Livent Corporation

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2022 earnings release conference call for Liveint Corporation. Full lines will be placed on this and on the mode throughout the conference. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer period. I would now turn the conference over to Mr. Daniel Rosen, Investor Relations and Strategy for Liveint Corporation. Mr. Rosen, you may begin.

Thank you, Beau. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Liveint's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. Joining me today are Paul Graves, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gilberto Antoniazzi, Chief Financial Officer. This 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 would request a limit of one question and one follow-up per caller. We would 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 filings with 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'll turn the call over to Paul.

Thank you, Dan, and good evening, everyone. Livent continued its strong performance in the fourth quarter. and finished the full year 2022 with record financial results. Adjusted EBITDA of $367 million in 2022 was over five times higher than in 2021. This significant improvement was a result of higher average realized prices across all of our lithium products. We expect to generate higher profitability in 2023 as we build on this performance. This is driven by further increases in average realized prices across our portfolio of lithium products, as well as higher sales volumes, with the first phase of our Argentina expansion coming online during the year. We are expecting roughly 20% higher sales volumes in 2023, starting in the second half of the year. This translates to an adjusted EBITDA guidance range of $510 to $580 million. a roughly 50% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. We expect further enhancements to liven up revenue growth, profitability, and cash flow as we bring additional volumes online in 2024 and in the following years. Before I get into more detail regarding 2023 and other focus areas, I'll turn the call over to Gilberto to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2022 performance, as well as our announced 2023 financial guidance.

Thanks, Paul, and good evening, everyone. So this is slide four. Liven reported fourth quarter revenue of $219 million, adjusted EBITDA of $108 million, and adjusted earnings of 40 cents per diluted share. While up considerably versus the same quarter in 2021, results were roughly flat versus the third quarter. As highlighted in our last earnings call, A larger portion of sales were delivered to customers under older contracts with price set at lower fixed prices, resulting in a negative mixed impact. For the full year 2022, we reported revenue of $813 million, adjusted EBITDA of $367 million, and $1.40 of adjusted earnings per diluted share, all records for the company. Revenue was up 93% versus the prior year. Higher average realized prices across all lithium products more than offset slightly lower volumes sold versus 2021. The volume differential was primarily driven by lower lithium chloride sales, as well as the building of inventory to support the startup of our new carbonate and hydroxide production units in 2023. Adjusted EBITDA, which came in at the upper end of our guidance range, was over five times higher year over year. Higher average realized prices easily offset an increase in operating costs. While pricing was higher across all full suite of lithium products, the improvements were most notable in the uncontracted portion of our lithium hydroxide and carbonate volumes. The pricing benefit was also notable in our beauty lithium and high purity metal businesses, where we successfully shifted from annual to monthly price setting arrangements with most of our customers. Our beauty lithium business grew to roughly one-third of total revenue for the year, and we expect it will continue to be an important and profitable business for the company. Liven's total capital spend in 2022 was $327 million, in line with our guidance. This was a step up from 2021, reflecting our progress on multiple expansion projects. Our balance sheet and overall liquidity remains very strong. We ended 2022 with $189 million in cash and no draw on our $500 million revolving credit facilities. This revolver was upsized by $100 million during 2022 and renewed for an additional five years to 2027. The combination of our current cash position, our ability to draw on the credit facility, and a strong outlook for cash generation from higher volumes and sustained pricing give us continual confidence in our ability to internally fund our capacity expansions. Let me now comment on our financial guidance for 2023 on slide five. LIVEN expects another substantial improvement in financial performance, driving record results in 2023. For the full year, LIVEN projects revenue to be in the range of 1 billion to 1.1 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be 510 million to $580 million. This represents growth of roughly 30% and 50% respectively at the midpoints versus 2022. Our guidance is based on higher volume sold and a higher average realized pricing across our portfolio of lithium products, partially offset by higher anticipated costs. We further highlight some of these key drivers on slide six. Livon expects to sell 20% higher sales volumes, or roughly 4,000 metric tons on an LCE basis, versus 2022. This increase will largely be in the form of lithium hydroxide sales and is driven by our initial phases of expansion coming online. Our first 10,000 metric ton expansion of lithium carbonate in Argentina is substantially complete and is in the process of starting up. We expect commercial volumes from this expansion to be available for sale in the second half of 2023. Incremental production this year will largely feed our new 5,000 metric ton lithium hydroxide line in Berserker City, North Carolina, which was completed at the end of last year. With this new unit, LIBRA remains the largest producer of lithium hydroxide in the United States with 15,000 metric tons of domestic capacity. one of the few producing lithium hydroxide companies outside of China today. We're also expecting meaningful price improvement in 2023, with higher average realized prices across our portfolio of lithium products. But we'll go into more detail shortly on specific components related to our lithium products and our customers. However, It is important to emphasize that our guidance does not rely on an increase in the lead-to-market price from current levels. As we have said in the past, given the nature of livened contracts, we expect a continued increase in our average realized price in 2023 under a wide range of market scenarios. At the same time, we expect some higher costs in 2023. although not enough to offset further anticipated margin improvements. The biggest drivers of higher costs are royalty payments in Argentina, the cost incurring commissioning new production units, and broad inflationary pressures. For royalties, the increase is due to a higher average expected median reference price, on which royalties are based in 2023 versus the prior year. And to be clear, The underlying percentage paid for our royalty calculation has not changed, and the reference price is based on an average export price out of Argentina and Chile. For startup costs, there are inefficiencies that come with initially operating new plants at lower production rates, and we would expect this impact to be temporary in nature. We also continue to see higher costs for raw materials, such as soda ash. for energy and for labor although not in the same magnitude as experienced in 2022 i want to conclude by providing 2023 guidance range for other financial metrics liven expects depreciation and amortization to be in the range of 46 to 52 million dollars this is a step up from 2022 and is due to the start of depreciating capital investment related to the new production as we bring it online. We expect Liven's adjusted tax rate to be 16% to 19%. This reflects a continued improvement as a result of our evolving business mix and adjustment to internal corporate structure since being spun off as a standalone public company. Liven's 2023 capital expenditure are anticipated to be $325 to $375 million, slightly higher than 2022, and will be supported by an adjusted cash from operations, projecting the range of $360 to $440 million. I will now turn the call back to Paul to provide some additional context for our 23 guidance and how we'll position ourselves for the year ahead.

