78th Emerging Growth Conference and day one of our two-day virtual investor conference. I'm Ana Berry. Just a few notes. Today we're running until 4:30 P.M. Eastern. When we switch to the next company, you'll see a black screen for a moment, but don't go anywhere. That's us just moving over to the next presenter. If you experience downtime, refresh your browser. Everything usually works properly once you refresh it, and our platform does work best on Google Chrome, so if you're watching from an Apple device, you have to hit the play button to start the session. Now, all of our conferences, they're uploaded to our Emerging Growth Conference YouTube channel, so please subscribe: YouTube.com/EmergingGrowthConference, and today, during each company's presentation, you can submit questions through the webcast module, and we will attempt to address as many of these at the end of the presentation. Let's begin with Brazil Potash. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange American under the symbol GRO, and it's developing Brazil's largest potash project that will supply sustainable fertilizers to one of the world's largest agricultural exporters. Please welcome CEO Matt Simpson and Executive Chairman Mayo Schmidt. Welcome, gentlemen, to the conference. Good morning to you both. Good morning. All right. Well, I'm going to let you take the floor and then call me back when you're ready for questions. Great. Thank you. Well, welcome, everyone, and a real pleasure to be with you here today. And I'm going to take a couple of minutes for background purposes and then turn it over to Matt, the CEO, to take us through the slide deck. Let me just, first of all, say, after a lifetime of agriculture from youth, a farm boy raising crops in the Midwest and dairy, and then working in a lifelong agriculture career globally, led to some very unique experiences. My background, frankly, is 15 years with General Mills as a commodity trader while responsible for operations and collection and logistics of production of crops. After 15 years as a commodity trader, I took over Conagra Canada as President of our Agriculture Systems in Canada, which was establishing grain collection, building terminals, as well as fertilizer distribution across the country and across Canada. Post the Conagra experience, I undertook a restructuring of a historic Canadian iconic ag company named Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. At the time, in a difficult financial position, I came in as Chief Restructuring Officer and as CEO. I was able to turn that business around with a great team of people. Saskatchewan Wheat Pool became Viterra, regional leading global diversified agriculture. We operated from seed, grains, processing, global logistics, and, of course, fertilizer distribution manufacturing. It was a TSX and ASX-listed company. We had a global supply chain of over 50 countries as we grew the business from being a regional cooperative to a public company, moving production from areas of surplus to areas of needs. In Viterra's life cycle during my tenure of over 11 years, we moved from a $220 million enterprise to build a $7.35 billion global enterprise operating out of 14 countries over that 11 years. I then went on to take the opportunity as CEO to do the IPO of a Crown business, Crown Corp, named Hydro One, which was the nuclear and hydroelectric power company for Eastern Canada, one of the largest IPOs in Canadian history. We distributed nuclear and hydroelectric power for over 16 million citizens. And I also might note that I'm thrilled that this critical project that Matt's going to take us through today has an extraordinarily strong renewable base of hydroelectric, so it fits nicely into my experiences, which I'm very happy to be participating in. And during my tenure at Hydro One as CEO, I was also asked to join the board of a fertilizer company and retail company named Agrium. I joined that board. After a period of time, I was asked by the board to chair the merger of equals, the MOE with Potash Corporation, which I undertook during integration of that business, about a $16.7 billion transaction. During the integration, the collective boards came to me and asked me if I would chair the board of directors, which I did for a number of years, and leading to, in 2021, asked to do a transitional role as CEO as the board undertook their duty to set management up for the future of the business, which I undertook. So I was in that role just about 11 years as well. Post that period, I joined Canada's largest, as Chairman of the Board, Canada's largest food cold storage system, which is logistics and transportation, was named VersaCold. We ran that business for 18 months. We tripled the value of the company and sold it to a U.S. company named Lineage, which is now undertaking their own processes. So let me just say, you know, I've been drawn to this really unique project. The population, as we know, is expected to grow to nine billion people by 2045, and the world has become reliant on production of agriculture as historically it would be. And Brazil, being a number one exporter, is a critical supply chain. So Matt's going to take us through that. I would just say a summary of what's attracted me to this opportunity for the world is global food security. World hunger is a critical project for all of us. And my lifelong background in agriculture and everything that grows on the farm and the metrics, as Matt will take us through this, are so extraordinarily compelling in market and critical. So thank you. And Matt, I'd like to turn it over to Matt, the CEO. Thank you for that overview, Mayo. So we do have Safe Harbor. In terms of the presentation, you know, why should you care? Why is this interesting? As Mayo said, Brazil is the world's largest net exporter of