Hi everyone, and welcome to Lithium Leaders, a CEO roundtable on market trends and the future of the industry, provided by Global X ETFs. Today's presentations will provide 2 CFP, IWI, and CFA CE credits. If you have questions on credit, please give us a call at the number on your console. We like to keep our events interactive, and we will be utilizing polling questions throughout the presentation. The questions will show on your screen, and you can select your answer choices and hit submit. We welcome and encourage your questions. You can type your questions into the Q&A box, and we'll do our best to get to as many of your questions as possible. If your question is not answered, you will be followed up with directly. Today's presentations, as well as additional materials, are available for you to download in the documents folder at the bottom of your screen. As always, we appreciate your feedback. At your convenience, please take a moment to take our survey that's also located at the bottom of the console. In the event that you missed any part of today's session or simply would like to watch it again, a replay will be made available, and all registrants will receive that information by email. I'm excited to introduce our moderators today from Global X ETFs. We have Pedro Palandrani, Director of Research, and Madeline Ruid, Research Analyst. Thank you both for joining us, and without further delay, I'd like to turn it over to Pedro to get us started. Pedro? Thank you so much, Stephanie, and good afternoon, everyone. Really excited about this symposium. We're going to be hearing from many industry leaders about what's happening in the lithium industry, why lithium is considered a critical material, what mining techniques are out there, and why it's important to understand the differences of those mining techniques, for example, supply-demand dynamics, and so many other topics. So today, to kick things off, we have Ernest Scheyder with us. Very excited to see Ernest. We've been following him for quite a while. He's a senior correspondent at Reuters covering the clean energy transition and critical materials, of course, including lithium. And he's also the author of The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives. Excellent book, highly recommended. We've seen already many clients reading it. Madeline has it on the back of the bookshelf there. Ernie, thank you so much for being with us today. Hey, great to be with you both. Awesome. Well, just to kick things off, perhaps at a very high level, Ernest, clearly the United States today represents less than 1% of the lithium supply. However, in your book, you mentioned that the country could potentially produce 3% of the world's annual lithium needs by the end of the decade, although the country as a whole holds about 24% of the world's lithium reserves. So in the book, The War Below, you're also offering a unique in-depth insight into perhaps the tensions between different stakeholders here in the United States as these miners are trying to work to ramp up this mine production, mine operations in the country. So broadly speaking, who are these different stakeholders, and how do you think these tensions can be addressed for the United States to really become that next country to be able to supply a lot of lithium out there? Certainly. So one of the main tension points is whether or not we should be developing more of these critical minerals, especially lithium, inside the United States. And that is a muscle broadly that the United States especially has not had to exercise the past 30, 40, 50 years. I think when people think of mining in the United States, the past half century, it's been around coal mining. It's not been around lithium or nickel mining broadly. But now as we have this energy transition, we're starting to see the need, of course, and the competition on a global scale. And at my day job at Reuters, I tracked a lot of proposed lithium projects, both in the U.S. West and throughout the rest of the country. And I started to notice opposition for various reasons due to those projects, even while the demand for lithium was increasing. And so you started to see many divergent voices come into the conversation that went beyond sort of the binary when we're thinking of opposition to extractive projects. I think the stereotype there is around whether you have a mining industry versus a local community. But here we also saw a lot of policymakers get involved and have sort of different approaches, while some policymakers might say, yes, broadly, we support the lithium transition and the green energy transition. Some might say, well, maybe for various reasons, not in this specific place. Local communities might support it in some parts of the country but might oppose it in other parts of the country for various reasons. You certainly have economic developers that would love to have extractive projects, especially for lithium or copper or nickel in parts of the country. Then you also had NGOs which, for various reasons, either supported lithium's broad goal to help the energy transition or might say, hey, we don't want this particular mine here because of either indigenous rights reasons or because of ecological and environmental reasons. So I would say those are sort of the main constituencies at play here. Not every constituency is a monolith. I mean, I learned time and time again when I was reporting out The War Below that each issue can have many, many different voices rather than sort of just that dual binary. That can add to the conversation and, yes, add to the complexity, but also really help people grapple with this idea of choice. What are the choices we're willing to make in all of these different constituencies if we want the energy transition? I would argue and do argue that we are not having that conversation broadly as Americans right now. We're used to exporting the production of many critical minerals, especially lithium, to places we may never go and never visit. If we want this energy transition, if we think climate change is serious, and if we want all the electronics that we use every day, the cameras that we're using right now to communicate as a very prescient example, we have to be having a discussion about where we get these building blocks. We have to have all those different constituencies coming together to have that dialogue. Yeah, and I think that it really goes nicely into the second question. So in your book, you also state that energy security used to be about crude oil and natural gas, but now it's also about lithium and copper and other important EV metals. Can you elaborate on this statement, and particularly as it relates to the current lithium supply chain and the current countries that are really at the heart of the transition towards electric vehicles and clean power? Sure. I hope you'll forgive sort of maybe a small story on the side, but I promise I'll get to answering your question. I have a chapter in the book that talks about leaf blowers, and that might seem basic and whimsy, but I wanted it to be a guidepost for readers to think through how this energy transition is about so much more than just electric vehicles. I think that tends to be the stereotype. So a few years ago, I purchased a leaf blower for my house. And of course, two-stroke engine-powered leaf blowers are considered anathema in many host governments, some of which are actually banning them. And so the push was to actually go electric. So I bought an electric leaf blower. That brought me down this big rabbit hole of, OK, well, where does the lithium come from that helps power the lithium-ion battery inside this leaf blower, as well as all the other critical minerals? And I got to tell you, I could actually not figure out the answer as to where the lithium came from. I didn't know if it came from Chile, from the Atacama Desert in the north of the country and brine operations there. I had no clue if it came from Western Australia and hard rock operations. I had no clue if it came from Nevada, where there's the only existing U.S. lithium operation currently. And I think that lays bare sort of how we have to be thinking about supply chains, especially for critical minerals, as the energy transition takes off. It was only about four years ago, as the pandemic started to roll across the entire world, that we started to realize that the United States didn't make masks, sort of that most basic piece of medical equipment. Just extrapolate that now across all the other thousands of electronic devices that we use every single day, cell phones, laptops, et cetera. They're all built with critical minerals. So their supply chains matter. And if we think having the transition is going to help with climate change, then also having a localized or maybe a regional production would reduce the carbon emissions from shipping. I mean, those two countries I just mentioned, Madeline, Chile, and Australia, are quite far from the United States. And the processing facilities are in China, primarily in China, I should say. The idea of taking lithium from northern Chile, shipping it across the Pacific Ocean to a processing facility in China, then shipping it to a manufacturing facility where it gets put into my leaf blower and then shipped back across the Pacific Ocean to me in the United States sounds at odds with the broad goals of the Paris Climate Accords. That puts further onus, I do argue in the book, on how do we think about regional production of these critical minerals and not just extraction out of the ground but also processing. This is about so much more than just transportation. It's about every other device that we use every single day. Where and how and why we produce this stuff matters. And clearly, beyond that geographic segmentation that you're making reference to, we also have different lithium mining techniques, right? And I think it's really important to understand all of these different mining techniques. So perhaps can you explain to the audience the differences between what we see with clay, with brine, hard rock lithium extraction? Like you say, Australia very well known for that hard rock extraction. South America very well known for brine. Now we're starting to see even here in the United States that clay operations or potential operations. So perhaps can we touch on all of those different mining techniques, Ernest? Sure thing, Pedro. So the most common way when people think about mining is hard rock mining. Gold and silver are through hard rock mining. And lithium can also be produced via hard rock mining. It's found in a type of rock known as spodumene. And this is very common in parts of Western Australia and other parts of the globe, with Western Australia sort of being the main production hub for hard rock lithium mining. And that is sort of as the traditional way you sort of dig the rock out of the ground, and then you break it down, and you then process it in a processing facility. There are several projects in the United States that would like to be hard rock projects. Piedmont Lithium's project in North Carolina, for instance, would be a hard rock project. And so that is one main way to produce lithium. Another way is through brine. Brine is basically salty water. Northern Chile's operations right now, powered by Albemarle and SQM, are two major brine lithium production facilities in the world. These use evaporation ponds that basically take brine out of underground reservoirs and, through a series of chemical steps across various ponds over many, many months, use the evaporative power of the sun to extract lithium from that brine. Depending on the geological composition, you could also have calcium or other minerals in that brine. So there can be many steps depending. It does take a pretty long time, like I mentioned. It can take several months. You do need to have a region like the Atacama Desert in northern Chile where you have very little rainfall. Because you can imagine having an evaporative pond outside in, say, Arkansas is not going to work because it rains a lot in Arkansas. So that is a limitation to the technology. There is a nascent group of technologies known as direct lithium extraction that, in essence, sort of works like a household water softener that aims to filter lithium out of that brine and then reinject the brine into aquifers back underground to help maintain underground aqueous levels. That technology, there's several different types of DLE technology, none of which have gone fully independent yet at a commercial scale. But there's many that are quickly getting there. Standard Lithium is one of the companies that is pushing forward on using a direct lithium extraction. It's also attracted companies like Albemarle, Rio Tinto, and many, many others across the world. And then clays is sort of a third category or bucket, I would say, that are potentially very appealing to produce lithium. Now, it's never been done at commercial scale before, but it's succeeded a lot at laboratory and at other test scales, excuse me. And this is lithium that's infused with a sedimentary or clay. And to extract that clay, you need large amounts of sulfuric acid. And so the Lithium Americas' Thacker Pass project in northern Nevada is a great example of a sedimentary project. And that mine is actually being developed right now and should be online in the next few years. So that's a quick, broad overview of the projects. And as you can see, all three will potentially be used inside the United States as their developers move forward with their plans. Then shifting a bit towards the U.S. policy landscape, which miners could potentially benefit from as we continue to see increased demand for clean technologies and the mining itself, how do you think the Inflation Reduction Act changes the outlook for lithium mining and processing in the U.S.? When you were researching for The War Below, were there any specific government efforts related to the IRA or not that you found particularly interesting? Well, the IRA, on a broad level, is really a national security piece of legislation. And let's not forget, it was approved the same year that Russia invaded Ukraine and really crystallized the globe's attention on this idea of supply chains that first came to perhaps global attention during the pandemic. The IRA marries the idea of auto and manufacturing supply chains with tax credits. So you can, as a consumer, get a tax credit for an electric vehicle if the lithium is produced in the United States or in countries that have a U.S. free trade deal. Those actually include Chile and Australia, as well as several other countries. And so what that has done is it has spurred manufacturers to think about, how do we actually ink deals with companies that have projects inside the United States? So a great example is Ioneer's project in Nevada. In southern Nevada, they are