Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Sigma Lithium’s 2025 first quarter earnings conference call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in listen-only mode during the conference presentation. There will be a replay for this call on the company’s website. After the prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session for participants. At that time, further instructions will be provided. I would now like to turn the conference over to Irina Axenova, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you all for joining us for Sigma Lithium’s first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Speaking on today’s call will be Ana Cabral, our co-Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer. I will also be stepping in for Rogério to cover the financial highlights for the quarter. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and webcast live. Today’s presentation includes forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. These statements reflect our current expectations but involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For further information, please refer to the cautionary statements in our presentation and our public filings with Canadian and U.S. regulators. All of these materials are available on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ana Cabral. Ana, please go ahead.

Good morning. I’m very pleased to present you with our first quarter 2025 results. Over the last two years, we have transformed Sigma from an emerging producer to a leading global lithium company. Our core strategic advantage is our resilience to lithium price cycles. Our competitive advantage is a direct result of operational efficiency that drives the way we run our business because we focus on the elements that we can control, mainly continuously lowering our production costs. We would like here, then, to outline our competitive advantages to start this presentation. First, we’re strategically well positioned. We industrialize lithium oxide concentrate, which has higher margins than refining. Our plant and our mine are located in Brazil in an established industrial and mining jurisdiction with strong rule of law. Second, we are resilient to lithium market price cycles. We are a low cost producer on an all-in sustaining cost basis. Third, we achieved operational efficiency at scale on all fronts. We have perfected [indiscernible] knowledge into an unprecedented 70% recovery levels at plant that mimics floatation. We have also achieved over 700 days with zero accidents with lost time. Four, we have been rewarded with US $100 million in a heavily subsidized government debt from our development bank, 16 years of term at 2.5% fixed cost in U.S. dollars, because we deliver shared prosperity to one of the poorest regions in the country. As a result, we also earned our social license that determines that basically we receive environmental permits repeatedly achieved on schedule. I want to highlight also that 100% of our production is uncommitted, which brings the potential to receive prepayments from signing offtake agreements with clients. This is a very standard financing practice in the mining industry and is an untapped funding source that’s readily available to…

Thank you Ana. Let’s now take a look at our financial performance for the first quarter of 2025. We reported $48 million in revenue, representing a 28% increase year-over-year driven by higher sales volumes and disciplined execution across the operation. Cost of sales came in at $34 million, reflecting a 19% increase year-over-year driven by higher production volumes, partially offset by lower operating costs. As a result, we delivered solid cash gross margin of 35%, highlighting the continued efficiency of our operations and our strong low cost position. EBITDA for the quarter was $10 million, and when adjusted for non-cash stock-based compensation, adjusted EBITDA reached $11 million, a substantial increase compared to the same period last year. This translated into strong EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margins of 21% and 24% respectively, underscoring our scalable and profitable business model. We ended the quarter with a cash position of $31 million, which I will cover in more detail shortly. Finally, we reported our first net income of nearly $5 million or $0.04 per share. These results reflect our ongoing progress in increasing production, maintaining cost discipline, and achieving strong financial performance. The next slide shows how a strong execution translated into solid margins this quarter. With $48 million in net revenue and cost of sales of $34 million, Sigma generated $17 million in cash gross profit, resulting in a cash gross margin of 35%. Reported EBITDA for the first quarter was $10 million and, when adjusted for non-cash stock-based compensation, adjusted EBITDA surpassed $11 million, reflecting a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%. During the quarter, we also continued our work on reducing short term debt by reducing trade finance balance by 15% from $60 million to just over $50 million, while our interest per ton reduced further to $17. Looking ahead,…

On this section, I’m going to give you an update on our expansion plans. On this slide, we demonstrate that we continue to make progress in our construction work for our second industrial processing plant. We have a detailed table showing the main work streams of the construction. We have completed approximately 32% of the construction by this first quarter. This chart illustrates the pace of our progress: earthworks completed, the water drainage pipelines completed. This infrastructure enables our closed water circuit, which is key. It allows Sigma to fully reuse the water that we pipe from the Jequitinhonha River, which is sewage grade, so this is our closed water circuit. Again, what we delivered as far as construction progress is this longer but less expensive portion of building, but it’s a key preparatory work for the assembly and the installation of the equipment of the industrial plant. We have been thoroughly managing the pace of our construction in order to preserve cash flow, therefore we have not yet submitted the orders for the long lead items of the plant, but we will. This next page shows that this construction is fully funded by a signed subsidized loan in agreement with BNDES, the Brazilian Development Bank. As I mentioned earlier, it has a very benign 16-year duration and an unmatched low interest rate fixed in real at approximately 2.5% a year. We have already submitted to BNDES our first reimbursement package which has over 500 invoices, so the receipt of our first disbursement tranche is still pending, and that will drive the timing for the placement of the orders for the equipment that I mentioned earlier, what we call long lead items. This next page shows how we make sense to double our production capacity. It’s going to cost just…

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator instructions]

Hi, this is Rock Hoffman from Bank of America. My first question is, was there a conscious decision to produce 5.0% spodumene concentrate this quarter, and is there less desire in the market right now for even 5.2%? What’s a good assumption going forward?

Well, we basically--it was conscious. We have very high grades, so as we put in the reprocessing circuit into full capacity, we have the ability, which is actually a luxury, to adjust down our grades. Why is that? Because the current pricing formula for lithium concentrate, it decreases the base price linearly, but while we add the reprocessed material through the recycling, we gain mass exponentially, so it makes sense to actually--to join both circuits in the Greentech plant to add mass exponentially, which significantly lowers our costs given that we are essentially processing our existing tailings. It’s a fantastic ability technologically that we’ve gained. Now to your question, the market unfortunately doesn’t reward higher grade material properly with the appropriate premium, as it does in other established industries such as iron ore, copper, therefore we are essentially adjusting it to the best product available in the spot market, which is essentially the Australian average what’s on offer. So yes, it was a deliberate decision, and we will continue to do it.

