5E Advanced Materials Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
September 4, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Raised $10 million in new funding ($4 million equity, $6 million convertible notes) to complete Phase 1 commercial engineering, operate the small-scale facility, and support offtake and government initiatives.
  • Small-scale facility achieved production of 1 short ton per day of on-spec boric acid with head grades of 5.5–6 % after addressing maintenance issues such as a heat-exchanger leak and bagging area enclosure.
  • Engineering optimizations—including a switch to chilled crystallization and horizontal well drilling—are projected to cut natural gas use by 60 %, reduce CapEx on crystallizers, and lower sustaining costs by up to 10×.
  • Launched customer qualification program with positive feedback from two specialty glass customers and two new prospects in energy transition and defense, highlighting strong demand for a domestic boric acid supply.
  • Pursuing significant federal support, including a $285 million Ex-Im Bank loan guarantee and DoD/DOE grant applications in the tens of millions, to underwrite Phase 1 commercial plant financing.
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Earnings Conference Call
5E Advanced Materials Q4 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the 5E Advanced Materials Fiscal 2024 Shareholder Update Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation and prepared remarks, 5E's executive management team will conduct a question-and-answer session with the company's sell side research analyst and will also respond to questions submitted by investors. Please note that today's conference call is being recorded. I will now pass the call over to Nathan Skown in Investor Relations. Nathan?

Nathan Skown
Nathan Skown
Investor Relations Representative at 5E Advanced Materials

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for 5E Advanced Materials Fiscal 2024 conference call. During this call, management will be referencing our earnings press release and a webcast presentation that can be found in the investor relations section of our website. For a copy of our press release or the supplemental presentation, you may contact Alpha IR Group at feam@alpha-ir.com, or go to our investor relations page on our website. Presented our legal disclaimers. Today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements, including our expectation of future loss, production capacity, market dynamics, liquidity, cash spending, and other items. Actual results may differ materially and adversely from those projected or discussed in these forward-looking statements.

Nathan Skown
Nathan Skown
Investor Relations Representative at 5E Advanced Materials

Additional information concerning these factors that could cause results to differ materially and adversely from these forward-looking statements are contained in our press release went out earlier today, as well as the disclosures and our public filings with the SEC. The company is under no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Today's call may also include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, as that term is defined in Regulation G. Financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. This afternoon's conference call is hosted by 5E's Chief Executive Officer, Paul Weibel, and Chief Strategy Officer, J.T. Starzecki. Management will first lead off the call by making some prepared comments, after which we will open up the call to your

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you, Nathan, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We recently closed the books on our 2024 fiscal year. Despite fiscal year 2024 being a challenging one for 5E, there has been significant progress made, which now positions the business for a much stronger, better future in 2025. 2024, we made significant strides, having obtained our final approval from the EPA, started the small scale facility, achieved first production, and recently finished the month of June by shipping first customer samples. As we enter fiscal year 2025, our goals include completing the first phase of engineering for our 90,000-ton boric acid commercial facility, securing offtake agreements, exploring partnerships for our various byproducts that we'll produce, and commencing the diligence phase for project finance.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

On today's call, we'll discuss the recent capital raise, current state of the small scale facility, report progress on our cost optimization, and outline the outlook for fiscal year 2025. Please turn to slide 4. Last week, we announced a capital raise of $10 million. The new capital consists of $4 million direct common equity offering from a new U.S.-based shareholder, as well as a commitment from our two lenders to issue via private placement $6 million of additional convertible notes. We believe that this capital raise provides the runway to complete the first phase of commercial engineering and allows our management team to focus exclusively on this effort. We have a strategy and a deliberate plan in place for the use of these recently raised funds.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

The use of proceeds from this capital includes the following: Advancing the first phase of the commercial plant engineering program, which we target to complete in December or January of twenty twenty-five. Upon completing this phase of engineering, we expect to then quickly update our technical report summary. Second, to fund the operation of the small scale facility, where we will continue our efforts to optimize capital and operating costs and advance production of our product for customer qualification. Thirdly, the new capital will aid in our ongoing pursuit of offtake agreements and commercial negotiations. And finally, advancing various government initiatives already in the works. Please turn to slide five, where we will report on the progress of the small scale facility. I'm pleased to report that we had zero safety incidents during the quarter.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

