Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Westwater Resources Inc. Second Quarter 2020 Results and Business Update Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christopher Jones, President and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Gaylene, and welcome to the Q2 results meeting for Westwater Resources. Again, this is Chris Jones, I'm the Chief Executive Officer and with me here on the line are Jeff Vigil, our Chief Financial Officer; and Dain McCoig, our Vice President of Operations. On Page 2 of our presentation we have our cautionary statement. So I’d like to encourage listeners to read them at their leisure. We will be talking about some and discussing some forward-looking information as we go through the presentation today. On to Page 3, Westwater is a green energy materials developer. We are developing a battery-ready graphite business in Alabama, which is scheduled for production in 2022. And now with a vanadium discovery and we'll be talking about that later in our presentation today. We're exploring for lithium in Nevada and Utah on two highly prospective properties. And we retain leverage to a rising uranium price with two licensed processing plants in Texas and almost 200,000 acres of mineral rights and development properties in Texas and New Mexico. On to Page 4, ensuring the safety of our employees is our prime directive here, and to ensure the health and safety of these employees in the communities where we work. We've eliminated unnecessary travel. We've instituted health protocols working together and instituted remote working arrangements for our employees based on CDC and State guidelines for COVID-19 compliance. We’ve ensured that our employees are permitted and encouraged to take time off due to illness, or the illness of those around them without penalty. And reclamation activities are -- in South Texas are continuing using protocols designed to ensure the safety of our employees there. On Page 5, we continue to work with our business partners to maintain our advanced battery graphite product development schedule. Dorfner Anzaplan, our technical consultant continues to provide results that will shape our pilot plant operations that are scheduled for Q4 of 2020. We continue to work to ensure adequate financial liquidity to support our key operations and business activities by using a stock purchase agreement with Lincoln Park Capital, a controlled equity offering sales agreement with Cantor Fitzgerald. And we were able to secure a Federal PPP loan for our URI subsidiary in Texas. And Westwater has prevailed in a key decision in its case for compensation from the Republic of Turkey. The ICSID tribunal turned down Turkey’s request to bifurcate the case. And really that was a turn down of a delaying tactic. And Westwater remembering -- remembering Westwater is requesting $36.5 million plus fees for the taking of its licenses in Turkey. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Jeff. Jeff?

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Chris. First, let's look at our capital position on Slide 6. Our closing share price yesterday was $2.39 and was approximately 7.6 million shares outstanding, our market capitalization stands at $18.2 million. At the start of the second quarter of 2020, our share price was $0.98, while at the end of the quarter our share price had increased to $2.65. We welcomed a more positive outlook in the capital markets, evidenced by a recovery in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of nearly 4,000 points during the second quarter. Certainly the enactment of the CARES Act at the end of March appears to have added some stability to the capital markets. In particular, as the Payroll Protection Program appears to have been beneficial to many small companies, including Westwater Resources. After evaluating and determining that WWR's subsidiary URI Inc. was eligible and qualified for a PPP loan and we applied for and received the PPP loan in the amount of $331,000 on May 4. This allowed URI to put back to work employees who had been furloughed in March due to the uncertain economic conditions that existed at the time. Over the course of the following eight weeks, URI used a 100% of the loan proceeds for qualified labor and benefits expenses. We believe we have met the criteria for a 100% forgiveness of the loan and we'll prepare and file the forgiveness application during the third quarter. Given our forgiveness application to be approved by the small businesses administration, as we expect, we will treat the forgiveness as a gain from extinguishment of debt. Despite the uncertain economic conditions and tumultuous capital markets we faced in Q1, in Q2 we were able to maintain adequate liquidity to keep our graphite business moving forward and to…

Thanks, Jeff. On to Slide 8. We're going to talk about our Coosa Graphite Project really the crown jewel in the Westwater universe. On Slide 9, batteries and their role in clean energy is really what the topic of this slide is. And batteries are really driven at this point, battery growth is driven at this point by the transportation market. Global electric vehicles are expected to grow at about a 23% growth rate over the next several years. Think of however, electric vehicle or car as it's coming down the road you might see a [Tesla IC-800] pounds batteries, 200 pounds of graphite models. And transportation sector accounts for 23% of greenhouse gas emissions accelerating demand for these low emission alternatives. But that's not the only place where we see growth in the battery business. In the energy storage business, grid batteries, peak shaving batteries, peak demand management batteries are expected to grow also at 11% growth in graphite, our graphite products goes into those batteries as well. And of course consumer electronics like the laptop you may have on your desk today or the phone that you've been using this morning represents a big, solid and still growing market at about 3% growth rate. Graphite is a component of all these batteries. That includes lead acid batteries, the largest battery market in the world. Alkaline power cells, we need to be thinking about Alkaline power cells as being 10 billion with [a B unit to a year] and there's a gram of graphite everyone of them, and of course, non-rechargeable and -- rechargeable lithium ion batteries. We make products for all three of these battery types. And the United States government has defined graphite as critical to the nation's security and prosperity. On Slide 11. The Coosa Graphite…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Debra Fiakas with Crystal Equity Research. Debra, your line is open.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. I actually have a couple, and I wanted to direct one question initially to Jeff Vigil in regard to the cash usage during the quarter. It seemed like it clicked up just a little bit in this quarter, understandable. I wondered if you could perhaps give us a little bit of insight into how much of that spending in the quarter related to the coronavirus pandemic and whether or not there's any cash usage there that might not be repeated in subsequent quarters? And then maybe if you could just give us a little bit of guidance on the coming quarters, do you expect cash usage to increase or decrease?

