Livent Corporation

Good afternoon, and welcome to the fourth quarter 2021 earnings release conference call for Livent Corporation. Phone lines will be placed on a listen-only mode throughout the conference. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer period. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Daniel Rosen, Investor Relations and Strategy for Livent Corporation. Mr. Rosen, you may begin.

Thank you, Emma. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Livent's fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining me today are Paul Graves, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gilberto Antoniazzi, Chief Financial Officer. The slide presentation that accompanies our results, along with our earnings release, can be found in the investor relations section of our website. Prepared remarks from today's discussion will be made available after the call. Following our prepared remarks, Paul and Gilberto will be available to address your questions. Given the number of participants on the call today, we will request a limit of one question and one follow-up per caller. We will be happy to address any additional questions after the call. Before we begin, let me remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning specific factors, including but not limited to those factors identified in our release and in our violence to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Information presented represents our best judgment based on today's information. Actual results may vary based upon these risks and uncertainties. Today's discussion will include references to various non-GAAP financial metrics, definitions of these terms, as well as a reconciliation to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP are provided on our investor relations website. And with that, I will turn the call over to Paul.

Thank you, Dan, and good evening, everyone. There's a number of topics we'll cover today, including how we finish 2021, what we see at the start of 2022, and how we see the full year developing. We'll give an update on market conditions and what we think the medium-term holds for our industry, and how we're investing to meet the rapid-growing customer demand that's underpinning the growth that we see. Starting with 2021, we deliver stronger results in the fourth quarter compared to earlier commitments by the end of the third quarter, giving us a greater ability to take advantage of consistently improving market conditions in the final quarter. While we're able to recognize higher average prices across our portfolio in Q4, we'll see an even greater increase in realized pricing in 2022, as we will discuss shortly. Four-year results for 2021 came at the top of our guidance as a result of the strong Q4 performance. Looking at 2022 guidance, high realized pricing will drive a significant increase in profitability compared to 2021. This is despite flat year-over-year volumes. Prior to our capacity expansion, we fill out incremental volumes in 2023. We expect this higher realized pricing to drive four-year adjusted EBITDA up to almost three times that of 2021 at the high end of our guidance range. Beyond 2022, we expect demand to continue to grow at rates similar to today. Supported by increased visibility and focus from our customers on securing reliable long-term battery-grade lithium supply, we're announcing today that we've commenced engineering work to add a further 20,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate capacity in Argentina, which we expect to be in production before the end of 2025. When combined with our current 20,000 metric tons of So before I get into more detail about 2022 and beyond, I'll turn the call over to Gilberto to walk us through our Q4 and 2021 financial results, as well as our 2022 outlook.

Thanks, Paul, and good evening, everyone. I will begin with our fourth quarter results on Blackboard. We reported revenue of $123 million, adjusted EBITDA of $28 million, and adjusted earnings of $0.08 per diluted share. revenue was up 50% compared to the same quarter in 2020, driven by higher volumes and higher realized pricing across almost all lithium products. Versus the prior quarter, revenue was also up 19%, with slightly lower total L3 volumes being more than offset by higher realized pricing, most notably for lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was nearly four times higher than prior year and increased 85% versus the prior quarter. As discussed in our last earnings call, because Lightning fulfilled most of its committed volumes for 2021 in the first three quarters of the year, we have more available volumes to sell in the higher price environment seen in Q4. Additionally, a greater proportion of these sales were in the form of lithium carbonate, where market prices were notably higher. Some of the margin benefit from much higher pricing was offset by increased costs due to broad inflationary pressures and continued global supply chain disruptions. Turn to slide five. For the full year 2021, we reported revenue of $420 million. adjusted EBITDA of $70 million, and $0.18 of adjusted earnings per diluted share. Revenue and adjusted EBITDA were both at the high end of our guidance ranges and resulted in an annual rate of growth of 46% and 212%, respectively. The improvement was due to higher volumes and higher average pricing, largely offset by higher costs related to logistics, soldering, and other raw materials. Despite flat carbonate production volumes in Argentina versus 2020, LIBEN's 2021 total sales volumes increased by over 7,000 metric tons in LCE terms versus the prior year, primarily from higher hydroxide and carbonate sales. as we were able to draw on the inventory we carried into 2021 and were also supported by some additional third-party carbonate purchases. Average pricing on an LC basis across the portfolio was higher than 2020. Average pricing was better than our expectations 12 months ago and was largely a result of better than expected improvement in the market conditions. It was also supported by the flexible nature of our operations and our ability to pivot to selling carbonyl or hydroxide when it made sense to do so. There were a few areas of higher costs that impacted our business. They include higher and less predictable energy costs and higher raw material costs, most notably in the solvents and liquid metal used as feedstock. Global supply chain challenges also resulted in higher shipping logistic costs, while some unavoidable delivery disruptions created certain timing issues for us. We had $119 million in total capital spend in 2021, of which 25 was for general maintenance and in line with historical levels, while the remainder was for our expansion work. There was a notable ramp up in capital spending in the fourth quarter that we forecast will continue into 2022 as we move closer to the completion of our near-term capacity expansion projects in Bessemer City and Argentina. I may now comment further on our financial guidance for 2022. LIGO expects a substantial improvement in financial performance in 2022. For the full year, LIZEN projects revenue to be in the range of $540 to $600 million, and adjusted EBITDA to be $160 to $200 million, representing growth of 36% and 159% respectively at the midpoint versus the prior year. This would imply an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 15% at the midpoint. Our guidance is based on a flat year-over-year total volume sold and significantly higher prices year-over-year across all product lines, partially offset by higher costs. Given the number of moving pieces in our guidance, let me try to provide a simple bridge from 2021 results to the midpoint of our adjusted EBITDA guidance. Starting with our 2021 result of $7 million, the increased pricing in our multi-year hydroxide contracts effectively levels that number. In addition, the increased earnings from our non-contract volumes combining hydroxide and carbonate and priced by reference to China indexes is expected to add a further $60 million to the adjusted EBITDA. Offsetting this, we see higher operating costs, such as labor, energy, and raw materials, of $15 million. And finally, as we complete our expansions, we expect a $5 million expense to ramp up costs. You will notice that we do not anticipate any impact to our profitability from due to lithium and high pure metal business since we expect higher cost to be passed on to our customers through higher prices before concluding i want to provide further guidance in selected financial metrics for 2022. respect to our balance sheet we ended 2021 with 130 million dollars in cash and no draw under a 400 million dollars revolving credit facility. For the full year 2022, LIDAR is expecting to generate adjusted cash from operations in the range of 145 to 185 million dollars. We anticipate capital spending in 2022 to be in the range of 280 to 320 million dollars. as we complete our new 5,000 metric ton hydroxide unit in Basque City and the first 10,000 metric tons of our cabinet expansion in Argentina. This guidance is also inclusive of minimum spending across the business at levels in line with historical spending. The combination of LIBEN's current cash position, its ability to draw on the credit facility, and a much stronger outlook for cash generation and higher volumes in pricing provides confidence in the ability to fund its capacity expansion programs. I will now turn the call back to Paul to provide some additional context to our guidance links in how we are thinking about the year ahead.

