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spk02: Good day, everyone. Welcome to Sigma Lithium's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and is broadcast live on Sigma's website. All participants will be in listen-only mode. For those on the phone, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To pass a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by 0. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matthew Teo, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Strategic Development at Sigma. Please go ahead.
spk00: Matthew Teo Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our 3Q earnings call. On the call with me today is company CEO, Anna Cabral. This morning, before the market opened, really actually last night, we posted our 3Q3 financial results. as well as SEC filings. Before we begin, I'd like to cover two items. First, during the presentation, you'll hear certain forward-looking statements concerning our plans and expectations. We note that actual events or results could differ materially from changes in market conditions in our operations. And additionally, earnings referenced in this presentation may exclude certain non-core and non-recurring items. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures and other associated disclosures, including descriptions of adjustments, can be found in the back to the release. With that, I will pass the call over to Anna. Anna?
spk01: Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Matt. Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here with all of you to present our third quarter 2023 financials. We are delighted to present to our very first operational quarter, and we are profitable right at the onset. So with that, I'll go straight into the first page with the operational highlight. Well, we're not a large producer. We are forced for good in the lithium industry. And we basically achieved what may be impossible. We are delivering zero carbon, zero things, lithium produced without toxic chemicals. We have basically been producing the very best product in the lithium industry as far as concentrate. We have always managed to do that, delivering a very successful ramp-up. As you can see, our Green Tech Plus has reached 90% throughput. We've been consistently shipping monthly 20,000 tons of the triple zero green lithium concentrate. Our fourth shipment is expected by the end of November, which is going to be size minimum 20,000 tons. It goes to Glencore. In fact, on that, I just came back from almost two weeks in China, Shandu, all over, where we ascertained on the ground the fantastic receptivity of our product as far as behavior throughout the refining. We'll talk a lot more about that. As a result, we are moving forward with the detail engineering for the expansion. I mean, there's not enough of this material to supply the demand for what we are bringing as value adders. So the selection of the design engineering company is connected to the strategic review conclusion. Depending on the strategic review partner choice or winner choice, we're going to select an engineering company. But we're going ahead with expansion because we can basically sell every gram of this product. And there's more. There's going to be a lot more of this lithium. We have also delivered in this quarter a substantial potential increase of the mineral resource. We got phase four that's going to be approximately 30 million tons, and then a phase five for another approximately 20 million tons. So we expect SGMA's total mineral resource all the way to phases one to five to reach 130 million tons. With that, I'll move to the next page, financial highlights. Every financial target has been delivered we are profitable on the first operating quarter, which means that we have an incredible degree of operational efficiency and discipline. We are the second lowest cost producer of lithium concentrate globally, which means we will thrive in any price environment for lithium. And that is the key message of these financials. We're crystallizing our position as second lowest cost producer of lithium concentrate. And that's the result of tremendous financial discipline. I mean, we are profitable, and we also have a superior product. I mean, we do things that no one else does, such as not having a tail in dams. and we deliver a zero-carbon lithium. And despite that, we are profitable and we are low-cost. This basically demonstrates our resilience to the lithium cycles. We're going to strive in any pricing environment for the commodity. And depending on where the cycle goes, we even have the ability to capture market shares with this triple-zero lithium. This material is the material of choice for any downstream client, all the way up to carmakers, which are procuring batteries bound for the European Union. This is all in preparation for the EU Battery Passport 2026, no matter in the world where these batteries are produced. A bit of the highlights of the numbers, we posted a Q3 revenue of $96 million. We also produced to date 71,650 tons of the high-grade product. The low-grade product is 100,000 tons. We also have delivered an adjusted EBITDA of 54 million tons. Our unit operating cost FOB port is $577 per ton. And we have a very sound net income at $36 million in the third quarter. So very profitable. with significant recurring cash generation and liquidity. The next slide shows our production highlights. We have the triple zero lithium as a commercial success. In other words, there's not enough of our triple zero green lithium to satisfy demand. Some of the highlights of the third quarter and production to date, we produced 38,500 tons of