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Earnings call · FY2025 Q4
Executive readout · one minute
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Net tone +82 · moderate hedging
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| Metric | Period | Guided | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
|
All-in sustaining costs plus interest
for 2026
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$592 | — |
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Sigma Lithium's 2025 4th Quarter Earnings Conference Call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded, and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the company's presentation. There will be a replay for this call on the company's website. After the prepare remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for all participants. At that time, further instructions will be provided. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anna Hartley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please, go ahead.
I'd like to welcome you to our 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today is Anna Cabral, Co-Chair and CEO of Sigma Lithium. Our earnings press release, presentation, and corresponding documents are available on our website. I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during this call, including any production guidance, expected company performance, update on mining operations, the timing of our projects, and market conditions, may be considered forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language of our forward-looking statements in our presentation, MD&A, and press release. Before turning the call to Ana Cabral, we will be showing you a short corporate video as we think the pictures will paint a thousand words about what's happening at Sigma.
Hi everyone. Well, thank you, Ana, for showing us this video of our operations. As you can all tell, we're very, very proud of what we built here in Vale do Jequitinhoa. So without further ado, I'll go straight into the fourth quarter 2025 earnings release presentation, which covers the entire full year 2025 annual financial results. We're going to make quite a lot of forward-looking statements, and we would like to encourage you to read the disclaimer of this presentation that's going to be posted on our video. Sigma is the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas. We've delivered operational excellence, we are a low-cost operation, and we are executing a high-growth strategy for 2026, 2027, and 2028. This is because we are a management operator company where our interests are fully aligned with the interests of our shareholders, which are to build long-term value. Our main competitive advantage is our resilience, which comes from operational efficiency. Our efficiency is again driven by the fact that the management is owner of the company. More importantly, we are located in a country in Brazil which is a politically stable traditional mining jurisdiction where we have a very low cost operating environment. On sustainability, we are 100% sustainable. We have the quintuple zero lithium, which starts with five points. We do not have tailing dams, so zero. We do not use drinking water. 100% of the water is reused and recycled from sewage, zero. We use zero hazardous chemicals in our operation. DMS is basically a physics-based process, so third zero. We use 100% clean energy, so zero dirty energy. And we have had zero accidents with lost time for almost three years. Again, a picture is a thousand words. Here's a picture of our waste tailings. before and after the artificial germination program. It's blended into the landscape. It's basically stacked up rock, fully geotechnically stable. And we went through the sustainability initiative of actually planting the rock into a green mountain. So what you see now is essentially the picture below. We are 100% sustainable. We produce the quintuple zero lithium. We have zero tailing dams. We have zero drinking water. We have zero hazardous chemicals. We have zero duty power. 100% of our power comes from clean electricity. We have had zero accidents for two years and seven months. Five zeros. At the bottom, a picture is a thousand words. You see the before and after of our waste-tailing piles, which are basically the rocks removed from the pits. rocks very stable geotechnically stable but more so we have planted the face of those rocks with artificial germination we basically did what we call proactive regeneration and the picture shows how it looks like now just a year after those piles were created. So geotechnically safe, sustainable, blended into the landscape, which further enhance the environment. We have built the fifth largest industrial mineral lithium producing complex in the world. So in the picture you can see that we have a state-of-the-art industrial plant integrated it into a vine. But the plant is not just an industrial plant. It is a state-of-the-art, clean technology, lithium processing facility, where we achieve 70% recovery of the lithium, which is amongst the highest in the sector, and it compares with processing methods which which are a lot less sustainable. SIGMA is the economic engine for developing the Valley of Jaquitimonia. We lifted the valley towards prosperity. That is a key region of Minas Gerais, which is the second richest state in the Republic. We created a thousand jobs, 11,000 indirect jobs, and 21,000 beneficiaries from our social programs of microcredit and small-scale agriculture. We also have granted drinking water access to 18,000 people. 85% of our workforce is regional. 