working to get their final permits right now that attracted Ford Motor for many reasons, not the least of which is it's a lithium project inside the United States. Lithium Americas has a deal with General Motors for very much the same reason. This will be lithium produced inside the United States. It will be IRA compliant. And it will, therefore, allow General Motors to sell vehicles and extend those tax credits to its own customers. In North Carolina, Piedmont Lithium has a deal with Tesla for very much the same reasons. And so you started to see the IRA spur domestic development for various critical minerals, especially lithium. Because of what we were discussing earlier with Pedro, the United States produces such little lithium right now. But if we're going to actually have this energy transition and, more importantly, for these automakers to get these tax credits to their consumers, they're going to need to find more domestic supplies of these critical minerals. And finding a domestic supply is often a lot easier than shipping another supply from another side of the world in the long run because those supplies can be interrupted by weather, by conflicts, by any other number of factors. So the IRA definitely has spurred a lot of domestic development for not only lithium but other critical minerals as well. But you still have that tension point around permitting, around earning the social license to operate from host communities, and around getting the environmental safeguards in place. So it definitely has not, I would say, caused a shortening of the permit review process. But it has extended a large carrot to the industry. Do you think pricing could potentially and when I say pricing, lithium prices specifically, do you think that could be a constraint for U.S. projects to actually come to life? And probably, perhaps, you can share a little bit of historical context into lithium prices. Clearly, we saw prices skyrocketing, close to $80,000 per metric ton for hydroxide. Then now we're 80%, 90% below those levels. So perhaps you can share a little bit of that kind of lithium price view. And what level, in your view, should be kind of a healthy price environment for a lot of these projects, not only in the United States but around the world, to really operate not only in a profitable manner but in a sustainable and long-term manner as well? Well, I would say I'm taking a step back here. I mean, the size of the lithium industry has never been at the size that it's at now. It will only continue to grow. It used to be sort of a very niche industry that was used to make greases or in pharma, biologics or in other sort of very specific or niche areas. The idea now that we have really an explosion in lithium demand and we'll continue to see it grow to 2030 and beyond has sort of reoriented how the industry thinks about lithium. Price fluctuations, for instance, as a comparison, are not anything new for the crude oil industry. For instance, it goes up. It goes down. Some companies decide to hedge crude oil. Others do not decide to hedge crude oil, whether they're consumers or producers. And so I think what you're starting to see is the consumers and producers of lithium start to grapple with this new price dynamic. Unlike crude oil, there's two main types of lithium. Although now that I'm saying that, of course, there are several different grades of crude oil, I recognize that. You can have Brent or WTI. But for lithium, it requires extra processing to make either lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. And manufacturers have various reasons why they would pick one over the other. And that has led to some lithium producers really push for their product to be considered a commodity, excuse me, a specialty chemical rather than a commodity chemical. But I think sort of on a broad level, the lithium industry and its customers are feeling their way through this new reality that the volumes being sold are much greater than they were even 10 years ago. And what is that going to look like when lithium trading contracts are more prominent? And will that allow more hedging? And what will that mean for when prices spike or when they drop? And how will different consumers of lithium, including auto manufacturers, think about that? And I think right now there's still some growing pains around figuring out how to approach that. And different manufacturers obviously have different needs, different pain points, different relationships. But I think, broadly, the industry is growing fast and having to adapt to this new, basically, price and volume environment. We have seen some potential expansion plans in the lithium industry slow down with the recent shifts in the pricing environment. Do you believe there's a growing disconnect between the projected growth in lithium production capacity or, even more broadly, just critical minerals in general and the amount of critical minerals, including lithium, that will be needed to support the EV and clean energy transitions? One of the things I found time and time again when I was reporting at the book is just to your point, Madeline, I mean, the sheer scale of the critical minerals that we will need to actually achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Accord are just gargantuan. I don't think that's generally understood by the average person on the street. So I hope that we really have a broader conversation about where, how, and why we want to get these building blocks, especially and including lithium. We're not having that conversation right now. I think all of this involves choice. I mean, what are the choices we're willing to make? I mean, if we don't want lithium produced in a certain part of Nevada, for instance, are we OK with relying on lithium imports from the part of the world that might not have the same social and environmental standards that we expect of extractive projects inside the United States? So these are things that I hope people think through. I mean, the era of just showing up to a store and expecting a product to be there without thinking through who made that, where did it come from, I think that's fading away. And I think you're going to see that some companies are increasingly going to use it as selling points to say, hey, I either produced this product with lithium from the United States, or I made sure that this critical mineral that I produced was ethically sourced. And so that you know when you buy that product that you are buying a product made with lithium that was produced at the highest ESG standards. I think you're starting to get there. And I think certain certification organizations like IRMA, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, as well as others, are going to slowly move the industry in that direction. What are some of those examples, Ernest? For example, one that comes to mind is Thacker Pass from Lithium Americas. We'll have John Evans later today on the webinar. But they're expecting to have that first carbon-neutral kind of operation facility in Nevada. Are there any other examples? Or perhaps can you tell us a little bit about how they may get there? And again, I know we're going to have John later today. But perhaps, from your view, what are they doing differently to really get there? I think, broadly, there's an understanding or at least an expectation from consumers that if we're going to be going into the energy transition collectively, we want to be doing better things for the environment than what we had been doing with a fossil fuel-based economy. So 100, 150 years ago, when the petroleum was really the petroleum-based economy was growing, we didn't really have a discussion about what that meant for our environment, our economy. And what did we get out of that? We got climate change. We got a cartel that controls most of a good chunk of the world's oil production, several armed conflicts around it. And so I really hope we think through, what do we want out of the energy transition? And so I think consumers increasingly are going to say, hey, if buying an electric car or an electric leaf blower or any other electronic device is better for the environment than one powered by fossil fuels, I want to know that that's actually true, that it's actually an ethically sourced product. And so I think you're going to start to see mining companies respond to that by working towards carbon neutrality, by using maybe more autonomous vehicles to reduce perhaps worker injury, to look at ways to implement solar and wind and other renewable energy-generating devices at their mine sites. I mean, remember, mine sites tend to be in the middle of nowhere in the most cases. So you're not near an electric-generating plant. And so the more you can use renewable energy, it's probably going to be better. So I think you're starting to see things like this because I think consumers are going to increasingly realize, hey, I want to know that the lithium that is in this device that I am buying is actually good for the environment. And so I think you're going to start to see mining companies respond to that. And we already are. You mentioned the Lithium Americas' example. We've also had multiple companies talk about how they are going to process their critical minerals, especially lithium, in ways that they feel is better than in past processes. Piedmont Lithium is one of them that's put that out there. Ioneer, which has a project in southern Nevada, has talked about having a fully autonomous fleet. Several mining companies are talking about getting electric-powered trucks to move away from diesel, which, as you can imagine, using diesel-powered trucks to extract lithium seems paradoxical by design. So I think you're going to start to see more and more of this as the industry moves in that direction. You mentioned a couple of times today kind of the oil industry. Clearly, we're also seeing kind of large players like Exxon trying to tap into the opportunity here with lithium, right? Would you expect to see other large energy companies continue to take an opportunity in the lithium industry? Well, certainly, Exxon is one of the first movers into the space. They're looking at direct lithium extraction. I think many of the similarities are there between lithium and crude oil. They both involve subsurface geology, fluid dynamics, and many other related areas. So I'd be curious to track if we're going to start to see other oil companies get into this space, especially around using direct lithium extraction, which can involve, as we were saying earlier, extracting brine from an underground formation and then filtering it through a series of pieces of equipment. It's an area that definitely overlaps. I do start to see some similarities there. I mean, certainly, on a broad umbrella, I mean, they're all under the energy category. And so whether that's oil or natural gas or lithium or other critical minerals, I think you're going to start to see more and more companies interested and poking around on this space. There's a lot of companies that are interested in lithium right now, a lot of regions of the world that are interested in it as well. And so what will that mean for price in the long term? What will that mean for global production? I think we'll all have to track it in the coming years. Awesome. Well, Ernest, that was a fantastic conversation. And again, I think a lot more details can be found within your book. Again, "The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives." Again, fascinating conversation, fascinating book. Highly recommended to the audience today. So again, Ernest, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll continue this webinar now with a few other CEOs from Piedmont Lithium to Standard Lithium and Lithium Americas. We're going to have a full day of conversations. But again, Ernest, thank you so much for joining us today. Great to be with you both. Before we jump into the next session, we'd like to take a moment to ask for your participation in a polling question. The first poll should be showing on the screen for you now. That question is, do you think the U.S. can gain a more prominent share of the lithium mining, lithium processing, and/or battery production industries by 2030? Your answer choices to choose from are yes, particularly in lithium mining and processing. Yes, particularly electric vehicle battery production. Yes, across the entire lithium and battery production volume chain. Or I do not think it's likely to happen by 2030. You can select your answer choice by clicking directly on the screen and press Submit. Just as a reminder, materials have been made available for download in the Documents folder at the bottom of your screen. Please feel free to submit any questions you may have at any point in time during today's event by typing them into the Q&A box. If your question is not answered, we will be having someone follow up with you directly. Thank you for your participation in this poll. Now let's move into the next session. All right. So for the next session of our Lithium Leaders Symposium, we're honored to be joined by John Evans. He's the president and CEO of Lithium Americas. And the company is currently advancing the Thacker Pass project out in northern Nevada. So we're really looking forward to learning more about the project as well as the company as a whole. So thank you so much for being here, John. And take it away. Thank you very much for having me as part of this program. I really appreciate it. Really appreciate being able to tell the audience more about what we're doing, which is really unique here in North America. Our project overall has many highlights to it, which I'll get into much more details. Just some summary takeaways before we dive into the details. Our Phase I project is moving forward in terms of being substantially de-risked from a construction standpoint. Really, where we are in the process here is really positioned to become really the first and largest near-term resource of lithium in the United States and really in North America, beyond the only current operation today, which is about a tenth of the size of what we're building here. General Motors is our largest shareholder and a stakeholder in the project. We're playing an important role in their strategy as well in terms of expanding their vehicle fleet offering for fully electric vehicles by 2035. We're backed by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the ATVM Loan Program. A conditional loan was granted about a month ago. We've done a follow-on financing, which really allows us now to move forward to close that loan, which is what we're focused on now, and substantially de-risk the construction and funding, as I mentioned when I first started. We're well positioned along the cost curve. I say that in terms of you would build this project in any cost environment that we've seen. It has a