Thank you, Gilberto. To turn to slide six, and as Gilberto already mentioned, flat versus 2021. No meaningful volumes from our capacity expansion projects are expected to be commercially available this year, even though we do expect mechanical completion and operational startup before the end of the year. This reflects the reality that in our industry, it takes time to ramp up production levels, to resolve the inevitable startup challenges for product quality and consistency, and then complete the processes related to customer qualification, especially for hydroxide. As a result, the first meaningful step up in sales volumes for Liban will be 2023. We expect a significant improvement in pricing in 2022, with average realized prices higher across all of our products. Specifically for Liban, 100% of our sales volumes in 2022 will be at prices either set in contracts entered into in late 2021, or at market prices determined on a monthly or quarterly basis in 2022. We anticipate significantly higher average realized prices in our lithium hydroxide business, which can be characterized by two distinct segments. Around three-quarters of our hydroxide volumes are on a multi-year, largely fixed-price take-or-pay commitment with a small subset of customers. This is in line with the company's historical strategy and provides a base of stability and predictability around returns on its capital investment. Among these contracts, we expect to realize increased prices versus prior agreements of around 50%. For the remaining portion of hydroxide volumes, we have made volume-only commitments for 2022 with periodic pricing reviews that allow for more direct exposure to market prices. The majority of our hydroxide customers are transacting with us on this basis. With respect to lithium carbonate, which has seen some of the most dramatic recent increases in market prices, we will continue to be opportunistic in the near term, selling small volumes on an uncommitted month-by-month basis. Sitting here today, we would expect realized prices with these portfolios of customers to be more than double what we achieved in 2021. And finally, for our remaining key lithium products, such as beautiful lithium and high purity metal, we continue to commit volumes to our existing customers. However, price setting has shifted to be on a quarterly or even a monthly basis, as opposed to an annual basis as it has been historically. This price setting change reflects a different dynamic. with cost increases and key inputs, especially solvents and methane. By moving to quarterly or monthly pricing conversations with customers, we're able to more effectively maintain profitability. Like many other businesses, we're dealing with the impact of general inflationary pressure in both raw materials and labor costs. In addition, and specific to Liban, our guidance includes additional costs in the second half of 2022 as we commence the process of commissioning and ramping up our new carbonate and hydroxide units. And lastly, there continues to be lingering global supply chain disruptions that originated at the onset of the pandemic and that add friction and cost to shipping and related logistics. And while we hope some of these pressures to ease over time, it's much more difficult to predict how this will unfold. The ranges of our guidance for 2022 are wider than historical ranges, reflecting the shorter-term volatility and unpredictability we're seeing in some areas of the market. Delivering four-year results near the high end of our ranges would likely be due to even higher pricing than we're currently assuming. And conversely, results at the low end would most likely be due to lingering supply chain challenges impacting the timing of volume delivered or resulting in higher than expected costs. I want to spend some time discussing current market conditions on slide number seven. The incredibly strong demand for lithium units sold throughout 2021 and now into 2022 has been led by record-setting demand for electric vehicles. New energy vehicle sales in China grew by over 150% in 2021 to 3.5 million units, which is greater than the entire number of EVs sold globally in 2020. Additionally, any EV sales in China are projected to be well over 5 million units in 2022, 2023. And in Europe, fully electric vehicle sales grew to 109,000 units in December, marking a monthly record for the top five regional markets and a penetration rate at a new high of 16%. And in the U.S., at least 13 new EV models are expected to be introduced to the market in 2022, more than double the number currently available. And the positive trends behind demand for nursing do not stop in electric vehicles. We continue to see increased demand expectations including light commercial vehicles, e-bikes, stationary storage, and mobile devices. And lithium-ion battery installations for EVs grew by 143% in China, and just over 50% of these new installations were the lithium-ion phosphate or LFP batteries, marking the first time in recent years that it has become the predominant capital technology. While carbonate and hydroxide demand both grew significantly in 21, this shift towards LFP was clearly responsible for part of the acute tightness seen in the carbonate market. And this demand surprise combined with the less surprising failure of carbonate expansions to deliver volumes as planned meant that demand growth outstripped supply growth. We saw inventory levels essentially disappear in the channels, whether that was spodumene concentrate or carbonate. environment, it's easy to understand that the China-based battery market, which has largely rejected multi-year fixed-price contracts in preference for short-term pricing mechanisms, saw a rapid increase in prices for all battery materials. However, they all cost one of the main reasons to adopt LFP over high nickel chemistries. We will be monitoring carefully how battery technology adoption evolves. With iron phosphate prices also rising rapidly, the higher carbonate prices have quickly negated the relative cost advantages of LFP-based cathodes. In fact, the lower-margin applications have seen the financial rationale for LFP cathodes disappear. Today, these applications are not non-EV in nature, such as stationary storage, but it does not take a great leap to see that some future EV launches, which were counting on low-cost LFP batteries to justify the decision, may not happen quite as predicted. Additionally, over time, we expect there will be a greater focus on the higher average energy consumption required to produce an LFP-based battery versus an NMC-based battery, and especially on the significantly lower metal recovery value per kilowatt hour when thinking about end-of-life recycling factors. Perhaps for all of these reasons, it's clear to us from our many conversations in leading OEMs that there is no intention of moving away from high-nickel catalysts high-margin vehicles. The entire lithium