Thanks, Gilberto. On slide seven, we want to provide a framework for how to think about livense expectations for average realized prices in 2023. As mentioned earlier, we're expecting roughly 4,000 metric tons in LCEs of additional sales in 2023, most of which will be in the form of lithium hydroxide. You can see that roughly 70% of our volumes have fixed pricing terms that have already been set for 2023. There are a number of customers that fall into this group, some of which are still being supported under legacy contracts, and others that were agreed to around the end of 2022 with pricing more reflective of current market conditions. Because we've agreed to a separate fixed price for each customer for all of 2023, and these are take or pay commitments, we have very high confidence regarding the roughly 40% average expected price increase across these volumes. This allows us to strike a balance between locking in attractive prices for 2023 and retaining upside as we move through the year. For clarity, we have only one fixed volume contract in place today where pricing is already set for 2024, with the rest of our volumes subject to either a price escalation or market-based price structures. Annual fixed prices continue to be preferred by a subset of our customers looking for cost predictability, particularly to manage their own budgeting processes. We approach each one independently and are willing to engage with our strategic customers to balance both of our needs in these volatile and unpredictable price environments. Therefore, if market prices continue to remain above our average realized price, we would expect there to be further pricing upside on these volumes next year. The smaller remaining hydroxide and carbonate volumes, roughly 20% of our expected LCEs for sale in 2023, are under a few different variable pricing structures with adjustments typically made on a monthly basis. It is in the variable pricing segment where we maintain the greatest exposure to market prices. We are expecting average realized prices for these volumes to be slightly up in 2023. largely due to the much lower price levels we saw in Q1 last year, which dragged down our 2022 average realized price. Given this, and the fact that in Q4, market-based pricing was a lower portion of our overall sales from prior quarters, means that this group could still achieve higher average realized prices year over year for livened, even if market prices pull back from current levels. Additionally, while there's a lot of attention paid to movement in the China spot market, this is not reflective of the entire market, as you can see when you study various export and import statistics for countries such as Chile, Argentina, Japan, and Korea. Lastly, we will have variable pricing in our other specialty segment, which is largely comprised of our butyllithium and high-purity metal business. For 2023, it represents about 3,000 metric tons of our expected LCEs, but as much as 30% of our total revenues. We expect average realized pricing to be roughly flat in 2023, year over year for this group. And while these volumes are also exposed to monthly changes in pricing, it is largely structured as a pass-through of changes in lithium metal input cost, meaning the operating margin is more stable than changes in revenue might suggest.

On slide 8, I want to highlight what you can expect from Liban in 2023.

