Good morning, and welcome to Vow Green Metals presentation for the first half of 2024. My name is Mathias Nilsen Reierth, and with me today, I have Cecilie Jonassen, CEO of Vow Green Metals, and Jan Halvard Aas Møller, CFO of Vow Green Metals. Jan Halvard will go through the financials, but first, Cecilie will take us through some of our main developments in the period. Cecilie? Thank you. Thank you for joining us this morning, and we are looking forward to tell you about more of our results this year. There's been solid industrial, commercial, and financial development in the first half year of 2024, but first, let us talk about what we're doing. What we're doing is valorizing biomass. We are taking biomass and pyrolyzing it into three valuable products, the main product being biocarbon, but in addition to that, we are also producing bio-oil and bioenergy. And why are we doing that? We're doing that so our customers can reduce their CO2 emissions, and the potential is massive. Especially when using this in the ferrosilicon and silicon industry, you could reduce up to five tons of fossil CO2 emissions when you're using our product, well, let's go back to the first half year of 2024 for Vow Green Metals. We've had quite a lot of developments. We've raised funds and also broke ground at Hønefoss. In April, we announced that we are doing a strategic process to raise capital, and Pareto Securities has been engaged to help us in this process. And with this process, Vardar and Skagerak Energi was executing their NOK 70 million investment in Vow Green Metals. Skagerak Energi through their subsidiary, an investment of NOK 20 million and Vardar with NOK 50 million debt conversion. We've also established a NOK 10 million revolving credit facility with SpareBank 1 SR-Bank. And of course, remembering in the start of this year, also entering into a contract and supply agreement for our biocarbon product with Elkem for the first 50,000 tons of biocarbon from the Hønefoss facility. But we've also done some major developments at our key projects. At the early production line, we started the production, but it's also been fully financed through a leasing agreement with SpareBank 1 SR-Bank. At the Hønefoss facility in the large plant, the loan agreement was done during this summer, so it's after the reporting period, but this was signed in July, and Eksfin is guaranteeing 50% of the NOK 344 million loan agreement. Vardar executed their NOK 50 million investment in the plant in April, and is now a 20% stakeholder in the company, VGM Operatør AS. We also started construction at the Hønefoss site, and we expect to complete it in 2025. We also have some progress on our next project, Viken Park. We've finished our first pre-study for the core technology, but also we started the pre-study with Carbon Centric for the carbon capture and energy offtake. Back to Hønefoss. Breaking ground. Here at picture to the left, you can see the building really coming into life, building it this summer, and started them in May. We will also start the process equipment in October this year. The plant operation is still expected to be in the second half year of 2025, and we've been happy to welcome Vardar as the 25% owner of the facility in the first half year of 2024. Also, being backed by DNB and Eksfin with the loan agreement, was important, of course, so making sure that it's a fully financed plant, both for the first 10,000 tons production equipment, but also for the buildings and infrastructure necessary to go into the next phase and, increase the production capacity to 20,000 tons. Then, we've also been working with our early production line, a capacity of 2,500 tons, and where we also develop new products and have experience from the process prior to starting up the larger plant. This has been a very important step for us, and we've also, during the summer months, been adding additional pilot equipment to increase the capacity to develop new products. But to be able to do this, it's important to have control of the quality of what we're doing. So we also establish our own laboratory, with the possibility to measure most of the quality parameters necessary for the biocarbon, but also specialty equipment, to develop the bio-oil. And also, of course, it's important for us to have important partners in this. Working with Future Materials Catapult, that is making their equipment available for us, has been important when we're developing our new products. So I've been through most of what's been the early production line and Hønefoss progress. Viken Park is progressing as I started off with today, with the pre-study both for the core technology, but also the pre-study for carbon capture and energy offtake ongoing. We plan to take a second pre-study after the regulatory plans for the area is finished, and we expect those to be done in October this year. A bit back to our business model. We announced this over a year ago, but we also refreshed it this April, when we started our strategic work with Pareto, explaining Vow Green Metals' business model and our value proposition. Vow Green Metals is developing projects and also developing product, but also taking the full operations of the plants, making it possible for investors both to go into the local SPVs and the local projects, but also to invest in Vow Green Metals. To give a bit more feedback on how we could do that, going back to the investment with Skagerak and Vardar. So when we did the strategic process, working with energy company was important for us, and getting the support from energy companies, meaning that we could learn from their part of the infrastructure and of course, our third product being bioenergy. But they invested both in Vow Green Metals, but also Vardar has invested in the local factory at Hønefoss. So then I'll go to Jan Halvard. Leave it to you. Thank you, Cecilie. So a brief presentation on the financial statements for this first six months. Employee expenses increased with NOK 2.7 million, which is a result of an increased workforce from eight to 15 persons. Other operating expenses increased by NOK 1.8 million, also representing the increased activity in the group as a whole. The total employee expenses are distributed between the balance sheet and the P&L statement. So the total expenditure was NOK 10.8 million for the first six months, which is an increase of NOK 4.7 million compared to the same period last year. In the balance sheet, you will notice an increase in non-current assets. NOK 46.3 million of this is due to the leasing agreement Cecilie referred to earlier. This is also recognized as an increase in the liability in accordance with IFRS 16. Other increases in non-current assets are due to the work being done at Hønefoss. Other current liabilities remain stable, while the equity has increased with NOK 120 million, due to the capital raises, net of, the financial performance for the first six months, and also transaction costs in relation to the capital raise. And with that, I will hand it back to you, Cecilie, for some summary notes. Yeah. We started off the year of 2024 with some clear ambitions. Producing at the industrial scale, then starting off with the early production line, has, of course, been a very huge milestone for us. We've continued to build commercial partnerships, both within the biocarbon but also at bio-oil markets, advancing key projects like Viken Park and others in our portfolio, and the maturing of these project leads, making sure that we have the feedstock in place and also the offtake. And at last, also standardize and cut costs for our future projects and ongoing projects is important. And with the early production line, we're having learnings that we can implement in the next coming projects. So to finalize, first half year of 2024 has been a solid improvement for us when it comes to both commercial, financial, and industrial scale for Vow Green Metals. Thank you very much.
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