Livent Corporation

Good afternoon and welcome to the first quarter 2023 earnings release conference call for LiveIn Corporation. Phone lines will be placed on 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 LiveIn Corporation. Mr. Rosen, you may begin.

Great. Thank you, Rob. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to LiveIn's first quarter 2023 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 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 Form 10-K and other 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 has had a strong start to 2023, reporting record financial results in the first quarter of this year. Adjusted EBITDA of $157 million was nearly 50% higher than the fourth quarter of 2022, with this improvement being a result of higher average realized prices across all lithium products. The development of Namaska Lithium, in which Livent is a 50% shareholder, continues to progress as expected, and the project reached several important milestones in the quarter. The detailed engineering phase of the project is now complete and the Namaska Lithium Board has approved the start of construction of the 34,000 metric ton lithium hydroxide facility at Bacon Core and the earlier commencement of mining operations at Wabuchi. A feasibility study is planned to be released by Namaska Lithium in the second quarter. This study will outline an expected pathway to initial production and sale of spodumene in 2025, which will then be replaced by the production and sale of lithium hydroxide commencing in the second half of 2026. Livent has raised its full year financial guidance for 2023 and continues to expect meaningful improvement following record 2022 results. This is highlighted by a midpoint for adjusted EBITDA of $565 million or a 54% year-over-year increase. As we discussed last quarter, the way we structured pricing for 2023 across our portfolio of customer contracts brings two benefits to us. It provides greater earnings visibility for the year ahead than a purely market price approach while also retaining some exposure to market prices and allowing flexibility to take advantage of commercial opportunities. We have also announced that we amended and extended our supply agreement with BMW, committing greater volumes and additional years to this relationship, which will help bring greater visibility to our operations in the coming years. Before I provide some market observations and highlight key focus areas for Libent, I will turn the call over to Gilberto to discuss our first quarter performance. as well as our revised full-year 2023 financial guidance.