American Battery Technology Company Common Stock LD Micro 20th Annual Main Event Conference

All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your time and also for your interest in learning more about American Battery Technology today. At American Battery Technology Company, ABTC for short, we are commercializing our internally developed technologies for both critical minerals mining and manufacturing and critical minerals recycling to build out the North American battery metal supply chain. I'm Alex Flores, ABTC Chief Financial Officer. My background includes over two decades of experience in project finance and manufacturing in the automotive sector, including electric vehicle battery production. ABTC is publicly traded in Nasdaq with ticker ABAT. Our market cap is over $200 million, and our headquarters are located in Reno, Nevada. We now have four locations and commercial operations and just about 200 employees. We are in a revenue generation ramp-up stage, and our 2026 fiscal year results reflect our strong performance.

ABTC is here to facilitate the transition to a battery manufacturing, closed-loop, low-cost, and domestic, environmentally responsible supply chain. With current infrastructure for supplying battery metals not keeping pace with demand from electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and gigafactories, three independent challenges have been identified. The first one is the security of supply. The U.S. holds less than 1% of global battery materials manufacturing capacity for metals designated as national security, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese. With China controlling over 80% of global processing for cathode and anode materials, it exposes the U.S. to a considerable supply chain and trade restrictions. The second challenge is the cost of supply. With battery materials demand superseding new supply, manufacturing cost is impacted by battery metals imports and high logistic costs. The environmental impact is the third challenge.

Greenhouse gas emissions, contaminated water, and soil are risks that are greater when sourcing and refining battery metals in regions with less strengthened environmental regulations. Our approach is to first close the loop and then fill the loop. We have internally developed proprietary technology where waste material from chemical refineries or waste cells from battery manufacturers or battery packs, storage units, or consumer electronics products are being demanufactured, and battery metals are recovered, such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium, to close the loop and provide a second life in similar applications. We also have our Tonopah Flats Lithium Project, which addresses American battery critical mineral supply industry needs through a U.S.-located mining and refinery project to fill the loop, strengthening domestic supply and bringing battery production cost down.

Our U.S. unique value proposition includes a 138,000 square foot lithium-ion battery recycling facility, which is located outside of Reno, Nevada and has a 20,000 metric tons per year intake capacity, where operations commenced in October of 2023. A 45 years life of mine mineral resource and refinery located midway from Reno to Las Vegas, which financials will be addressed during this presentation, and an in-house research and development lab leveraging new technologies for the business. We combine commercial lithium-ion battery recycling with lithium mining and refining, all based in the U.S., reducing reliance on foreign supply chains and securing a stable battery materials supply chain. Moving now into ABTC's recycling business.

Our technology combines a demanufacturing process where we systematically convert battery packs into modules into cells into sub-cell components, allowing the separation and sorting materials production recycled products including copper, aluminum, steel, and a lithium intermediate black mass. Then the second phase on the right hand, then further refines material into battery-grade nickel sulfate, manganese sulfate, cobalt sulfate, and lithium hydroxide. By keeping the entire process under one roof, we are able to maximize operational efficiencies, achieve higher overall material recovery, and eliminate logistic inefficiencies. Our recycling process delivers several technical advantages, such as feedstock processing certainty, as we are capable of processing a wide variety of battery sizes in a high-purity yield by recovering battery-grade lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese to meet OEM specifications. Our technology and business model has attracted support from both the public and private sectors, validating our approach and path to commercialization.

Our proven performance include a $2 million awarded grant from the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium. ABTC has been also awarded by Fastmarkets and CleanTech Breakthrough Recycling Solutions. Fastmarkets is a global pricing reporting platform serving metals and mining markets. ABTC has been approved by the USEPA under the CERCLA offsite rule to process waste and handle end-of-life ion batteries. CERCLA stands for Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which primary goal is to clean up abandoned and uncontrolled inactive hazardous waste sites and prevent chemical spills or toxic releases. We have established an intake model through our landmark partnership with The Battery Network, expanding beyond traditional business-to-business operations and opening a direct pipeline to consumer battery recycling. Second, we are scaling up our operations with the design of a second lithium-ion battery recycling facility, which will be strategically located in the southeast United States.

This new plant is designed with 100,000 metric tons per year intake, representing a five-fold increase in capacity over our first facility. The second facility has also received support from the Department of Energy. We have awarded grant equivalent to $150 million, and we have announced a total CapEx investment for this second facility of $375 million. This is a grant, not a loan, so there is no payback. There are different performance milestones that we will need to achieve. Moving into our mining business and just as background, today, Australia, Chile, China produce nearly 90% of the world's raw lithium, which highlights the strategic importance of new domestic sources. In the U.S., a very large lithium-bearing deposit exist within sedimentary resources in central Nevada. ABTC has developed an internal proprietary set of technologies to access this lithium in this unconventional claystone resource.

We have developed first-of-kind technologies on 631 unpatented lode mining claims, covering more than 13,000 acres near the historic mining town of Tonopah. This lithium resource is a unique claystone resource and offers a structure that allow us to access lithium in a way that produces high volume, low cost, and low environmental impact battery-grade lithium hydroxide. Our Tonopah Flats Lithium Project hosts 21.3 million tons of accessible lithium hydroxide monohydrate extracted from claystone at lower transportation costs, providing certainty to supply chain security in America. This generational asset will support a projected 45 years life of mine, more than 200 full-time employees, and a peak mining rate near 30,000 tons per day.

From our pre-feasibility study that it was published basically a year ago, the economic potential shows an after-tax internal rate of return of 21.8%, a net present value of $2.6 billion, a highly competitive production cost of just over $4,300 per metric ton of lithium hydroxide monohydrate. Supporting infrastructure will include a state-of-the-art surface mine, a commercial refinery, sorry, and a behind-the-meter solar field with battery energy storage system, ensuring efficient sustainability operations. The mine is located in an energy community. That also means that based on 48E credits, we may aim to earn up to 50% of 48E credits for the total solar CapEx. For the mining and refinery project, we have also received strong strategic support through a $900 million letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank for our mining and refinery operations.

The mining project has been designated a priority project under FAST-41 framework, which should streamline the federal permitting process. We have now initiated our definitive feasibility study based on the PFS findings. We have completed all required NEPA baseline studies for the project and submitted the results to the Bureau of Land Management, a critical prerequisite for advancing through the federal permitting process. BLM has deemed approved our mining and refining plan of operations that we have been working on since November of 2022 for our Tonopah mine and refinery project. Mid-September, we published our 2026 fiscal year results with highlights in record revenue, $21.7 million, a 407% increase year-over-year. Cost of goods sold, on the other hand, represented only a 67% increase through operation efficiencies deployment in our outside of Reno, Nevada lithium-ion battery recycling facility. The company reported annual cash basis gross profit of $1.7 million.

This is a non-GAAP measure that excludes non-cash items such as depreciation and stock compensation. We ended the year with a very healthy balance sheet. We closed with $49.5 million in cash, and we have zero debt in our balance sheet. We haven't just secured a world-class resource. We have developed proprietary technology to refine it. We have successfully designed, constructed, and operated a multi-ton per year integrated pilot facility that has produced battery-grade lithium from our Nevada claystone. This crucial step has allowed us to de-risk the technology at scale and produce battery-grade products. We're now moving forward with commercial integration. We're working on strategic partner selection for long-term commercial offtake agreements to continue to solidify our role in North America battery supply chain. I open the floor for questions now, please.

That's a great question. Thank you.