Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aqua Metals first-quarter 2017 corporate update conference call. [Operator Instructions. This conference is being recorded today, May 9, 2017. Before we get started I would like to turn the conference over to Greg Falesnik, Managing Director of MZ North America, the company's investor relations firm, who will read a disclaimer about forward-looking statements.

Thank you, operator. This conference call may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements concerning Aqua Metals, Inc.; the lead acid battery recycling industry; the intended benefits of its agreements with Johnson Controls and Interstate Batteries; the future of lead acid battery recycling via traditional smelters; the Company's development of its commercial lead acid battery recycling facilities; and the quality, efficiency and profitability of Aqua Metals' proposed lead acid battery recycling operations. Those forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Among those factors are the fact that the Company has not yet ramped up its initial commercial recycling facility to full-scale operation, thus subjecting the Company to all the risks inherent in a startup; the uncertainties involved in any new commercial relationship; and the risk that Aqua Metals will not receive the intended benefits of its agreements with Johnson Controls and Interstate Batteries; risks related to Aqua Metals' ability to raise sufficient capital as and when needed to expand its recycling facilities; changes in the federal state and foreign laws regulating the recycling of lead acid batteries; the Company's ability to protect its proprietary technology, trade secrets and know how; and these and other risks disclosed in section Risk Factors included in the quarterly report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 1, 2017. Aqua Metals cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake and specifically disclaims any obligation to update or revise such statements to reflect new circumstances or unanticipated events as they occur. At this time I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Stephen Clarke, the Company's Chairman and CEO. Steve, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Greg, and welcome, everybody, to the 2017 quarter one earnings call for Aqua Metals. And just as Greg has just read through the Safe Harbor statement, I would just put it up there for a few seconds to refresh your memories that this presentation will include forward-looking statements. So I want to start off with a summary of where we are; then on the next slide I'll show you the sequence that we are going to go through a double take you through it. I will hand over to Tom later on in the presentation to talk about the financials and then I will finish up with a summary and then we will take questions. But just to get started, the key points that I am going to go through today are that what we are calling AquaRefinery one, which is our first aqua refining facility, in fact the world's first aqua refining facility located in McCarran, Nevada is now operating and in revenue. We actually began production in quarter one and took truckloads of feedstock to get the facility commissioned and up and running and in a level of steady-state at the front end. Sales to a strategic partner commenced in quarter two using materials that were made in both quarter one and quarter two. And again, we are into the situation of truckloads of feedstock crushed and shipped now. For the remainder of this year we are going to be ramping production to 120 metric tons a day of lead, which we aim to achieve by the end of 2017 or sooner. And we will be going through why that's validating our economic projections and incorporating lessons learned into the operation of our first AquaRefinery. With that said we are planning AquaRefineries 2 to 5 and…

Thank you, Steve. As Steve mentioned, we had no revenue in the first quarter. We have, however, begun customer deliveries in April. And I can say with a smile on my face we are no longer a pre-revenue Company. For the three months ended March 31 we had an operating loss of $4.5 million. Net loss was $4.9 million. That's $0.26 per share loss. We had $30.6 million in cash and cash equivalents as of March 31, 2017 compared to $26.6 million as of December 31, 2016. Staff increased from 58 at the end of 2016 to 73 currently of which 44 are in our Nevada plant. We are actively recruiting for the C and D shifts at the plant as well as building our team in Alameda. The outstanding common shares as of today, May 9 is 20.1 million shares. Recently the executives of the Company, and myself included, instituted 10b5-1 plans. For those that don't know, 10b5-1 plans are predetermined stock sale plans that cannot be changed once in place and are administered by a broker. The purpose is to allow stock sales without the influence of material information. The plans in place are for a small portion of our individual holdings in Aqua Metals, but do represent relief from personal financial pressures endured in the formation of this Company. Our annual general meeting will be held May 22 at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland, California at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. There are three items of business to be voted on by shareholders: elect five directors to serve as members of the Board of Directors and the nominees are Steve Clarke, Thomas Murphy, Vincent DiVito, Mark Slade and Mark Stevenson. They are all five of the current directors. Second, to ratify appointment of Armanino LLP as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ended December 31, 2017. And third, to approve our amended and restated 2014 Stock incentive plan. Proxy notice, annual report and the voting instructions have been mailed out. Please vote early and, again, the [AQM] is May 22, 10 a.m. Pacific Time at the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland, California. With that I will turn it back over to Steve.