market remains tight today, and the extent of this tightness is reflected by just how high prices in the Chinese non-contracted market are climbed. Published lithium prices in all forms continue to rise, and we're now seeing the pull-through of contracts that mature at year-end being reset at meaningfully higher price levels. Non-integrated spodumene converters in China continue to operate at lower utilization rates due to a lack of available spodumene feedstock This dynamic is driving up the price of finished lithium products in a similar feedback loop to what we previously saw when lithium prices were steadily declining, albeit in the opposite direction. And in this rising price environment, there have been a number of other lithium suppliers that have chosen to walk away from existing supply agreements or have forced a shift to market-based pricing structures. The dramatic near-term spike in the spread between carbonate and hydroxide prices has also caused falling back from their efforts to enter the hydroxide market. This withdrawal from the battery-grade hydroxide market is further supported as producers have seen a close-handed difficulty in getting qualified and the costs associated with not being able to sell low-grade hydroxide due to a lack of customer willingness to use it. Converters that choose to withdraw from the hydroxide market will find it much harder to get re-qualified into the supply chains of the high-end batteries. future, but the time and effort needed from the battery producer to qualify supply requires a commitment from the lithium producer to remain a supplier long enough to justify that effort. Looking at the forecast of lithium industry capacity additions, many hope we'll relieve some of the supply shortfalls. We continue to but there are also some factors such as environmental challenges and local opposition that are creating delays and even some high-profile cancellations. As we've said in the past, lithium expansion projects are complex. They're both time and capital intensive, and they almost always have unique local challenges. and, in fact, more often than not, result in delays or cancellations. Given these practical realities, it's very difficult to forecast a sustained period of oversupply over the next few years. Despite some of the challenges seen on the supply side, we have not seen any other OEMs back away from their electrification targets or commitments. In fact, in the past few months alone, there have been new announcements of EV partnerships and joint battery cell manufacturing plans. And understandably, in this environment, we've seen a heightened customer focus on securing long-term lithium volume commitments from reliable sources. As OEMs slowly develop their understanding of the lithium supply universe, our proven ability to meet battery-grade qualification standards and deliver on that commitment makes it one of the first calls as OEMs look to secure their long-term base volumes. And it is this increased engagement with us by the ultimate consumers of lithium products that underpins our decision to invest in further capacity expansion. As shown on slide 8, within the next 12 months, Liban will add 5,000 metric tons of hydroxide capacity investment hydroxide commitments to strategic customers while eliminating the need to purchase third-party carbonate to feed our hydroxide plants. Beyond this, an additional 10,000 metric tons of carbonate capacity will be online in Argentina by the end of 2023, which will nearly double Liban's total available LCEs from 2021 levels. This production growth over the next few years will see us deliver higher volumes to customers and help us to fund continued expansionary investment. And to meet the growing needs of our customers, Leiden has begun the engineering work on a second expansion in Argentina, looking to add an additional 20,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate capacity. Following this expansion, which is expected to be complete before the end of 2025, Leiden's Argentina operations will have a total annual carbonate capacity of 60,000 metric tons. And this is in addition to our existing 9,000 metric tons of lithium chloride capacity in Argentina. The rationale for this decision was straightforward. Our customers want to secure more values from us than we can currently produce. And as long as we can execute supply agreements that justify the capital commitments with respect to price, duration, and certainty, we will continue to invest. Longer term, Livent will continue to expand its hydroxide production capacity. operational flexibility, and a pathway to be a larger participant in the carbonate market. NMASCA, a fully integrated lithium hydroxide project located in Quebec, Canada, of which Lydon County holds a 25% ownership stake, is nearing completion of its previously announced optimization study. While this study is a few months behind schedule, we're confident that NMASCA will be producing lithium chemicals by 2025. I want to conclude that the next phase of our planned expansion in Argentina will be fundamentally different from our existing operations at the SALARP today. A primary focus of the preliminary engineering work is how we can expand capacity within existing infrastructure constraints. For example, by changing some of our existing processes, we believe we can add this next 20,000 metric tons of carbonate capacity without requiring access to any additional fresh water. our existing operations in Argentina, we can increase yields and eliminate the production seasonality caused by unexpected weather events. And as we work to expand life into production to meet the increasing demand for lithium, the new Argentina expansion, as well as the associated capital requirements as we progress. Sustainability continues to be a key consideration in our decision-making and investments, and we welcome opportunities to further strengthen and advance our program. Earlier this year, Leiden announced that it would award a 2021 gold status for sustainability performance by Ecovaris. This is the second consecutive year that we have while ensuring we continue to operate in a safe, ethical, socially conscious and sustainable manner. And finally, Libent began a voluntary, independent third-party assessment using the Standard for Responsible Mining from the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, or IRMA. Libent is the first company with mining operations in Argentina and one of the first lithium mining companies in the world to become a full member of IRMA. We intend to continue our leadership in pushing our industry towards greater transparency and continuous improvement in all aspects of sustainability, including efforts to better engage with our communities. This is something our current and potential customers truly value and believe it's another key area of differentiation for the company. I will now turn the call back to Dan for questions.

