path to commercial production now coming into focus, we intend to provide more clarity on the potential valuation across our total estimated resource beyond NORI-D. So as most of you know, on April 28, TMC USA submitted the world's first application to the U.S. government for a commercial recovery permit for deep sea minerals in international waters, alongside two exploration license applications under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. This decision followed many months of due diligence and dialogue with U.S. agencies and policymakers. We engaged multiple law firms to review Dishra and NOAA's long-standing implementing regulations and established framework that is legally sound, robust, and enforceable. In the lead-up to our application, we consulted extensively with NOAA as to the regulatory requirements that we will be asked of us, and since then have had productive engagements with them, as well as the White House and members of Congress, all of whom recognize the strategic importance of this industry to America's energy security and industrial base. And we believe this US-based pathway offers the greatest probability of receiving a commercial permit in a timely, transparent, and legally robust manner, giving us clear line of sight to responsible commercial operations. The application area for commercial production covers over 25,000 square kilometers in the Clarion-Clipperton zone. And this is ground we've got to know very well, having conducted years of environmental research and offshore resource evaluation, and where we've already defined, measured, and indicated resources. In parallel, we've also submitted two exploration license applications covering nearly 200,000 square kilometers. And based on our extensive data, we estimate these areas contain over 1.6 billion tons of nodules with an additional 500 million tons of exploration upside, representing approximately 15.5 million tons of nickel, 12.8 million tons of copper, 2 million tons of cobalt, and 345 million tons of manganese. And we believe these license areas offer a shovel-ready pathway to help deliver critical mineral independence to the United States and, as noted in the recent executive order, deliver over 100,000 jobs and more than $300 billion in annual GDP. So America's role as a pioneer in deep sea mining in the high seas is often overlooked, but president Trump's recent executive order reminded the world of that legacy and robust regulatory framework already in place to support this industry. You'll notice the president's signature there in the middle of the map. And the order directs the Secretary of Commerce to expedite permitting under the U.S. Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act and tasks multiple federal agencies, including Defense and Energy, with assessing offtake opportunities and domestic processing capabilities. It further calls on key U.S. development finance agencies to identify tools to support the industry. And in light of our longstanding partnerships in the Pacific, We welcome the directive for a joint interagency assessment alongside U.S. allies on the feasibility of an international seabed benefit sharing mechanism and rest assured that we are having continuous and productive dialogues with the governments of Nauru and Tonga on these points. And the signal is clear. The United States is ready to again lead this industry, backed by a transparent and enforceable legal framework. For TMC, this brings the regulatory clarity that we've been seeking for our application and supports the broader investment case for developing a strategic domestic supply chain based on deep seabed minerals. It's refreshing to work with a regulator that is not only transparent but also supportive, flexible, and even enthusiastic about the strategic importance of this industry. NOAA has publicly committed to expediting the review of applications and is dedicating the resources needed to avoid undue delays. They've already taken steps to streamline interagency coordination, something we're already seeing firsthand in our early consultations. The Department of Commerce has made clear that companies like ours can apply today under existing U.S. law, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it plainly, the United States not China, will lead the world in responsibly unlocking seabed mineral resources and securing critical mineral supply chains with our partners and allies. And we're encouraged by the level of professionalism and urgency from the U.S. agency that we've so far experienced. Some in the media are also applauding the new U.S.-focused pathway. We've always admired the economist for quality independent journalism, and we're pleased to see the paper once again return to the topic of deep sea mining with two pieces. In its May 1st leader, the paper took stock of the executive order for government agencies to ready themselves to start issuing commercial recovery permits for deep sea nodules and acknowledged TMC's front runner position at the head of, and I quote, Mr. Trump's deep sea queue. The paper also offered strong words to the ongoing regulatory delays at the International Seabed Authority, warning that if the body wished to retain any influence over the development of this industry, that it would do well to pay less heed to activist speculation and focus on fulfilling its legal mandate to establish regulations. And while some media remain focused on speculative studies that ignore decades of real-world data from offshore trials, It's encouraging to see the economists continue to acknowledge the need for trade-offs and that sourcing metals from deep sea nodules is far less harmful than the destruction caused by expanding mining in biodiverse rainforests. With deep sea mining firmly in the spotlight, I was honored to be invited to testify before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on how nodules can help revitalize U.S. industry and manufacturing. In his opening remarks, Chair Paul Gossard urged his colleagues to consider the positive economic implications of seabed mining and how the US, with its legacy of technological and environmental leadership, can ensure the frontier isn't ceded to China. Echoing these sentiments, my own testimony, which is available on the committee's website and YouTube, spoke to the opportunity for the US to reclaim leadership in an industry it helped pioneer while strengthening critical mineral independence and jump-starting a new era of American industrial strength. Importantly, the hearing gave space for one of the world's leading scientists on sediment plumes to directly counter activist speculation and reinforce what the data actually shows. Dr. Thomas Peacock, one of the world's leading experts on deep sea sediment plume dynamics at MIT, warned that, unfortunately, The latest scientific findings are not being used to guide decision-making on deep sea mining. Instead, outdated and debunked claims from activists, such as the fallacies that operations could impact carbon sequestration or spread sediment plumes for thousands of miles, are being amplified in the media, despite having no basis in current scientific data. But hopefully that stale speculative narrative will continue to wear itself out in the face of increasing infield observed data, especially once we're in production. I'd now like to turn it back over to Craig to discuss the resource a little bit further.