Standard Lithium Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Standard Lithium's fiscal fourth quarter and full year 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. It is now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Salah Ghamoudi, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone. Joining me on the call today are David Park, CEO and Director, Andy Robinson, President, Director, and COO, and Mike Barman, Chief Development Officer. As a reminder, some of the statements made during our call, including any forward expectations, company performance, and timing of projects may constitute forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our press release, which also applies to this call. I'm pleased to introduce our newly appointed director and CEO, David Park. David joins us after nearly three decades at Koch Industries, one of our key strategic partners. He began advising Standard in 2023 and has played a key role in helping to systemically de-risk our business, including with the consummation of our partnership with Equinor. David, it's great to have you on board. I'll now turn the call over to you.

Thanks a lot for the introduction. Since joining Standard in September, it's been a pleasure to be many of our investors, analysts and key local stakeholders. The company has carefully navigated a complex economic environment over the last fiscal year. We're ending 2024 stronger than ever, having partnered with global energy major Equinor and with the support of cornerstone investors, including Koch Industries. While the retreat in lithium pricing from all-time highs in 2022 and broader cooling of sentiment in the electric vehicle and energy transition space has pressured the sector, we're focused on what's within our control. For us, that means continuing to de-risk our business and move our world-class lithium brine projects forward. The most significant de-risking event for Standard and our shareholders occurred in Q4 with the close of a project level investment and partnership with Equinor. Equinor is a global energy major that has made a strong commitment to growing its renewables and low carbon solutions business. We're thrilled to have them on board. Our teams have already been working closely together over the last few months. We believe our partnership with Equinor validated the quality of our assets in Arkansas and Texas. our direct lithium extraction process and the expertise of our team. Standard clearly communicated over the past fiscal year the importance and benefit of having strong strategic partnerships, and we delivered on this vision. The world class potential of our Southwest Arkansas project was further validated last week with the $225 million conditional grant from the US Department of Energy. This award is one of the largest ever received by Arkansas and or a US critical minerals project. It will help ensure American energy and supplies chain security by breaking our reliance on China. This project is expected to add up to 300 construction jobs and 100 direct permanent jobs, as well as many more indirect jobs and millions of additional dollars in community benefits to the area. Equinor and the US Department of Energy carefully evaluated our assets, teams and plans over the last year, as Coke did a few years before. All three determined that standard lithium and the smack over is where they want to invest. Concurrent to securing a strategic partner, we work to advance and de risk our projects, specifically at Southwest Arkansas. We completed a pre feasibility study secured our brine production rights, and purchased a 118-acre parcel of land that we expect to house the project's central processing facility. We continue to refine the scope as part of the feed and DFS work. Standard now envisions a larger project developed in two phases producing 22,500 tons per annum each of lithium carbonate. At our demonstration plant in Eldorado, Arkansas, we successfully installed and commissioned the first commercial-scale DLE column in North America, supplied by Koch Technology Solutions. Its performance has exceeded our expectations and design parameters to date, and it was an important step in de-risking our DLE flow sheet. To good work, advancing and de-risking our projects has been supported by the build out of our executive team over the last year. This included the addition of Salah Gamoudi, who has brought structure and best practices to our finance accounting functions. He's ensuring the company is well prepared for the next phase of growth as we move forward towards development and production. Mike Barman joined as our chief development officer, bringing over 20 years of experience in investment banking and relationships with him. He's currently focused on advancing discussions related to offtake and project financing. While market sentiment and lithium price may ebb and flow, STADDRD is focused on what we can control. And for us, that means continuing to de-risk and advance our world-class lithium brine projects. I'll now hand it over to Andy, who'll provide more insight on our projects and DLE process that's helping us unlock our smackover resources in Arkansas and Texas.