First, continued strong financial performance following a record year in 2022. 2023 will be the first of an upcoming sequence of years that Liban will see the benefit of incremental production volumes as a result of multiple years of expansionary investment. As Gilberto mentioned, we're expecting a 50% increase in adjusted EBITDA in 2023 at the midpoint of our guidance at a time where a lot of investor focus is on the potential implications of a near-term pullback in China's spot prices. Increased production for Liven will continue in 2024 and the years to follow as we progress on our various expansion plans and will be a significant driver of future financial growth. This will result in meaningfully higher cash flow generation for the company that is much more balanced around a wider range of pricing assumptions. Second, we remain unscheduled to deliver all of our announced capacity expansions. We expect to complete our second 10,000 metric ton expansion of lithium carbonate in Argentina by the end of 2023, with first production from this expansion expected in early 2024. So, as at year end 2023, we expect nameplate lithium carbonate capacity to be doubled out of 2022, approaching 40,000 metric tons. Outside of Argentina, construction began on a 15,000 metric ton lithium hydroxide facility at a new location in the province of Zhejiang, China. First commercial volumes from this unit are expected in 2024, and it will increase our total global lithium hydroxide capacity to 45,000 metric tons. Beyond 2024, LIVEN continues to progress engineering and evaluation work on additional planned carbonate expansion phases in Argentina, as well as additional hydroxide expansions that include lower-grade lithium recycling capabilities. We expect to share further details on all of these fronts later this year. Third, LIVEN plans to release a resources and reserves report at the end of this month with our 10-K filing. This will be LIVEN's first published resources and reserves report. but it is supported by decades of historical operating data. The report will give investors, stakeholders, and other interested parties an ability to evaluate the size, scale, and cost structure of our operations at Salar del Hombrin Huerto, as well as how we can support our expansion plans in a sustainable manner. Finally, we want to provide an update on the Masca Lithium. fully integrated lithium hydroxide project located in Quebec, Canada, in which Liven is a 50 percent owner. Turning to slide nine, we provide a timeline with key milestones leading to commercial production of Namaska lithium. The project is reaching the conclusion of its detailed engineering phase, and you can expect a number of key updates in the first half of this year. A feasibility study is being finalized and is expected to be published in the coming months. It will demonstrate why Livent remains as committed as ever to helping bring the project into production, and why Namaska Lithium will be critical to a future North American supply chain. Shortly thereafter, project construction is expected to formally begin, although the team has already begun ordering important long lead equipment and is commencing onsite preparations as we speak. As part of the construction decision, Namaska Lithium will outline preliminary sources of financing, which are expected to be comprised of a number of attractive options. The structure will likely include a combination of third-party debt financing, including potential low-cost government funding, prepayments from customers, and funding from Namaska Lithium's two current shareholders, Livent and Investamont Quebec. Livent continues to provide technical and commercial expertise to Namaska Lithium and has been appointed to engage in sales and marketing efforts on its behalf. We expect Namaska Lithium to announce its first customer commitments in the first half of 2023, including any project funding contributions from these customers. With respect to timing, we expect Namaska Lithium to begin generating revenues in the first half of 2025. Initial sales are expected to be in the form of spodumene concentrate, as Namaska Lithium will look to bring the Wabuchi mine and concentrator online as quickly as feasible. which is anticipated to be before the end of 2024. These spodumene cells will be a temporary source of additional cash flow until the downstream hydroxide facility at Beckencourt comes into production and Damascus Lithium is operating as a fully integrated project. We expect first hydroxide production by 2026 on a 34,000 metric ton nameplate battery-grade hydroxide facility, powered by low-cost green hydroelectric energy. Namaska Lithium continues to be a highly attractive project. Its strategic location draws strong interest from potential North American and European customers who are becoming increasingly focused on localization. It is well positioned to take advantage of various government incentives like the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. to promote domestic energy storage supply chains. Additionally, Namaska Lithium has a critical first mover advantage in the region. Having already secured space at an industrial park being developed in Beckham Corps at a time when access to infrastructure and proximity to shipping ports are key challenges for many development projects. I want to conclude on slide 10 with some commentary on market conditions. Before turning to 2023 expectations and some of the short-term data points many are focused on in China, we should take a step back and acknowledge that 22 was another exceptional year for lithium demand. and the broader electric vehicle supply chain. For the full year 2022, global EV sales are believed to have exceeded 10 million units, growing well over 50% versus 2021. Within China, EV sales are expected to have nearly doubled to roughly 6.5 million vehicles. On the battery side, total global installations across all applications were up roughly 60% year over year. Lithium demand remained very strong throughout 2022. It was a year in which lithium prices steadily climbed higher on the back of a widening supply deficit, underscoring yet again the challenges for battery grade supply to keep up with compounding demand growth. And despite concerns of higher lithium prices potentially being demand destructive, we have not seen any evidence of this today. In fact, despite facing higher input costs, we saw encouraging performance and commentary from a number of leading EV and battery producers in 22. There's understandably a lot of focus on China today, given a number of combined near-term factors, including the impact of moving away from zero COVID policies, the removal of subsidies that have previously been extended for a few years running, and the first declines in spot prices after an unprecedented run to levels well above what most people would consider rational. While it will take some time to assess how things progress as we come out of this seasonally quiet period around Spring Festival, there are a few points I want to highlight. While many have referenced substantial inventory builds within the EV supply chain, this is something that we simply have not seen today, particularly upstream at the lithium consumer level. Recent data from SMM provides a clear example of this. When looking at monthly demand, which continues to grow as expected, versus the amount of downstream lithium carbonate inventory available, the ratio hit new lows approaching year-end 2022. This makes sense as lithium consumers look to destock throughout the year in the face of higher prices. While there appears to have been some inventory increase to begin 2023, it is likely related to lower consumption levels during the lunar holiday slowdown in China. What is clear is that continued destocking similar to last year will be very challenging given the difficulty in maintaining historically low inventory levels for an extended period of time. restocking should naturally be expected at some point. This is especially the case if demand continues to be strong, which is still very much the base case for most in the industry. Benchmark Minerals, among others, is expecting total LCE demand growth of around 40% in 2023. Some of the largest lithium companies have also taken their own demand estimates up considerably in 2023 and even higher in the following years. Demand growth does not need to be linear, and prices could certainly move around quite a bit in the interim, but the point remains that we don't see long-term fundamentals being meaningfully different based on any recent data points or speculation. Additionally, there are no indications that we're on the verge of a meaningful oversupply of lithium anytime soon. While new supply is expected to come online in 2023, there have already been multiple announcements of delays and meaningful cost increases globally. Others have announced they will prioritize bringing volumes online as quickly as possible at the expense of producing qualified battery-grade material. Finally, there is not enough discussion about structural increases in the cost of both building and operating lithium assets. These higher costs are only being amplified as the desire for localized supply chains grow, and this isn't a trend that we expect to reverse anytime soon. As the cost curve continues to push upward, it will become clearer that lithium prices need to remain higher for longer and that reinvestment economics in our industry are fundamentally reset. When putting all this together, it's hard to envision a probable scenario where the lithium market does not remain structurally tight to varying degrees over the coming years. And before concluding, I want to thank our Liven employees and partners around the world a great year in 2022. They continue to work tirelessly to meet our expansion milestones in 2023. These are all big undertakings, and they're doing all of this work while staying focused on advancing Liban's core operating priorities of safety, quality, and reliability, making positive contributions in our communities, working closely with customers to advance innovation and sustainability, and providing a great work experience for all. Together, I'm confident that we'll make 2023 a landmark year for Liven and our customers. I will now turn the call back to Dan for questions.