this 5.5 triple zero green lithium. Year-to-date production is 71,650 tons. We have also successfully ramped up the green tech plant without a tailings dam, which means we have 62,000 tons of triple zero green byproducts. Here today, 100,000 tons of triple zero green byproducts. In other words, The next target will be to sustain the plant recovery at the design level, which basically shows global recoveries, including ultrafine losses of 65%. We have three shipments that have failed. We have a port shipment on the way, sailing at the end of November. Scale will be approximately 20,000 tons to 22,000 tons on that shipment, which means we're maintaining guidance because amongst all of our products, we're going to hit 130,000 tons in equivalent revenues of triple zero green lithium and byproducts. So for a company that just became a producer, getting there, having successfully ramped up, if you multiply 22,500 by 12, it means we got there. You get to 270,000 tons a year. So the plant works, the dry stacking works, tailings byproducts, have been successfully commercially sold. There's spectacular demand for that product, given its purity. And in the picture on the right of this slide, you can see the third module, which is something that only Sigma Lithium has managed to achieve. Dry stacking at ultra-fines at 12%. So here we are delivering on our promise to make this supply chain a whole lot more sustainable and paving the way for the zero carbon battery. The next slide shows the resilience. It shows that Sigma can generate cash at the bare of the cycle, at the bottom of the lithium cycle. In other words, we have low costs, and therefore, we have been delivering consistent revenues in large volumes, both in byproducts and also in the main concentrate. More importantly, as we have one of the lowest costs in the industry, we are able to essentially maintain this operational resilience and generate cash flow no matter what. So we have in front of you a simulation hypothetically showing the lithium prices for concentrate reaching 1,500, but because of our low cost, we are able to get to, you know, a significant cash generation, both with phase one and also with the expansion. And then you have the byproducts credit, which we're keeping separate just for the sake of transparency and clarity. Now, why do we have such low cost? Well, basically because of decisions we made early during the development. We chose the dense media separation, the DMS, and at that we powered with data. very, very inexpensive renewable power. So the combination of a simpler processing flow sheet and low-cost renewable power leads us to these spectacular results right out of the gate in our first quarter with financials. So we are clearly extremely proud of what we've achieved here. Another interesting point, on the next slide, we'll show you why. The product is actually better. So despite us selecting dense media separation, which back in the day seemed like a very unique, riskier selection, we actually made it mainstream again in the industry. It preserved the integrity of the mineralization of the product. And it allowed us to deliver this incredible superior quality. It's visual. When you look at this slide, the next slide, with the quality, we have a unique high-grade, high-purity, and coarse-grained product. You don't even need a laboratory analysis to ascertain that the forest product is different than the ultrafine that is produced by our peers. And the light green color shows purity. So our purity matches talus and green bushes. Then you look at the bottom. You have products of inferior quality, which are the powdered product. loaded with iron oxide and other impurities, sometimes even migraines. So it's a picture that says a thousand words. And this product drives cost savings to clients of up to 30%. The next page is a bit more on quality, on low cost, and on this tremendous competitive advantage, which translates into commercial success and also on low cost and cycle lithium cycle resilience as far as generating free cash flow essentially the chemistry of the high purity the triple zero plus low alkalines you see low iron oxide low mica and then low alkalines here which are low potassium oxide and low sodium oxide. So the product is better and is also environmentally competitive, which is an advantage for the European Union-bound batteries. And again, we'll get to it. Batteries are produced all over Asia, the cells, and they're shipped to the European Union packing factories. We have a tremendous advantage when supplying to these cell makers in South Korea, Japan, China, everywhere with this product. Why is that? The next slide shows the cost-saving map to clients. We bring significant cost savings to downstream clients. It matters a lot, especially in a tight market where the downstream is trying to squeeze cost out of the supply chain. specifically on the refiners. So when you look at the slide here, you can see that there's a potential of up to $6,000 per ton of hydroxide for the downstream, for the refiner, which is part of a downstream supply chain, which is perhaps stolen, which represents a 26% higher margin for that refiner or battery maker that's stolen through their refiner. And that is Sigma. And we've been working with Glencore and their customers to premiumize that product in the market. So even at 9% price of lithium hydroxide, our premium lithium concentrate can drive measurable savings to converters, to downstream in the current market. which is a tremendous competitive advantage on quality, on value in use. I'm stressing that point just to demonstrate how our product comes first, because we have a