T1 Energy Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jessica and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Friar Battery third quarter 2023 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Spittel, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, and welcome to Fairbattery's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me today on the call are Berger Steen, our Chief Executive Officer, Oscar Brown, our Chief Financial Officer, Jan Arve Haugen, our Chief Operating Officer, Jeremy Bezdek, Executive VP of Corporate Development and President of Ferrer Battery US. During today's call, management may make forward-looking statements about our business. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Most of these factors are outside Ferrer's control and are difficult to predict. Additional information about risk factors that could materially affect our business are available in FRER's S-1, an annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Berger.

Thanks, Jeff. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining today's call. We'll start today with an overview of what we believe is FRER's compelling equity story. Their value proposition is based on the premise that electrification is both inevitable and and reliable mass deployment in batteries. But in today's higher for longer cost of capital environments, the companies who will emerge as the next leaders of the energy transition must balance growth aspirations with rigorous financial discipline. Our team at Frere is unified in that vision of the business and we're committed to build upon a unique competitive position with that approach. With that in mind, We're excited about the opportunities we have to establish FRER as a leading developer and scaler of battery technologies across the energy storage and electric mobility sectors. As Tesla asserted earlier this year, the long-term growth potential in our core markets is profound and aligned with decarbonization initiatives, Western energy security, and accommodative public policy, highlighted by the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. As stewards of your precious capital, our responsibility to maintain the liquidity we need to convert these opportunities, which are punctuated by a growing universe of real options into nesting shareholder value. We intend to do that by protecting our strong balance sheet and deploying capital selectively while we advanced our ongoing capital formation initiatives, diversifying on the technology spectrum and battery value chain, maximizing the IRA incentives, and finally developing our highest return projects. Turning to slide four, let's review our key messages this quarter. As you saw in this morning's release, we're contending with the delay in our progress to fully automated production at the CQP. And we have implemented a detailed plan to address the complex challenge of scaling the 24-hour semi-solid platform. In light of the current CQP calendar, the U.S. team has re-sculpted Giga America to pursue the full-scale project on two parallel paths. Pack 1 is based on the 24M semi-solid technology, and Pack 2 is the leveraged conventional technology. As Jeremy will document shortly, these two paths are not mutually exclusive options for the Giga America side, and they're aligned with our strategy of expanding on the battery technology spectrum. Turning to the Giga... For the Arctic project, we have elected to minimize spending in 2024 while our work continues at the CQP and while we engage with Norwegian and European government stakeholders to establish framework conditions that place the project on globally competitive economic terms. Moving to slide five, the playbook to navigate today's high volatility environment is as follows. We're initiating a cost rationalization program to reduce our total run rate cash spending by over 50% in 2024, which will extend our liquidity runway to two plus years. Oscar will elaborate on it shortly. While we safeguard our balance sheets, we won't be able to move as quickly as we'd like to move in front, but I want the following point to be clear. Freer is not going into hibernation year. We will continue our important work at the CQP, where we will hold our vendors and partners jointly accountable for our progress. We're pursuing conventional technology partnerships, which will mitigate the risk to the business and open new opportunities. We will continue to fund critical initiatives that we believe will generate value for our shareholders, and we will advance our key priorities while we maintain the strategic flexibility that's necessary to thrive in today's high-mobility dynamic. Just slide six. Here's the latest on the CQP. The timeline to achieve automated production of inspected cells has pushed beyond our previous goal of the fourth quarter of 2023. Commissioning of the casting and unit cell assembly equipment, which is highly complex, proving to be more difficult and time consuming than we previously envisaged. We're attempting to scale a new battery technology with intricate next generation equipment, which has and will continue Our response to these challenges is to implement a plan to prevent further delays. We have implemented changes in project governance for heightened coordination with our vendors and ecosystem partners. And we are elevating the involvement of our battery subject matter experts and other relevant partners inside and outside Freire. This initiative is spared by the formation of a technology advisory board comprised of some of the industry's foremost minds, including Dr. Dan Steingart, fair board member and co-director of the Columbia University Electrochemical Energy Center. Dr. Steingart and his fellow advisory board members are drawing on their collective wealth of commercial and operating experience to assist our team at the CQP. Let's go to slide seven for a brief overview of our technology strategy. Our strategy has always been to establish fair business across the technology spectrum and to value creative adjacencies within the value chain, and we are working on that plan. We're pursuing conventional technology partnerships to complement 24M Semi-Solid, to unlock avenues to financing and commercial development, and potentially accelerate project development timelines. The conversations we're having are exciting, and they're a testament to the unique position we're establishing in the marketplace as an industrial partner of choice. The pursuit of technology diversification is intended to be complementary and anti-24M semi-solid and in no way diminishes our excitement about 24M's potential as a fit-for-purpose solution across a variety of growing use cases. Although scaling the 24M platform at the CQP is proving to be more challenging than we anticipated, we believe we have the financial and organizational resources to do it, and we believe that it's a worthwhile investment of our time. I'll turn to slide eight and GigaArctic. We announced this morning that we're minimizing spending on GigaArctic in 2024 because we need to prioritize liquidity during the CQP scale-up and focus on capturing IRA incentives in the United States. We value our partners and supporters in Moirana, where the CQP remains our first operating asset and the technological heart of the committee. The hire-for-longer interest rate environment and the introduction of the IRA have changed the business case for GigArctic. We must operate within reality, and today the project is no longer on competitive economic terms with the opportunities that we have in the U.S. As stewards of your capital, we have a fiduciary obligation to invest in our highest-return projects, and we intend to fulfill that duty by making sensible business decisions. While we minimize spending on gigartic in 2024, we'll continue to work with stakeholders in reaching European governments to develop framework conditions that are competitive with the IRA, with Canada's variable cost offsets, under capital spending initiatives in countries in the rest of the world, all of which are required to counter China's structural cost advantages and dominant market share across the battery supply chain. We look forward to engaging locally to promote the purchase and establishing decarbonized battery production here in Norway. In the interim, we will spend the previously committed capex in the Giga-Arctic to secure the asset and preserve the option value of the project. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Jerry.