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

Thank you, Mr. Rosen. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star then number one on your telephone keypad. Yeah, and please lend yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you do have additional questions, you can jump back in the queue. And to withdraw your question, press the pound key. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. And we'll take our first question this afternoon from Steve Richardson of AgriCorps ISI.

Hi, good afternoon. Paul, first question on NAMASCA, and I think you hit on it, talking about the structurally higher cost in the industry. But, you know, we've seen some updates from some other comparable integrated projects in North America of late. And I was wondering, you know, I don't want to front run the PFS here, but If you could just talk about what you're seeing in terms of costs and trends, and then more importantly, why would this project be advantageously positioned relative to some others in the North American context?

It's a difficult question to answer in a way that I think is going to fully satisfy you, but let me make a few observations. I think the first thing to really understand is that every project is different, and that's especially the case as this industry develops. There's a big difference between, for example, expanding an established brine project and building a brand new brine project in South America. One has a lot of infrastructure, one doesn't. So the predictability of costs is different for new projects than it is for existing projects that are being expanded. It's also very different on a technology by technology basis. It's very different using a conventional mining and a conventional conversion process relative to maybe some of the non-conventional sources of lithium that we have out there that people are running projects on. And so I think this degree of predictability and certainty, I think people have maybe overestimated how much visibility we have on projects that nobody's really taken on in any scale before. We definitely see meaningful changes driven by a few factors for all projects. They take longer, first and foremost. Secondly, there's a lot of competition for labor. Qualified labor is scarce. And in certain parts of the world, we've seen competition from non-lithium projects, oil and gas projects, for example, which are ramping back up in certain parts of the world. And we see competition for basically the fab yards where some of the major long lead items are being made. And so you either wait longer, which has implications for cost, or you have to pay more for some of these specific items. And you're also seeing some Some issues with scaling, you know, people are trying to go bigger, quicker, as we said, and I think it's not always linear and there aren't always cost savings in the initial expansionary phase. I think there's no doubt that when you look at predictable cost curves, predictable capital expenditure curves, a project like Namaska, which is frankly not earth-breaking or groundbreaking in any new technology, any new processes, it is in a part of the world that is frankly a little bit more expensive to build in than some others. But that's largely offset by the fact that it will have a lower operating cost than many others, given its low-cost energy, its proximity to key markets. It is clearly advantageous with regard to IRA-qualified material and will be advantageous. And it's not easy to see many other projects in North America with the same certainty. So the industry needs a whole wide range of projects. So this is not resource competition. This is not me saying... You know, Damascus Lithium is a far better project than Project X or Project Y, and therefore Project X or Y shouldn't be developed. They're all going to be. They all need to be developed to meet demand levels. But I think it's pretty important that you look at each project really in great detail in its own right when you sort of form the question as to how credible some of the forecasts of capital expenditure and how credible some of the future operating costs are.

Appreciate the color. We'll look forward to the update later in the year. Just perhaps a quick follow-up. Could you help us bridge the 4KT LCE growth this year implied by guidance versus what was talked about last quarter in terms of, I believe, six? I think they're probably not the same basis, and we're talking – I'm just wondering if you could just confirm, has any schedule changed in Argentina, or is this inventory, or am I counting LCEs wrong?

No, no, it is pretty straightforward. We're a few months late in Argentina. In the grand scheme of things, two or three months doesn't make a big difference, but in a calendar year when you're adding 10,000 tons, obviously it means we're short of 1,000 tons or two compared to what we said before. The reason we're late is really linked to your first question, You know, there are challenges to every single project. And I think we've seen some of the other projects in Argentina at similar phases make similar comments. It's difficult to get that final 5% done. There's a lot of local content requirements. There's a lot of local labor requirements in there as well. And it doesn't take much if you have a few pieces of piping or a few electrical connects, relatively basic stuff that are late arriving, that are held up at the port, that get caught up in some customs disputes. So they're really sort of the classic blocking and tackling that's needed at the very end of a project that slowed us down in the first part of the year. Not in the major. It's really just, my engineers will hate me for saying this, it's plugging the last few pieces of pipe and making the last few connectors in place. But we are a couple of months late relative to what we would hope.

Great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. We'll send this now to Chris Cash at Loop Capital Markets.

Yeah, good afternoon. So one follow-up on that question about the couple months delay, four versus six, does that sort of, you know, just challenge, does it cascade into the next expansion that was slated for late calendar 23 into 24? So I'm just wondering if you're going to get, I guess, by pushing out the volumes this year, you're going to get extra volume increment next year, but I'm just wondering if the delay if you're seeing that cascade into your further expansions.