chemical, physical, technical, measurable cost savings, and we're delivering the best or the most sustainable 3.0 lithium product, and we're not charging for it. The environmental zero carbon, zero tailings, low chemicals is for free, right? So it's a fantastic attribute for clients delivering their cells into the European Union. On this slide here is actually a fascinating exercise that we've produced. In other words, our product will always have demand at premium prices. because of the chemical attributes. This chart compares the margin our clients would achieve, the efficiencies, vis-a-vis buying the competitor's product on spot market. You can clearly see the gain. The spot margin in light green is lower, and Sigma's customer margin, even at 9%, is actually higher. Why? Because the 9% premiumization doesn't capture the full cost savings that the client has. So it's a win-win situation. That's why the demand and acceptance of the product has been so spectacular. I mean, I was in China for almost two weeks. I brought my home. Yeah. So I got disconnected accidentally. So I was... So I was talking through the slide where we have the chart with the demonstrated efficiencies driving demand for Sigma products in any market. And I think basically wrapping up that slide with that chart, comparing the premium products driving measurable efficiencies for the client, you can clearly see why the client with the spot The client today has two choices, buy the competitor's product at spot market and buying Sigma's product at a premium value. That's the chart you all see on the screen now. And we showed you on a graph that our client achieves higher margins no matter what happens. In other words, by purchasing Sigma's product, he's always better off. So Essentially, that drives the commercial success that we've been achieving in this industry. And our commercial team still camped in China, basically working with our partners for the low-grade ultrafine and with Glencore for the high-grade triple zero concentrates. And the response has been spectacular from car makers, battery makers, and then the solar or refiners themselves. So we're very proud of what we built. We're very proud to have been able to deliver a product that's not only the leader or the reference environmentally. Come on, it's like zero common. No one does that. Zero tailings dams. and we don't use hazardous chemicals, but also we actually have physical and chemical properties that deliver value for the customer. So this is – I've been going through these points repeatedly to make it clear that we don't have a demand problem because we, Sigma, will place every gram at our price given all these competitive advantages and values in use. The next page shows then the summary of all that I've been saying. Where does it all lead us? Well, it leads us into a tremendous competitive advantage when it comes to cell making and bound for batteries to be packed in Europe or bound for cars, they're going to be sold in Europe. As you know, there are battery cell factories located all over the world, in China, in Japan, and in South Korea. And for now, they ship the cells to battery packers that have their European factories. So this packing taking place in Europe then is directed to the car makers located in Europe. So the sourcing of those cells, the tracking of those cells within the battery maker is actually happening as we speak. And Sigma, our triple zero green lithium is a recognizable brand. Clients ask for it. They want to have our material. They ask their downstreamers for our material so that makes us very proud and then when you look at the european auto market this year in our production this year that's where you can clearly see that you know there's not enough of our product just to satisfy the european demand uh which is fantastic i mean remember again the atl lg sk panasonic they're all based elsewhere but they're making the cell that will end up in the european cars and that's that is the battery passport 2026 and the supply chains are getting ready as we speak so the next page a bit of the triple zero gradient uh this has been our purpose, our incentive as investors, as operators, as executives, as partners here, this is what we set out to do, meaning enabling best-in-class carbon intensity for batteries and eventually enabling the holy grail of the zero-carbon battery as far as lithium is concerned. In other words, we The lithium hydroxide chemical producer in China today, if it's best in class, meaning using natural gas and using renewable power, he can actually have a total carbon footprint of just 2.5 tons of carbon per ton of lithium hydroxide. In other words, that's very easy to tackle with carbon credits because this best in class has done the homework, as far as replacing coal gas for natural gas and replacing coal power for renewable power. So with our material, which is zero, you eventually end up in a fantastic position as far as abating the final abating of these carbon loads with carbon credits. So again, we enable the zero carbon battery for lithium as far as the lithium material is concerned. The next slide, I'll go quickly through it because you're all very familiar with that. The triple zero, zero carbon, zero chemicals, and zero tailings. The key elements are tailings recycling, dry stacking. You know, we have zero residue mining because we get rid of all the tailings. We sell the byproducts for a price that's 10% of the main product. That's an important point. The water, we basically reuse all the water, so we source the water with sewage. So this is sewage-grade water that comes in, gets treated in our water treatment station inbound to make it