agricultural goods to the tune of about $167 billion a year. But the country is very exposed because it imports 98% of its potash, which is one of the three main nutrients used to grow food, when potentially the second largest basin in the world is sitting in its backyard being developed by Brazil Potash. So simply because we're in Brazil and everybody else is now 9,000 mi-12,000 mi away in Canada, Russia, Germany, Israel, our cost to extract, process, and deliver this essential nutrient with no substitute is less than just the transportation cost alone for everyone else. So we have a substantial and sustainable cost advantage for a nutrient that people have no choice but to buy because you have to eat that has downside price protection. We literally just IPO'd the company at the end of November, so it is now trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GRO. We have several major catalysts that are going to come out this year, including the appointment of Mayo, who recently just took over as Executive Chairman. We also added Christian Joerg to our board, who spent almost a decade of his career with SALIC in the Middle East, responsible for Saudi Arabia's Global Food Security program. There's a lot of additional offtake agreements that we anticipate signing in the coming months. We're going to be doing a carve-out of our high-voltage power line, which will save about $200 million on our capital and get that announced this year, and start construction of the project. So to talk about the Brazil Potash project in more detail, the plan is to produce about 2.4 million tons of pink granular potash. Last year, Brazil had a record 14 million tons of consumption. This will supply roughly 17% of Brazil's need. And we have 23 years of proven and probable economic reserves, but that's based on drilling just 5% of the basin. So I can't tell you that there's 460 years of production here, but we know that there's at least 23 years with our property. If we add in the two neighboring properties owned by Petrobras, which is the oil and gas company largely owned by Brazil's government, you're sitting at about 100 years, and that can easily be doubled or tripled. So that initial production will generate about $1 billion of EBITDA a year. And these companies typically trade at about nine times EBITDA, and that could be doubled and tripled over time. The main reason why we listed the company is because we are now fully permitted for construction. It will cost about $2.5 billion to build this project, out of which we already have reached out to several export credit agencies and banks and are pretty confident we can get about $1.7 billion in debt. We also announced as part of our IPO that we have a royalty option agreement with Franco-Nevada, the biggest royalty provider in the world, about a $30 billion market cap, where they have a 4% gross revenue royalty that could bring in a nutshell of $150 million. So that leaves around $450 million of equity that we'll need to raise to build this project. We do have one offtake agreement with a company called AMAGGI. This is a mega farmer in Brazil that generates about $10 billion a year in revenue, and they've agreed to purchase 550,000 tons of potash must at market price, plus inland freight, which adds about $35-$50 to our benefit, times a mid-single-digit price discount. This is all about location, location, location. It's because, again, we are not only in Brazil with everyone else being somewhere around 9,000 mi-12,000 mi away, but we're also only 5 mi away from the Madeira River. So most of the farming in Brazil occurs in what's called the Mato Grosso region, where you see Sorriso and Campo Novo. The soybean, cotton, corn is then trucked following the green highways to the yellow rectangles that you see, which are river barge ports, where river barges are then loaded and then transported to a transshipment terminal about 40 mi away from us in a place called Itacoatiara. Those river barges are then offloaded for international export, and they largely come back empty. So instead of them coming back empty, we're going to load them with our potash and make use of a backhaul right back to where the farmers are located. Our transportation cost compared to importers is about 71% lower. To put this in perspective, this is the global cost curve developed by a market intelligence group called CRU. What it shows is that Brazil Potash will not just be first quartile, but we will be the lowest cost all-in supplier to a farmer in Brazil. Now, when you look at this cost curve, the dark bottom line, which is about $80 a ton, is our cost to mine and process. That's very similar to the Russians to the Canadians. The big difference is we do not have that middle blue bar, which is the international transportation cost, which is well over $100 a ton for importers. Then when we look at the light gray bar on top, which is the inland Brazil transportation cost, in our case, it's about $50 a ton, and importers are closer to $80-$100. So our all-in cost, again, $80 to mine and process, plus $50 to deliver of $130, is less than the over $200 of just transportation for everybody else, and they still need to pay another $80 to mine and process. So we have downside price protection at about $280 a ton, where in that case, we're still making over 100% profit, about $600 million of EBITDA, and everybody else is breakeven or losing money. So it's not possible for the price to ever drop sustainably below that level. As mentioned, we do have a royalty option agreement with Franco-Nevada, and it's a 4% gross revenue royalty for life of mine that targets 6.5% internal rate of return in exchange for investing around $150 million for project construction. The whole why do you care? Why is this interesting? Well, you know, the world population just hit 8 