TMC the metals company Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in the Metals Company First Quarter 2026 Corporate Update Conference Call. Joining us today are the Metals Company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Gerard Barron, Chief Financial Officer, Craig Chesky, and Chief Innovation and Offshore Technology Officer, Rutger Bosslin. Following their remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to CFO Craig Sheskey as he reads the company's safe harbor statement within the meeting of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements and information about the use of non-GAAP measures. Craig, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. 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 statements. 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 will also be posted on our website. You're welcome to follow along with that slide deck, or if you're joining by phone, access it at any time at investors.metals.co. I'll now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Jared Barron. Jared, please go ahead.

Thank you, Craig, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Well, as we said during our last call, if 2025 was about a transformational piece, 2026 is about accelerated execution. In the six weeks since our last call, we have several developments to report from TNC, our partners, our regulator, and the emerging nodule industry in general. The big development this week was the signing of our production agreement with Allseas, which will enable us to complete, commission, and operate the first commercial polymetallic nodule collection system. The agreement was signed by you, and while many of the key commercial terms and concepts have been reflected within our filings and technical reports for years, I believe the signing of this agreement shows the confidence that we and Allseas have in the regulatory path forward. and the confidence that now is the time to prepare for commercial production. In late April, NOAA determined our consolidated application for TMC USA project to be in full compliance with the requirements of the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act and its implementing regulations. This milestone represents the latest in what we expect to be a consistent and transparent cadence of regulatory milestones in the coming weeks and months. And we expect that our application will shortly be posted to the Federal Registrar, kick-starting one of a number of sequential public comment periods as part of NOAA's rigorous process. Once our application is certified, NOAA will notify the public of its intent to prepare and publish an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. A draft EIS and TCRs will also be posted for public comment. And once the EIS and TCRs are finalized, NOAA is expected to make a final determination on issuing the license and . You'll notice that the comment periods in blue on this slide are required to remain open for 60 days, and they represent elements of the compressed, ensuring due consideration for our application and a robust process. Non-compressible . There are no mandatory time limits on our other steps, so the regulator has some flexibility in how they move through these . And we continue to expect a grant of our commercial recovery permit during Q1 of next year. Our strategy has always relied on partnerships. The quality and depth of the strategic partnership we've assembled across offshore operations, onshore processing and refining, and project execution is what has allowed us to move fast. And on the offshore side, Allseas brings more than 40 years of deepwater engineering and operations, including a long track record of pioneering entirely new offshore technologies at industrial scale. Across processing and refining, we have strong relationships with globally recognized metallurgical and engineering groups, including PAMCO, Glencore's XPS, Hatch, Greer's Inc., all of whom have already worked with nodule-derived materials. And together with our partners, we have collected, lifted, and processed thousands of tons of polymetallic nodules, something no other company in our industry has achieved. We believe this level of industrial capability around the project is one of the reasons TNC continues to maintain a multi... over others in the offshore mineral sector. And while others are still exploring, we are already building and integrated... ...and ultimately downstream... On May 11, we signed an agreement with Allseas for the completion of the development of the first commercial production system and the future operation of this system after expected permitting approval. Much of this work is already well advanced, and in clear sign of their confidence that this industry is moving towards commercial readiness, Allseas have agreed to fund a significant portion of the pre-production costs and for these costs to be repaid over time after commencement of production. This agreement is not just a major milestone for TNC and all seas, but for the development of the seabed mineral industry more broadly. And I'm pleased today we have TNC's Chief Innovation and Offshore Technology Officer, Rutger Poslund, on the line to tell you more about our offshore system and operations, And of course, Rutger led the development and successful testing of our pilot module collection system while he was at Olsies, before coming over to join our team to help bring us to commercial operations. Rutger, over to you.