50% of the economically active population has benefited from our social programs. We have renovated, created and built schools that put over 500 children in after-schools or school programs. We have been instrumental in delivering 6.8% of GDP growth for the whole state of Minas Gerais. And still, every year, we serve 3 million meals so that the new waves of people keep coming to help build this lithium valley. So, we have a build-to-last company. It's a resilient business that's been thriving throughout lithium cycles. That's what we have achieved in 2025, and that's what we will continue to deliver in 2026. large-scale, low production costs, and traceability. We have had zero accidents for 2.7 years. We uphold the highest health and safety standards in the world, top-ranking amongst all companies in metals and mining. But more importantly, we have demonstrated speed of execution, low capex to build and to restructure operations such as will be done with mining. And we are in a low-cost operating country which supports us to achieve all of that. So now I'm going to go through the operational financial highlights of 2025 and I'm going to give you a preview of the first quarter, 2026 estimated. We have had unparalleled resilience throughout the last year to date. We have generated cash flows across 2025 lithium volatility. Our business was built to last and to endure the cycles. Four key examples. We signed $146 million in off-take agreements with very robust intrinsic values. Intrinsic value is the advancement we receive from clients for the right to have deliveries of tonnage throughout periods. First offtake agreement was basically to fund working capital. It was signed in 2025 for deliveries throughout 2026. The total is $96 million for 70,000 tons of deliveries. The second was a $50 million typical off-take prepayment that was signed for 40,000 tons of annual deliveries throughout the next three years, commencing in 2026. Second, we have been the demonstrators that a commercial strategy well executed can actually yield actual results, even in this market, even throughout volatility. We have been tracking seasonality and we have achieved $67 million in net sales in the fourth quarter of 25 and in the first quarter of 26, solely a result as this sound commercial policy. First, we monetized lithium seasonality to a T by basically receiving price adjustments in the fourth quarter, working with our clients to time the deliveries and the final sales, re-sales of their products throughout the contract season of 2025. That has resulted in the revenues for the fourth quarter. More importantly, we have generated cash flow from a whole new line of business, which is selling the lithium fines, high-purity lithium oxide fines that we have reprocessed through our industrial plant out of our dry stack tailings. That happened initiated in 2025 and then throughout 2026. With the leverage, our balance sheet, and we've repaid debt. That was our third highlight. 60% of our short-term debt has been repaid. 35% of our total debt has been repaid in the years such as 2025. On top of that, number four, we have upgraded and restructured our mining operations completely for safety, for efficiency, for low cost, for cadence, and for better delivery. We transition from an outside contractor to full operational control, And we are poised to demonstrate those efficiency gains and cost optimizations throughout the next quarters. Here are pictures that, again, a thousand words. It just shows the lychium fines piles being moved across to the shipping halls already at the port. The result of those sales have actually monetized what we used to call green premium, which doesn't really exist. But the fact that we actually created this new line of product out of the dry stack tailings definitely delivered to our investors what we call a sustainability premium, meaning actual financial results from the investment we made on a dry stack unit for the clean deck. This is a page with our off-take agreements. The off-take agreements single-handedly enabled our mining upgrade, our long debt repayment, and the capacity expansions. We have an announcement. We signed a 40,000 a year typical off-take agreement that is going to net us $50 million in a true prepayment to be closed within the next three months. That amount is equivalent to 120,000 tons to be delivered over the next three years. The use of proceeds will be for a growth strategy. We also announced and signed the 70,500 ton one-year offtake agreement for a total of $96 million. That off-take agreement is for deliveries throughout 2026, and the purpose of it is for working capital. That's the working capital that enabled the mining upgrade and some of the debt repayments. Now, in 2026, we have two more off-takes to conclude. First, we're going to amend our contract for the equipment leases of the mining upgrade large-scale machines that have been backed by an offtake for three years. Initially, it was for 11,000 tons. The number probably will increase depending on the scale of machinery that we are able to secure in the second quarter. So, again, the continuity of the mining upgrade to better, more efficient, more cost-efficient, and safer operation. The second uptake that we're about to close is the 80,000 ton a year for three years that is going to net us $100 million in a typical prepayment. That conventional offtake will have user proceeds to pay down the long-term debt that currently is sitting in our balance sheet as short-term debt because it matures in December of 2026. That was a four-year shareholder that has been gracefully given us by our shareholders in late 2022 to enable us to have working capital to commission our plant. So that will be replaced by an offtake, which is a very sound and very logic operational move for Sigma. On this page, we again demonstrate how the competitive advantage of low costs create the resilience from the price pressures that lithium has undergone this year, especially coming from new regions, sometimes not necessarily compliant or traceable product. But more importantly, from the constant refining innovation that the main markets have demonstrated by bringing the ceiling of this industry constantly lower. The ceiling for, for instance, lipidolite