Thanks, Tom. So I'm just going to wrap it up now with some key takeaways. So I think you've got the theme now that preparation for large-scale rollout is our priority. We believe that we have broken the back of the commissioning process. We have got some kinks to iron out, but every single one of the processes that we need to operate is operating. Improvements that need to be in place are simple engineering improvements. We have proven that the process overall works. We are not seeing any surprises in costs, bills used, energy used or anything like that. AquaRefinery 1 is commissioning revenue and on track. It continues to be our primary focus and we are using it to prepare for accelerated growth. Strategic partners brought scale and urgency. They derisked our ramp up, they provided stability for efficient scale up and the planning of efficient scale up, and it allowed for a more aggressive [technical difficulty]. We are still looking at additional strategic partners. I think in terms of battery industry partners, I think that tank is full. But I think there are some opportunities in process and equip supply that would be synergistic with the great relationship that we have with Wirtz Manufacturing. We are now beginning early-stage work on higher value products and services. I talked about the nano structured lead. We are also beginning to look at where we may go next in terms of other metals. And we are positioned to leverage existing and future strategic partners. And last but not least, we announced earlier on that we actually are doing some invitational site visits. So we have arranged an invitational for sell side analysts in May that will take place in May. We have been asked not to give out when that date is. I believe the analysts want some time to prepare and publish. Similarly we are arranging an invitational for buy side analysts and investors which will occur in June and beyond. So with that said, I will hand back and we will take questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer.

Thanks so much, guys. As you look at building the organization to a larger scale, can you talk a little bit about the recruiting process, particularly on the engineering side. As you think about scaling a couple of factors at a time, that seems like a critical bottleneck. If you could address how you are planning to deal with that.

Sure. So the first thing we did was spent some time studying, working with and talking to and challenging people we know and have worked with in the chemical industry, specialty chemical industry and the data center industry and we've got a lot of lessons from there about how you manage the transition from sequential buildout to parallel buildout. We've hired a head of talent acquisition, Maureen Murphy, no relation to Tom. And she has been working with us now for a few months identifying potential candidates for senior engineering and program management roles and some other roles that I can't really talk about yet because it will give away what we have got in our plans. But what is fascinating is that the quality of executive talent that is showing an interest in joining us and the industries from which they are interested in joining us from. Does that help?

Yes, that's very helpful. And as you think about the lead nano-fibers and commercializing those products, is that a three-year program for you guys or is that something that's more on the five to seven year timeline?

It's a great question. One of the things that's going on in the lead industry that's really being underreported is that Europe, after 20, 30 years of procrastination appears to be switching rapidly to 48 volt automotive batteries. It will start with high performance vehicles that if anything precedent is to go by it is quite probable that by early -- as early as 2020 or the early 2020s the days of the 12 volt starter battery will be history as vehicle switch to a 48 volt bus. What that's doing is creating the conditions for a revival of interest and a revival of resources into the development of much higher performance lead acid batteries. The characterizing feature of the lead acid industry is that it's largest product by far, the 12 volt starter battery, it is so damn good that pretty much for the last 100 years there's been no need to develop anything better. A starter battery is something that sits in your vehicle, you hit the key, you turn it on, it starts your engine, job done. Well, we are moving now from a time when cars were cars to cars that are mobile smartphones that we ride in. And the electrical load and the electrical challenges in a modern vehicle are way beyond just starting an engine. We have moved to hybrid turbochargers with electric motor generators in them. We have moved to electric power steering, electric power brakes, semiautonomous driving actuators and all the rest of it. And that basically means not only are we moving to 48 volt starter batteries, but we are moving to 48 volt batteries that are not just starter batteries; they are batteries that will be powering the turbocharger to eliminate or reduce turbo lag. They will be taking electricity in when your foot comes off the gas and the turbocharger winds down. They will be powering the actuators and the rest of it. So these batteries are going to be cycling at various states of charge. And that we think -- well, not think, we can see already it's starting a real interest in high-performance electrodes, high performance materials, high performance additives for a whole new generation of high cycle life, high-performance 48 volt lead acid batteries and we want to be in the forefront of that.