billion people, well on our way to 9 billion. Growing middle class that wants more protein in their diet, all while 1 in 10 people are starving today. So there's only two ways to increase the amount of food that we grow, which, by the way, needs to increase by about 45% over the next 25 years. What one is you increase the amount of land that you use to grow food, but as you see in the top right, there's a finite amount of land. So the amount of land per person is actually on the decline. So the only sustainable way to do that is to make the land more productive. And that's exactly what potash does, as you can see in the bottom right. Specifically, what potash does is it strengthens the stem of a plant to make it more resilient to stress. And stress can come in many ways. You know, if you think of the weather over the past year, where in one week we've had massive temperature swings, we've had drought, we've had flooding in various countries, all of that causes stress, which reduces a plant's ability to grow, and potash helps survive that stress. The problem with the potash market is it's an oligopoly. You have three countries, being Canada, Russia, and Belarus, that supply over 80% of the world's potash. Even more concerning is Russia, Belarus, and Israel. Over 50% of the world's potash is in countries that are sanctioned or at war. Globally, the 63 million tons a year market is somewhere between $20 billion-$30 billion, out of which Brazil, again, is the world's largest importer, 22% market share. The reason these geopolitical events are so concerning, if we focus on the line in green, is that it has caused massive volatility in the price of potash. Normally, potash sells into Brazil for somewhere around $300-$400 a ton. But when the U.S. government sanctioned Belarus in mid-2021, prices doubled. And then when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, you see that vertical spike where in the span of just one year, potash went from $300- $1,200 a ton. Why do you care? If potash prices increase, it makes it more expensive for farmers to apply to the field, which means grocery prices around the world skyrocket. Now, why did the price of potash come back? Primarily because the sanctions against Russia and Belarus never applied to potash, and it's simply because we all need to eat. Every ton of potash that makes its way out of those countries is hitting the grocery stores where we're buying food. Coming back to Brazil, whether you started your day today with a coffee or an orange juice and later today you have something that comes from tofu, chickens, or cows, odds are it came from Brazil. Brazil is the only major country in the world, as you can see on the right, that's actually increasing the amount of land that it uses to grow food. Other major countries like the United States, Europe, China are all in the decline because the world population is outstripping the amount of land available. Brazil is also one of the only countries in the world that does three crops a year. So unlike the United States or Europe, where you have a cold winter and you can only do one crop, Brazil just keeps growing. So while that's great for feeding the world, it really stresses the soil by sucking up the potash. So that potash has to be replaced in order for the soil to continue to be efficient. Zooming in on Brazil, again, this is about a 14-million-ton-a-year market, record year last year. It's growing at about 6.8%, which is four times the rest of the world. The rest of the world's about 1.7%, and there's only one domestic producer, a company called Mosaic. Very small, though, only does about 350,000 tons. And they're expanding that plant now to 500,000 tons. But by about 2030, they'll be fully exhausted. So this has caused Brazil's government to panic and put in place the National Fertilizer Plan because the country imports $25 billion a year of fertilizer. That's more than twice the United States, and it's four to six times every other country in the world. How does that benefit Brazil Potash? Well, the government has deemed potash as a critical mineral, and they are setting up funding, much like what you see in the United States for critical mineral projects to finance construction. They've cut tax rates, and they've expedited permitting. Again, we have raised about $240 million to bring this project to its current fully permitted for construction state. It'll cost $2.5 billion to build, out of which we only need about $450 million of equity. Long term, we expect our cost to mine and process to be about $79 a ton against a sale price just shy of $500. So tremendous margins on this project. Central case, about $1 billion of EBITDA. Worst case is about $600 million. And if we take just two-thirds of record high prices that were recently hit, we'll be generating over $1.5 billion. Potash is kind of unique in that it's actually formed by failed oceans. So literally, just like it sounds, you had a massive body of water that dried up, and it left salt behind. The biggest basin in the world is in Canada, and that's where you have several multi-billion dollar companies like Nutrien that Mayo used to run. You have K+S, the Germans. You have Mosaic, a U.S. company. And now BHP, the biggest mining company in the world, all building potash projects. This basin in Brazil was originally discovered by Petrobras, the oil and gas company, in the 1980s, and it's believed to be about two-thirds the size of the entire Saskatchewan Basin. So it is truly massive. Although we are located in the Amazon State of Brazil, to be clear, this does not impact any rainforest. It's currently low-density cattle farmland, as you can see in the top, and it's an underground mine with dry stacked tailings. So very, very small footprint. Everything comes from earth and is returned to earth with