No, they're completely separate and distinct work streams because it's completely run as, for this very reason, they're run as separate and independent parallel processes. I actually would hope that we learn from these last mile challenges that we have and get ahead of them. I think the team understand better now what these, this is the first time we've been through the last 5% of a project. We know we have another one coming at the back end of this year, so I would expect that the learnings from this will give us even more certainty of delivering that second phase on time.

Got it. And then thank you for the page seven, which sort of frames the, you know, the fixed versus variable versus butyl. That's helpful. A question on that would be just on the portion of hydroxyl and carbon at fixed price, is while fixed right now and you see that the realized pricing up 40%, is it fair to say that some of those customers, they're still ongoing contract negotiations, that they've become perpetual, those conversations, or are those fixed, you know, absolutely fixed for calendar 23? Yeah, no, they are.

It's a mix, honestly, because without getting too far into the details – None of them are really negotiated still in 2023. We are 95% plus of those numbers with regard to 2023. But they really make up, I think it's probably fair to say, three different types of pricing structures. There's some that were agreed in the past and we'll just roll through this year. There are some prices in there that are new prices that were fixed for 2023, but will either be rediscussed at the end of the year, or we've already agreed a step up for 2024, or they'll move to market-based pricing in 2024. So they'll migrate at that point. Or they are sort of market-based prices that have ceilings in them, and we're already over the ceiling, so the pricing is bouncing at the ceiling in the agreement. So they're technically market-based, but We're pretty confident the market price is going to be above the ceiling, so they'll stay up there. We only have – look, every customer we have, every one of them today, has either moved to market-based pricing or has made a commitment to move to market-based pricing in the next year or two. We have, frankly, one customer that has not made that commitment. They are still buying volumes from us outside the contract. on market-based structures. So they've sort of implicitly agreed it and accept that this is where the world is going to. So we'll see this transition continue as we get late through 23 into 24. By the time we get into 25, 26, certainly by 25, I don't expect to see really any of our volumes not being linked to market prices by that point.

Thanks for the call, Paul.

Thank you. And next we have to Kevin McCarthy of Vertical Research Partners.

Yes, good evening. Paul, I'd appreciate your updated views on prospects for growth in China in light of the challenges that you mentioned in your prepared remarks. In other words, COVID transition, lack of subsidy renewal, and the spot dynamics. And then I guess related to that, on slide 10, I appreciate this inventory chart. Just as a clarification, is that meant to include producer inventory or inventory all the way through the chain? I certainly welcome any thoughts on your end as to those levels downstream.

Yeah, let me answer that one first because it's easier. That is lithium inventory held at either a consumer of lithium, so a cathode producer or cathode producers, and at the lithium producers themselves. So it's a lithium inventory. It's not designed to speak to, obviously, lithium in the form of cathodes. It's just pure, basic lithium carbonate held either at a lithium producer or at the customer themselves. That's how we understand the data from SMM. And in terms of growth in China, first of all, we've not yet, but hopefully we won't see a post, you know, spring festival covid rebound so we don't see a lot of implications today at least from covid in the market i think in terms of removal of subsidies i mean this is a market that i i think it's kind of reached exit velocity frankly when you when you're doubling your total number of vehicles in a year um when sales are at this level when there are frankly fewer and fewer non-ev alternatives in china we don't really see from any vehicles sold in china a massive impact to demand from the removal of substance. There will be some, but this is a market that continues to grow anywhere. Anyway, perhaps more importantly in China, you have to understand most of the lithium today, as you know, for battery applications, is in fact going into China anyway, where it's processed into cathodes or into cells, even if it leaves the country again afterwards. So, So I think China itself is going to continue to be a source of growth. Just a final point for you and a data point that maybe is lost for a lot of people. Today, about 40% or maybe a little bit more of the demand is actually not for EVs. So we look at subsidies for EVs, et cetera. Stationary storage and a whole bunch of other applications are not EV-related. And they're actually growing quicker today, we believe, than EV applications on an installed capacity basis. When you look at total gigawatt hours of demand, we're actually seeing a larger growth in the non-EV applications than in the EV applications. And so subsidies and regulations, et cetera, while important, are not the only part of what's driving demand growth for battery materials.

As a follow-up to a prior line of questioning, Paul, how do you see the global cost curve evolving over the next decade? let's say three or four years, where do you think fourth quartile production economics will migrate to given the need to exploit higher cost resources moving forward?

I think if you look at, let's take Chinese lapidolite processors, for example, today, I mean, it's not that easy to get really reliable data in there. And the same is true over some of the Chinese recycling streams that we see. But it feels like you've got sort of a marginal price in there of the $25 to $30 a kilo. So if that remains the marginal producer in the fourth quarter, I don't see that cost falling under any circumstance. It's sort of structural as to the challenges of processing that particular type of ore and the energy they have and the seasonality of that business as well. It's hard to sort of assess the rest of the market, to be perfectly honest. There's no doubt that You know, if you saw a $3 per kilo cost, that's probably five or six today with higher operating costs, energy costs, third-party costs. If you saw a $7 or $8, these are all cash costs at the gate, by the way, so they don't at all include capital costs. The $7 or $8 is probably well into double digits today. And then our fourth quartile, I mean, that's solidly sort of first, second quartile production assets by any historical cost curve. So it's definitely moving up and moving up quickly. And I think as you look at some of the ore bodies that have been brought on that are hard rock, if you look at the model, right, the model remains, develop the mine and ship it somewhere else, ship the product to a third-party toller. It's just the most expensive way to do it. And as more of the business is produced that way, more of the material is produced that way, rather than as integrated production, then the cost is going to keep going higher. I think for most people, given the technical challenges and the increased capital required of producing, say, a hydroxide plant, You know, most people who own a lithium asset today are not going to go to the trouble of developing a lithium hydroxide asset. So it doesn't matter what the resource cost is. They're fundamentally producing lithium on that model on a higher cost structure, a non-integrated structure. So these are all pressures that are just going to keep pushing the marginal cost higher.