low OpEx, which rivals some of the best in the world, depending upon whether you look at it from a C3 or a C1 basis, which is with royalties and taxes included or without. Regardless, this stands as a top-tier project and, of course, a very large asset. We have a large technical development center. We actually had a visitor yesterday from Asia who commented it's the largest, most complete demo plant he's seen actually outside of Asia. We've done a tremendous amount of testing. It's very robust. We've had, obviously, very, very many people in there doing due diligence. They all came away with the same in terms of it being a very robust and actually simple flow sheet, which I'll cover in a few minutes. The project has many ESG elements to it focused around water, community relations, emissions. And actually, it's even carbon neutral in the way we've designed it. And again, we'll talk about some of those in more detail. And then finally, and most importantly, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my team. I am not the expert in the room all the time, actually never. And it's really my team who has allowed us to really get forward to this point and actually get into construction. We've got a very experienced group of folks that have come from EPCMs, chemical companies, lithium companies, mining companies. And they're all, most of them, mid-career folks with decades of experience. And really proud to actually call myself a colleague with all of them. The project itself is in northern Nevada. It's a very large resource. It's a geological formation. It's called McDermitt Caldera. We are located in the south. However, we do hold claims all the way up to the border of Oregon, both mainly on the west side but also on the east side as well. But beyond that, the area that we're in actually is so blessed with lithium that we don't need to really go beyond the footprint that you see here, which is that dark inset at the very bottom. And it's there on purpose, just given the highest lithiation we've seen is there. The whole caldera is lithiated. But where we are actually has lithium concentrations in some cases up to 1%, which is very unusual and lends itself to very easy beneficiation and processing actually to a battery-grade lithium salt at the end. We are fully permitted. We have all of our federal and state permits. Of course, the project was appealed, as all these are in the U.S., almost every infrastructure project is. And we're through all of that as well. So no litigation remaining. All cases have been dismissed or dropped. And we're moving forward, which, again, very unique in the U.S. or actually any jurisdiction to be completely green light now on all permitting going forward. The location is very good from an infrastructure standpoint. I have experience in other jurisdictions and other continents as well. You can see on the map here to the left is State Route 95, which is essentially almost an interstate going to Boise all the way down to Interstate 80. We have a state route which runs through our site. We have overhead power lines. We have water both to the east and west of the resource itself. It's at about 5,000 feet, so about the same elevation as the city of Denver. It lends itself to construction here in that while we are in a very remote place, that's very relative when you look at this versus other projects, which in some cases could be two or three hours away at high elevations away from the closest civilization. As I mentioned, we have an agreement and an investment from General Motors. They've invested $320 million in the company already at the common equity level. Another $330 million will be coming in in and around the time before we close the loan with the Department of Energy. Again, the raise that we did triggers the GM tranche two and allows us to close the loan. They're all co-dependent on each other. That's what really, I think, sets us apart as well versus many companies in this space in that we've gone from a developer to an advanced developer now to a builder. In the next few years, we'll become the largest producer actually in the US and actually in North America. GM has exclusive rights for up to 15 years for Phase I. We have an offtake agreement, which includes a pricing model as well, which includes a floor and also is based off of market index pricing and has a graduated discount as pricing goes up. The easiest way to think about this is that the discount works as an effective discount, almost like your wages are taxed, and gives GM protection when pricing spikes, very much like it did two years ago. We believe the situation on the pricing is going up. It'll continue to go up now as the market is maturing and cycles as it goes through that. The loan itself is really unprecedented, especially for a critical materials project in North America and the US. The loan amount is $2.26 billion. Now, that includes interest during construction. The cost of capital here is the same as the US government. So it's locked in each month as we draw based off the 20-year Treasury note. So you get a blended cost of capital during the construction. Takeaway that I can't and you can't beat this cost of capital really anywhere in the world. And it underlies and is basically the foundation of our financing for nearly 76% of the capital cost. The tenor of the loan is quite long, up to 24 years. So the government really is leaning forward and hands in the huddle here to advance this very strategic project for the industry but also for the economic and climate security of the United States as well. As I mentioned, from an OpEx standpoint, this gives you a good illustration of where we sit along the cost curve. And what you're seeing on the left here is an apples to apples on a C1 basis. So this would just be pure OpEx. To the left of us is actually the Greenbushes. So we're equivalent to the Greenbushes. If I flip this over from a C3 standpoint and included things like royalties that you'll see in some companies or countries or export taxes, we'd actually move to be a Tier I asset in terms of first quartile. We'd be a little cheaper than Greenbushes and actually slightly cheaper than the Atacama when you add those types of things in, like the royalties that you have in Chile. The pricing here, as you can see, is heavily dependent on reagents, which is not unusual and actually very common for other projects like this. In our case, we use liquid sulfur, which is all sourced domestically, either in the US or in Western Canada, soda ash, which comes from right next door, literally in Wyoming. And actually, these numbers here, I think there's a lot of room for improvement in that the pricing on this was actually taken at a time where inflation was higher. So we had the ability here, I believe, to actually have a lower OpEx and make this even more competitive. So world-class project. The pricing that you're looking at here or the costing, rather, reflects actually making fully integrated at the gate a battery-grade lithium salt when it leaves the plant, all within this 1,000-acre mine and 5,000-acre footprint that you have for up to 40,000 tons a year for 40 years. It's a very unique and very rich asset. The flow sheet, we get a lot of questions here that, well, this is different than other projects. Every lithium project is different. No resource is the same. And the flow sheet that you use, even amongst traditional brine projects that use solar evaporation or spodumene projects, are all bespoke depending upon what your impurities are. The beneficiation here is where a lot of people ask questions is, how do you get the lithium from this underlying ore? The ore itself is much different than a hard rock in that it's very friable and that you can break it up in your hands. And when you expose it to water, it actually naturally dissociates, which makes sense just given this was formed as a very thick sediment layer after a volcanic eruption. And a crater lake was formed. The volcano re-erupted again, uplifted, actually heat treated the sediment itself and helped actually do some of the work for us and then drained out actually right in the area that we're at. That's the reason why the lithiation is so high there. But what we do is actually use exactly what the phosphate industry does. But what they reject, we take. And what we take, they reject. So the gangue, the larger particle-sized material up front, is what we reject, squeeze the water out, recycle it, put it on the ground to evaporate the 9% moisture. And we put it right back in the pit again. So we're actually doing concurrent backfill and reclamation. We take the material, and we thicken it and centrifuge it to get the remaining water out so we can recycle it, leach it with sulfuric acid. And then from that point forward, it looks almost very much like spodumene, where you go to lithium sulfate and you go forward, and you actually process it into a battery-grade material. Every piece of equipment you see on here in terms of size or design is an operation around the world and has, in some cases, more than 50 years. So we're basically just borrowing and using what already exists. The order of operation reflects what we're working on here in terms of removing impurities, which in our case, as you can see here, is magnesium, to a little lesser extent, calcium, and some others. But again, all well-practiced chemistry around the world, and something that we demonstrate at a very large scale at our Technical Development Center in Reno, Nevada. As I mentioned around de-risking, we've done a lot of work to advance the project in concert with closing or getting a conditional loan guarantee, having a strategic agreement with General Motors, and ensuring the project is fully financed all the way through the end of construction. As I mentioned, we have a Technical Development Center that we've opened almost two years ago that's been in continuous operation. It's supported by our own analytical laboratory. And again, it's quite large scale. It's a 30,000 sq ft facility, which actually I forgot to mention on the page previous. The beneficiation is actually at scale using a production-size hydrocyclone. So instead of scaling up, we're just adding more, which I think is unique. And I'll say I have quite a bit of experience in this industry. Most people don't do that. They do this with a feasibility study at a tabletop in gram scale. We're doing kilogram scale, which requires much larger equipment. But we really wanted to ensure the process is very robust and also to use it as a training center, actually, as we start to train operators as we get closer to completion. All of our early works is complete. In the very front of the slide, you could see the excavations done. We've dug where the foundations are going to be, where the plant is. We have our media material set aside for reclamation already on site. We have power already on site. We have water utilities. We're essentially ready to go. Our workforce hub has also been started. So we'll be housing the workforce around Winnemucca, right on the outskirts of town, bussing people to site and bringing them home each day. They'll be working 3 weeks on and 1 week off in offset shifts. We have a 15% contingency in the CapEx. So our contingency went up. And actually, our costing now is at FEL Level 4, which is a very high level of detail in the financeable estimate. So when people talk about feasibility studies, those are at best FEL Level 2. We're at the point now where we're backed up by the government. Our constructor, in terms of contractor, Bechtel, is all signed off. It's a very high level of detail, supported by pricing already for all of our equipment and steel, detailed engineering at this point, which is already well beyond 30%, which is a point at where most companies, especially larger companies like BHP and others, would already be at FID and actually full notice to proceed to be in construction. So we're ready to go. FNTP and FID will come post-loan close, which we expect to have in the second half of the year here, just given all the work that we've done and all the wickets that we've passed through at this point. I mentioned CapEx. So this gives you an idea of the amount of detail that we've gone into from a feasibility estimate, which when you do a feasibility estimate and convert it to an FEO Level 4 estimate, which is a financiable, buildable estimate, a lot more work is done. And you can see here what makes up this 29% increase. We've already taken into account higher labor costs, which, if you're going to ask me where costs have increased, and I think it's global in nature, labor. The way we've mitigated that as well is bringing in the AFL-CIO via the North American Building Trades Union, where we have an agreement. We're paying union wages, which are, of course, above national averages. And in return for that, they're going to ensure that we have the right skills at the right time at the right place. We'll also be housing them in our workforce hub for two reasons. Number one, there's not a lot of hotels or extra housing in the area. In counter to that, housing is quite short in the U.S., and I think Canada as well. And it puts undue stress on the community. And of course, to build Phases II and Phases III, we'll have a facility already in place to be able to handle the influx of workers from probably as far away as Boise, Salt Lake, and Phoenix. Long story short, we've taken our lessons from some of the other semiconductor factories, which wanted to go out at sort of the lowest cost wages and then struggle to be able to attract the workforce that they need. And frankly, when you worry about cost inflation during a project, and this is from experience from past projects that I've been involved in, is not having the right types of labor, them not being productive. And that causes the project to be extended in terms of schedule. And at the end of the day, it costs more. Plus, you don't get to cash flow around your schedule. And then again, some of the other aspects of this too are we know all of our materials. We know all of our quantities at this point. It all reflects in a very robust estimate here, which includes, as I said, a 15% contingency within these numbers as well. So we're very confident in these numbers. In terms of ESG, I mentioned a few of these things. But number one, low carbon footprint. So our Scope 2 and Scope 1 and 2 emissions are about 6 tons of CO2 per ton of product or CO2 equivalent, excuse me. We are actually carbon neutral. The waste heat that we generate from our reagent plant, again, copying from the fertilizer and phosphate industry or anybody else who uses sulfuric acid, you capture the heat with a turbo generator. And it'll provide a little bit more than half the power that we use on a daily basis. The rest that comes from the grid, from Bonneville Power, which is in the Pacific Northwest, which