that once was $25,000 per ton is now around $17,000 to $18,000 per ton. But going lower, to a target of probably $15,000 per ton, it doesn't matter. Irrespectively, we are actually working below the floor of the industry, which is product coming from the African meal supply regions. So, so long as we are sitting exactly where we are in the cost curve, we have the resilience of operations that allow us to, for instance, sign off takes with our floors and continue to deliver excess returns every time prices are in the current levels. On the left, we demonstrate the resilience with our total cash costs, which are all-in sustaining costs plus interest. On the left in green, we show the full year achieved all-in sustaining costs plus interest and the guidance. So we're pretty much in the same ballpark. And as a result, we felt comfortable to put in the guidance of $532 for all-in sustaining costs, plus $60 for interest for 2026. In the next slide, we show the numbers of how we're able to bring our people safe to their families every single day, day after day. And this is what we work for. We have never had a fatality in 13 years of operations. We have been producing for almost three years. We have never had a fatality. But more importantly, we're getting to almost 2.7 years with zero accidents. We've lost time. So our people go home every day and come back to work the following day. That is the highest operational global safety standard in the entire battery materials industry, but more so we sit at the top of the ranking across all metals and mining companies. We have had 1,600 employees here. We now have 1,000 employees. is a large operation and we still achieve that 966 days consecutively without accidents we're very very proud of it so here is to the numeric operational excellence a number is a thousand words the unique resilience and robust cash flows can be demonstrated with each and every one of the main items of our 2025 and first quarter 26 estimated operational performance. First, offtakes. We had signed a 96 million offtake prepayment in 25 that enabled us to receive working capital by having our production paid in advance. Then we just signed a 50 million traditional offtake for three years of 40,000 tonne deliveries, totaling 120,000 tons to be delivered over the next three years. But in advance, up until June this year, we're going to receive $50 million. Traditional, typical off-take. Irrespectively, we have managed to repay debt to a magnitude that is significant, considering the volatility in low points religion prices reached in 2025. We paid 60% of our short-term debt and 35% of our total debt. That was basically because of cash flow generation. This company was built for cash flow generation. We are a cash machine. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we generated $31 million of cash from operations. In the third quarter of 2025, the previous quarter, we generated $23 million. So, we increased our cash flow generation in 35% from third quarter to fourth quarter of 2025. More importantly, the lithium materials production has had a decrease in volumes because of the full restructure we conducted in mining. But given that we are an industrial operation, we delivered another source of revenues. In fact, we built another business, which was reprocessing the dry stack tailings into what we call low-grade lithium fines. So ultimately we had equivalent of 70,000 tons of the main high-grade product in revenues sitting as inventory accumulated throughout the last years and that material became this new line of business of what we call high purity lithium fines. So for the full year of 2025, we produced 183,000 tons of high-grade premium lithium oxide. For the full year of 2024, we produced 240,000 tons of high-grade premium lithium oxide so our annual production decreased in 24% however how did we generate so much cash flow how did we accomplish so much repaying that by basically creating a new line of business which is what we call the sustainability monetization the green premium in numbers we reprocessed the lithium contained in our lithium finds, in our dry stack piles, and we created a whole new business, which is selling high purity lithium finds, which have a lower grade, but in monetary value, it's equivalent to 70,000 tons of the high grade premium lithium oxide. So, all in all, we're not even solving for volumes, we're solving for cash flow, and cash flows were delivered, and that was repaid. And here are the numbers, which speak for a thousand words, and do not have an opinion. Numbers are numbers. What we want to show on this slide is, again, the quantification and a pictorial of how commercial successful strategy actually helped us to deliver revenues in the third quarter of 25 and in the fourth quarter of 25. We have fantastic clients who are commercial partners. So we sell them the material. We do a final sale and they take the risk. That sale takes place using a provisional price. So we take some of the risk, but we also gain some of the upside. In other words, when our clients resell their product, resell to their clients, we have a profit-sharing gain or a profit-sharing loss. Last year, we had a loss. This year, we had a substantial gain. Again, this was achieved by mapping seasonality. And seasonality in this industry is pretty clear. It happens in the restocking period that takes place after September. It's called contract season. So our commercial partners worked with us to basically execute their final resales, mostly after October of 2025, which allowed us to reap the benefits of a much better pricing environment than what was experienced throughout the whole year because of the tariff volatility in the metals market. So when you look at the greens, you can see the resales by our clients. When you look at the red, you can see the sales from Sigma to the client. And you look at the line, you see the lithium prices and the tremendous