Thanks very much. Thank you. We go next now to David Deckelbaum at Calendly Company.

Thanks, Paul and Gerbato. I appreciate all the color today. I did just want to follow up a little bit on the pricing conversation to confirm a couple things. One, the 40% increase year over year, does that reflect contracts? Sorry, yeah. Does that reflect contract negotiations that have occurred for 2023. Were these earlier than expected? And then the latter part is you highlighted that you only have one remaining fixed contract for 2024. What does that currently represent as a percentage of your contract exposure or sales?

You know, when you think about how we contract business, let me just step back before I answer the specifics of that and just sort of remind you how maybe we're a little different to a much anybody else in the industry just just remember we sell largely hydroxide and we sell largely hydroxide into high nickel battery applications we do have others in Greece's for example and other applications but we're largely selling into that space the characteristics of that are a little bit different to what you might see elsewhere first and foremost you have to develop long-standing relationships with customers because the process of quality just the sheer complexity of that supply chain, the cost of qualifying your material, et cetera. Frankly, the fact that for many of our customers, almost all of them, we run a specific grade for that customer, specific packaging for that customer. You're always in a bit of a dance with your customer about these commitments. It's why you see us talk about take-or-pay in hydroxide, which we don't do in carbonate, nor do most others. You'll see us talk about selling, quote, under contracts under hydroxide, which we don't do, and I think most won't do in carbonate. It really is a very different business. So the conversations with the customers are, for want of a better description, perpetual. I think the easiest solution many customers are seeing to this, especially as the OEMs are increasingly becoming the customers, But even with the battery producers who themselves are trying to make sure that they're not caught with a price that isn't reflective of market conditions is to move to market-based pricing. And so in most cases, what customers are trying to do is figure out what that means. What is a market price? Are there indices we can look to? Does it involve annual renegotiations? You know, a bit of a blast from the past from five, ten years ago when everything was negotiated that way. These are all perpetual negotiations. The volumes you see there are largely done under contractual commitments. They, I believe, frankly, will continue to change over the next two to three years as the market evolves, as customers get a better view of where they want material shipped to, how much the IRA is going to change their supply chain, and how much premium, if any, they're willing to put on U.S. source material. which battery technologies they follow. Do they all stay high nickel? Do some of them get pushed towards carbonate-based technologies given challenges in getting enough hydroxide? So when we sit down and when we look at these negotiations, I think it's going to be different every single year. I wouldn't expect the customers to change. We'll put more volumes to some customers. We'll add one or two new customers. But what I would expect to happen as this market evolves is that we get closer to market economics in any given year. I'm not going to unfortunately be able to answer your question as to how much of the volume is under that one fixed price contract, but you can imagine that as we go forward, as we add more volume again, there'll be less of this conversation necessary because more and more of our volume is going to be whether through contractual agreements that last multiple years or whether because of annual conversations are going to essentially reflect whatever the market conditions are at that point in time.

I appreciate that, Paul. My second question was just on Namaska. Gilberto, is there a contingency in the CapEx guidance for 23 for Namaska, or would the DFS that comes out in the first half, would that present potentially incremental costs to that CapEx guidance?

It will not, because that CapEx that we have there is predominantly for our growth projects

at liven and and i must if we do anything would be a capital infusion which it's going to be honestly non-material at this stage okay okay i appreciate that thank you thank you we go next now to christopher parkinson at mizzou great uh thank you so much uh can you just give us a little bit more color on the incremental you know the 20 000 times and the updated uh cadence in terms of when those tons are essentially going to be priced in, are they going to be rolled into existing contracts with existing customers, you know, so on and so forth. Just trying to get a better sense of if that changes your exposure to spot, you know, over the next 18 to 24 months. Thank you so much.

Hey, Chris.

Yeah, I think, you know, as we've said before, all that volume is going to find its way into pricing structures that reflect the market conditions at the time. Some of them Frankly, some of those volumes we need to meet contractual commitments that we've already signed, but those contractual commitments are market-based pricing. They reference market bases, indices, et cetera. So, yes, they're spoken for, but they're not priced yet. They'll be priced in the market at the time. Some of the rest of that volume will be committed closer to the time, and it won't be on a multi-year fixed price. I think we've demonstrated this year we're willing to take a look out into the world and say, is there a price at which we're willing to set price? the pricing for the next upcoming year? And the answer is yes. And the answer is, the question we'll answer every single year is, how much of my portfolio am I willing to fix on that basis? Frankly, even many of the contractual structures we go into with customers are not going to be monthly resets. They're probably quarterly resets in most cases. So I think it's all designed to sort of bring a little bit more predictability to some of these customers as they look at their annual pricing structures. But All of that volume as it comes on, as I said, I think the fixed price contract is a dinosaur that's dying out. And I think that there won't be any renewals, extensions, expansions of contracts that are multi-year fixed price contracts.