Thank you, Paul. Emma, you may now begin the Q&A session.

If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you can jump back in the queue. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. We'll pause for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Chris Katsch with Loop Capital Market. Your line is now open.

Yeah, good evening. Thanks for the color of the market trends. There's obviously a lot of cross-currents. My first question really is, you know, I think you said despite increased relevance of LFP because of, I guess, higher cost for carbonate and maybe some sustainability considerations, many Western EV supply chains are not really backing away from their commitments to high nickel cathodes. So my question is, to the extent that they're looking for security of supply in for hydroxide and those battery specs that are tough to meet. Do they have a preference for a brine versus hard rock based hydroxide in order to meet those commitments looking forward?

asset right now that's operating, but we don't really hear that, that there's any particular major firms. Now, the whole caveat to that is that there are a couple of producers that are already thinking very much about sustainability. While there's inherently no reason why you can't have sustainable paths to produce lithium hydroxide from hard rock, Today, at least, much of it has got a huge carbon footprint because of the way mining has shifted to China and processed there and shifted around the world. So there are certainly some that are looking at that saying, that model, the non-integrated model, doesn't work for us, not for baseload lithium. But it's not really the issue with spodumene per se. It's actually about the way spodumene is being mined and converted in the market today.

Right. Okay. Fair enough. And then just to follow up, Pete, you alluded to the increased participation in the carbonate market. Can you talk about what the thinking is from a strategic standpoint? Would making more volumes available for that market would be more opportunistic based on where the relative pricing is between carbon and hydroxide? Or do you have customers that are looking to to you for security of supply of carbonate as well as hydroxide. Any color there is appreciated. Thanks.

Yeah, I think it's this idea that being a monolithic lithium producer is not necessarily a good idea in the long run. I mean, you can be monolithic in only having one resource. You can be monolithic in only making one lithium product. We also recognize that people want us as included. the same way to meaningful volume of short-term transactions. Carbonate does. And so I do think that there's an opportunity for us to increase the diversification of our portfolio, allow us to participate in more markets. It won't change the fact that we consider ourselves primarily to be and they don't lend themselves to short-term spot transactions. So we don't expect to move away from long-term demanders from customers, but we would like to have a little bit more exposure to Phyllis and Carbono than we have today. Fair enough, thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Joel Jackson with BMO Capital. Your line is now open.