I'm proud of our team, and the behavior-based safety program we have implemented continues to drive accountability, awareness, and a culture of safety. Additionally, we continue to achieve head grades of 5.5%-6% boric acid in solution, which equates to approximately 10,000 ppm of boron when we sample. This result continues to demonstrate that 5E is in possession of a world-class resource. Despite the good results, we have not gone without headwinds that have resulted in some plant downtime. Recent maintenance issues included downtime to repair a leak in our heat exchanger, as well as revising the design of our screw conveyor that feeds boric acid from the belt filter to the dryer. Additionally, we paused operations for about two weeks in the month of August to install a sifter and enclose the bagging section of the plant.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

to prevent final product from being exposed to the elements. Our team was judicious, swift, and diligent in executing the necessary solutions to have us back up and running. With the modifications made, our current production rate is one short ton per day of on-spec product. When we initially started producing, the goal was to first produce boric acid. The second goal was to achieve a product that meets prospective customer specifications, and the third goal was to begin increasing rates. While we continue to assess increasing production rates, we are currently comfortable operating at a rate of one short ton per day, as it provides us with a liquidity profile whereby we can complete the first phase of engineering, continue to optimize costs, and progress customer qualifications while we work towards offtake agreements.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

As we build towards and assess higher production rates, we continue to obtain critical information that is integrated into our commercial engineering design. On slide six, we have outlined our optimization plans. Two meaningful changes we have incorporated into our commercial design include a change to the method of crystallization and the temperature of our mine water injection solution. Since commencing mining operations in January twenty twenty-four, we now have a higher degree of confidence in the resource and our achievable head grade. Further, we believe we can increase our head grade to higher levels by increasing the temperature of our mining solution. This increase in our solution temperatures will also decrease residence time, leading to a more efficient process. Essentially, our data has determined that it is less expensive and more efficient to heat the solution compared to blowing off and evaporating water.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

This has provided us the opportunity to modify our crystallization method from evaporative to chilled crystallization. Chilled crystallization has multiple benefits that are worth highlighting. First, the amount of energy required will be much less. An initial energy balance estimates a 60% reduction in natural gas consumption relative to evaporative crystallization, which will drive a lower structural OpEx. Further, this process provides us with the opportunity to use less Hastelloy steel in our crystallizer design, which will in turn reduce the overall capital costs by utilizing less expensive materials of construction. Another area of optimization is our mine plan, where we believe we can reduce the overall levels of sustaining CapEx up to a factor of 10 by implementing horizontal wells and sidetracks. Our horizontal well program has been externally vetted, and to increase confidence levels, we plan to test horizontal wells in the upcoming fiscal year.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Additionally, we continue to critically examine our potential byproduct credits. We have confirmed lithium chloride exists in our solution today, and we are monitoring the increases in concentrations of lithium and calcium to determine the optimal recovery technology. Finally, we continue to investigate calcium chloride and assess this as a byproduct relative to gypsum, and we are actively looking to explore partnerships with existing producers and technology providers. At this point, I'll turn the presentation over to our Chief Strategy Officer, J.T. Starzecki, to talk about our commercial and government programs. J.T.?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Thanks, Paul. If we can turn to slide seven, we will quickly touch on our commercial strategy and how we are advancing down this critical path. The commissioning of our plant and subsequent operations has allowed us to use this early production to initiate our customer qualification program, which we recently launched in late June. This is a key step forward in the development of our project as it lays the groundwork for broad product acceptance, which will underpin the platform to execute offtake agreements with a variety of customers. Since launching the customer qualification program, we have been progressively advancing commercial discussions with interested parties who are actively looking to diversify their supply base of boric acid now and into the future.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Initially, our qualification program included two customers who are leaders in specialty glass production for premium consumer electronics and fiber optics, as well as pharmaceutical glass products. After distributing our initial samples as part of our growing discussions, we have received positive feedback and have progressed to the next stage with both customers. We note that these potential customers carry with them very attractive growth profiles and long-term demand outlooks.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