They're all going to have a reference to the market in some way, shape, or form embedded in them.

That's very helpful. And you hit on it a few times regarding the IRA contract. and your exposure, you know, obviously in Damascus, but can you just hit on, obviously one of your competitors is fairly vocal on this, can you just hit on, you know, how you're thinking about it in terms of your U.S. assets, the relationship with Argentina, obviously there's been a lot of notoriety with, you know, Chile's relationship and even with the EU regarding some trade relationships over the last, you know, within the last couple months. Can you just hit on your overall thought process there, what you're hearing from your customers and how we should be thinking about that in the context of the live-in story? Thank you.

Always the easy questions, Chris. Thanks. I think it's fair to say that it's difficult for anybody, us included, automotive companies, anybody, to build a 10-, 15-, 20-year investment thesis on the basis of the IRA or any other individual government incentive program that's put in place. You have to be comfortable that your asset can stand alone without a short-term government support infrastructure in place. There's a lot still to be resolved with the IRA. There's a lot of debates, conversations going on, lobbying clearly as to what is and what is not IRA compliant. I mean, clearly, this friend of country idea, free trade agreement idea is important. But the same is true of customers or users who maybe are not selling vehicles that qualify or they don't sell to customers that are in an income bracket that qualifies. And so I don't think it's going to be a simple case of a U.S. asset producing a lithium product is going to be hugely valuable. I mean, an example is today, at least, there aren't a lot of plans out there of scale to build U.S.-based battery capacity that uses lithium carbonate. And so it's OK bringing online lithium carbonate from the U.S., but Somewhere, somehow, it's going to have to be turned into lithium hydroxide. Now, that could change, right? We could see a shift in carbonate-based battery technologies building supply chains in the U.S. The IRA doesn't necessarily incentivize that. So there's a lot of complexity around lithium assets. I think that the truth remains you've got to be able to produce a quality product that is battery-grade, and you have to have a reasonable cost position. Otherwise, no amount of incentives are going to help you out of that position.

Thank you for the thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go next now to Matthew Dio at Bank of America.

Thanks. So you're going to 40,000 metric tons at Ombremerto, and I think in the past you said you could do 100, or perhaps that's possible. How do you get there from here? Some of your peers are being a bit more aggressive with scaled expansions. than I guess you've historically taken. So can you get to 60,000 new tons over two stages, or should we expect more incremental ads?

So I mean, the resource can go big, right? And you'll see that when the resource report comes out. This is not a resource constraint issue. So let's take that to one side. It's infrastructure, frankly. The single biggest issue, for sure, is infrastructure. If you guys ever get the chance to visit there, you'll realize it's not a place that you can suddenly fill with ponds like you can the Atacama. So you need a different technology to scale to that size. We have one. The DLE process we use is eminently scalable to 100,000 tons. And if the energy supply and the fresh water supply is available and or we can develop technologies like water, et cetera, or I think our expectation today, though, is based on what we can see, is we're not willing to commit to more than 60,000 down there without some development in those areas. We're working on them, and this is not a static decision, but we certainly have plans to go to 60,000 tons in the next few years, and they're being actively engineered, pursued, and planned right now. I think we talked about getting to 100,000 when you take into account the mass of lithium exposure that we have as well. I hope that we can move Argentina to 100,000. Why? Because I think it's really difficult for the industry as a whole to supply the lithium that people need without Argentina, Chile stepping up with much higher volumes than people are producing today. I mean, it's the biggest resources. It's frankly the most environmentally friendly way to produce lithium. It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than many of the sort of hard rock-based processes that are non-integrated that involve moving rock halfway around the world. um and and it's reasonably low cost and and it's the both countries that largely speaking are supporting the development of the lithium industry with their own personal flavors so we certainly hope to get there but we're realistic that there's some big infrastructure questions that need to be answered before we can make that jump from 60 000 to 100 and even beyond that all right uh and to stick with argentina yeah i know

It's kind of whack-a-mole on headlines down there, but Alchem discussed the removal of a 1.5% to 4% export tax shelter for Argentina lithium. Can you talk through that and potential implications? Is it real? Is it not? What benefit do you have from that?

Yeah, look, it is real. It's a reasonably small impact on us. I think the rebate we got last year, I think it was a single-digit million. It's about $10 million.

Yeah.

So the impact on us is not meaningful or significant. It's just part of the development down there that we'll see continuing. I think the whole conversations in Argentina, it's a complicated place, as you know. And there's a lot of politics. As you said, whack them all on headlines. There's a lot of politics with a small P to work your way through.

But we've been doing it for 25, 30 years now, and it's no different to how it's always been.

Understood. Thanks. The next now to me, Joel Jackson of BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning. Good job. Paul, on the MASCA feasibility study, did it slip a little bit? I thought maybe it was going to come end of 22, and I thought you did order some long lead time items. So I was wondering, did you delay that because you want the fees done before you start ordering equipment, or maybe you can talk about that?

I'm not sure where in the world you are to give us a good morning, Joel. Did I say good morning?

Did I say good morning? I'm in Toronto. Happy Valentine's Day, Paul.