Hi, good afternoon or good evening. We know what your capital plan was, or capital expansion plan, CapEx-wise, was at the time of the spin of the IPO. Can you walk through how much CapEx is left to spend on the carbon expansions for the 2020 coming up and the 2020 after that? You've got $300 in the budget now, so how much we should expect to spend on this in 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026? I guess talking about carbonate, you can throw in what you commit to hydroxide to get to 30 and then these things.

Yeah, I'm going to pass that to Gilberto in a moment. I wanted to say we have visibility over essentially 22 and 23 because that's essentially when our current engineered expansion end. So I don't yet have visibility on the new one that we've announced today. intense than what we've done already, but that needs to be proven out. I'll let Gilberto walk through some actual numbers of what 2022 and 2023 and any run over into 2024 spending will be.

Yeah. So, Gil, so just a point of perspective, between 2018 and 2021, we spent in the growth initiatives about $350 million. And frankly, this is pretty much in line with what we always expected. So for this year, we are expecting to spend all 275. So, and the remaining of maybe another 150, 125 next year to complete phase two in Argentina. So that's where we're looking at Verizon. And actually this year is a big stand because we do all the civil work. There's no pre-buying because we spent a lot of money in the last couple years building and buying the modules in China. They're all in Argentina now. And now we're just really going through a lot of the seed award that needs to be done in both Argentina and Bessemer City.

Sorry. I'd like to ask another question, but the 100 to 125 next year, you said to finish phase two. Is that to finish phase one or phase two? I may have heard that wrong.

Well, to finish the second, the 20,000, the 10,000 that we are already building, that we can keep that next year.

But to finish the post-expansion, okay. To get to 40, kind of 1 to 125 next year.

Exactly. It depends.

Everything that we've been asking is prior to today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. My other question would be then... Can you talk about the process changes for the next 20,000 in Argentina? Let me elaborate a little bit more. What process changes are you considering? What's proven out? What do you have to prove out still? And, yeah, thanks.

I think it's best to say none of the process changes require technical, you know, innovation or revolution. There are well-known technologies that exist today, just haven't been applied in the looking space. And, frankly, to an extent, and a high degree of engineering complexity that would be required. It is not massively different to what you will see some of the other projects in Argentina talking about. So it requires, first of all, it will essentially eliminate ponds, so we will not have a pond And that's good because ponds are a pain to maintain, they're expensive to maintain, they're ugly, and locals don't like them, and so it will somehow help with that. And it will require us to create a much more closed-loop environment for the water that we use, so it will significantly reduce the amount of water that we use per kilo of product produced. It also allows us to do a whole bunch of other stuff in terms of recovery of other waste streams that help increase yield as well. So I can say that it's just a different approach to it. The base DLE technology that we use does not change. The base process does not change. It's really about how we handle and manage water more than anything else, and how we essentially concentrate the brine to the required levels.

Are you going to be doing a pilot of this, or you don't need to do that?

I think the engineering process will let us know whether we feel the need to pilot it or not. Thank you very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Thanks for taking the question. Let me start with kind of a high-level question. We've seen the spot price of lithium carbonate increase six-fold. in the past year, how high can that get realistically before we begin to see some kind of demand destruction in the battery market or any of the other verticals?

That is a really, really key question that I don't have a specific answer for. There's no doubt that that point exists, but I think it exists at different points for different products, different segments. I think in a premium vehicle using high nickel technology, I think it's a much higher number because the relative cost of the battery is different. I think for, bluntly, anybody who sells cars in a highly regulated area, where you don't get a chance to sell combustion engines anymore, or you have massive fines, potentially, because of your CO2 emissions, you don't have a lot of choice. You have to find a way to continue to sell vehicles and put the batteries in them, so maybe a little less price sensitivity in that. But I think where there isn't a regulatory push, then a couple of things are going to happen i think one of them is you quite likely they'll maybe launch different vehicles to start with you either only launch the high premium ones or you go for smaller shorter engines that can carry a smaller battery pack to allow for the fact that they're more expensive i think it um also impacts quite significantly some of the maybe lower margin businesses whether that's you know commercial vehicles whether it's station storage especially which is very price or can be very price sensitive i think you're going to find EV demand. I think it also could trigger a bunch of other innovations around the market. I mean, there's no doubt that it may trigger better charging infrastructure. If the car makers have to put smaller batteries in because they're so expensive, the incentive to invest in faster charging maybe comes along. So it's an interesting, really interesting question to sort of play out. But to my mind, there's no doubt that prices, you know, as high as they are, have to have some impact on demand in the long run.

Okay. Let me zoom in on your Quebec opportunity. I guess it's been about a year and a half since you made the Damascus investment. What would it take for you to pull the trigger, make a final investment decision on that?