And then the last one for me is just about site selection for the next facilities. How far along are you in evaluating and in identifying those sites? And can you give us just a sense of the decision-making process for you from a cadence perspective over the balance of the year?

We have made location choices for two nodes and we are discussing land for one of those.

And we'll take our next question from Bhakti Pavani of Euro Pacific Capital.

Just a quick question. You just mentioned that there are some improvements that still needs to be done in order to ramp up the production capacity to 120 tonnes per day. Just wondering where in the process do you think improvements need to be done? And also from a dollar standpoint what number are we looking at?

So the improvements are really in throughput capacity in electrolyte production, that's the aqua prep. It's not really an improvement but we need to install and turn on the remaining modules and we need to commission the ingot line. Everything has been installed. In terms of dollars it's not -- it's all built into our budget. There is no additional spend that we haven't already budgeted in that.

But from a modeling standpoint what do you think would be the ideal or expected CapEx spend through the rest of the quarters?

I think for the rest of the year we will have a little over $8 million in capital spend.

Also I just was curious to know like in the slide, you mentioned that currently you shipped the metallic lead and the secondary lead ingots. And also Steve provided a breakdown of about 120 tonnes per day of lead which will include 80 tonnes of metallics and 40 tonnes of pure lead. Kind of curious to know how is the pricing different between the secondary and the pure lead that will be coming out of AquaRefining facility?

This is lead industry pricing, secondary lead, essentially the stuff that comes out of a smelter is [Technical Difficulty] LME. Lead alloys, which is what we will be shipping from the metallics, follow quite complex pricing calculations depending on whether they are antimonial or calcium or other alloys. But they typically run at a $0.05 to $0.08 premium over LME and it varies. And then the four-nines and above can trade from a 5% to 15% premium. The thing that's fascinating for us is that we are capable of making five-nines purity lead for which there really isn't a price. It's quite a specialized market, delivers the potential for very, very high cycle life, very high performance active material. But it's not broadly used primarily because there is insufficient supply of it historically. One of the things that we think we are in a very interesting position with is to be able to be the world's first to market five-nines pure lead as on actual product and we don't know what the premium for that will be.

Also, I know you guys mentioned that you are still working on the blueprint with JCI on retrofitting their facility. Has any decision been made on which facility you guys would be working on or still that's being discussed?

We are honing in on a site. I wouldn't want to comment on which site that is. That is for JCI to comment on.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take the question from [Steven Webber] of Bentley Capital.

On the additional facilities, if I saw correctly on one of the charts, you still had 2017 as the dates that you were indicating for additional facilities. And I guess my first question is: is that correct that you anticipate breaking ground for at least one additional facility this calendar year?

I wouldn't go so far as to say we will be breaking ground this year. We will define that facility; we will probably be in a position to acquire the land and announce it and move forward with it. It depends on -- some locations allow us to break ground and then get permits, other locations require that we get permits then break ground. But it will definitely be our plan -- I can't say definite, but our plan is to announce where the additional facilities are going to be built this year.

And coincident with that I assume would be you wouldn't do that without having the financing fully…

In place.

…worked out at that point.

Yes, absolutely.

So the fact that the plant isn't operating yet at 120 tonnes a day and may not be until the end of the year you don't expect that to hamper your ability to receive commitments for financing for additional facilities?

No, we don't expect that to be much of an impediment. And that may sound blase, but the reason we believe that is the financing entities we are talking to understand that it's a modular process. And if we've got the battery breaking working and we've got the ingot line running and we are making electrolyte and we are producing electrolyte into lead and they can see modules operating effectively, that's pretty much enough of a derisk from the perspective of the people we are talking to.

There are no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for any closing or additional remarks.

Okay, thank you very much, Bethany. And thank you very much for all of those of you who attended and thanks for the questions. And we look forward to giving you a future update at the next earnings call. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.