suitable for the green tech plant, and you know, we end up with a closed system of fully reused water. And more importantly, we power the plant with clean energy. Clean energy in Brazil is two cents of a dollar per kilowatt hour. I mean, it's the cheapest, the lowest cost in the world, except for the Middle East. were subsidized. So we're in a fantastic position here as far as renewable power. It's lower than anywhere. It's actually half the price of Canada. So with that, I'll move into operational. Operational and resource expansion updates. That's the next page. Moving to the next section. So the next slide is successful commissioning of dry stackings. Here we show that we basically successfully commissioned our dry stacking. And when you see this chart which shows recoveries, we segregated in the chart the portion of the period when we actually nailed the dry stacking commissioning by delivering the ultrafine dry stacking at 12% moisture, which meant we could then accelerate the production from the dense media separation. So you can clearly see us reaching stability on recoveries and, again, reaching the yield levels that we have been striving to do. So that's explaining to everyone, yield is how much of every ton of ore that gets into this process, module one, crushing, becomes final product, becomes triple zero lithium concentrate, main product. Recoveries dictate how much lithium we actually recover from the material, so we've got our productivity, right? In other words, As we calibrate the plant to achieve target production volume, the recovery of the lithium is the link to volume. So here at Sigma, we actually have a very high class problem because we need to strive to adjust down the lithium concentrate grade to 5.5%. As you might recall, our first shipment was north of 6%, which isn't operational ideal calibration. And that's because we start with exceptional quality feedstock entering the processing blood. So as we achieve that calibration down to get to the market standard grade of 5.5% lithium oxide, we basically achieve yields and recovery that increased substantially, as you can see on this slide. So, again, very, very, very proud of what our operational team on site, our two general managers running mining plants, have achieved. And we keep on improving. We're now installing a magnetic separator on the ultrafine circuit, which is going to give us a boost on recovery. But, you know, the work is there. We've already gotten it. At $22,500 a month multiplied by 12, we're already annualizing the design capacity of $270,000. The next stage, maintaining head grades through successful operational integration. The next page is basically showing that there are no tricks here, right? As we said, our focus has been to lower the grade to five and a half. You can see that the grade's been clearly above five and a half. We don't get properly paid for delivering more grades as the industry's delivering five and a half and below. So the challenge is to bring it down to five and a half, which is, again, a very high-class product, a testament to the quality of our feedstock. So another important point on this slide is that we're not doing something typically known as high grading, meaning going to rich areas of the ore body just to achieve a successful ramp up in recovery and then suffering that in year two. No, we're not doing that. If you look at the axis on the right, you can see that the head grade has been constant. At 1.4, 1.46%, that is the diluted feed we showed on the feasibility study. So incredible consistency on the feed, which shows that the challenge is to keep the grade down, basically down from 6%, down from 6.5%, so that we are able to deliver grades that are in line with the market as opposed to going above market and not get properly compensated for it. The next slide, slide 18, shows that we're going to expand. The SEL3 BPL engineering is going to this last stage. We're doing the final quoting. As we're going through a strategic review, the selection of the contractor of the engineering It's going to be a function of the winner, the next guardian of Sigma. Each one of them has their own views. It could be going to an Eastern construction company, which actually has been building, you know, transmission lines and large-scale generation, power generation structures in Brazil for very successfully, very low cost. We're going to be funding it via debt and via operational cash flow. And the plan is to triple production by next year. Why? There's a market for every gram of this product. There's just not enough of it to satisfy demand. And that's just totally if we consider European Union-bound sales. There's blockchaining throughout. There's tracing throughout the supply chain. And we both really went up for that tracing. As I said earlier, our product has become a brand. And you can clearly see here on the map how easy it would be to expand, given that most of the infrastructure preparation of industrial sites has already been made. The next slide will show... Our ability to scale up production organically. How big can we get? We just unveiled that our mineral resource, Phase 4, Phase 5, goes up to 130 million tons. So there's another 50 million tons floating over on Phase 4 and 5. So we can easily think through another line. And that line could be potentially integrated. Again, it will depend on the winner of the strategic review. And going back to the engineering point, I want to make it clear, Promont will be there driving the actual construction in Brazil. What we're talking about is the engineering sort of brain management pairing with Stigma's robust owner's team now, because they already