You know, we don't control the rains up there, clearly. And that's appropriate. We only own 25% and the government of Quebec owns 50%. So It runs its process independently. We are providing a lot of technical support, so we have very clear insight into what is going on with that. But I just remind everybody that, first of all, Namaskar is a very good spodumene resource. There's no history yet of mining in such a remote, cold location. Miners do this all the time, but when you get into transport, I say, to a chemical, you know, there's implications as to environmental footprint, cost of per unit of production, et cetera, that just need to be worked through carefully. And the same is true of building a chemical conversion plant. I think you've heard from us, and you've heard from even more experienced producers than us, that, you know, producing a spodumene conversion plant is not easy. We've seen failures out there, meaningful failures out there, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of waste of capital failures out there. So it's really important to do it right. I would argue as well, by the way, that there isn't necessarily a huge rush to bring enough material from Namaska to the market. Why? Essentially, for the next two or three years, the only really growing market for the hydroxide is China. And it's questionable about whether it's practical really to import hydroxide in large quantities into China, given customs duties, given shipping and logistic challenges around that. It's certainly possible. But I think the master is absolutely geared towards the development of a battery industry in North America and in Europe. And it's probably fair to say that's still pretty nascent and probably won't be meaningfully evolved much before 2024, 2025. Having said that, we still think it's a fantastic project and has an important place to play in the industry in the long run.

Thanks very much.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson with Mizohu Securities. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you. Can you just discuss the 28% to 43% growth assumption for 22 on the top line? I think we'll all presume that it's pricing due to the flat volume assumption. But if you could just hit on the portfolio differentials between hydroxide, carbonate, lack of spot chain versus your primary competitor. And just, Paul, you could quickly comment further on just the changes of the evolution of your pricing contract structures. That would be incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. Sure.

Okay, so let me deal with the last question, the evolution of our pricing contracts. They really haven't evolved that much at all in terms of the largest contracts. We remain committed to multi-year. but the bulk of our customers have typically wanted to reset pricing every year. And they take much smaller volumes. They're typically not battery-raised, typically increased in other industrial applications. And frankly, we've moved them and said, look, if that's the market, if you don't want to make long-term commitments, then let's just price to market. And we've made it very clear that we always have the option, particularly in hydroxide, to sell the carbonate instead. And so wherever there's a market for carbonate that we can sell it to, then Frankly, the hydroxide, the short-term hydroxide customers like that just have to keep up. And I think that's been an evolution, and we typically not reference hydroxide pricing against carbonate pricing. 20-43% growth rates. I think we mentioned about three-quarters of our hydroxide volume, but it's all pricing, right? But three-quarters of our volume, and our mix is different, by the way. We're going to sell more hydroxide in 2022 than we did in 2021, but we don't have any more LCEs, so by definition, carbonate volume report that the hydroxide volume is up around 50% or so, pricing-wise. The remainder of the both hydroxide and carbonate, which has been priced against the alternative to otherwise sell it into the spot markets in China, today at least we'd expect that pricing to be at least what it was in 2021. You get a bit of a wrinkle at the top line, it's a little bit confusing as well, which is our lithium and metals businesses, which were about 120 million, maybe a little bit more, of revenue in 2021. You know, they are hugely sensitive to run-ups in lithium metal pricing, and lithium metal today is running up incredibly quickly because the alternative for most metal producers are all continues to climb we will pass that on to customers directly out to customers and so the top line is likely to grow but the dollar margin will change and so we won't necessarily contribute any extra ebitda but it will add something to the top line so if you all put your excel spreadsheets out just there'll be a bit of a disconnect when you do your math caused by this pastoral cost in the viewing of metal businesses

Got it. And so that's helpful in pricing. And just a very quick follow-up. Just can you give us our updated thoughts, or your updated thoughts on transportation logistics, labor, just, you know, what are the ultimate variables we should be monitoring for both this year and any, you know, current view on 23? Thank you.

Yeah, you know, I don't see that being a massive change as to what it's been like, which is great. I mean, it's predictability because of the two biggest challenges that you have. I think late you know, inflationary pressures in labor around the world and actually the shortage of labor in certain places. We tend not to suffer with that as much as others, except maybe in the expansions and capital deployment. There's just a shortage of people to do the capital deployment around the world. But in terms of other costs, you know, we've seen increased energy costs for sure. We've seen difficulties sometimes in securing slots. And it can be disruptive for lots of different things. We have a port in Chile today where, you know, ships that we booked onto just didn't bother stopping in Argentina and just kept going. And these kind of disruptions and impacts on predictability more than anything else that are the biggest challenge. And I don't have an answer to you as to where it's going to go or whether the cost is going to go up or down. It's just going to be messy acting for a while still.

Still helpful, Colin. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Richardson with Evercore. Your line is now open. Mr. Evercore is disconnected, so we'll move on to Kevin McCarthy with Vertical Research. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Good evening. Paul, with regard to your first expansion in Argentina that's set to come online in 2023, Has any of that output been contracted already?

You know, in essence, it largely has, right? Because we've been buying third-party carbonate, converting it to hydroxide to meet our hydroxide commitments. That's why we've been starting to short carbonate and have to buy some as soon as it's up and running online. And, you know, one of the reasons we can bring it on reasonably quickly is that we don't have that same drawn-out qualification process with It still takes time to ramp it up, but the qualification is less of an issue. It, in essence, as I said, removes the need to purchase the bicarbonate. You know, I think, though, there are a lot of conversations going on more about that second phase that comes out in 2023, I think, or 2023. At that point, we'll be, assuming we do nothing else, pretty long in lithium, lithium carbonate, maybe 8, 9, maybe 11, 12,000 tons of carbonate. And so we do have two conversations going on with customers, customers that would love to contract for that carbonate, and customers that are We will certainly do one of those two, I suspect, ahead of that second expansion coming online.