services our part of the state of Nevada, is all hydro. It's a unique design. And right from the very beginning here, we're aspiring to be completely carbon neutral in terms of operating power sources. Water consumption-wise, we're a zero-liquid discharge facility. So we do not discharge to a chemical sewer. We do not have hazardous waste. We recycle each drop of water more than 7 times. So it's about an 85% recycle rate. Our water usage is equivalent to about a medium-sized farm on an annual basis. So if you think in terms of center pivots, those circles that you see flying across the US or Europe, it's about 4 of those on an annual basis in terms of equivalent water usage. From a community relations standpoint, we have community benefits agreements with the local community, which is about 10 miles away, and even the tribal community, which is about 50 miles away. And that includes things like investments in a new primary school for the local community, a daycare facility for the tribal community 50 miles to the north. That's actually wrapped around with a commitment by the unions to bring in specialized training for skilled trades. These are apprenticeship programs for folks not only to be trained during the construction, but then post-operation, you're essentially seeding the community now with skilled trades, which is actually very much not many of those folks in this part of the country or that part of the state, I would say, in terms of having skilled trades like plumbers or pipe fitters or electricians. Typically, people move off to larger cities or around the country. What you're left with is a shortage in more rural areas. So a lot of thinking that has gone into sort of a multifaceted approach here around having a very light footprint and that the benefits are actually flowing to the local community too. Strong stakeholder support here as well. I just mentioned the community support, the tribal support, which I think you've seen as well if you look at some of our releases. Obviously, the U.S. government, the state government as well, the county. We've had a lot of folks that see our vision here, are excited about what we're doing not only for the local community in the state but also for the United States and North America in general to not only fuel this green revolution that we're having but also provide economic and climate security for the country too. So there's a multifaceted view that folks have that see benefits in building projects like this, especially in lithium, where we produce very little in North America versus what we use already and what we're going to be using over the next decade. And then again, as I mentioned in the beginning, I wouldn't be here without these folks. I'm not going to go through their backgrounds, but a very experienced team that have come from larger companies in their past career, very specialized knowledge, and the combination of this caliber with this team and then many people that aren't on this chart that support them has allowed us to get to this point. All projects and companies are about people. We have a really unique mixture here of folks that came into the project because they saw the same vision and really want to build and get this operation in production. We're not drilling a couple of holes in the ground and trying to sell the project off. I think that's why we've attracted investment and partnership with GM and that we're prepared and have an operating team already behind this to build this project and get it into operation and then eventually grow it and continue to grow it in terms of subsequent phases beyond Phase I, which leads us to where we are today. We're on the precipice of major construction. As I mentioned before, we just did a round of financing, which is going to enable us to close GM tranche II and also to close the DOE loan. We're continuing to advance engineering. We're past 30%. We're likely to be somewhere closer to 40%-50% when we ask our board for full notice to proceed, which allows us to proceed to major construction and our first year of production, which would be in the second half of or at least our mechanical completion of production, which would start in the second half of 2027 and be at full rates in 2028. So we're excited to move forward. It's been a long road, but proud of what we're doing here. And I'm personally very proud of the team that's working with me. Thanks. Well, thank you, John. Great presentation. So we definitely have several questions here. So perhaps we can start at a high level because you just mentioned that here in the United States, clearly, lithium supply is quite minimal, right? It's less than 1% as we speak. But by the end of the decade, I think we all can agree that the story is going to be quite different. And if we start doing numbers with Phase I, 40,000 tons, probably by the end of the decade, we're going to be talking about 3 million metric tons of perhaps kind of demand supply. And we'll see if we actually get to that level on the supply side. But what's your view about the countries, the United States market share perhaps of the global lithium supply by the end of the decade? Yeah, I laughed when you said at one point and that there's lots of things moving forward. But time is precious. It's 2024. For folks that aren't familiar with us, the very first concepts around Thacker Pass started in 2007. So it's taken a long road to get to where we are here. There's several different approaches around different resources in the U.S. and Canada. Look, if you think it's 6 years from now, maybe 5 or 6 of projects like ours that are entering production or near entering production, we'll call it 200,000 tons, which is significantly more than this point than the 4,000 or 5,000 tons that are made currently. The U.S. imports last year about 50,000 tons of refined lithium. So already with us and Silver Peak, which would be Albemarle, that's not even equal to what we import. By 2030, I believe the U.S. will be probably requiring somewhere, depends how quick the gigafactories get done. But I think the last I saw, there was something like 700 GWh of capacity between the U.S. and Canada that were being put in. That's going to be in excess of 500,000 tons a year. They're going to be required just for North American demand. So if we can put in 200, maybe a little bit more, you're right, the market's going to probably be 3 million tons. So it'll be measurable and meaningful. But it's going to be difficult for North America to be independent, that's for sure. It's going to require work with other like-minded countries and other resources. But also, I think you'll see different approaches based on different resources, which is needed. So I mean, I'm an all the above person. You need many of these projects to go forward for us to support the infrastructure bei ng built out already in terms of building battery capacity in this country. And during your presentation, you started talking about your company's sustainability measures that you're putting in place for Thacker Pass. C ould you elaborate a bit more on some of those potential sustainability measures? And also more broadly, where do you see sustainability fitting into the broader lithium industry over the next either a few years or decade? Yeah, if you look at our history, you can see we've been releasing ESG reports now for at least 2 or 3 years, even pre-production, which I think underscores our commitment to do things right and in the right way. We're also involved with IRMA. We did a pre-audit. And we'll be moving forward over the next 12-18 months as well with another audit as we're in the starting blocks here and actually already advancing construction. And those are very holistic. I think our approach, as you can see, is very holistic too, whether it's around community relations, community benefits, whether we have an ongoing commitment to reducing our carbon footprint. There's other things that we can do in subsequent phases or modifying phase I once we get into production to reduce our carbon footprint. There's a constant view on conserving and reducing the amount of water usage. Beyond that as well, we're one of the few resources that actually can reclaim as we go. By year seven, we're going to start backfilling. No more than about a third of the pit, which is, I'll say, shallow compared to hard rock mines. It's about 350 feet deep at the deepest spot. We'll be backfilling because of the nature of what we do here. We can put back in the ground the gangue right after we take the water out of it and recycle it because we're not adding any reagents or chemicals to it when we do the beneficiation. Any fines that we produce are neutral and can be put back in the ground as well too. So right from the very beginning, actually, how we even operate our mine is we're trying to be as environmentally conscious. So we leave no footprint after phase I is done. That's great. And I want to double-click on the DOE's loans because I think that's clearly one of the largest lithium-related news of 2024 pretty much around the world, right? So again, $2 billion-plus from the DOE. So can you perhaps share with the audience, how long did it take the company to actually get to receive that loan? Perhaps what lessons from the application, the due diligence process, can you perhaps offer to other lithium producers? Because clearly, there is a huge focus from the federal government to support a lot of these projects. And I think we'll likely see a few other types of loans like this one in the next few years. Yeah, I hope so. I think it's a great program. The word I would tell folks is be prepared. So you need to have the right team and the team going forward. The DOE told me a story. They get stuff, everyone, from people sending in with Gmail addresses. That's not going to work here. This isn't venture capital. The government is offering very attractive financing rates. But with that comes the amount and level of due diligence that you would expect from any sort of project-level project type of capital lending, a bank. They use very conservative views on pricing. You have to be ready for extensive due diligence that's done by third parties. And then the DOE office itself, at least that side of the office, is populated by very skilled folks that came out of project financing or Wall Street that really know what they're doing. From the time of getting your letter of substantial completion, which we got in January last year, as you can see, it took about a year to go through all of that. It's very thorough with a data room, with meetings in person, with site visits, all of your contractors. It's very open book, open kimono. There's no secrets. And the government, again, is looking at this through the lens of investing behind companies or enabling companies to build. But at the same time, as any bank, they have to ensure that there's a very high, reasonable probability of getting paid back. This isn't a grant. It's a loan, so not free money in that sense. So that type of lens is used. So you have to be very prepared. And I would say also from a permitting standpoint, the government will not wade into things like that. Our conditional loan, we're through all of that type of stuff. But you have to have your ducks in a row when you're going to approach and go through this final phase of the process. And I know there's many folks behind us. And again, I spoke to some of those companies and happy to help them as well. We need more of these types of projects, even well beyond lithium, into other critical minerals and other industries as well to ensure that we're prepared for this transition and also for, at the end of the day, economic security in this continent. Switching back to more of a macro view, lithium prices, you talked a bit about them throughout your presentation. We've seen some signs of improvement in 2024. So what is your outlook for prices maybe through the end of this decade? And yeah, how have you been navigating the current environment? It sounds like along the cost curve, you are in quite a good position. Yeah, and I will underscore that. Again, I was going to say the same thing. So this project, that's the other lens the government looks at. Is it competitive through pricing gyrations? It's an immature industry. So you tend to have too low of lows and too high of highs. That's going to level out over the next 10 years. You're right, pricing is very slowly going back up. And that's reflecting the capital costs for things like this. So the cost here, other folks in the industry didn't blink an eye because this is what things like this cost, whether you're in the US, Australia, and the scale of this, if you were doing it in another country, very, very similar. So I think we will have another run-up in pricing. I don't think it's, well, $80,000 was never real anyways. It was a very few of spot market prices. But pricing certainly got into the $60,000-$70,000 a ton. If you look at actual pricing now, it's a bit higher than what we would say spot pricing is out of China. But the market's growing too. So you'll have index pricing in North America by 2030. Just given, as I mentioned before, you're going to need 200,000 tons of refined product just for North America. And regional pricing reflects things like tariffs if you bought material from China or royalties that have to be paid from governments prior to exporting. With that, I think pricing is going to go up where our long-term view is it needs to be somewhere between $20,000-$30,000 a ton. I think that's what you hear from Albemarle. You hear from Arcadium. You hear from Pilbara with equivalent spodumene-type pricing to support continual investment at this scale for projects like this globally, to ensure that you get a good return in terms of IRRs for projects like this. And I think you're seeing pricing kind of going back that way. Even some of the most dour analysts are saying, "Yeah, I think it might be by 20,000 by the fourth quarter." And I think they're right. Well, John, thank you so much for the presentation, for answering many of our questions. I know there are plenty of other questions. But time's up here. So again, thank you and congratulations, actually, for the great year that you've had in 2024. And we're definitely excited to continue to see Lithium Americas in the next few years, especially, again, as you enter into that production phase and contributing to the lithium supply story. So again, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. We'd like to get your feedback on the next polling question. The question should be showing on the screen for you now. That question is, what do you see as the biggest challenge for lithium as an investment opportunity? Your answer choices to choose from are market volatility, geopolitical risks, environmental concerns, supply chain disruptions. Again, that question, what do you see as the biggest challenge for lithium as an investment opportunity? And you can click your answer choice and press Select. And as you're getting those answer choices in, we do appreciate your feedback. Please be sure to take a moment to fill out our brief survey located at the bottom of the console. And if you're interested in continuing the discussion on any of the topics discussed today, please click on the meeting request box and confirm the request at the bottom of your screen. Thank you again for your participation. And now let's continue to the next discussion. All right. Next, we have Keith Phillips. Keith is the CEO of Piedmont Lithium. Keith, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Awesome. Well, just for context, Piedmont is a U.S.