For these customers, the need to secure a domestic source and a reliable supply chain of boric acid is of critical importance now more than ever. More recently, we have added two additional customer prospects to our pipeline and have already shipped samples to them. These customers are also industry leaders with strong long-term growth needs and demand profiles, with one being in the energy transition space and the other in a military defense-related industry.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Encouragingly, with only a few months of formal discussions behind us, our commercial strategy has made and will continue to make incremental progress. Furthermore, our project continues to capture attention and recognition in the marketplace, and we continue to receive inbound inquiries and new interest from parties looking to receive product samples for testing and qualification. If we can move to slide eight for a quick update on the progress towards our federal government program. Our government affairs program has always pursued three main outcomes as part of our initiatives in Washington, D.C. First, federal funding support to advance current operations, as well as financial commitments for our commercial phase I facility. Second, congressional backing on Capitol Hill for the support of domestically produced boron and its derivative products. And third, the inclusion of boron on the USGS critical minerals list.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Multiple federal funding applications remain in process for both the Department of Defense, both in the congressional appropriations process and under the Defense Logistics Agency. Within the last quarter, the company was recently accepted into a federal program called Cornerstone, which administers investments under the Defense Production Act, and DIB, under the Defense Industrial Base, which also provides funding for companies looking to better the U.S. defense supply chain. It's worth noting that we continuously look and apply for federal funding as both short and long-term solutions for the business. To update everyone, we continue to monitor a submitted application we made to the Department of Energy earlier this year under an open funding call. Per the agency's website, winners of the awards are expected to be announced this fall.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

The final highlight to note related to government support comes through an application submitted to the U.S. Export-Import Bank for the Made in America initiative. 5E completed our initial application in mid-July for a loan guarantee of up to $285 million in project debt finance for our phase I commercial plant. We hope to receive formal feedback and a letter of interest from our application this fall. Lastly, we remain very engaged with key members in Washington, D.C., to drive support for the newest domestic source of boron in the United States. All our California representatives on Capitol Hill receive frequent updates and in-person briefings detailing project progress, and we've been successful in obtaining 10 members of Congress to put forth a signed request to have boron added to the 2025 USGS critical minerals list under the Department of the Interior.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

With that, I'll hand the presentation back over to Paul for a few closing remarks.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you, J.T.. As we turn to slide nine, we'll discuss the next steps forward we'll be taking on our project as we execute our strategic playbook and deliver catalysts over the next five to six months. As J.T. mentioned, we've applied for the EXIM Bank's Made in America initiative. We expect the letter of interest this fall, which is an invitation to project diligence. To successfully secure project finance, we'll need to progress the first phase of commercial engineering and execute firm offtakes with bankable customers. In June, I outlined that we would utilize the summer to optimize our design. Today, given our superior research, we know that chilled crystallization is the optimal process design to produce boric acid for our commercial facility.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Fluor, our EPC firm, has already begun moving forward with this design, has started the process for budgetary bids, and our team has a parallel work stream to assess gypsum against calcium chloride as our byproduct mix. Our engineers have dedicated sub-work streams that include vendor and equipment testing, on-site lab testing for further processing improvement, and multiple scenarios of material and energy balances. Through this, we'll be using a data-driven methodology to test CapEx and OpEx, which will create the ability to drive down total cost and determine the optimal design. Today, we know we have multiple potential pathways for co-product revenue streams, and we are putting each under its own standalone test. These potential revenue streams and the enhanced operational optionality they bring to the project's economics have come as a function of our ongoing project cost optimization work.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

As the first phase of engineering progresses, we'll report this progress and lift the veil on catalysts that we expect will drive our share price higher. Additionally, the product we produce at the small scale facility will be used to increase the customers in our pipeline and our announceable letter of intents, and work towards offtake agreements that will underpin bankability for project finance. These efforts will drive completion of the first phase of engineering and a refresh of our technical report in early twenty twenty-five. Lastly, we continue to progress our already submitted applications and monitor the appropriations, DoD, and DOE submissions with hope for a favorable result in the near term. I'll conclude on slide ten.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Ultimately, both the progress we've made on the ground at our small scale boron facility and with the successful recent capital raise, we have runway ahead of us to complete the first phase of commercial engineering. This has given our management team the latitude to focus on the business, improvement of economics, and reporting on our progress. This is critical for 5E's next stage of development, and I'm highly confident in the plan we have in place. Despite the headwinds of twenty twenty-four, which we have overcome and advanced, our business case remains firmly intact. Our key permits are in place, our customer qualification program is underway, and we have a clear direction to progress forward in twenty twenty-five. As always, I'd like to thank the entire team at 5E Advanced Materials for their hard work and contributions, value for our shareholders.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

With that, we'll open up the call to your questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. The first question comes from Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed.

