Sigma Lithium - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Irina Axenova (VP of Investor Relations)

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you again for staying with us for so long, and we do apologize for the technical difficulties that we had in the morning. I hope that everything is working well now and the sound is loud and clear. We would like to start our fourth quarter earnings conference call of Sigma Lithium. On the call today, we have our Co-chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Ana Cabral, and our Chief Financial Officer, Rogério Marchini. I would like to remind you that the presentations that we're going through today will have some forward-looking statements and some non-GAAP financial measures. These statements reflect our current expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to matter materially. For more detailed information, please refer to all cautionary statements included in our filings, as well as these presentations, and all these documents are available on our website.

With this, I'll turn the call over to Ana for prepared remarks. Ana, please go ahead.

Ana Cabral (Co-Chairperson and CEO)

Thank you, . I'll be joined by Rogério, who is going to be sharing the presentation on the financials with me. Without further ado, I'll start with the Greentech plan. Essentially, we are an integrated mineral operation, and we use proprietary Greentech in our lithium oxide processing plant. We have two distinct operations. We have a mine, and we have a Greentech industrial plant. At that mine, what we achieved last year was basically to file, together with this set of documents, a technical report which increased the mineral reserve estimates of our mines to what is equivalent of 22 years of feed of spodumene ore into the Greentech lithium industrial plant. The 43-101 audited by an external QP that information.

More so, we also increased significantly the mineral resources of the company, putting it at 107 million tons and 1.4% of lithium oxide contained. There is sufficient years and sufficient amounts of spodumene ore feed to actually ensure a very long operating life to the Greentech plant. What we have achieved in this quarter was to essentially take the plant to its third version, reaching levels of efficiencies such as the 70% lithium recovery at the DMS plant level that puts us in a very unique position as an innovator in the sector of lithium processing materials. The Greentech plant has had three distinct stages since it began, since it was commissioned in April 2023.

The first version, which is what was built, had to be totally re-engineered in one of the circuits that's dearest to us, which is the circuit, the dry stack tailings. The dry stacking and water reusage circuit had a full re-engineer that would allow us then to make the first shipment. That became version 2.0, which is the version with which we initiated operations in Brazil. That version was a continuum of progress in our research and development on efficiencies. It has received significant improvements in the cyclones and the centrifugation, the dense media separation lithium recovery circuit of that plant that enabled us to get to the 70%. The module one, the crusher, also had its efficiency increase, especially given the introductions of changes in the way the systems work within the crusher circuit.

The implementation of all these two changes was also followed by the incorporation of a new circuit, the lithium reprocessing circuit, the recycling circuit that allows us to do more production with less mine ore. That circuit was the main driver of the increased levels of production we demonstrated in the fourth quarter at 77,000 tons. That plant, the three circuits, the Greentech 3.0 in its improved version of continuum innovation is the plant that we're going to build again. We are in process of setting out works and construction, as you can see in the chart below. On to the operational excellence. The main operational highlights is that in the fourth quarter, we delivered a 28% increase in production of the carbon-zero green lithium, reaching over 77,000 tons. This was our highest quarterly production ever to date, and it exceeded the previous guidance.

The sales also rose sharply, increasing 29% quarter on quarter to 73,900 tons. I have to highlight that this sales success is a result of our fine-tuning of our commercial strategy, aligning ourselves with IRH in the United Arab Emirates so that we together focus on value optimization by navigating the seasonality of the purchasing cycles in the downstream market in Asia, in China. The result of this successful focus on commercial strategy enabled us to achieve an average CIF China realized price of $900 per ton in the fourth quarter, well above spot. On the safety front, we have quite a lot of progress. We reached over 600 days without a lost time injury. We also made progress Plant 2 construction, remaining on schedule for commissioning in the fourth quarter of 2025.

As we reach speed and execution, we do not do that at the sacrifice of health and safety of our team members. Another important highlight of this presentation is the financial results, the robust financial performance we demonstrated in the fourth quarter. I mean, we've shown the significant quarterly cost decrease for our cost from plant gate to all-in sustaining costs. We're very proud to actually highlight our all-in sustaining costs at $592 a ton. We also reported robust margins, essentially reaching 42% of a cash and operating margin in the fourth quarter and a 26% Adjusted EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter. This demonstrates the resilience of the business to the cash cycles, the pricing cash cycles. Therefore, our ability to generate cash flows even in the current price environment.