-based company really aiming to become one of the leading producers of lithium hydroxide in North America. I'm pretty sure we're going to get more details about that hydroxide ambition. They have a growing production in Quebec serving very large customers. I'm pretty sure we'll hear about that as well. So Keith, please tell us more about the company, about Piedmont, and generally speaking, your views and approach to the lithium industry. Great. Well, Pedro, again, thanks for having me. Thrilled to be here and always happy to speak about Piedmont. So we are Piedmont Lithium. We're an American company that's somewhat unique in the lithium industry. There are very few American companies. Most are Australian or Canadian or of some other jurisdiction. We're building a big business here and also around the world. I'll talk to you about that as we go through. We'll make some forward-looking statements. The appropriate disclaimer language is here after the presentation. So just in summary, why Piedmont? First of all, we are operating with our joint venture partner, Sayona Mining, the largest lithium operation in North America, which is in Quebec. It's called North American Lithium. It is a spodumene concentrate mine and plant. It's in production. It's by far the biggest upstream asset of any kind in lithium producing in North America. Right now, we started production about a year ago. I'll speak more about that in a minute. We're a producer. What that means is we have immediate leverage to any movements in lithium prices. People talk a lot about leverage to prices. But if your asset isn't going to produce for 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 years, you really don't have any leverage. In the near term, we do with prices at relatively low levels today. We're bullish about the future. We think we'll participate in that very directly. We also have a very large integrated project, spodumene concentrate and lithium hydroxide, in North Carolina. That's sort of our foundational asset. Important news last week, we received our mine permit approval last week. That was 2.5+ years of hard work by the team and by the regulators. We're very pleased with that. We'll be bringing more messaging around the development type of timeline for that project. We have a high return on invested capital project in Ghana with our partner, Atlantic Lithium. There's a project called Ewoyaa. We think it's the best-located lithium project in all of Africa. It's a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. It's a large resource, high-grade. And because of the nature of the mineralogy, it's a relatively low-CapEx project. CapEx in the Definitive Feasibility Study was $185 million for 360,000 tons per year of annual production. Really fantastic economics. So we're excited about that. As I said, we have strong levers to lithium prices. We also have, when you add up everything between our share of Quebec, our share of Ghana, and our 100% share of North Carolina, it's a very significant spodumene concentrate business today and in the future. And if you add it all up from a future perspective, certainly top 10 globally in terms of scale of the resource and the production potential. And we just have a unique strategic position in the United States. Again, there are very few American lithium companies. There are very few with conventional assets in the U.S. There are really two of us, in my view. And it's something that has a lot of benefit for us. On the right-hand side, you can see we're listed on NASDAQ. We're also listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. We were founded as an Australian company. We have a market cap today of around $225 million, cash balance at 12/31, around $72 million, and very strong research support from a number of institutions. Location matters. I mean, we think we have exceptionally well-located assets. When we started out in North Carolina, we were conscious that we were on a very significant mineral belt called the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt of interest. All the lithium in the world came from this belt from the 1950s to the 1980s. It's a very significant spodumene occurrence, about a 30- or 40-mile-long belt. It's 25 miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina. So the infrastructure is amazing. People talk about good infrastructure. Nobody has better infrastructure than we have. A lot of assets are really in the hinterland. And that's okay. But infrastructure is not an advantage for them. It is for us. It has a big impact on cost, et cetera. In Quebec, we have by far the best-located asset in Quebec, which is North American Lithium. It's 40 miles from Val-d'Or, which is a large mining town with all the trades there, contractors. People can drive home at night. They don't have to fly in, fly out every week or two from a camp location. Logistics are very favorable relative to the other more northern Quebec assets. Again, in Ghana, we're a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, huge advantage relative to most of the other assets on that continent. Briefly, on the lithium market, I mean, there's a lot of short-term focus on lithium prices and how they've fallen over the last couple of years. I mean, lithium hit record highs in 2022. Hydroxide prices over $80,000. Spodumene concentrate prices over $8,000. Prices have reversed and fell as low as basically 85%-90% to the lows in January, February. We've had a little bit of a bounce back. We think there's a lot more to come. Fundamentally, the story is still intact. I mean, EV growth rates are still strong globally. And we believe that'll continue. I think it's inevitable that electric vehicles dominate the vehicle markets. Alternative uses for alternative markets for lithium, like grid storage, are growing very rapidly as well. So fundamentally, the story is intact. We're optimistic that in the long run, there'll be great demand for lithium. And while there are a lot of potential supply sources, I think we're going to have a pretty volatile market, for better or worse, over the next several years until we get to maturity, probably not until the 2040s. Growth rates are still 20%+ for the industry. And it's a young industry. So by definition, we've sort of had booms and busts. We've just got through a bust. We're hopeful the next move is up and think it could be very significantly. If you look at prices, you can see over the last 12 weeks, prices have recovered, particularly spodumene concentrate, from around $900 to almost $1,200. So a nice recovery. But again, these concentrate prices were $8,000 18 months ago. I'm not suggesting they'll get back to 8,000. Maybe they will. I think there's room for very significant continued improvement in prices. Let's just talk about some of the key catalysts for us. As people think about our story, I'll just go geographically, USA, Quebec, Ghana, and then at the corporate level. We have two projects in the US. We have the Carolina Lithium Project and Tennessee Lithium. Carolina is integrated with its own mine. Tennessee is a chemical plant, just a converter. That's a fully permitted asset, by the way. The mine permit approval in Carolina was quite significant for us. Really, as you think about Carolina versus Tennessee, they both have the same chemical plant. One has its own mine. By definition, that makes it a lower-cost project and a more strategic project. So we're spending a lot of time now kind of deciding what the cadence of those two projects might be. But that permit approval was huge for us. Next in line will be project financing. We'll submit an ATVM loan application to the Department of Energy in due course. We'll also be seeking partners for the project, particularly to focus on the downstream part of the projects where there's a lot of capital required and a lot of expertise required. And we think we can get help from other people and really minimize capital required by our team. In Quebec, we're up and running. We're in month 12 of production at this stage. And the trajectory is really good. We have an opportunity to really achieve run-rate production by kind of the end of June, by the addition of this crushed ore storage dome. I can talk more about later. That's coming soon. That's really important. In terms of our sales, we buy 113,000 tons a year of material from the joint venture. We sell it to our customers. Our long-term customers are Tesla and LG Chem. Those deliveries haven't really started yet on a volume basis. We've been shipping in the spot market, which is more volatile and today lower-priced. We're looking forward to transitioning to those contract shipments. In Ghana, the key items are ratification of the mining lease, completion of the sovereign wealth fund investment, and then to secure funding to fund our share of the contribution, which we're focused on, a loan from the DFC in Washington, also looking at prepaid offtake funding for our share of the offtake. At the corporate level, we're really focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet but minimizing dilution to shareholders. We sold some of our Atlantic Lithium stock earlier this year. We sold all of our Sayona Mining stock earlier this year. We didn't do that because we wanted to sell them. We sort of thought we would need capital in the future. It was less dilutive to our shareholders to exit those shareholdings. Our joint ventures are unaffected. We're still moving fully forward with those. We've really put the balance sheet in a strong position in a difficult market. I'll talk briefly about each of these projects. I realize time is limited, again, Quebec, Ghana, Carolina, and Tennessee. I'm going to just focus quickly on Carolina, which we haven't talked about a lot for the last couple of years as we went through the rezoning process. This is a highly strategic project. It would be the only site on the planet with its own mining concentrate plant and lithium hydroxide plant on the same site, all in what we think is the best location in the world to do this, 25 miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina. Very significant mineral resource and some opportunities to really and the economics of the project are really quite superior. You can see in green here the Carolina Tin-Spodumene Belt, which is one of the world's most significant spodumene occurrences. And again, all the lithium in the world came from these two sites in red back from the 1950s to the 1980s. Why do we like Carolina Lithium Project so much? First of all, very low-cost operating environment. Infrastructure is the best in the world. Or certainly, no one's better than ours in the mining business. Low-cost power and gas, minimal transport distances. Our spodumene will be transported less than a mile to the chemical plant. Others are shipping spodumene around the world to chemical plants, including us in Quebec. That has a big transport cost disadvantage for those projects. We have local markets for byproduct industrial minerals, which we'll talk about in a minute. We also have the lowest tax regime that's relevant in the lithium industry. If you think about Ghana, Canada, Australia, Chile, Argentina, you think about royalties. We don't have any royalties on this project, any government royalties. We have some small private royalties. The U.S. has the lowest corporate tax rate among Western countries. As of next year, North Carolina won't have any corporate income tax. There's no value-added tax, which is a big issue going into China. So huge advantage from a tax perspective. We're surrounded by customers, easy to access those customers, the big OEMs, the big battery players. We have very supportive government programs in the U.S. with the Inflation Reduction Act, the ATVM loan program, et cetera. All in all, it's just a superior location. If you look at a core sample from our ore body, we have spodumene. That's what we're searching for. This is spodumene concentrate. We'll turn it into lithium hydroxide. That would go into batteries. That's kind of obvious. We also have quartz and feldspar and mica. These are industrial minerals for which demand in the southeastern U.S. is very, very significant for countertops, for glass, for ceramics, et cetera. In Western Australia or northern Canada, for example, there are no markets for these industrial minerals, even though they exist in a lot of other people's ore bodies. This is a huge kind of cost advantage for us, being able to recoup and sell. 80% of our ore contains one of these minerals that we'll sell. In most cases, it's only 20% spodumene. In our case, there's 60% of the other stuff, which is also very valuable. So a big advantage for us given our location. There's also Tennessee Lithium. This is a graphic of the proposed Tennessee Lithium chemical plant. The identical plant would be built in Carolina. So again, we'll come back on what the cadence of the two will be. In Quebec, this is an aerial photo. This isn't schematic. This is the actual plant. It was built a decade ago at a cost of around $400 million. It has been operating for the last 12 or 13 months, ramping up nicely. We hope to hit kind of run rate this summer. Very excited. Sayona is the operator. They've done a great job really advancing this and bringing it on. It's a wonderful project. You can see production generally trending up. Sayona will make an announcement next month of kind of Q1 totals. The trend is good. The trend will get better once we have this crushed ore dome completed in kind of May. This really will help run the chemical plant or the concentrate plant more consistently and drive mill utilization higher and production higher, and thus unit costs per ton lower. Importantly, again, we are both an owner and a customer here. We buy 113,000 tons of the material per year. We'll sell our share of that material to Tesla and LG Chem under long-term agreements. Shipments under those will be commencing fairly shortly. We have a reasonably favorable offtake agreement. We pay a ceiling price of $900 a ton for the material. You can see at higher prices how much gross margin we can make on just the offtake