Okay. And then secondly, how would you characterize the quarterly cadence of your earnings this year? Is that mainly going to be a function of how prices behave within the one quarter of your hydroxide volumes that's essentially floating, as I understand it?

Yeah, I think it's going to be any quarter different to any other quarter. They will have different costs and shipping, they'll have different mixing quarters depending on customers, and we'll certainly have different pricing for certain products during the quarters, but we don't have before mechanical completion. And so if we are fortunate enough, for example, to mechanically complete a month or two early, we will likely start those startup costs and therefore the expenses a little earlier as well. So that's the only real obvious seasonality in our performance. Now, having said that, we've never done four equal quarters. I don't expect the sheet to be any different, but I have nothing that I can roll out to you to explain that.

Great. Thank you for the caller.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Richardson with Evercore. Your line is now open.

Hello. Hi. This is Kishan Reddy calling for Steve. Sorry about that. Earlier had a phone issue. In terms of 2022, I was wondering if we can just go back to the underlying earnings power of the business. it's clear that things have kind of gone back to that 2018 baseline or even stronger due to pricing. But in terms of the cost structure, as inflation moderates, even slightly declines throughout the year, how should we think about the cost and margin profile of the business on a go-forward basis in 2022 and 2023? Yeah, you know, this is a hard one, right, because

They go up, but they don't go down. I think that there are other commodity inputs, like solvents, for example. A lot of the costs, it's fundamentally higher costs to do business. And I think it's a reality of the living business, by the way. The costs don't go down as we expand. I mean, the low-cost assets have all been developed. The easy, low-hanging fruit has been developed. I think trying to regionalize supply, which I think will become a push to put costs up, not the lowest cost locations when you do that. I mean, for us, I think the costs compared to 2018, we have a higher cost of being a public company. Insurance costs, for example, and other factors. We have higher labor costs. We have more people. And a lot of that is ahead of our expansion. And so, again, they're not going to go back down in the future. I think 2022 margin profile is clearly a healthy margin profile. But most of the increase in margin we're going to see change in the cost subject.

Great. Thank you. And then just one quick follow-up. Earlier today, one of your peers increased their long-term lithium demand figure to about 1.5 million tons in 2025 and another doubling by 2030. I was just wondering your insight on long-term demand dynamics of the business, you know, sustainable price response, and frankly, if there's enough supply out there to reach demand.

That's it. Thank you. I think on that call earlier today, I think one of your peers made the correct comment, right? It doesn't matter what the fundamental demand is. If there's no supply, there's no supply. No amount of price will change this. This is not an industry. You know, when you look at the growth that we have, there's no idle capacity sitting around. So you've got growth growing at this rate. I mean, you're looking at numbers today that show growth in hydroxide and carbonate demand for next year will be 40% for this year. Over the last year, 45% in hydroxide, 35%, 40% in carbonate. But when you line that up with the supply side, there just isn't a supply there for that. And so I think you have no choice but to look at the supply and say that will be the limiting factor of demand. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of supply that can come to market and will come to market. And I also don't believe that the answer to this is going to be price contract a sensible price is to put in real commitments and to find preferred partners that they will support to make sure the expansion happens, whether that's providing technical support, capital, whatever it may be. But there's no doubt that if we just carry on attempting to leave, you know, China-based prices to drive investment decisions, it's not going to end well. So my view remains if there was a lot more supply, there would be a lot more demand.

Your next question comes from the line of PJ Chivakar with Citi. Your line is now open.

Hey, good evening, Paul. You know, your lithium prices are up somewhere between 50% to 100%. You know, I'm looking at this China crisis. What's the impact on the supply chain? Do these cathode and battery guys have pricing, or are they the ones who are going to get squeezed out? Who in the supply chain, you know, faces the squeeze or is it being passed on to the final consumer?

Well, I would say a couple of things. You just have to look at the earnings profiles of the CATLs and the LVESs of the world to suggest it's not the battery guys that are bearing the cost. In my experience, from what I've seen, the cost does get passed through ultimately to the OEM. And that's why, in the end, I think the OEM has to play a bigger role in these decisions because they're the ones carrying the cost. I don't know whether it's being passed on to the ultimate consumer because, you know, again, an EV is competing with other options, not least of which keeping your old car. So there's only so much you can pass on to the consumer. uh but it's not that the ultimate where we haven't probably more than anybody else they're going to be the ones feeling the pinch as this goes through the supply chain now it's a difficult one right because as i said before china the prices you see in china really reflect mainly a china phenomenon but all the capital materials and are being made in china and there's obviously a lot in korea and japan but it's really in china and so whatever it's a captive domestic market this is going to impact the chinese ev market first and foremost when you start to sell and price outside China, it's just a different market dynamic. The price packs are not as extreme. They're still meaningful, but they're not as extreme, just as the price collapses, but nowhere near as large either. So I do think that there's certainly plenty of margin in the chain to sustain higher lithium prices. I don't think there's enough margin in the chain to in perpetuity sustain $60 or $70 carbonate prices, which is why not

that time great Paul thank you that's helpful and you know we've been also hearing that LFP costs are now higher than NMC does that mean NMC begins to get back share maybe in China or does that mean you know it can incentivize adoption of other batteries like sodium ion batteries for some other applications maybe not in automotive but in the ESS