This ability to generate cash flows in the current price environment is what allows us to build to H2 to the stages where we are of work in civil construction and also allows us to have an operating cash duration in the bank with a healthy liquidity position. We have $46 million in cash in the bank. That was also a result of improved working capital efficiency throughout the quarter, where we basically lower short-term debt costs to $19 a ton. Here is a slide again that we're very proud of, and that's why we keep showing it. We reached a 2.35 TRIFR ratio, which places at the very top of the rankings of the ICMM for all metallurgy and mining. We have been prioritizing safety first as we build. We build our responsibility and with respect to our collaborators.

This excellence, this culture of excellence is driven by this day-by-day culture of safety in the processes. Now I move on to the operating financial performance. We talk about volumes, and then we talk about the cash cost. Volumes-wise, we basically are annualizing more than 270,000 tons of lithium production. That's demonstrated by the strong quarterly results of the fourth quarter at 77,000 tons of lithium production. If we continue at this pace, we will be able to meet this target of 270,000 tons for 2025 and then deliver the additional 30,000 tons that would come from the early commissioning Plant 2 to a total of 300,000 tons for the forward year, for the current year. Once phase two is fully constructed and ramped up, we're going to have expecting 520,000 tons of phase two production.

That's delivered with an across-the-board low cost of $318 per ton at plant gate, which translates into a $427 per ton CIF China, which then gets interest, SG&A, maintenance CapEx, and royalties to deliver us an all-in sustaining cost, which is a true measure of operational cash profitability, which at the fourth quarter reached $592 per ton. We're very proud of this number. Here's now a schematic on production levels. I mean, the 28% increase achieved in the fourth quarter basically reinforced the 2025 production guidance we are given. Across the way, in other words, Plant 1, we're guiding 270,000 to 270,000 tons, which essentially triangulates well with the annualized fourth quarter production. If one is to add the material coming Plant 2, we would again get to 300,000 tons, which triangulates very well with results we already achieved Plant 1 in the fourth quarter.

That is why we're very proud of the fourth quarter results. To the right, there's the guidance in blue. Here is the reported low costs. These low costs on an all-in basis demonstrate operational strength and the resilience of the business throughout the price cycles. We go from a very low plant gate cost, which is then lowered further to yield the plant gate cost for the fourth quarter with an annual picture here at $318 a ton. Now, when we go into the all-in sustaining cost, we again are able to lower on a quarter-quarter basis. This cost further lowered 22%, again, mainly a result of the monetization of economies of scale. Here is the build-up to make it easy to connect the COGS with these cash costs. COGS printed in financial statements are equivalent to $434 a ton. That's COGS printed in financials.

We move in to the CIF China. The changes are D&A and the shipment accounting and other adjustments. Very straightforward, it demonstrates we stand to gain from scale as we increase production because ocean freight costs less once we hire bigger hauls, bigger ships. Here we have another very important bridge, which is the bridge from CIF cash costs to all-in sustaining costs in 2024. Again, very straightforward. We have the CIF China cost, and then we add maintenance CapEx. We add SG&A, and then we add financial expenses. All-in sustaining cash costs. Royalties are inside CIF China. Of all-in, $592 a ton, which essentially validates in the current price environment of between $800 and $900, how we are quite profitable per ton, in fact.

That gives us confidence in the forecast we are putting in for 2025 on an all-in sustaining cost basis and how conservative the forecast that is because it refers to cost levels that we have already delivered on the fourth quarter. It also shows in 2026 how economies of scale work to our favor. As we increase production scale, we are able to lower our cost per ton as a result of a monetization of economies of scale. Here are all the financial updates, and I will go through that very quickly. The main message on our financial performance highlights is how rich, how incredible our cash gross margins are. We are showing in the fourth quarter a 42% cash gross margin, basically printed. That bodes well with the underlying cash gross margin for the year, again, at over 40%.