Canyon Hayes
Canyon Hayes
Equity Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Hey, guys, you've got Canyon Hayes on for Matt Summerville today. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just an update on recent spot market pricing. And, you know, J.T., I remember a couple of months ago, you'd mentioned that there were tailings issues at some of the larger market constituents. I'd be curious to hear if that was ongoing still.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Canyon, yeah, first, thanks for joining us today and having some input. So let me first address the caking comment that pertains to other producers within the market. We are still hearing instances based on the environments in which product is being transported into, that there still is a struggle with certain producers to put product in large quantities into markets where caking is still a continued issue that potential customers are working on. As far as spot pricing goes, recently, Fastmarkets launched coverage of boric acid, and they have continued to put some guidance into the marketplace, where spot pricing for boric acid is in the range of $1,100-$1,250 per ton.

Canyon Hayes
Canyon Hayes
Equity Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Great. Thank you. Moving over to the balance sheet, a couple moving parts here. You've got, you know, the recent capital injection. Kind of where you're standing today and that current cash burn rates, maybe an update to where that will bring 5E, you know, over the next months, years, et cetera.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah, I think, appreciate the question. You know, as kind of noted in the remarks, this will get us through our first phase, the FEL 2 engineering program, and I think that gets us into early twenty twenty-five.

Canyon Hayes
Canyon Hayes
Equity Research Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Great. Thank you for the questions.

Operator

Okay. The next question comes from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Hi. Hi, thank you. Paul, you mentioned the customer qualification program. Do those customers need to see the consistency of the grade more than an increasing volume? And, how can you provide more detail on how the qualification program will work, please?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah. So I think when you talk to different customers, everyone has their own spec, right? Boric acid kind of gets a wrap that it's just a commodity, whereas, you know, based on the customers we're working with, they have certain specifications that make it not so much a commodity, right? Moisture content matters, impurity profile, as well as particle size. And so, ultimately, to a certain extent, today, we're very much kind of who has the best spec, right? And that's kind of because if you look at the chlorides and sulfates that we'll have to meet, you know, if they're twenty-five PPM, we will, you know, other customers may be fifty.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

We're on the current customer spec, and so, you know, it started with KG samples, and then, you know, the next step will be material handling, where they'll take one or two tons, right? And so I think we've, you know, and J.T. had in here, but ultimately, every customer is different, and their process kind of varies by customer.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Sorry, J.T. Yeah, and is one ton a day?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

No, go ahead, Tate.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Enough to satisfy? And is one ton a day enough to satisfy most of the customer qualification program?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

J.T., you want to take that?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Sure. So at this point, Tate, yes, it does meet the needs that the customers and the testing programs that we've launched, plus the testing programs that we're starting to queue up. As Paul mentioned in some of his opening remarks, that one ton a day, we view as the cost optimized amount of tonnage coming out of the small-scale facility right now to feed into the customer qualification program, and it gives us runway as we continue to do that, to bring in more customers into the program. So we do feel that at this point, that's the right balance for us.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. And then can you provide in terms of Paul, did I cut you? In terms of operating costs, running the small scale facility, is it mostly on the processing side now and away from the injection side? I mean, or can you talk about where most of the costs will be operating the plant going forward?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah, I think. Listen, at one ton a day, like we have, it's a reasonable burn from a variable cost, which really is hydrochloric acid, LNG and some lime, and a bit of sulfuric, as we kind of regenerate HCl. The fixed costs are the bigger component today, right? And that's because we do operate 24/7. And so, you know, that's the bigger component. So that, you know, that's kind of why, as we've gotten up to that one ton and we kind of know what those utilizations are, we're comfortable here, right? Given we raised ten, right? And so that gives us that ability to continue the customer qualification.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