purchases, ignoring the money we'll also make at these prices as an investor in the asset. So very significant leverage to lithium prices. And if prices were to go to, say, $1,900, we should make around $100 million a year of gross profit on just these shipments, plus obviously profitability at the asset level. Finally, in Ghana, this is a wonderful project being developed with our partner, Atlantic Lithium, large resource, high-grade, large production profile, low CapEx and OpEx, very favorable. Africa is going to be an important player in the lithium business. It already is. Of all the African projects, this is by far the best located. We think it's in the best country to be in from a mining perspective of the other lithium choices. It's a mile from the ocean. So just very favorable logistics. You can see some of the economics, 94% IRR, very high NPV, et cetera. So very significant project and very important for us. This should be developed. We think 2025 and 2026 is when the construction will happen. Production should commence in 2026. That's really it. I hope I didn't go over it by too much. But that's a good run-through on what we're up to. That was fantastic, Now. Thank you so much for that color and details about Piedmont Lithium, Keith. I guess one of the slides that really caught my attention was really talking about the high-level lithium trends, right? And one of the charts that you had there was showing that over the long term, there's expected a lithium deficit, right? Whether that's not happening today, it could potentially be happening in the future, exactly this slide here on the right-hand side. So perhaps can you share with the audience a little bit of kind of that color around why we would expect to see that lithium deficit over the long term? And of course, there is a lot to say about the inelastic nature of lithium supply. And of course, we can see on the left-hand side how rapidly demand is growing for something like lithium. Perhaps more color on that. Supply-demand dynamic is very important for us. Sure. I mean, I think fundamentally, it's important to step back and understand how young this industry is. I mean, we've been producing lithium since the 1940s and 1950s, as an industry. But really, the growth has been very dramatic. And the industry's quadruple the size of what it was 7 years ago when I started in it in terms of production, maybe more than that. But it's going to triple again between now and 2030. That's what most people expect, and then grow from there. So it will become a very significant business. And I like to say, I think when you think about this industry and say the 2040s, 20 years from now, there will be a lot of discoveries. A lot of new mines will have come online. A lot of concentrate plants will be built, EV plants, cathode plants, et cetera. The industry may or may not be mature by then. My guess is it'll look a little like the copper industry now, where there's still growth above GDP growth. There are a lot of assets. Kind of operating rates become a factor. Supply demand's reasonably tight. Prices certainly move, but maybe not with the same scale of movements here. In lithium, the issue we have is demand growth is so rapid. Demand growth is rapid. It's kind of, as you can see, the demand growth in this chart I don't know if you see some of the cursor, but it's kind of going in one direction, where supply growth on a year-over-year basis isn't nearly as smooth because supply growth to build lithium projects takes a lot of money. Our Carolina Lithium project, CapEx is $1 billion. That's a December 2021 number. There's been inflation in the industry since then. So presumably, the number will be somewhat higher. Those are big projects to build in difficult markets. So when you're in a market where you're going to have booms and busts, I think, on the supply side. You're going to have periods where people just choose not to develop projects, either because they can't raise the money or won't raise the money. They won't raise it because it's too dilutive, too expensive. And they just decide, you know what? We're just going to hold still. So as an example of that, Albemarle has a very large lithium hydroxide project in South Carolina. I think it's 100,000 tons, two phases, 50,000-100,000 tons. Earlier this year or late last year, they sort of put that on hold. It It doesn't mean it won't happen. I expect it will happen. The U.S. is in desperate need of more lithium hydroxide projects. But the returns at the prices in effect at the time were insufficient to justify developing it at that point. So I think Albemarle took the view, listen, this is a project we're going to engineer and get ready to build in a stronger market with a lower cost of capital. They're not alone. A lot of people are going to make those decisions. And I think you're in a time in the sector now where there won't be any big capital projects launched today. There's some that are underway. There are a few. There's the Covalent project in Australia, which is the last legs of its construction process. There's the Nemaska project up in Quebec. Those are big projects really commenced in a bull market. I think right now, you're going to have a lag where people aren't going to build those new projects, whether they're big spodumene concentrate operations or chemical operations. And demand's going to continue to grow. And it's just a matter of time before there's going to be shortages. We talked to the car companies and battery companies. And their requirements really kick in in 2027 and 2028. And the amount of lithium they need is pretty staggering. They're big numbers. And they're nervous, anxious, I would say. And for obvious reasons, they're spending a lot of money on their own building car plants and battery plants. And they're worried about having those be fed. So that doesn't mean lithium prices need to rise today and that supply and demand aren't in line kind of today. But I don't think there's going to be enough built in the next year or 2 or 3 to meet that 2027, 2028 demand. I think we'll need far higher prices to incentivize anybody to develop these big projects. And I think that's just a reality we have to face. Yeah. Zooming into the U.S., that was really interesting to hear the global perspective. Earlier in the webinar, we talked about how the U.S. currently represents less than 1% of the lithium supply. If you could kind of look forward, what do you predict that the U.S.'s share will be, let's say, in 2030 or into the 2040s? Boy, that's a good question. I'm very optimistic on US EV penetration and demand. I'm very optimistic it's happening on the amount of money being spent by the car companies and battery companies to build battery capacity and cathode capacity. I'm not nearly as optimistic about the United States' ability to develop its own internal source of lithium raw material supply. I mean, there are some interesting projects. So Thacker Pass in Nevada is now largely funded and permitted and kind of under construction. So that's great. But if you add it all up, we think we're going to need 800,000 tons. We think by 2030, there'll be 800,000 tons per year of lithium hydroxide demand in the US. We currently produce 20,000, 2022. So we need 40 times more seven years from now. And if you add up all the projects that want to be developed in the U.S., it doesn't add up to anything like that. And most of those won't be developed in that timeline. We certainly hope Carolina will be. But a lot of others aren't yet permitted, aren't yet funded, et cetera. So I think the U.S. is going to have to rely on friendly nations. Canada is going to be important here. There's a lot of spodumene, for example. And I would add, most of the American projects are non-traditional sources. They're geothermal brines, some other kind of DLE projects, clay projects, et cetera. I hope those all work. They may all work. No one's ever produced lithium chemicals at scale from any of those sources before. So there's a little bit of a chemistry project to all that. Spodumene's pretty straightforward. Any of the good spodumene projects can produce a material that can be converted into battery-quality lithium chemicals. There are a lot of spodumene projects in Canada. Now, they'll be developed in due course. There's only one. There's one operating now. That's ours. There's one in construction now. That's Nemaska. I don't know when the next one will be. Those are also large capital projects. So yeah, I would say the U.S. will produce more than 1% of the raw material. But I think our demand will probably be 15% ±. I think we're at 15% or 16% of the global car market. So to the extent we need 15% of the lithium, I don't think as a country, we'll ever come close to that without some new exciting discoveries. Yeah. And Keith, how. I just should add because it's a good question. It's really important. Having said that, what's really important is for those people who are able to do it so for Livent, for Arcadium and Albemarle today, who do produce lithium hydroxide in the US, in North Carolina, about 20,000-25,000 tons in total, there's massive scarcity value of that. I mean, that's very special. Canadian material's great. Australian material's great. China material's not so great for a lot of reasons. But American material's very scarce. People, we think, over time will pay more for that. They'll want it. They'll really seek it out. So we're really excited to develop our business in the US because we think it's a conventional project, relatively easy to develop, in a great location. And it's American. And people are going to want that material. And we think pay more for it. One of your other slides was showing a very big price improvement in 2024, right? If you had to predict perhaps the long-term nature of pricing, understanding that there are a lot of cyclical factors, but what would be that kind of pricing level where you would see kind of a healthy industry growing but not getting to that kind of $80,000 per metric ton on the hydroxide side that then all of a sudden created a lot more issues for an industry? Yeah, it's a good question. Listen, I think so let me go back to that slide. So I think this is the slide you might be talking about. I would just say at these prices, we're not at a point where we're anywhere near incentive pricing. So if someone's producing today, there's no reason North American Lithium can't be profitable at, say, $1,175 spodumene concentrates, right? But that doesn't mean we would go build it today. I mean, that was built 10 years ago for $400 million. We put about $100 million into it a year or so ago. So there's $400 million or $500 million of capital spent. Replacement value is probably $800 million, I would guess, $600 million or $700 million or $800 million. So if someone else sort of said, gee, I'm going to go build a plant for $600 million or $700 million or $800 million, and I'll make a margin of whatever per ton, the returns will be insufficient. We need higher prices for that. So I think you've seen the majors in the industry talk about prices like $25,000 a ton for chemicals, which implies sort of high teens for spodumene concentrate. I think when Arcadium was merged, Livent had a prospectus or a proxy document that used pricing of $25,000 hydroxide and $1,900 spodumene concentrate. Those are prices that I think they were using as sort of a medium to longer-term average. I think those are reasonable numbers. And it's anyone's guess. Nobody knows. I think those are reasonable numbers. Certainly, prices could be higher than that at certain times. And they're obviously lower today than that. But I think those are numbers where people can look at the project and say, I can build it for that. And lenders can look and say, I can loan against that. That makes sense. And equity investors will support that. At today's prices, the numbers don't work. They just don't work. So again, just to use this as an example, the big Albemarle projects in South Carolina and there are other projects around, I don't know where they stand from a permitting perspective and an engineering perspective. But my guess is if they were ready to go today, they wouldn't go today because they're probably unhappy with their share price. Their cost of equity's high. Cost of debt's higher, et cetera. So I think people are going to wait for a stronger environment. And I have a slide in another presentation. It's unfortunately not in this one. It just shows the volatility of lithium prices. If you go back 10 years and you look at lithium versus other commodities, oil, gas, coal, nickel, gold, lithium is either the best performer or the worst performer in any given year, it seems. It's never on average. It was the best performer kind of in 2021 and 2022. It was the worst performer in 2023. I think the next leg will be up. I don't know when it will be. I think in that stronger market, people will have the opportunity to fund on a lower-cost basis. You'll see projects come back in. Having been delayed, that's now going to mean that supply won't come for two or three years later. That's what's going to cause, I think, the next real run. And then speaking about the Inflation Reduction Act, how could that benefit lithium miners like yourself, and particularly given how it's aiding in the expansion of the U.S. battery belts? Yeah, it's really important. What's interesting is before the IRA, a lot of the big announcements preceded the IRA. And we weren't contemplating or contemplated by the IRA or contemplating the IRA. But there have been a lot of new investments since then. And the pace has really accelerated or certainly accelerated through 2023. I am aware of, for example, one very major project, which was intended to be developed in Canada and on the back of the IRA was pivoted to the US and is now being constructed in the Southeastern US, multibillion-dollar project. And it moved here because of the IRA. The tax benefits, both for consumers of cars but also for producers of the critical minerals, are very significant. There's some uncertainty about how those all get finalized. But they're very significant. So the IRA is a great benefit. Obviously, in China, there's very proactive government support of their industry. It's growing far more quickly than ours. I think the way the IRA was designed as well, the production tax credits, I think they're really cleverly designed. I'm sort of, relatively speaking, a conservative from a tax perspective. But I like the way they did this. The only benefits under the IRA tax credits for us are if we go spend all the money we need to spend to build this project, let's say it's $1 billion. You spend $1 billion. You hire the 500 people. You employ them. You ramp up the project. You become profitable. You then get to the point where you have taxes to pay. You get a credit against those taxes you might pay down the road. So in that case, there's no money really up front with the IRA, which I think is interesting. I think it was well designed. It's highly incentivizing because the after-tax returns to projects are improved, which lowers your cost of capital and your ability to really get these projects built. So I think it's a great program. It's really helping. Some of those things, the tax credits to producers, those only exist for American companies, American taxpayers. The other customer benefits accrue whether you are producing in Canada or Australia or some other friendly free trade country. Well, Keith, we're almost at the top of the hour here. But just wanted to thank you for your time, your great presentation. And yeah, looking forward to continuing to learn more about Piedmont over the next few years. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, guys. Thanks for the opportunity. This brings us to our final polling question of the day. The question is, which of the following best describes your current level of client interest in lithium investments? Your answer choices to choose from are very high interest, high interest, moderate interest, low interest, or no interest. Again, that question is, which of the following best describes your current level of client interest in lithium investments? As you're getting those answer choices selected and pressing submit, just a reminder that you can download your continuing education certificates of completion via the folders at the bottom of your screen. In the event that you missed any part of today's event or simply would like to watch it again, a replay will be made available with on-demand CE credit. That information will be provided to you by email. T hank you again for your participation on this polling question. Let's move into the next session. All right. We'll continue our conversation right now on the topic of lithium leaders, a roundtable on market trends and the future of the industry with Robert Mintak, CEO of Standard Lithium. Standard Lithium is quite a fascinating company. It's really a miner with a flagship project in southern Arkansas. They're also expanding to several other regions. We can talk more about that today, of course, with Robert. But I think something that makes Standard Lithium very special is the technology angle that you're taking when it comes to their brine operations through direct lithium extraction technology, DLE technology, something that's out there in the news. Everyone wants to learn about that. I'm sure they will be learning about direct lithium extraction today. So with that, Rob, thank you so much for joining us today. Please take it over with your presentation. Thank you, Pedro. Thank you, Global X, for including Standard Lithium in the CEO roundtable today. You gave a great introduction to the company and our projects and our approach. I'll hammer that home in a brief overview presentation for everyone. Quickly, we trade in New York on the New York American, SLI as our symbol. Similarly, in Canada, on the TSX. Because of that, we've got two pages of forward-looking statements. What we'd like to say about Standard Lithium is we've got the right projects in the right place with the right strategy for developing those. We have a distinct advantage in the resource that we're developing, a lithium brine resource, in that it's the highest-grade lithium brine resource in North America, one of the only resources globally that's similar to the best projects in South America. Another advantage on the resource, we're working in an area where they've actually been mining brine for the last 60 years for the production of bromine. The project that we're developing is applying DLE, direct lithium extraction. We are an industry leader in DLE. We've been actively developing a process that's tailored for the project. We've benefited from being able to have an operating demonstration-scale plant running for the last 4 years to fine-tune a process that's scalable and adaptable for the resource that we're developing. A key to developing any project, you can't do it alone. Strategic partnerships, alliances, and leveraging that expertise is key for execution risk. We have got extremely strong project partners that we're working with. What we've got also is an advantage in the area we're working, the Gulf Coast of the United States. We're developing a resource that's called the Smackover Formation. It's had 100 years of energy development for oil and gas and 60 years for brine. So what we have, what we like to call the X factor, an advantage that extraction projects rarely benefit from, social license to operate, a business-friendly jurisdiction, and all of the infrastructure and benefits of working in this environment. Over the last 7 years, we've built the team using an agnostic approach to building a project. We have a multidisciplinary team of experts. We've got a proven track record of delivering resource and energy projects. The Smackover Formation, that's where we're developing our projects. It's one of the world's largest brine aquifers. You see on this slide, it extends from central Texas to the Florida Panhandle. What makes it unique is it's the only high-grade lithium brine resource in North America, a resource with comparable lithium grades to some of the best projects in Argentina and Chile. It's got a proven track record of success in brine operations. In South Arkansas, they've been producing bromine from brine for the last six decades, a great foundation for developing a DLE project. This region is the energy heartland of the United States. A century of energy development brings extensive depth of understanding of the reservoir and other geological understandings and also access to specialized contractors and experts in brine operations. This is an extremely business-friendly region to operate in. Arkansas and Texas have a culture that is very tuned to this extractive industry. And streamlined permitting and lack of red tape is extremely important when you're looking at execution and building projects. Some of the key attributes of the Smackover Formation are its high-grade, thousands of data points from this century of energy and six decades of resource development. And when we're looking at DLE projects specifically, we have an area where you've demonstrated that you can pump and reinject brine. They do it for billions of gallons annually in Arkansas. Now I'll talk to you about our projects that we're developing, why we're starting in Arkansas. Arkansas is where there's an existing brine industry for bromine production. They've been producing bromine since the late 1950s. And it's managed by the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission. So there's a clear regulatory framework in place. Because of that regulatory framework and that existing industry, there's expertise in brine production and reinjection that doesn't exist anywhere else in North America, let alone on the planet. Because of our work over the last seven years in developing the project, we've developed alliances that have allowed us to integrate into the existing brine operations of the region's largest operator, LANXESS, to install and operate our large-scale demonstration direct extraction facility and also working on that platform to consider developing our first commercial facility, leveraging that existing infrastructure of an operating brine facility. There's also been historic direct lithium extraction work done in the region. Albemarle, one of the global leaders in lithium, has successfully run a DLE pilot program a decade ago and have announced recently that they're undertaking new pilot programs in Arkansas. So now let's get to our projects that we're developing in Arkansas. The first project is called Phase 1A. Phase 1A is a brownfield project tying into an existing bromine facility that LANXESS operates. LANXESS has three process facilities in south Arkansas, west, central, and their south facility, which is where we've been operating our demonstration plant and where Phase 1A is considered to be built. This is what a brownfield project looks like, an existing brine operation that's been running since the late 1950s. A key feature of this for developing a commercial operation and for the running of our demonstration facility is that this facility has an existing brine flow of 3,000 gallons per minute that feeds the bromine operations of LANXESS. An extremely robust geological and reservoir understanding because of those operations, this site has an average lithium grade of 217 milligrams per liter. The significance of that is that a brownfield site, this is where we've been operating our demonstration plant. When we look to develop the commercial facility, that facility will tie into the existing brine pipeline, which you see on this slide is an aerial shot. On the left, you can see the existing industrial site that LANXESS operates and where we would consider installing the first commercial DLE facility, Phase 1A, directly adjacent on private property, connecting to that existing 3,000-gallon-per-minute pipeline so that we don't have to develop the reservoir to go into the commercial development. Minimal permitting required with this project. The project is considering initial production from that 3,000-gallon-per-minute pipeline with a 217 milligram-per-liter lithium grade of 5,700 tons per annum and an average over a 25-year mine life of 5,400 tons. What you see on the screen are the numbers from a definitive feasibility study that we completed in Q4 of last year. We are undertaking commercial negotiations with LANXESS for a site lease, commercial brine supply, and other site services agreements, which are necessary for the completion of all of the data required to make a final investment decision on this project. The other project we're developing in Arkansas is called the Southwest Arkansas Project. This project is a greenfield project. It's located 40 miles west of the LANXESS project on the same Smackover Formation aquifer, directly adjacent to Albemarle's operations in Arkansas and just north of where ExxonMobil has got into the lithium space with their leases directly below our project. The key features of this project, even though it's a greenfield project and only 40 miles to the west, is the grade. The grade on this project is significantly higher than the 217 milligrams per liter on Phase 1A, with an average grade of 437 milligrams per liter and a high mark of 597. We've recently acquired on this project a 118-acre land parcel for consideration for our commercial operations. What's significant about this project is that grade drives the project economics, especially with direct lithium extraction. As you can see in the information, this project's economics are extremely strong. A preliminary feasibility study we completed in Q3 of 2023 considered a base case of 30,000 tons of lithium hydroxide production and a high case of 35,000 tons production. What we'll see is extremely strong economics with an average OpEx of just over $4,000 per ton on a 30,000-ton base case and just under $40,000 or sorry, just under $4,000 per ton on a 35,000-ton high case production. It's all driven by grade. We have a definitive feasibility study that we've kicked off this year on this project. We're also working in Texas, so an extension of the aquifer just west of the Southwest Arkansas Project in a highly prospective area, the formation in East Texas. What makes East Texas extremely attractive is the grade. We've noticed extremely high concentrations as we trend west from our projects in Arkansas. Ideal brine conditions that we've spent 4 years with our team identifying. The recent drilling program that we completed last year showed grades averaging 644 milligrams across the resources that we're developing with a high mark of 806 milligrams per liter. What makes this significant is this is an extremely large opportunity. The brine formation and the brine characteristics are very homogeneous across the region. A replicable direct extraction process that we're launching with our projects in Arkansas is the key to unlock this resource. Our objective is to secure lease positions that will allow us to bridge the gap between where we are today towards 100,000 tons of annual production of lithium chemicals. That's the objective with the work we're doing in Texas. The key to unlocking these resources and any brine resource in North America is direct lithium extraction. But it has to be the right tool for the job. You can't take a silver bullet approach. DLE has to be developed for the brine chemistry, for the resource geology and hydrogeology, and for all of the other project parameters that will make it successful. And we've been doing that with the process we've developed for our Smackover projects. Scalability is incredibly important. You need a process that will work not just at a pilot scale, but will work at commercial scale. The advantages of DLE compared to conventional mining evaporation pond processes are an extremely small footprint, much higher recovery rates, and adaptability where you can build your projects based on market dynamics. But you have to have the right conditions for the DLE to work. You need grade, you need temperature, you need to be able to pump and reinject brine. And there's no better region to do this than the Smackover Formation. It has all of the formulas required for success. You have a region where you have existing regulatory environments, strong supply chains for chemical reagents, an area that's not under the water stress that you find on many projects. The formation not only hosts a high-grade resource, but it's demonstrated that you can pump and reinject. The technology needs to be tailored for the brine chemistry, and we benefit from working in an area where they've been doing brine processing for decades. Being able to utilize many equipment decisions made by integrating existing brine processing treatments in the flow sheet. Workforce is going to be critical on all projects in the lithium sector globally. Attracting skilled workers is a challenge in this tight economy today. But we're benefiting from working in an area with an existing industry and complementary skills from the oil and gas sector. A social license is incredibly important on any project to develop. These projects we're developing stand head and shoulders above others with strong community support. What you see on this slide is our direct lithium extraction pilot facility that's been operating since May of 2020 at the LANXESS South facility. It operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is what it looks like on the inside. It's not just a tent. It's a continuous operating direct lithium extraction plant as a commercial operation would be, fully automated. Over 60 million liters of brine have been processed through this demonstration