That, again, translates quite well to validate the Adjusted EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter. We've shown a 26% gross margin over an EBITDA of $12 million U.S. dollars. Triangulating really well with the Adjusted EBITDA for the year of $46 million U.S. dollars at an underlying 25%, which leads us to this very healthy cash position of 46%. These financial results, when we discuss underlying financial results, all we're doing here is adjusting them for an accounting charge that refers to 2023 from settlement of provisional prices that related to materials that had been shipped in the period year 2023 in the fourth quarter. That amounts to $29 million. That's basically the difference between the reported revenue and underlying revenue where we appropriate charges for shipments in 2023. Why is that?

Because this represents a picture of our business accurate for that year, devoided of charges from previous years. The same takes place in the operating profit. We go from a $5 million operating loss to adding back $8 million of non-cash RSU, stock-based compensation. We get to three, and we add back the $29 million U.S. dollars referring to the previous year, and we get to an underlying number of $32 million U.S. dollars. Interestingly, when we compare the quarter to the annual, both for the year and for both revenues and for operating profit, we can see how it triangulates well. The underlying triangulates well as a good demonstration of what our business looks like because it is essentially that revenue of the fourth quarter times four, conceptually speaking.

There is an order of magnitude validation and corroboration that takes place here because we posted a very straightforward, simple-to-read fourth quarter. Similar element with the EBITDA and the EBITDA underlying margins. Again, we begin with a reported EBITDA, added back stock-based compensation, non-cash. We get to a reported Adjusted EBITDA, and then we put in the $29 million referring to previous year's provisional price adjustments that settled this year from shipments last year that gives us to the $46 million U.S. dollar underlying EBITDA for the full year. In the quarter, we did not have those adjustments. We get to a $12 million U.S. dollar reported EBITDA in the quarter, which again triangulates in order of magnitude quite well with the numbers posted for the full year 2024. Here, again, still on the thematic of cash margins.

The numbers we're posting in the fourth quarter just demonstrates how out of the curve, how much of an outlier the third quarter numbers were because that was the year where we made all those charges, the accounting settlements for the $29 million for the settlements of shipments that took place in 2023. Again, it shows that the trend over 30% for our realized gross margin reported is actually very much in line with the previous quarters. The same happens to the reported EBITDA margin on a quarter-to-quarter basis. This demonstrates incredible operating consistence that Sigma Lithium has had because as the prices somewhat stabilized for lithium, we were able to maintain on an operational side, which is what we control, this operational consistency. Now we're going to talk about our liquidity and our debt position.

I call here Rogério Marchini, our Chief Financial Officer, who is going to start discussing our cash position and our liquidity position.

Rogério Marchini (CFO)

Thank you, Ana. Good morning, everyone. We closed the year with a low working capital requirement driven by our disciplined cost control and increased production volumes, which resulted in a $46 million cash position. Regarding the long-term debt maturity, while the 2026 maturity may appear substantial, it actually represents only four months of sales at the current lithium price, making it measurable within the context of our business. Moving to the next slide, we have successfully reduced short-term debt levels, which are now lower than in the first half of 2024, while continuing with recording production level. Additionally, we have maintained financial costs at the low levels reached in the third quarter of 2024.

When we look at the financial cost per ton, we have seen significant reductions in short-term debt costs. With higher production volumes projected for 2025, we expect financial costs per ton to align more closely with the level observed in the fourth quarter of 2024 rather than those from earlier quarters. Now, moving to the next slides. Throughout 2024, we reduced financial costs per ton as we increased our production volumes. In 2025, while we plan to significantly ramp up production, the impact on financial costs per ton may not be as pronounced as we expect due to this BNDES loan, and we will not yet see the full impact of lithium production as it will not be fully operational. However, by 2026, when Plant 2 is operating at full capacity, we anticipate a sharp reduction in financial costs per ton. Ana, back to you. Thank you.