What I was gonna add, kind of on the back of the other question is ultimately a ton a day is adequate to put the offtakes in place, right? Because most of these customers, like, their big focus is, like, long-term supply when we're at ninety thousand tons, right? Listen, if we can and we will look to build some inventory and offset some incremental sales against production credits. But where we are today, in kind of our liquidity profile, it's kind of the best of all worlds.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great, and just last for me, you mentioned some of the August work. Are you done with the sort of shutdown related work, or might more shutdown related work come up, or and was that work related to bagging machine process? Can you go into detail?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah. Yeah, no. So, the plant is pretty much 100% outdoors, right? And it's very much solution mining, so it's pipes into your crystallizer into ultimately your belt filter. And so, and then from belt filter, it goes to screw conveyor to bagging, right? And so, we kind of realized we needed to enclose the back end of the plant where we come off the dryer and then into the bulk material handling, where we fill our Super Sacks. And so we kind of, you know, it was a pretty basic job, but we kind of stopped any production while we enclosed that. Listen, I think there's.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

You know, we are doing preventative maintenance, but there some of that's always a little tricky, and I'll be candid, like, there's a bit of a novelty to our process, and as we've kind of kicked off and gone through, there's been teething pains, right, and we've worked through those issues. We've kind of highlighted a couple of them here, and we get back up, so you may take a step back, but we continue to find ways to take two, three steps forward.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Great. Thank you, and all great details. Thank you very much.

Operator

Once again, if you have a question or a comment, please indicate so by pressing star one on your touchtone phone. The next question comes from Matthew Key with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed.

Matthew Key
Matthew Key
Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Hey, good afternoon, Paul and J.T. Thanks for taking my questions. Obviously a lot of progress being made in terms of boric acid production. I did wanna touch on lithium briefly. I think you noted in your prepared remarks, you're currently evaluating various recovery methods for the byproducts. Could you maybe go into a little bit more detail on that? And what's the current timeline for producing a customer-ready lithium product from Fort Cady?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

So what we're seeing today is we see ppm, you know, in the range. In the current test sample will be anywhere from about 40 ppm-60 ppm, which is good, right? It's there. And that's some of that could be it, and the genesis is we really want more data, right? And ultimately, as we look at some of the byproducts that we'll produce, if it's calcium chloride, you could build up lithium concentrations over time, and that could crash out with your sodium, or you could potentially do ion exchange on the, on with the remaining piece of the calcium. Or if you go the gypsum route, you could extract the lithium on ion exchange after you've removed your metal salts. And so there's, from.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Like, ultimately, we wanna DOE is expensive, and sort of what you're seeing in market conditions has put a, where pricing is where it is, has put a lot of headwinds on up-and-coming producers in that space. So we're very mindful of, we want to, while we feel good about the bullish trend of lithium, like, we wanna extract and recover that in the lowest cost way possible, right? And we have a couple avenues to pursue that in the current design. And so I yeah, I think, you know, we also are doing ongoing testing, where that 40-60 ppm in the lab has actually 3X'd when we modify and change our HCl rates. So at 9%, we've 3x'd it.

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

And so that's those are the good data that it's kind of like, okay, wow, this could be a game changer for economics. And so I think that's it. It's just it's been really good and comforting to see that string is there. We have it in the resource table, and ultimately and this kind of dovetails into the DOE grant application we've applied for is how can we really maximize that? I think once we do a little bit more homework, we then would be able to speak to timelines, but that's a great question.