built one, and all their... All the engineers that built it are now working with us in an owner's team. So who would be the foreign engineering company that we would pair with Promont to support our in-house owner's team, right? And, again, what we are trying to do is to achieve optimum construction and achieve, you know, optimum cost effectiveness of the expansion of the plant. So lastly, on this ability to scale up production organically, this slide shows that post-ramp-up, this is what we're going to look like. So if you look at the slide on page 19, you can clearly see that. In other words, we have phase 1s. Then we're going to have a tripling, which is two phases built at once, two line trains built at once. That will lead us to 766,000 tons, and then potentially a fourth line. That's the obvious strategic choice. I mean, it's just the obvious strategic choice. In other words, ramping up, we're going to be big. We are a force for good in the industry. We are one of the looking next majors, potentially going above 100,000 tons a year, depending on how the export line is going to be strategically directed to perhaps intermediate chemical integration, which leads me to the next slide. The slide... The next slide shows that all the finalists in the strategic review, I mean, the strategic review has now moved to finals. The groups have bundled in consortium, which is very healthy because there's efficiency, and every consortium has expressed the wish to produce intermediate chemicals in Brazil. Why? It's quite straightforward. If the industry is going to leave China It has to go to a geography attached to a company that can actually deliver competitive products. I mean, even when you think China, which is what we've been doing for the last two weeks, they are, you know, the sole producers of lithium chemicals globally, as we all know. So when you think supply chain with them, we actually gain quite a lot of insights. Because it's on their interest, too, to build intermediate chemicals we call double zero, meaning zero carbon, zero waste. They do a fantastic job on waste in China. And the location of the country to deliver intermediate chemicals has to be a country like Brazil. Why? We have cheap, abundant, renewable power. at two cents a kilowatt hour. We have abundant natural gas at a competitive price. We have a very large domestic market that can clearly digest, and that's where they use all the byproducts. And those are very key characteristics because the byproducts go into a cement-based construction industry and into a cleaning product, a detergent of domestic industry. And Brazil has both. So Brazil can actually deliver zero waste, just like China can. And we can also deliver zero carbon. That is why we can coexist with what is still a China-centered chemical supply chain by delivering less volume of an extremely sustainable product that would key up, as we showed in a previous slide, you know, the lowest carbon and here zero carbon lithium hydroxide chemicals. So we can actually enable the development of the lithium hydroxide chemical industry globally by delivering less Chemical to chemical, intermediate double zero, zero waste, zero carbon in Brazil into anywhere in the world. Another interesting point in Brazil, we also have skilled labor for chemistry. Brazil never deindustrialized, so we have quite a large chemical industrial park in Brazil. And for basic chemicals, the level of specialization isn't the kind of specialization required to be an alchemist, as we call our Chinese friends. I mean, they're the alchemists. with the crystallizers, with their abilities to do this at an incredibly low cost. We would just be doing intermediate chemistry, which is basic chemistry. And for that, we do have the human capital in the country. So now I'm changing tack and talking about how big, how relevant, how strategic relevant is SGMA. So moving on to phases four and phases five. That's the next slide. On phases four and phases five, what we have here is a substantial additional growth in the scale of the mineral resources. It's what we've been telling all along. On page 22, what we have is just a recap of how big we are. We have four properties. And we've been focusing our drilling in the middle property called because that property concentrated most of the previous artisanal mines that were operating when we purchased SIGMA in 2012. So it's efficient to concentrate it here. So phases one, two, three, four, and five are all here. And these states alone deliver 130 million tons for SGMA's mineral resource, potentially, to be confirmed by the 43-101. And therefore, it just gives us the reservoir, let's put it that way, the scale of resources that would allow us to keep growing, to keep on increasing scale, to think about integration with one of the lines, to basically be the foundation to our growth large-scale plan to be the next lithium major because this is the kind of scale of mineral resources required for a company that plans to be the next lithium major. On the right, you see the map that we put forth with the exploration update announcement for Phase 4. That was just an exploration update. We were just trying to give investors a flavor of what's coming. We're going to put out a pre-43-101 with Phases 4 and 5, so increasing it upwards of 50 million times. The next slide is the closing comments. How do we wrap it all up? What does it all mean? What does it mean, all that I've been saying here, as far as our share price, creation of shareholder value, and what's going on in the industry? Well, we have not yet been re-rated as a producer. That full re-rating is yet to occur, and the screen makes it