That’s a very good question, Deborah. And the -- during the second quarter, I could say that we were not really impacted by the -- from a spending standpoint by the COVID-19 pandemic. And the primary reason for that is, the higher uses of cash, as I mentioned in my presentation was due to pay-down of trade accounts payable and accrued liabilities that have built up since most of the year. So, when you look at it year-over-year and quarterly basis, there was quite a reduction. But again, the answer to your direct question about did the coronavirus impact our spending? No it did not. We kept it pretty much at the same level. Otherwise, as indicated by the G&A spending, as well as the mineral property spending, and that looking forward, for the quarters, we will see some ramp up in costs related to product development as we discussed. But as far as our general and administrative spending and our other mineral property expense levels, we expect them to be fairly consistent with this quarter that we just completed.

Okay, thank you. And then I wanted to move on and touch on something that was mentioned in your opening remarks, Chris, in regard to the test of the CPSG product. And I think in the announcement, you mentioned previously that there's been some testing done on that CPSG -- CSPG product and comparing it to some other graphite materials. And I wondered if you perhaps could give us a little bit more detail on who might have conducted those tests. Did you commission them yourselves? And then, if you maybe could give us some hints as to how they went about selecting the other graphite materials to use as a comparison, I’d just kind of like to get a little bit more granularity on no [pun] intended on the graphite test?

You bet and if it's okay, I'll take them in reverse order. The way we selected our competition is frankly we had data sheets of available. Some are proprietary, some are public domain, and publicly available, and that's how we select our comparators. With regard to who did the testing? We've been working with Polaris Labs for most of the year now on our testing regime for all of our products. They're located in Seattle. And they represent our in house, out of house lab, if you will, we pay the bills, and they do the testing and report results, we do not influence results of course. So, it gives us a first class third party to evaluate our performance. And with regard to the testing of CSPG itself, we do two kinds of testing if you will. First of all, you send it to the lab and get it coded, so that it can act like a battery material in the same way that a lithium-ion battery actually uses it. And then you do initial charge acceptance and decline curves to ensure that the thing is electrically active and electrically receptive. And then over the course of about four months, you do upwards of several hundred charge and discharge cycles to evaluate what its performance can be over the long run. So, now what you saw in our releases is initial results, and what you'll see later, are going to be longer term results, so that we can understand the electrical properties of this particular product and how they apply to lithium-ion batteries. Does that answer your three part question adequately Debra?

Yes, it does. Thank you. Thank you very much for just kind of outlining what was -- what all was involved in that test. You also mentioned in your description of the process for making your various graphite materials, but some of the elements of the process is standard and then other elements are proprietary. And I wonder if you could just remind us again, for those elements of your graphite materials production or processing that's proprietary, is there a potential for having it patented? Is that important for your business to be able to protect your various processes, or know how from the competition?

So let me answer the question this way. For any process that is clearly better than what we see out there in the neighbourhood and something that we developed, there's some value to our company to patent that or to protect it in some way. So, we're in the process of continuously evaluating whether or not that's appropriate for what we want to do right now. And I think that once we would register IP, that would be something we want to talk about at some point in the overall process of development.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. And my last question is in regard to the pilot plant, and I appreciate that you're working on that, that you've been able to continue working on it over the last several months. While there's been so much disruption in business, it's excellent for you. I just wondered -- I'm ready to start working on it. I'm ready to start putting it up, and I wondered, what are those first steps to begin working on the pilot plant? What are the things that you have to do for first? For example, what would be the longest -- what are the steps that have the longest lead time? And maybe you could just describe what they are and what needs to be done to get that pilot plant up and running?

The longest single step in developing the pilot plant is the design, and we have been and are working on that right now. And then, the unique nature and the multiple processes for using for these different products then becomes something we have to schedule between different locations. So, the pilot plant would potentially purify at one location, makes SPG at another location and make PMG at some combination of the locations for instance. So, we're working with several different vendors to coordinate these activities so that we can have one coherent and easy to manage process for running this pilot plant. And then it all runs basically over the course of a month and a half or so towards the end of this year.

If I could just ask a follow-up, you're saying you're working with different vendors. Are you suggesting that you would have processing work done by different entities or are you just talking about the design and construction elements of the pilot plant?

The design and construction and coordination is not necessarily with multiple vendors, say [indiscernible]. But, the individual processes, we're basically high-grading processes from different vendors, people that are really good at this of particular aspect, if you will of the pilot plant. So, this work is being done brilliantly by and large by our team working with Dorfner Anzaplan in Hamburg, Germany.

Okay. And if you had to -- if you were pushed into a corner, and asked to give, say a percentage, what would you say is the percentage of the design work that's been completed?

I don't think I get pushed into that corner, Debra. But, I appreciate the question nonetheless.

The next question is from Howard Brous with Wellington Shields. Howard your line is open.

Thank you. Chris, I want to congratulate you and your team. I've been a follower of this company for years. This is the best quarter you've had in years and the best balance sheet you've had in years. So, just tons of congratulations. That's all I have.

Well, thank you for that, Howard. And I'll pass that along to the team, faced with the challenges of working remotely and then not remotely and the financial markets being a little nuts, certainly is the first part of the year, I agree this has been a great quarter, but it's really been due to the hard work on part of this team. And those folks we represent. So, thanks.

[Operator instructions]. There appear to be no further questions. So, this concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Christopher Jones for any closing remarks.

Thanks, again going Gaylene. And thanks all of you for listening to the call and participating in the Q&A. We're really proud of the team. We're really proud of the results that we have been able to produce this quarter, and we wish you all a safe, healthy and happy day. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.