Matthew Key
Matthew Key
Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you, and you mentioned that 5E has submitted applications for funding with both the DOE and DOI. Assuming that's all successful, could you remind me, you know, a ballpark of how much financing could potentially be received from those programs?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

J.T., you wanna take that one?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Sure. So in our opening comments, Matt, we talked about the magnitude of the EXIM loan guarantee that we've asked for. We have pretty significant grant applications that we've put in process in twenty twenty-four, in terms of tens of millions of dollars across multiple different programs. We have seen some progress in where those advancements or where the applications have advanced through. There's obviously different points that when you're talking about one of them, which is an appropriations request, there's obviously a you know a process that you need to go through, similar to any other federal funding item that falls under the appropriations, right? There's 12 appropriations dealing with agriculture all the way to defense. And we do continually track and get updates.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

The political process, just given the election season, has sort of temporarily slowed things down. But the funding that we've put in place, both from, you know, the ask that we've made from the DOE, but also most importantly, the DoD, are, you know, of a size and a magnitude that will be very, very impactful to that phase I CapEx number. And remember, all of that is in conjunction with the credit backstop guarantee. So it will be, you know, we'll if, if we're successful in the, in the EXIM process, we'll get the $285 million that we've asked for to backstop project finance. And then on top of that, we will get the grant money.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

I think the secret sauce within the grant programs within the DoD is that there are programs that we can ask for on an annual basis, right? So appropriations is an annual request. Under the DPA Title III, you're not limited to just one request. So there are multiple avenues, almost a bit like a spiderweb. You know, we don't control the timelines, but certainly the applications and the amounts that we've asked for will be very impactful and very beneficial to the broader stakeholders.

Matthew Key
Matthew Key
Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Got it. Thank you. That's, that's very helpful. Yeah, that's it for me, and good luck moving forward.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

Okay.

Matthew Key
Matthew Key
Equity Research Analyst at B. Riley Securities

Thanks, Matt.

Operator

We have a follow-up question from Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Thanks. It's Tate Sullivan from Maxim, just following up. I know you have time to file the 10-K, given your fiscal year ended in June. Are you planning to file it tonight by chance or to be determined?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah, so we, as you can imagine, based on, on the deal last week, all the sub-event disclosures are getting updated. They're in final review. If things go well, it's out first thing next week.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Okay. And then J.T., the last one is, you mentioned getting on the USGS list of critical materials for 2025. Does that increase funding eligibility? Can you just list some of the benefits of potentially being on that list, please?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Oh, great question, Tate. Does it unlock additional funding opportunities? The broad answer is yes, because of the way sort of the critical minerals list operates, and it sort of spans across both the DOE and the DoD. It does cover extraction funding opportunities for extraction projects that are extracting critical minerals. Therefore, should boron be placed onto the Department of the Interior's list, which is the USGS list, it would open up other pockets of money, more specifically in the Department of Energy. And sort of then it sort of unlocks the opportunities to get into the loan program office, should we decide to pursue that route. There are other gating items that are in sort of what Paul has already laid out for our strategy that would actually also play into that. But it's the short answer is yes.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Getting added to it would add to our profile and would also unlock additional funding opportunities.

Tate Sullivan
Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Maxim Group

Thank you very much.

Operator

Okay, now, I'd like to turn the floor back to Joseph Caminiti in Investor Relations for investor-submitted questions.

Joseph Caminiti
Joseph Caminiti
Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you, John. For a moment, I will recite a number of frequently asked questions that were submitted by our investors in advance of this call. While a number of the questions that were submitted were also re-asked by our sell-side analysts, I will go through the most frequently asked questions now to the management team. Can you provide an additional detail on the funding applications that the company has submitted and any anticipated expectations regarding the level of funds related to these applications?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Paul, do you want to take that, or would you like me to?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Yeah. No, you, that's coming in government, so go, go for it.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Okay. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate that. It is a question that we do get answered on a fairly regular basis. I'll give you some ranges, or I'll provide stakeholders some ranges of the funding requests. I won't get into specifics and into how it sort of where it falls within, you know, within the specifics of the DoD, but we made an appropriations request earlier in the year for $20 million that essentially fit within the defense budget for the ongoing and increased production of domestic boric acid, as it does play into a lot of different derivative products.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

We've also made a request under the DPA Title III, under the Defense Logistics Agency, to also look at additional engineering work, equipment pre-purchase, and scalability of the current facility, and the magnitude for that request was up to $35 million. Now, I will caveat all of that by saying that the U.S. government reserves the right to adjust those figures so they can make a recommendation, and they can, they can reduce that number, they can increase that number, they can come to an agreement on, is it split between, you know, the DLA, or is it, is it split under the industrial base? They can make sort of that, those decisions internally.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

But I think the message here is very clearly that it's significant funding that we've applied for, and we do feel that our use case and the case that we've made in these funding applications is as strong as anything that is in the market today.