facility. What you see in the center slide here is a commercial column of our DLE LSS process, the heart of the DLE process that has recently been installed at the facility. We've got a purpose-built technology. DLE needs to be tailored for the brine, the chemistry, the temperature, the resource, water, power, and all of the other aspects for it to be successful. The process we've developed is a multi-step process, taking raw brine first through a pretreatment step to remove suspended solids, hydrocarbons, and other elements which may foul the DLE process. Post the pretreatment, we go into the heart of the process, the direct extraction process. We use a highly selective lithium sorbent material. That process, post extraction, the brine is sent for reinjection into the aquifer. We produce a raw lithium chloride. That raw lithium chloride is then further polished, purified to remove any carried-through contaminants, producing a highly pure dilute lithium chloride solution, which is then sent for concentration because we're not using any evaporation. The highly concentrated lithium chloride is then converted to a final product of either lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide. The heart of our DLE process is LSS, or lithium selective sorption. This is a technology that we've developed in partnership with Koch Technology Solutions. It's been optimized for the Smackover brines. Our technical team and our expertise have been able to run our demonstration plant, partnering with Koch Technology Solutions, have integrated this process into our flow sheet. The LSS process has demonstrated at our plant better than 95% recovery of lithium from Smackover brine and a 99% rejection of the key contaminants, primarily magnesium, calcium, and sodium. Boron, 95% rejection. The remaining carried-through elements are removed in the final polishing step. We are running the commercial column at our demonstration plant right now, a unique benefit of having that facility. What you see on the image on the right is what we call a quad pod. This is the modularization approach we're taking for DLE, where these extraction columns will be integrated into modular processes, which can then be scaled based on total production that's required. The work we're doing with KTS on the Smackover brines and the project development is under a joint development agreement that we're putting in place with Koch, benefiting from the work we're doing and Koch's technical expertise, where we'll be able to develop the process with an exclusivity arrangement with Koch across the Smackover Formation. Additionally, the arrangements that were under discussion with Koch will include certain performance guarantees on lithium extraction, contaminant rejection, and life of resin, which, when we scale this commercially, provides further project de-risking and success for our efforts at our projects in Arkansas, Texas. This process uses water-free elution, so minimal chemical reagents, and we do everything we can to recycle water and other aspects of the project to minimize our environmental impact. Stakeholder support, engagement, are critical on projects. I just want to touch on those as well. Standard Lithium has been extremely active at the project level and the community level to ensure that we're partners as we build these projects. We sponsored the first EV charging stations in South Arkansas, and we've participated and sponsored in many community events. Most recently, in February, we held the first Arkansas Lithium Innovation Summit along with our co-sponsors, Albemarle, Exxon, and Tetra. And what you see on this slide is the level of interest that's being expressed in Arkansas for these projects to succeed. And with that, I'll pause and hand it back to you, Pedro. That was fantastic, Robert. Thank you so much for that great presentation. I guess, right off the bat, it seems that, as you explained, there's so much interest, even from traditional energy companies like Exxon, to really get into the lithium industry. So perhaps you can share with the audience today what's the attractiveness of the lithium industry today and why lithium? Yeah, well, what's really interesting and what's really attractive for some of these new entrants that are into the space is the lack of domestic supply in the United States, where the lithium industry is growing, the adoption of EVs, and the use of lithium-ion batteries and energy storage. The trajectory and growth is astronomical. The challenge has been most of the supply is directed to China, little development in the United States, challenging and building projects, and especially the attention that needs to be focused on sustainability. So the interests of a company like Exxon and their decision to choose Arkansas as their entry point really validates the work we've done over the last seven years and why we're in Arkansas. A high-grade resource, an area that's not under water stress, an area with a skilled workforce, mature regulatory environment, stakeholder support, and a domestic market that needs lithium. It's got everything when you're looking at project selection that's required. Where we have an advantage is we're the leaders in direct lithium extraction. We've got the head start and a process that is tuned to the resource. We started actually our conversation talking about the fact that the United States today represents less than 1% of the lithium supply. Like you say, China has been taking the lion's share as well of that conversion capacity. So if you have to venture to predict, the U.S. market share of lithium supply within the next few years, it could be by the end of the decade, what would that be? Clearly, I think we all recognize that with projects as the one that you just presented today, there's going to be much greater output from the United States when it comes to lithium. Yeah, well, less than 1% today, if we look at around 800,000 tons of lithium chemicals produced and less than 5,000 tons in the United States, I believe we can move to double digits in the United States. The challenge with U.S. projects, our regulatory environment on many projects is challenging. People don't want mining projects in their backyard. So there is a balance that's required. Legislation that's directing investments and end users to source domestically is extremely important. We chose our projects because of grade, because of likelihood of its success, permitting, and all of the project killers identified and manageable. So that aspect has been critically important. We chose our projects because they are in the United States, because the U.S. needs a secure supply, because of the environmental standards that we'll be able to demonstrate will be of the highest nature, and that the resource requires a modern process, but that process works. Numerous projects need to be built in the United States. There's a few on their way. It will be an important part of the supply chain. By the end of the decade, if we can achieve 10%-20% production, I think that will be a home run. On the topic of sustainability, you know, it seems to be an increasing focus in the industry, and especially given the increasing use of direct lithium extraction and other sustainable technologies and processes. Where do you expect it to evolve, sustainability efforts in the space? Yeah, well, the requirements to have a minimal impact on the environment, to engage with the communities, to be a participant at the community level are critically important. The end users looking at the supply chain for lithium and other critical materials going into the lithium battery industry also have a specific mandate as they move these projects forward. Direct lithium extraction is going to be a key tool in a sustainable supply chain. It will have applications on certain resources. It will unlock resources like the Smackover Formation. And we're leading that charge, and we hope to be a global showcase on sustainable development in Arkansas and Texas. That is going to be critical for the success of the adoption of EVs and for the acceptance of this type of industry in the United States. Talking about the United States, I think one of the key drivers of demand for the industry, not only today but in the future, are many of the fiscal policies that we're seeing around. One of that includes the Inflation Reduction Act. So can you perhaps share with us how can it change the demand outlook for lithium produced in the United States, that specific IRA, Inflation Reduction Act, a policy that I'm mentioning? Yeah, the Inflation Reduction Act is an incredibly useful and powerful tool that the administration's put in place, that the end user, the end user benefits with EV tax credits if their materials are supplied domestically or from countries with agreements with the United States. So that is realigning supply chains, and it's incentivizing the automakers and the battery makers to consider where they're investing and who they're partnering with. So having a project, an advanced project like Standard Lithium's in Arkansas and the work we're doing in Texas, benefits extremely highly from the Inflation Reduction Act. Literally the day after it was announced, the inbound calls we were getting from opt-takers and others interested in securing supply was through the roof. And it's continued that dialogue since then. The certainty of having domestic supply is going to be key for the success of these automakers. The additional language, there needs to be more certainty and more investment and other guidelines put in place to develop the domestic industry in the United States. But the Inflation Reduction Act has been a strong tool. We're very careful. We are in an election year today, this year. So we're very cognizant of that polarization. But there is bipartisan support for securing critical minerals that are critical for national security, for national defense, and the investments that are going to be made as the energy transition continues. Shifting the focus a bit towards prices, you know, we've seen some volatility in prices in recent years. What's your outlook for lithium prices in the next 2-5 years, let's say? And you know, what do you think the biggest factors will be going forward for influencing price fluctuations? Yeah, the current lithium price environment, you know, I've been in this space for 14 years, gone through, this is my third lithium price cycle. And while this cycle has been significantly, the pricing is significantly higher at its low than the last downturn, this pricing does have an impact on how new projects will be developed, investments, and potentially impact the supply chain moving forward. As in the last cycle, you know, the market dynamic and its natural response was to not invest and not build projects. And that's why we saw the prices swing as high as they did. Historically, you know, low commodity prices are eventually followed by a market correction and a price rebound, and we're likely to see that again. For projects to be financeable, for projects to be profitable long-term, pricing in the $20,000-$30,000 ra nge is the likely sweet spot. We may see swings higher than that, but I don't think we'll see this environment through the rest of the year where we are today. It can't be exact in predicting long-term pricing. But what's really important is to have a project that's on the lower cost curve. And Standard Lithium and the projects we're developing in the Smackover Formation are there because of the grade and because of all of the other project inputs. Those are really the most important things when you're looking at developing a project to survive these pricing environments. Absolutely. We agree. And, clearly, we also need to understand a little bit more those supply-demand dynamics, right? Because clearly that's going to be a main driver of pricing. But it seems that, in our view, demand is going to be exceeding supply. So we're going to need multiple success stories, not only here in the United States, but around the world, to really bring that supply to market to support the very ambitious EV expectations that there are out there. So do you agree with that, Robin? What do you see out there in terms of long-term supply-demand dynamics? Yeah, Pedro, you hit it on the head with that one. Investments need to be made in new projects to bring supply online. It's challenging in this pricing environment. And that will, you know, that will manifest potentially supply deficits in the near term that we've lived through previously and seen that pricing swing higher and lower. The industry is maturing, and the likelihood of those massive swings occurring again will be managed. But investments need to be made. Projects need to be built if we're going to be successful. The U.S. has a distinct advantage in that the Inflation Reduction Act and the other growths that we're seeing in the area really shines a light favorably on advanced U.S.-based projects. It'll be on the low end of the cost curve, being built in areas where you have a social license, where you have permitting, streamlined regulatory environments, where you're not under water stress, and where you have a process and projects that you can be building in a responsible, managed way, addressing market growth and demands incrementally, not knowing, not going, having to go in all-in and build a massive project, hoping that demand will be there. The advantage of DLE and the resources we're developing are we can build them in a staged, managed way to address demand as it's being required. This was great, Robert. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Again, fascinating conversation, around Standard Lithium, around DLE technology. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. Very much appreciate it, Pedro. Very much appreciate it, Madeline. And I look forward to keeping you updated on what we're doing. All right. Well, thank you so much, Robert, for those insights. And thank you to Keith, Robert, John, and Ernest for all of the great discussions that we heard here today. We really appreciate all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to be here. And thank you to everyone that attended. We hope you learned a lot today about the lithium industry. You know, the lithium industry here in the U.S. appears to be quite bright. There's a lot of positive developments occurring. There's still a lot of long-term tailwinds for the lithium industry in regards to electric vehicles, as well as battery tech and other clean tech. With that, I'll pass it over to Stephanie for any other additional closing remarks. Thank you again to all of our speakers and audience members who joined us today. We appreciate the questions that were submitted. We were not able to get to them all, but we will certainly have someone reach back out to you with a response. 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