no chemicals used in the processing of this product. Really, what we're mining is about 30% potassium chloride, which we then concentrate to 95% literally just using hot water and then supply that product to a farmer. Our byproduct, which we treat as waste, is sodium chloride, which is like table salt that you'd put on your food. That table salt, we actually put back underground into the mined-out rooms and in aquifer. My background is I'm a Chemical Engineer with an MBA. I started my career with a company called Hatch. I used to design and construct metallurgical refineries. I then worked for Rio Tinto, one of the biggest mining companies in the world, running a very large iron ore mine for a number of years, where I was responsible for about $300 million a year in spend, about 650 people. The majority of our team all are based in Brazil, and it's headed by a gentleman named Adriano Espeschit, who has a very similar background to me. We have 38 million shares outstanding basic, 48 on a fully diluted basis. All of our largest shareholders, which include CD Capital, Sentient, and Forbes & Manhattan, so we're talking about a little over 60% of the registry, are locked up for one year. So we have about 40% free float on the shares, the trade. Our biggest peers do largely trade on the New York Stock Exchange. They include companies like Nutrien, Mosaic, K + S, and Israeli Chemicals. And again, they trade at about nine times EBITDA. So our central case EBITDA is about $1 billion, which could be doubled or tripled over time compared to our current market cap of only about $300 million. So the upside on this can be truly massive. Again, this is all a logistics play. If you're buying your potash from Canada or Russia, it typically takes over 100 days to reach a farmer in Brazil. So farmers can't normally afford to buy directly from the fertilizer producer because, number one, they can't afford 100 days of working capital, nor can they afford to buy an entire ocean-going vessel. So they end up paying a blender, which is best described as a middleman, somewhere around a $50-$70 premium to cover those costs. In our case, you can buy direct because we can sell it to you in very flexible lot sizes and deliver it in under three days. And by doing that, you cut out the blender. So we don't need to compete on price. Just by cutting out that blender, we save the farmer $40-$70 while still charging the full market rate. When we look at where potash is consumed in Brazil, the bulk of it, again, is in Mato Grosso states. The darker the blue, the more potash that's consumed, and that's literally right around the corner from where we are in the Amazon State, connected largely by river barge. Whereas the bubbles on the outside represent the major ports where potash is imported. So about 80% of the potash that comes into Brazil today largely comes into ports in the south, Paranaguá and Santos, and then it's trucked inland at a cost of somewhere between $80-$100 a ton versus our $53 to use a backhaul, which is also much more environmentally friendly. With AMAGGI, again, one of the biggest soybean farmers in the world, we have three contracts that are binding. We have a take-or-pay agreement at market price for 550,000 tons, plus that inland freight benefit times a single-digit price discount. They also have the rights to sell any surplus potash that we don't have under long-term contract, and we're going to use their river barge to transport our product. From an ESG standpoint, this project has massive accolades. One of the key things is we are going to tie into Brazil's national electricity grid, which is 80% renewable sourced energy, and if you were to compare our project on a Scope 1, Scope 2 emissions, which is just the emissions generated at the processing plant and by the energy producer itself, we're estimated to be 80% lower than the next best in Canada, and then if you layer on, you're not unnecessarily transporting that potash 9,000 mi-12,000 mi, you save another 200,000 tons of transportation, so about 1.4 million tons lower GHG, and we do have an MSCI sustainability rating of A. As mentioned at the outset, the project is now fully permitted for construction. So all of that risk with permitting with Indigenous consultations is all behind us. We're now ready to start construction of the project. As we construct, much like if you were to build a house, the government inspectors come through. They want to ensure that everything's been built safely and to code. We'll then have our operating license and our mining concession. So really, to just wrap this up on, you know, why should you care, why is this interesting? This isn't just another mining or natural resource project. This is a project that's going to contribute meaningfully to global food security while providing our investors a substantial return on investment by supplying a product that people have no choice but to buy, because we all have to eat, with downside price protection in a much more environmentally responsible manner, so with that, Ana, I'll turn it over to you to ask us any questions that came up from our audience. Wonderful. Thank you, Matt. Yes, we do have some questions for you. Let's start with a question from Adam. He wants to know what are the primary risks facing Brazil Potash's core operations and what measures are in place to mitigate them? That's a great question, Adam. So I think it's important when we look at the slide here that the project, again, is an underground mine and it's being developed at an elevation that's more than 10% above the one in 1,000-year flood level. So there's no risk of water coming into our project. And that is usually the biggest risk with developing a potash mine, because it's a salt. If water touches a salt, it dissolves. And that's where you have issues