Ana Cabral (Co-Chairperson and CEO)

Here we're now reporting the forecast, and we left a message here where we say the forecast that consistent with what we've already done, in fact, is more conservative than what we have achieved in the fourth quarter. Essentially, this forecast also demonstrates at the bottom table, the cash flow per ton calculated, the cash flow total calculated based on the cost per ton we showed above, which basically shows how resilient Sigma Lithium is even in a current price environment. That resilience further increases as we increase economies of scale. Wrapping up here, when we see $100 in price movements, you see a disproportionately higher increase in our cash flow generation given that we're such a low-cost producer and all the gains that come from prices above a certain level go straight to the operational profitability.

Now we're going to go quickly to operational performances. Again, we can build fast. Building Plant 2 is essentially replicating Sigma's speed of execution and successful track record in building Plant 1. We have an advantage. We have to do a lot less construction between Plant 1 and 2 because here, when you show this picture, it's clear to see all that what's in green doesn't need to be rebuilt. In fact, it's been constructed to support three yellow lines. Here, on the table here, you get to see which of the construction work streams of Plant 1 are actually common to Plant 2. Those marked in red are those that relate to the existing infrastructure. It's almost half of the time we economize in construction and a significant amount of CapEx that has already been built, upon which we're taking advantage of in order to operate.

Much simpler construction and faster process. I think with that, we're just going to quickly show one slide around the NI 43-101 that we published for the Canadians. It just shows a present value of $6 billion. We show the price curve that we use, which begins at $900, continues at $900 for next year. That was reported by Benchmark Minerals. We took it from Benchmark Minerals. The significant changes in the way the project, which was then the project when the NI 43-101 was outlined, and the company delivered. There is this dislocation of beginning of operations in a much more conservative forecast in dark green in the 2025 report because we're now an operating company and we have the certainty of our numbers, cost, CapEx, and the production.

It's actually a privilege to be able to put out a model from the vantage points that we're in, where we sit now delivering basically on what we put out as far as visibility. The model we put forth in January 2023 is dislocated and you had much, much higher lithium prices given the current market environment at the time it was published. The differences in NPV are due to these two elements. Changes in the prices, significant changes in the prices, which they were different. We're doing well with those prices as the whole presentation showed and the changes in the timelines of development because it was a function of changing prices and our conservative approach. As the prices decreased in 2023, we actually didn't stop our plans.

We just stretched them out one year further by decoupling the construction of phase 2 and phase 3, which were outlined in the previous NI 43-101 report. With that, we close for questions, go straight to the Q&A. I really want to thank you for your patience, for being here waiting for us patiently throughout this presentation and the various deliveries we had of this presentation. Now we're here to answer all your questions. I'll start with Joel. Joel Holsett is in Miami just recently, Irina and I.

Hi, do you hear me?

Yes, loud and clear.

Okay, I had to make sure there, had to make sure you could hear me. Okay.

Trying to make sense of a lot that's gone in the last couple of hours, but I like to really focus, Ana and team, as specifically as possible as we can on the different cost buckets that you're talking about as we've seen in the last quarter and the guidance in 2025. I'm looking specifically at slides 13 and 14 in your presentation, but you've spoken about this verbally and you have lots of comments in your various releases today. The first question I'd like to ask, as I'll ask them one by one, is, Ana, if you don't get 270,000 tons of production this year, if you get 250, or 240, sorry, 240, similar to 2024, let's just say you get that, how do the per ton costs look in 2025? What happens with all-in sustaining costs? What happens with CIF China costs?

How does that change specifically if you go to 240,000 tons again in 2025 and not 270,000?

We're going to see basically a number that will go back to what we had in the second quarter, for example. At 240,000, the numbers become pretty similar to the second quarter because essentially that's sort of what we had at that time without the one-off items that contributed to increase the cost in the third quarter. We've already been through it. I love your question because when you think about the picture of what we've achieved on an all-in sustaining cost, where we actually have the ability to actively decrease these costs, the main effect is from a reduction of short-term debt.

Because prior to getting the final sign-off of BNDES, we maintained $100 million of this burst short-term debt in a balance sheet as to mimic what we would need to spend and how we would need to fund, shall we progress throughout the construction without the BNDES loan. We had the cash there. We would just keep fully drawing upon our short-term trade lines. Now, what has changed was BNDES was announced as fully committed and signed a loan contract. We no longer needed to demonstrate that we would have cash in the bank, just a certain amount that would cover for two months of working capital, plus four months of, let's say, any delays, reimbursements by BNDES. We kind of rounded out this math in terms of working capital.