Well, I certainly think there's an opportunity for non-liquid mine batteries in the ESS type. We don't care about weight. You know, at some point people are going to start asking those questions. I don't know whether it's Soviet, by the way, but I'm sure there's other alternative technologies that people will, I'm sure, be looking at. You know, NMC is not going to take back market share, but NMC continues to grow at an absolute growth rate of grow and develop in the way that we have predicted it, that it will grow and develop in passenger EV applications. Nobody was trying to use it in other applications, other than maybe power tools and e-bikes and scooters, that kind of space. But I think high nickel, high nickel is really going to continue doing what it does. And I think it will run into its own challenges with nickel at some point. It's not there yet, but we've all stopped talking about the nickel challenge because LFP prices have caught people's attention. But there's still going to be a nickel challenge for those high nickel batteries as well. Great. Thank you.

Your last question today comes from the line of David Duckelbaum with Cohen. Your line is now open.

Thanks for squeezing me in, guys. And Paul and Gilberto, thanks for all the color tonight. I'm curious, Paul, just a housekeeping item. You talked about Bessemer City. Mechanical completion obviously is on time for this year. but we expect first sales, I guess, or revenue coming in 23. How do you think about, I guess, that timeline when you present the expansion at Solar Ombre? Mechanical completion happens next year. When do we think about the revenue impact versus the chart of mechanical completion?

Yeah, my engineering operations team have promised that there will be no leaky pipes. So we can't talk about it. from the mechanical completion to production. It's not really a question of what are you producing, right? The best in the city, it's just going to have to get qualified. And with the best world in the world, I'm sure we are with lithium. Nobody wants to take a chance on lithium hydroxide quality in a high nickel battery because recalls are pretty expensive. So we don't really see any easing, despite the tightness in supply, of qualification processes. Now, we can start that process pretty quickly, and we have the mechanisms and the relationships established When you're talking three to six months quickly, not two to three months, it's a little bit harder to predict in the carbonate because it's less about qualification. It's actually about getting the plants up and running and producing the material correctly and fine-tuning the processes because that's really all about getting the impurities out and making sure you have the process running. I would hope that we will be running both of those plants at full production rates by the second half of 2020. two quarters probably to run them all up to full production capability.

That's helpful. And then just to follow up for me is I think you gave some guidelines earlier around the additional 20,000 ton per annum expansion, getting up to 60,000 tons per annum at Solar Ombre. Should we think of that because it sounds like it's an engineering tweak that leverages existing infrastructure in place and process redesign and Should we be thinking about that expanded capacity as being significantly more capital-efficient from a sort of a dollar-per-ton perspective relative to the initial two 10,000-ton expansions, or should we be thinking of it as roughly equivalent as a starting point?

That is a really hard one to answer. I don't know the answer to that, and here's why. There's a degree of capital inefficiency on the first phases that we've just done, camps for the contractors, water treatment capabilities, water pipelines, some roads, right, that we don't need to do again. And so that's not an insignificant amount of capital. But ponds aren't that expensive to put in, relatively speaking, and what we replace them with will probably be more upfront capital. I don't know how much more yet, again, until we've engineered all of that. So it's hard to know.

be no more capital intensive than the first 20 000 and possibly maybe even a little less capital intensive but that's a very preliminary look i appreciate that and then i guess just the last one is just the decision point to get everything up and running by 2025 when does that presume that that work begins is that 2023 it presumes we start the engineering today um

We will leverage as much of the engineering that we did on the previous work, so it's not a complete from scratch engineering process. The whole process doesn't change. It's only parts of it change. I would hope that we can start that process before the end of the year. And certainly, assuming that we think this is viable, in order for us to meet that 25 deadline, we're certainly going to have to start ordering the only time items sometime in 2022. And just think about that. That's not unique to our process. Any project needs to think two or three years out for long lead time items. That's just how long it takes to get some of the critical equipment for these expansions.

I was actually thinking, conversely, it's a relatively compressed timeline for expansion. But I appreciate that. Just a bolt-on. That's why. It's a simple bolt-on. Sounds easy.

This concludes our Q&A session for today. Mr. Rosen, I turn the call back to you.

Thanks. That's all the time we have for the call today, but we will be available following the call to address any additional questions you may have. Thank you, everyone, and have a good evening.

This concludes the Livent Corporation fourth quarter 2021 earnings release conference call. Thank you.