Joseph Caminiti
Joseph Caminiti
Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you. And another investor-submitted question: What are the anticipated next forthcoming steps in your customer qualification program?

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

I can talk in terms of sort of some general steps. Every customer is different in how they're gonna utilize boric acid in their production. So you will have some that essentially will test the impurity profile, the chemical content, and really are interested in the particle size. Really, as long as you fit that parameter, they will go into incorporating that into what we'll call sort of production testing. Some customers, based on the conversations and the process we're in, will add things like storage and handling testing because of the environments that it moves in and out of. So you'll always start with lab testing, so which is where we've initiated with, you know, a handful of customers. You then start to move down that value chain.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Some will have storage and handling, some skip right over that, depends on where we're going with the end market. You then typically will have some small scale production, where they're gonna produce laboratory-based, very small scale end products, and they'll do it more from a raw materials perspective. And then if you go all the way through, some customers will actually wanna do full batches of a run with all of the inputs, including the boric acid. And so it sort of runs the gamut. We're beholden to customer timelines because we're using, you know, they're using their facilities, they're using their personnel, and they're fitting it into their work schedules. I think what the broader audience would be very interested in and understanding is to know that we are in constant dialogue.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

So we're constantly getting feedback, and where things are in the testing process. We're constantly plotting out what is the next step. We're constantly plotting out how much tonnage or KGs or pounds are gonna be needed for the next either round of testings or the next customers. So we do have a very clear roadmap of where we sit today, what's in the pipeline, and where we're going to end up, and as that evolves, we will continue to update the market.

Joseph Caminiti
Joseph Caminiti
Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you. And another investor-submitted question: Do you anticipate that you will have production-based revenues in fiscal 2025?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Thanks. I can take that. Yeah, I think we wanna build inventory of on-spec product, continuing to progress with customer qualification. And then as we clear kind of the hurdles, get set up vendors, any incremental inventory will. We can make those sales, which then come back as production credits, right? And so, to keep the pace of play, yes, would wanna sell any excess product.

Joseph Caminiti
Joseph Caminiti
Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you. And the final investor-submitted question is regarding the company's existing FEL 2 engineering program. What are the biggest risks ahead of completing 5E's FEL 2 commercial engineering program and submitting a pre-feasibility study?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

Thanks. Good, good, good question there. Listen, I think we feel really good about where we are on the boric acid side, and kind of as I noted, Fluor is kind of moving forward with budgetary bids, which is great. You know, we know where we are basically up until that calcium stream, and that's what we continue to assess, and so I think that's a little bit of the unknown today, but we have the parallel work stream, where, you know, we have optionality to kind of keep going on gypsum, and as we kind of do more homework and look to partnership opportunities, whether it's, you know, existing producers or on the licensing side with existing technology packages, can we bolt that on because it's a better outcome for project economics?

Paul Weibel
Paul Weibel
CEO at 5E Advanced Materials

So I think that we're well aware of what we need to kind of do, and teams working really hard to make sure we hit that timeline.

Joseph Caminiti
Joseph Caminiti
Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you. That concludes the investor-submitted questions, and I will now turn the call back over to Paul Weibel, CEO of 5E Advanced Materials.

J.T. Starzecki
J.T. Starzecki
Chief Strategy Officer at 5E Advanced Materials

Thank you, everyone, for your time and interest in 5E Advanced Materials. This does conclude our remarks. We have a tremendous opportunity in front of us to become the next producer of boric acid and lithium producer in the world. We do have that proven asset and a strategy to modularly expand the asset over the next several years. Look forward to sharing this journey with all of you in the upcoming quarters to come. Thank you.

Executives
    • Joseph Caminiti
      Joseph Caminiti
      Principal of External Advisory Firm Alpha IR Group
    • J.T. Starzecki
      J.T. Starzecki
      Chief Strategy Officer
    • Paul Weibel
      Paul Weibel
      CEO
    • Nathan Skown
      Nathan Skown
      Investor Relations Representative
Analysts
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