Understood, thank you. Just as a follow-up, I understand that much of the cost optimization that can still be achieved from where we are now is largely in industrial operations. Can you describe that a bit more, as well as on the sizing and timing for how low these costs can feasibly go?

Well, not really. We prefer not to guide the gains with scale by furthering our operating costs, either mine or plant, because we are already amongst the lowest in the industry. When one looks at the guidance we put out at year end at the previous quarter, what we showed is that with scale, we would gain the obvious economies of scale, which were halving--we would decrease by 50%, by half our SG&A because you wouldn’t need to run [indiscernible] to run a double plant, and we would lower by half our interest bill because we put in a pro forma number that would comprise the financing to build the second plant. When we highlight that our all-in sustaining costs for two plants is expected to be $530 versus the expected year-end $660 of all-in sustaining costs, this gain is solely by lowering the interest cost by scale and lowering SG&A by scale. These are the obvious gains, and we left it at that. We felt that this would be an obvious manner to benefit from scale that would be mathematically unquestioned.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Shannon Gill from Cormark Securities. Please Ms. Gill, your microphone is open.

Hi there Ana. Sorry if this is a repeat, as I had to miss the beginning of the call, but when are you guys planning to do your first draw on your BNDES loan, and if it’s delayed, is there some sort of plan to secure offtake or refinance some of that short term debt? Can you let us know what your financial plan is going forward?

Absolutely. Let me unpack your question. First, I’ll go backwards. The first tranche, the reimbursements have been submitted, so the ball is in their camp - that’s first, and the amount is not that high given that if you look at our capex deployed on building this portion of plant two, I mean, we did the cheapest portion of the construction for now, which is earthworks and civils. Equipment hasn’t been ordered, so I’ll park that. Then we go back to the short term debt. The repayment of short term debt makes sense with cash generation, and the decision is made on a quarterly basis depending on how much extra cash we have and depending on lithium market prices, which we don’t control. We manage our financing short term liquidity based on how much extra cash we got versus the lithium market prices, so what we just did on the first quarter. Now thirdly, your question on prepayments - yes, that’s what I tried to signal and so did Irina, by demonstrating how we still have a significant source of untapped financing, because we’ve got this far as a company without committing a single ton of lithium, so all of our available units are not tied to offtake agreements, which means we could have the flexibility, we have the flexibility to commit these units in offtake agreements, and that’s a very good question because I’d like to make another point, just to clarify for those in the audience not familiar with these agreements. They do not mean fixed prices. They do not mean that I am hedging or locking in the current very low prices into three or four-year futures - no. What it means is I am delivering secured tonnage to clients that at the moment are very concerned…

Okay, thanks Ana.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Katie Lachapelle from Canaccord Genuity. Ms. Lachapelle, your microphone is open.

Hi Ana. I just wanted to build on Shannon Gill’s question with respect to the potential prepayment of offtake. Is there a certain percentage of your production for either phase one or phase two that you’re targeting to cover with offtakes or prepayments, and is there a particular duration as well?

Yes, there is. Again, we have flexibility. I was given flexibility by the Board to sign the offtakes that we highlighted in the presentation. How is the decision going to be made? Conditions. If we’re offered very good conditions, we’re going for it. Again, and you know that quite well but it’s a great question, because I want to further delve into this. These offtakes mean what? They mean that we get a prepayment not for all of the amount of the future sales but for a certain percentage, and then typically there’s a grace period to repay this because it’s calculated as a PMT, almost like fixed mortgage - you gain a grace period, and you gain a certain duration, and these are elements that are negotiated individually with each agreement. We gain flexibility here to use all of our production if it makes sense. Why we are saying this? Because the interest rates are typically lower in these offtakes than, one, in my current trade finance, even the longer duration one - that’s a year; two, my current long term debt, which is due 1.5 years from now, so the fact that we highlighted the ability to do prepayments demonstrates how we can do liability management using this uncommitted production. To your point, typical duration, there isn’t a typical duration but there is a minimal duration, and the minimal duration clients go for is three years. For example, we get a certain number of inbounds very focused on ’26, ’27, ’28 starting now, which means that clearly there is concern from clients on whether the volumes being offered during those years will be at low cost, will be ethically produced or not, because no one can guess future lithium prices. What we know is the demand is strong,…

Thank you Ana, very clear.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, since there are no further questions, I’m returning the floor to Ms. Ana Cabral for her final remarks. Ms. Ana, you may proceed.

Well, thank you everyone for joining us on this call, and once again we want to highlight that we’re building Sigma to last. We take our strategic steps very carefully, we manage our cash very carefully. We are obsessed with cost cutting. I want to leave you with another thought - cost cutting is like clipping your nails, it’s a culture of efficiency that we have implemented at Sigma. There’s an ownership culture here where over 50% of the equity of the company is in the hands of people who actually work here, so we are partner employees just like all our you shareholders, so we care about returns, we care about everything you all care for. Again, having this job even in a low point in the price cycle, is actually an honor. It’s a real honor to lead a very super committed team like what we have at Sigma. With that, I want to close once again thanking you for giving me the honor to lead Sigma into building it to last.

This will conclude the first quarter of 2025 conference call of Sigma Lithium. For further information and details of the company, please visit the company’s website at ir.sigmalithiumresources.com. You can disconnect at this time. Thank you once again and have a wonderful day.