like what happened very recently in Laos, where there was a potash project that was newly built and is now having sinkholes because water came into contact with the potash. So we don't have that risk because of the elevation. The biggest technical risk with building the project is the shaft sinking. You do need to sink two shafts about 2,500 ft deep through some very soft ground and through an underground river, and you do that by actually freezing the ground solid before you sink those shafts. That's exactly how BHP sunk their shafts and exactly how Anglo American also recently sunk their shafts for a similar project. Talk about some milestones or indicators that investors can look for over the next 12 months to gauge your progress. Some of the biggest things that we expect to have come up is we will be signing some additional offtake agreements. Those offtake agreements, in addition to the one we have with AMAGGI, are very important because when we go to the banks and we go to the export credit agencies to seek debt financing, it provides quite a bit of comfort that they're going to know who's going to be buying our product, what will the cost be, and are they a credible counterparty. I also mentioned that we believe we can carve out the cost to build the power line that connects us to the national grid and will take over 200,000 people off of diesel-generated power. That's going to carve about $200 million out of our capital. So that's also quite meaningful. And we expect to also start construction of the project. William wants to know, when will you have the first billable sale of potash? The project, once we start construction, will take roughly four years to complete. So assuming that we can start construction of the project this year, we anticipate being operational in around 2029. Do you issue guidance on the top and bottom line? We will not be issuing guidance on that, given that we are a development company as opposed to an operating company with cash generation. Vipul asks, what's the current cash burn and how are you currently capitalized? We just closed about $30 million in our IPO. The timing of the IPO was far from ideal. We actually closed at the end of November. I'm not sure if your listeners are aware, but in the United States, when you close an IPO for the first 21 days, you are restricted on your communications quite severely by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It wasn't until December 22nd that we were allowed to start communicating to the market, which just happened to be right in front of Christmas. Unfortunately, during that time, there were a number of investors that had been long-term shareholders that sold some of their shares. I think there's a little bit of tax loss selling that then puts us today to a point where the shares are at just an unbelievably low value. During that time, we also brought on Mayo. We brought on Christian Joerg. We announced a memorandum of understanding with the indigenous, so we're well cashed up to make our way through the entirety of this year with the funds that were raised. And we do expect to convert those funds into creating tremendous value for our existing shareholders. I know you mentioned this in your presentation, but maybe touch back on Mosaic and BHP and your relationship. Monroe wants to know any opportunities for you to merge with BHP specifically. Mayo, please take that one, given that you used to be the Chairman and CEO of Nutrien, so I think it's more appropriate for you. Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that any business such as this would be open to relationships and certain structures of partnerships. We welcome expertise as well as what we've already have. And yet at the same time, I mean, our goal is set on, our minds are set on completion and bringing to market the production. But if along the way there's parties that see, you know, and in fact, the Brazilian government has been a very strong supporter of this project. So we continue to have, and then AMAGGI taking 550,000 take-or-pay. So we've already built relationships that are building a vertically integrated system. And then, you know, we've got relationships within the market, whether you look at the sovereigns or the strategics. I think there's, as we've seen already, there's a lot of interest in this project. And it'll be interesting to see whether, you know, who emerges first in terms of their interest. But we've got heads down building this project. And if along the way there's an opportunity for shareholders, we'll certainly examine and consider that. Adam asks, what role does innovation play in your company's operations and workflow? In terms of innovation, I think the biggest change that's occurred in the potash industry over the past decade is the scale of the equipment. Normally with 2.4 million tons, you'd have two or three what's called processing lines or trains. In our case, although our latest technical study does show two processing trains, since then we've done some optimization work and we believe that we can reduce it to one single processing train. That has the potential to reduce our capital by about $200 million. I wouldn't say that we're going to drop from that $2.5 billion estimate because we do have quite a bit of escalation that's occurred over the past couple of years. But it does give me comfort between the optimization work on the processing train coupled with the forward exchange rate moving quite a bit in our favor since we've completed that study that we'll be able to hold the predicted CapEx. Wonderful. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for your time and presentation this morning. We certainly want to follow along with your progress into 2025. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Ana. All right, everyone, stay well.