obvious. They're producers which are delivering a tiny scale, and proportionally, they're getting a valuation per production that's way higher than ours, right? And they're developers. They're getting a valuation to five-year forward production that is way higher than ours. So this is the work that my partner here at ATAN, Seconda to Sigma, while we don't conclude the strategic review, Matthew Dayhole came to lead. I think there was a bit of confusion about what's Matt doing at Sigma. Well, he's joined ATEN, he's our partner at ATEN, and he came to help the principals of ATEN seconded to Sigma, namely Marcelo and I and all of us, to basically be the main investor interface in order to communicate all that we've been doing to hopefully bridge that gap. The gap is tremendous. We're We're basically a third of our, you know, producer peers, non-majors, and we do plan to close this disconnect on fundamental value alone. And our costs are so competitive that as far as profits, which we just delivered straight out of our maiden financial quarter and cash flow generation, that, you know, this company could be valued at anything as three times forward EBITDA, which is, you know, a very attractive company. value proposition, right? The next slide shows why are we going to be the next lithium major. We are already one of the world's largest producers at 270,000 tons per annum. Where we are now, if you take our monthly, you know, production shipment that's going on at a cadence multiplied by 12, that's what we get. So we got here. We are becoming one of the lithium majors because then with the expansion at 760,000 tons per lithium of concentrate per year, I mean, we get to the super club of companies that can produce an equivalent of 100,000 tons LCE per year. So We have a special product, high purity coarse lithium. We have a very low cost. And we have the triple zero carbon neutral dry stack, no tailings dam, which will fully sell these byproducts ultra fine. So it's a very unique competitive position. And then I want to close this call and thank you because you've been, you know, believing in us since, the beginning. And the least we could do to all of our investors is what we've been doing. We're delivering like clockwork on every front, and now we delivered cost, meaning we just crystallized our position as second lowest cost producer in the world. Again, when you do byproducts math on our cost, you get to a number that's literally on top of, that's literally matching the all in sustaining costs, we put out at the DFS, which is a testament to our obsession with operational efficiency. So every fraud, consistency, focus, relentless. I mean, in fact, I want to leave you with that thought. When I was in China, I received probably one of the biggest compliments there's ever been there, where they told me, well, you actually... outwork us, you burn, you know, the 3 a.m. oil. And I said, well, that's what needs to happen in the century where Asia is driving the work ethic, right? So we're literally, you know, outworking and working as hard as our competition. And that's what we want to leave you with on this earnings call. And I really want to thank you for staying with us, trusting on us, Even in this price environment where lithium enters a down cycle, we're here to stay because we'll thrive in an environment of down cycle given that we can produce free cash flow and earnings no matter what. So with that, I'll pass on to Q&A. And I want to thank you very much for listening to this call.
spk02: We will now begin the question and answer session. For those on the phone, to ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk03: Good morning, Anna, everyone. So, Anna, I think I read in your disclosure that you still expect 500,000 tons of spa gemini in production or sales next year. That would be about double what your run rate is now. Can you talk about the milestones you've got to hit? Because you haven't put the feasibility study out yet for phase two, three. So what do you have to hit? When do you have to be in production? How do you have to ramp? How have lessons learned that you can get to 500,000 tons of production for next year?
spk01: Yes.
spk03: Do you want me to ask the question again?
spk01: Yes. Yeah. Can you please repeat the question? Sure.
spk03: I would love to.
spk01: Sure.
spk03: Um, so in your disclosure, you talk about, um, 500,000 tons of spodging production in 2024. So next year, um, you know, we're very, but double, uh, the runway right now. So what has to happen? You haven't put the feasibility study out yet for, for, for the expansion. What has to happen for you to ramp up, get in production, uh, and get to 5,000 tons next year. Maybe you could talk about lessons learned from phase one.
spk01: Absolutely. Well, we learned quite a lot, as you all know, specifically when it comes to the trans-packing of the tailings, which significantly delayed us reaching nameplate capacity of the production. So we refined that circuit. We learned a lot on flocculation and chemicals that we could use in order to make that circuit very efficient. Again, it's the first circuit in the world. It's an innovation. We pioneered it. But we got it down to a T now. It's dry stacking beautifully. So that was factored into the new engineering. So I think this was actually a very important learning because all the learnings from actually commissioning this plant and the enhancements to the flow sheet are going to be factored already on the design. And so we are very confident that What we have now is a fantastic flow sheet because it comes battle tested by all the pain and all the lessons we've been through in the commissioning.