We believe that the levels at which we closed short-term debt in 2024, around $60 million, represent well together with $100 million of BNDES, what the interest cost would look like in the following quarters. What would happen with further scale? Rock Hoffman, please, I'll take your question.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hello. Sorry, can you guys hear me now?

Yes. Yes, we hear you loud and clear.

Oh, perfect. Given carbon prices have fallen roughly high single digits since November while spodumene has been somewhat sideways, just wondering how you'd view the interplay of pricing between these two commodities and whether or not we should expect spodumene to fall if carbon stays at current levels.

The current levels are a consequence of the inventories, unfortunately. It's not a story of demand. As we all know, demand is incredibly robust.

The inventories built during the high cycle mainly are now being washed out and absorbed by the market. We have an increased demand, but inventories keep on being absorbed. That is why you do not see the laws of supply-demand working because you need to add up the inventory. Essentially, what you got here is the search for that inflection point when you have supply and demand driving the pricing without interference of inventories economically. That is actually what is to monitor. We still have a picture. Long way to say that we still have a picture of sizable inventories within the system throughout 2025. The question is how robust will be demand because the depletion rate of those inventories will push, we believe, closer to where we are now, the moment of price inflection.

Thank you. Just a quick clarification.

Do you guys expect to get the first loan disbursement from the BNDES? Has it taken longer than expected?

Yeah, we're waiting to have it around the disbursement around mid-year because the next step is to send them the packages of what has been purchased, has been utilized for reimbursement purposes. They would evaluate, and they go back around sending us a reimbursement back. The way BNDES works is on a reimbursement basis. It isn't as if they're going to transfer $100 million at once. Almost like invoice reporting. We send them the batches, they review, and then they affect the disbursement, the reimbursement. Next one will be Joel, you still have a remaining question?

Yeah, it was weird. It disconnected. Sorry. I want to go back to the specific, I'm just going back to find the slide 13 and 14.

I'm having trouble getting some of your numbers. Financial expenses, you're saying, are $70 a ton in the fourth quarter. Now, what are we talking about as financial expenses? I have to look again, but I think your fourth quarter numbers are CAD 16 million or CAD 20 million. If I divide that by 77,000 tons, I get way higher than $70 a ton. I'm just trying to understand how you get to that 70. Can you give me the exact numbers? I mean, I can do 70 times 77,000 tons, but it seems like your financial expenses were higher in the quarter.

What we can do, we can get Irina to get back to you because I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. I think it's interesting to highlight, and that's a very important point.

In the third quarter, we paid the interest for the $50 million U.S. ACC for Citibank. We had a dislocation of interest for one period. There is a slide here. If you look at the, I do not know the number of the slide. I will get it to you. Let me go here. It is going to be on your screen in a second. Yeah. You see there? These are the closest two exact numbers I can give you. That is on a short-term interest per ton. It is just a short-term debt. Perhaps that is kind of where there is a mismatch. You see the actual interest number and then the dollar interest dollar per ton. That is your 19th report on that other page. Short-term. Because then on the long term, there is a considerable change.

Because then we're changing 10% a year trade finance lines, the $100 million average that we had dispersed because you see the disbursement change throughout the year, but only annual is an average, right? That becomes subsidized for low-cost debt. I go from 10% to 2.5% in dollars per year. The long-term debt has beneficial impact from BNDES entering as reimbursement here.

Just my last question would be, are there any trends or things you're working on happening in ocean freight or road freight, like things cost up, down, flat, things you're working on to improve that, or it's pretty steady state?

For us, there are opportunities in ocean freight, significant. We don't want to talk much about it, but it's kind of obvious. We hired our first Supramax for the Carnival shipment. That was 47,000 tons.

It's more space, yes, but it costs us less per ton than contracting a smaller vessel, sharing space in a smaller vessel, which calls on many ports for the usual shipments we were sending of 22,000 tons, right? When you go 47,000 tons, there are efficiencies to gain in ship contracting and whole usage that we wouldn't have when we were just hiring smaller vessels.

Okay. Thank you very much.