Marius Haas
Analyst · Investor Relations. Rodrigo, the floor is yours
Thank you, Rodrigo. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We're at a meaningful inflection point in Fermi America's development. with Firming 2.0, we're moving forward from the entrepreneurial foundation that built this company to the institutional framework required to scale it. Fermi was built on delivering reliable private grid power at scale to the hyperscale compute infrastructure that the AI economy requires. That hasn't changed. -- and market conditions continue to validate our approach and value proposition, forecasts for AI-driven power demand buried but the central tendency has moved meaningfully upward over the past year. In the near term, the picture is 1 in which power availability not capital and not demand appears to be the biggest constraint. It's clear that delays are being reported across announced projects globally. -- and those delays are being driven by core interconnection time lines and equipment availability. What's important for you to know is that our strategy is oriented towards addressing that specific gap. And it's why we believe our project is advantaged. Our mandate today is to execute with the governance commercial relationships and operational discipline that our investors rightly demand and expect. On today's call, we'll cover several important topics. First, I'll address the leadership changes and the steps we've taken to strengthen governance, commercial execution and financial discipline. Second, Anna will cover commercial progress, including tenant engagement, regulatory and nuclear. Third, Jacobo will provide an operational update on Project Matador, including recent site progress across procurement and construction. And finally, Rob will review first quarter results and liquidity. To begin, I want to take a moment to directly address the recent changes in leadership. Last month, the Board removed Toby Neugebauer from the position of President, Chief Executive Officer and Director. He was terminated for cause. The Board's decision was deliberate. It was unanimous among the directors involved and it was the result of a careful and comprehensive process that included guidance of an independent counsel. Importantly, the Board firmly believes the move was in the long-term interest of this company and its shareholders. While Tobi played a critical role in building something genuinely ambitious, the Board recognized that over the next 18 months, firming needs to operate differently. We need to execute multibillion-dollar contracts with investment-grade counterparties while continuing to evolve as a public company advancing towards commercial operations. This evolution is what Fermi 2.0 is all about and executing it will require changes at the top. These include 3 significant actions. First, we have strengthened our governance structure. I have assumed the role of Chairman of the Board, bringing experience from Dell Technologies and the enterprise technology sector. We expanded the Board from 5 to 7 directors, adding Myles Everson, Larry Kellermann and Jeffrey Steve. As our former CFO, Myles knows the company inside and out. Larry currently serves as our Head of Power and has more than 40 years of experience building multibillion-dollar power generation asset portfolios. Jeffrey is a seasoned Chief Executive and Chairman with deep experience scaling industrial enterprises into public company caliber organizations. We have engaged hiring struggles, a respected executive recruiting firm to lead the search for our next CEO. That process is underway, and we have a preliminary slate of highly qualified candidates already in hand. We're focused on identifying the right person, a seasoned leader with experience leading large, complex companies. relationships with hyperscalers and fluency in project financing to take firming to commercial operations and beyond. Additionally, we have hired Rob Masson as our interim Chief Financial Officer. Rob has more than 20 years of public company financial leadership. His track record of driving growth and enterprise value across multiple industries is exactly what this company requires as we scale Project Matador and cultivate institutional relationships. Second, we have formalized our operational presence. We've established a new corporate headquarters in Dallas in addition to our permanent on-site presence in Amarillo. Dallas positions us close to key stakeholders and deep talent while [indiscernible] keeps our team embedded in Project Matador's build out. And third, we have actively rebuilt and expanded our commercial relationships. Since the leadership changes in April, our commercial momentum has strengthened. Tenant conversations that had previously stalled have been reinitiated, and new prospective tenants have entered our data room. The market's response to the structural changes we've made have been constructive, and we're increasingly confident that this evolution positions firming to accelerate the execution of our first binding tenant agreements. And I will provide more color in a moment. At this point, I want to quickly touch on a few topics that are top of mind. I'll start with liquidity. Rob will discuss this in more detail shortly, but here is the main takeaway -- we have multiple levers we can pull, and we're managing this company so that capital decisions are driven by strategy and not by pressure. Next, our former CEOs ill advised call for an immediate sale of the company. The Board has carefully considered that view and rejected it outright. Our for sale at this moment is not in the best interest of the long-term shareholders, especially with anchor tenant negotiations advancing and our financing structure intact. As any responsible public company should be, we're always open to value-creating opportunities, but we're not going to be stampeded into a short-sighted decision. Lastly, I'd like to talk plainly about what has not changed. The assets and fundamental value of our business have not changed. We have a campus on the path to 17 gigawatts of private power with a 6-gigawatt clean air permit in hand and an additional 5 gigawatt applications filed. We have more than 2 gigawatts of long lead time gas generation, either on-site or under a firm contract. We have great partners, including Texas Tech University, which has reaffirmed its support. Our mission has also not changed. The country is in a generational race for AI compute and that raises bottlenecked high power line. As I mentioned earlier, behind the meter gigawatt scale redundant private power that is delivered on the necessary time line is not a nice to have, with the hyperscalers and frontier model developers. It is the constraint. Fermi was purpose-built to relieve that constraint. If anything, the macro thesis that served as the basis for our highly successful IPO is sharper today than it was then. And perhaps most importantly, the fantastic team executing on our vision has not changed. The engineers and project managers who pour the foundations handle supply chain logistics, manage EPC contractors and run permitting our sheer, remain focused and are moving forward. I will now turn the call over to Anna for a commercial and regulatory update.