spk03: So what milestones do you have to hit? Do you have to be commissioned by this state to hit 5,000 tons next year?
spk01: What's the milestone? Basically, it's interesting because we use the same slash and cut that we applied to phase one, even though we don't foresee waiting like April, May, June, July to hit the stride. I mean, because with the dry stacking circuit that works from the get-go, we can actually unleash and turn on plant two, which is the dense media separation, immediately. because now we know what is the right flow sheet for actually getting to the 12% moisture, which is the ideal moisture to be maintained in the cake that goes into the membrane of the dry stacking filter and hence go into the conveyor belt into the dry stack. So that was actually the one. know black box we have to solve again it's innovation right and this is why we've been here as financial sponsors and investors for six years we promised that we promised that to our stakeholders in brazil and we delivered it so we're not going to have that any that weight anymore so that cut uh commissioning significantly i mean four months is quite a lot and then more importantly Yeah, more importantly, we also know what the issue is with the water. When we first started this, we didn't realize that the water was actually sewage-grade, and we had to build a sewage treatment station to actually get the water from the river and remove the solid fecal residues and make it suitable for the plant. So there's a myriad of lessons here that we actually incorporated into the design. of this new two this two new plans uh and and therefore we see a construction timeline giving a lot more streamlined way more than the first construction timetable and then i think on the bigger picture when you look at that page and i can go back to that slide that is like if the moderator could please go back to the slide which is page 18 visually you can see that we have to do a lot less industrial site preparations than we had to do for phase one because we built phase one from scratch so we had to prepare one square kilometer kilometers of industrial area which we don't anymore given that the fixed green tech and infrastructure are already here the piping of six kilometers that brings this water the sewage water from the river into the treatment stations already here so a whole lot of what we call industrial site infrastructure is here we're licensed as you can see in the expansion little square of that slide. Again, moderator could go to slide 18. That would be very helpful. We are actually tackling the earthworks on pasture areas, which again should shorten earthworks by four months because we don't have to do animal capture. We don't have to do what we call vegetation classification. there's a whole lot of steps that are skipped because we're going into what we call entrophicized vegetation areas. So a lot of savings, a lot more streamlining. So what is the key piece of the puzzle now that we got all the work set up? Who is going to drive engineering? Because obviously each strategic partner, buyer, provider, potential M&A counterparty here has a preference. And we don't want to impose our preferences to them. And given that we're now literally in the last leg of it, there's no point in gun-jumping with an engineering company. Promon will be there. That's the Brazilian company that's done a marvelous job, marvelous job in managing over 1,000 people we had on site during construction. So they're the experts of executing on the ground. And then we'll pair them up with an engineering company, which will drive equipment procurement. I mean, equipment procurement can be basically concentrated in different parts of the world, depending on the strategic, you know, potential acquirer counterparty of SIGMA. And we'll do this together. We'll be here helping, you know, the next guardian of SIGMA to succeed. That's what we want. The success of the next Guardian is the success of Brazil.
spk03: Just following up on that, I'll pass over the baton. But as you talk about the strategic review and you're talking about words like Guardian, counterparty, a lot of broad different terms there, maybe you can give a sense of sort of how has the process gone, the range of bids, the range of kind of plans or proposals. And how have you been managing this in an environment of, okay, yes, lower lithium prices, but it's a commodity. Things go up and down. People can help handle that. How have you managed it in a time of clearly lower lithium multiples in the industry across the year?