It's always morning in Toronto or something like that. 2022 is never on the cards, right? I think the original numbers we were looking at for the hydroxide plant was 2020, 2025, and now we're saying we'll be producing in 2026, so it's a little different still. No change at all there. I think what has changed is the fact that we now, our original intent was, given that timing, to sort of produce spot concentrate but not sell any spot concentrate. But now, we frankly have just changed that plan and said, look, it makes sense just for a couple of years to sell spot concentrate because we can get Wabuchi up and running much quicker than we'll get Beckencourt up and running. So is it really a plan change? It's not a construction plan change. I think it's a slightly different commercial plan change, but

in terms of the asset development plan and progress, know that it hasn't changed.

Okay, and then we've obviously seen a really big equity stake by GM recently have another mining project in the continent, and you've got a prepayment situation with GM. And I think you talked about before that maybe, you know, if you get in the mascot advance a bit, maybe GM or others could be involved year, as you think about how you're going to finance the MASCA and you and your partner IQ, you spoke about a little bit earlier, what are kind of the most likely scenarios in terms of paid for capital, government subsidy? There obviously seems to be way more bucket of money, a much larger bucket of money available in the States right now, some projects, and it seems like Canada is behind a bit.

That is a hard one to answer.

I think, though, you're hitting on the right point. There's no doubt that the more progressive, forward-thinking customers are definitely the ones that have gotten most scared by the realization that there won't be enough lithium to go around. They're trying to figure out how they can use their capabilities to help develop assets. It isn't just money. Money is helpful, of course, but you can frankly solve that by committing to a really high price and we'll go finance things ourselves. But I think providing money up front, providing help with whatever it may be, you know, construction resources, engineering resources. Not everybody needs it, but some people do. And so I think there are definitely auto companies out there willing to provide help. Governments, the same governments, are trying to incentivize investments that align with their broader policies with regard to what they want their industries to be. You've seen the U.S. government, of course, give out some pretty significant grants, largely technology or resource development focused, which... which is the first wave, but we'll see where we go after that. Canada is a long way behind, but frankly, so is everywhere else in the world. So I wouldn't be up on Canada. I think Canada's demonstrated its willingness, either at the federal or the provincial level, to provide meaningful support to these projects in terms of financing from multiple pockets, but also in other ways, whether it's helping with permitting and other areas. So I think there will be continued evolution of the question of who provides the financing, what it looks like, and what do, if it's customers or governments, what do they get back in return? But I think they'll be an important part of the development of our industry, particularly, as you said, in North America.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll go next now to Pavel Volchenov at Radon James.

Thanks for taking the question. Lots of interest, obviously, in hydroxide demand. Can I ask about Butyl Lithium? Smaller slice of your revenue mix, probably not as growthy, but what are you seeing in terms of demand these days?

Butyl is a good business, let's be honest. It's a business we have a leadership position in globally, and that counts for a lot. We have long relationships with customers. It's also got some great characteristics. processes that it's used in, and it's not a big part of the cost structure. So it's a really good business for us. It's not an easy business. It's a complicated product to make. It's very much a regional business in terms of, or historically has been a regional business as well. Its biggest issue is that Buell is basically produced from lithium metal. Lithium metal largely today is produced from lithium carbonate. So as carbonate prices go up, metal prices go up. What we've seen in the business in terms of growth is the business would not have made economic sense if we hadn't been able to pass on this massive increase in lithium metal prices, which we're exposed to as we buy lithium metal and convert it into buly. And everybody in the industry is, by the way, has the same exposure to lithium metal. And so we've been able to pass that on. And so what it's been able to do, it looks like a much larger part of revenue today because it is, because pricing has moved meaningfully in 2022 in that business. But much of it is cost to pass on. So the margin impact is not maybe as great as you would think as the revenue piece is. Again, it's a good business. But just a little bit of background, one of the reasons that we used to be in this business historically is that metal is made from chloride. We're the only producer in the world then and largely still now that's basic in chloride. So we had this reason to be there. Today, you find yourself in a place, though, that you can divert that chloride to make carbonate. You can divert carbonate to make metal if you choose. Bully pricing has to be priced competitive with other uses of those LCEs today, which wasn't the case in the past. It's why there's been, I think, a fundamental step up in the scale and the nature of that business. Growth is not a really growthy business. No, most of the applications are GDP-type growers. Particularly, most of the growth is in Asia, so you've got to have a decent Asia footprint in that business as well. But as you can see, it's 30% of our revenue last year and this year, so... It's not a business to be dismissed.

Touching on the Asia angle, insofar as China and Asia more broadly become less dominant in battery production than they have historically, the changes in logistics around that, is that good, bad, or neutral for Leibniz?

You know, look, I think this idea of less dominant is an interesting one, but I think you have to be more clear. Less dominant can still be very dominant, right, because they clearly are today. I don't think the supply chains are going to be – they're still going to be massively weighted towards Asia as a whole, for sure, when you take Japan and Korea into account, but even to China. But I do think that as there are supply chains being built outside China – They'll be bigger, right? You could have a supply chain that's ex-China that might be bigger than the entire supply chain is today by 2030. So you could have a European and a U.S.-Canada supply chain, lithium, cathode material, cell manufacturer that's huge. It's still a lot smaller than Asia, but it's going to be huge. So it creates opportunities for companies like Liven. We have assets in China. We'll continue to operate in China, but clearly we're positioning ourselves much more to service non-China markets as they grow.

Thanks very much. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions this afternoon. Mr. Rosen, I'll turn things back to you for any closing comments.

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. Thanks, everyone, and have a good evening.