spk01: Look, this screen is not a benchmark for a strategic buyer. I mean, it's sort of they don't think quarters. You don't build a resilient business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. I'll give you an example. When it gets to 2028, it isn't like someone's going to appear two quarters earlier and say, oh, now I need to figure this out. I mean, these discussions are happening now. Battery Passport Year of 2026 is a reality, and it affects battery makers all over the world. Batteries made in China, cells made in China, cells made in Japan, cells made in South Korea, cells made everywhere are affected by it. So there's going to be a lot of lithium needed into the, you know, materialization of the plan of some of these gigafactories that have been announced and are being built all over or are operating right now. I mean, so ultimately it's 2024, practically speaking. So the plans for the remainder of this decade, which is the decade of lithium, are happening as we speak. And, I mean, I'll give an example. CATL announced this year in the Shanghai Auto Show that they're going to deliver the zero-carbon battery. There will be zero-carbon in 2025. Zero-carbon battery comes in 2035. That just shows that this is a global concern. It isn't something that just affects the Western, because As you all know, CATL supplies the world. So this is a global conversation. And what is Sigma? And just let's leave, you know, commodity cycle aside for a moment because, again, we demonstrated that we'll thrive no matter what, right? Sigma is a company that has a clean shareholder registry. There's not a single strategic here. It's basically financial investors with a financial sponsor, so we can deliver a transaction without the interloping that's been plaguing recent strategic movements. Two, we have an encumbered sizable hundreds of thousands of units, which means we are easily integrable for investors. massive top line M&A synergy. So we are almost like the perfect target. And we are in a country that is extremely welcoming to mining. The population wants it. We actually managed to demonstrate that there's a new model for the industry of mining processing to be followed in terms of lifting the people and sharing prosperity and not being less profitable. I mean, come on, we posted a profit, right? So I think we represent quite a lot for the industry. So this is just a long way to say that the process is going incredibly well. And I can't say much more given the It's sort of the imminence of it, right? The relief actually is very self-containing.
spk03: Sorry to cut you off, but thank you very much.
spk01: No, it's all right.
spk02: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. We have a question over the webcast from Marcelo Azem at Everest Capital. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations for the results. Does the company expect EBITDA margins and net margin to improve over the next few quarters? Does the company expect net margin to reach 75% as reported in institutional presentations?
spk01: We do. We do. And I think it's part of the process of leaving this period of commissioning. As you can tell by the bridge, of EBITDA we posted on the institutional presentation on our website, the further we move, the less clouded by non-recurring items our financials become. So we will become more streamlined and more clear the ability to deliver superior margins. Obviously, we're now showing simulations against a price backdrop that has gone down and that obviously affects our margins, right? So we were not running at $1,500 per ton of triple zero lithium concentrate. We are cheating right now at 1,800, 1,900, which was the price for shipment calculation using the formula on spot hydroxide of 23,000, but again, What we are trying to show is that we are profitable, structurally profitable, because our cost is so low. We're well below the marginal cost required for the industry to meet the supply expectations of demand. Even when you look at softer demand backdrop drop, even when you look at what we call the full bear cave, we're always going to be here. We're going to make more profit, less profit, It's a commodity after all, but we are resilient to cycles. And that's what makes Sigma very special, a fundamental asset, fundamental company here. We're here no matter what. So we are this super major in volume that has managed to keep costs very low. And I think it connects to the previous question, going forward as we expand, our costs will go down because the GNA, it's a bit of what happens to talisman. They're so big, the GNA gets diluted over. They are now at 1.4 million tons of concentrate. So it's a giant number. That is about five times our size. So we're tripling. So the more we increase the scale of production, the less the GNA matters. because it gets diluted down. So when you look at the fundamentals of the cost, it just gets better by simply basically diluting down the fixed cost over a larger number of units, right? So essentially, this is actually the demonstration of the resilience of the business. I mean, we can expand confidently because the cost actually decreases.
spk02: There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to CEO Anna Cabral for any closing remarks.
spk01: Well, I want to really thank all of our investors that have, you know, believed in us, that have stayed with us. We have a very steady roster of top investors that have, you know, stayed with Sigma over the cycle, almost like financial sponsors that we are. And the fundamental investors here have seen through the value. And what we are hoping to do is to reward them beautifully with the execution, the flawless execution, the strategic vision, the execution of the strategic review. We do see SIGMA as a key, key instrumental player in the global lithium industry, a real force for good because we brought the conversation of zero carbon, zero tailing and environmental sustainability and social sustainability and lifting the people and achieving social goals, achieving climate goals while delivering sheer profitability on the metrics while delivering an incredibly profitable and incredibly resilient So it has not affected us at all to be the most sustainable lithium company in the world as far as metrics, which shows a way forward for the industry. It's a matter of will, right? It's a matter of cost, discipline, operational efficiency, and then you become what we are, which is the bedrock of the zero-carbon battery. So we're very, very proud of this quarter. We're very, very proud of being profitable in the first quarter. operating revenue corridor, and that's thanks to you all and to your, you know, unwavering support over the years. So I'm very honored to have the investor base that I have. And with that, I'll close my remarks.
spk02: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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