volatility that happened throughout the year. In partnership with our clients, we capture not only the first peak of volatility, which happened in August, but also the subsequent curve of price increases that happened throughout contract season beginning in October 2025. That helped us book over $20 million in final price adjustments in the third quarter of 2025. And it helped us book over $14 million in final price adjustments in the fourth quarter of 2025. These are substantial revenues, so that's a quantification of what a sound commercial strategy is. On this slide, I'll go very slowly because we have quite a lot of information to unpack, but again, it's the financial discipline that generated these high operating cash margins. High operating cash margins are the source of the cash flow we posted. In 2025, if you compare the fourth quarter of 2024 with the fourth quarter of 2025, we have substantially increased our operating cash margin. If you compare the full year, 2024 full year and 2025 full year, our gross margins have decreased. Yes, because the pricing environment in 2025 was very challenging. But what is interesting is that the cash margins and the cash flow generation came from one thing and one thing only. We were able to reduce our costs faster than the decrease in our revenues. So despite the mining restructuring, despite price volatility, we were focused on what we could control and what we can control and on what we always control which are our costs so if you look at the bottom of the page you can see that the quarterly comparison between fourth quarter 24 and fourth quarter 25 shown a 77% reduction in costs that's way more than just variable costs. When you look at the annual cost reduction, you can see that full year 24 to full year 25, we've had a 21% decrease in costs. So when we talk about these operating costs, we add operating costs, SG&A, ESG, plus all others. So it's truly an achievement of financial discipline. We're always cutting what we control. We're always optimizing costs. So with that, we can go back to revenues. In other words, when you look at net sales revenues, on a quarterly basis, we've had fluctuations, which again, just demonstrate how volatile lithium prices were. More notably, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, when we restructured mining operations, we had a 41% decrease in net sales revenues. However, when we look at the first quarter of 2026 estimate, we more than compensated for that decrease. why is that because we not only open this new line of lithium fines which were the low-grade high purity business that we created out of our dry stack tailings but also all the work we've done in mine restructuring began to show results so on an annual basis the revenues decreased 27% and so when you look at the bigger picture here what is actually visible that yes revenues decreased 27% on an annual basis cost decreased 21% on an annual basis so cross cross decrease less than revenues on an annual basis but we were very quick to compensate that and to fix it in the fourth quarter where we cut costs and we decrease costs in 77%. So this is how financial discipline is demonstrated with numbers. In this slide, we show the quantification of the financial discipline, but now on balance sheet optimization. We have significantly the leverage, despite all the price volatility, despite all that happened with revenues from fourth quarter 24 to the fourth quarter 25 we lower our short-term debt in 60% from the fourth quarter 24 to the estimate of first quarter 26 which is actually the numbers that we have closing. We lowered it by 68%. So the work continued. We didn't stop. Then when you look at the third quarter 25 against current, we lowered the debt in 49%. That's a complete restructure in a way we fund ourselves in the short term. In a way we look at working capital even, meaning clients are now funding our operation because of our successful commercial partnerships with our clients. We make it win-win so that it costs us less in working capital and we deliver our balance sheet. This slide, I'll go very slowly on it because it shows our cash flow generation outlook. It's quite simple, it's quite straightforward, and again, it just demonstrates how Sigma is a cash machine. Why? Because we have high margins. We're built for cash flow generation. We have estimated that in the next 12 month period for phase one we're gonna probably have 240,000 tons of production. As we've shown before for the year we're going to deliver 200,000 tons. Now, because of our optimum cost efficiencies, we are going to be yielding an all-in sustaining cost, including interest, of $592. That's our estimation for the next 12 months, as we've shown you in guidance. That creates cash flows no matter what. If lithium retrocedes to $1,500 a ton, we're going to be generating about $158 million in free cash flow, after interest, free, free cash flow. If lithium stays around where it is now, between $1,800 and $2,000 a ton, we can generate anything between $218 to $260 million of free cash flow. just with one phase. As we double capacity, which will be in place by the end of next year, capacity, and we prorate production as we commission, you can sharpen your pencils and you can do the math of how much cash flow we're going to have with two plants. More importantly, as we calculate all in sustaining costs and all in cash costs the only optimization we've done work on GNA and ESG you don't need two of me or two of most of our personnel to run these businesses on the administrative side and interest because we're going to cut interest in half given that the interest is on the total debt that we are going to contract precisely to build plant two. So we have not factored in the actual operational scale gains that come from running two plants using infrastructure that is built and utilized now for one plant. So the infrastructure sharing of two plants are probably going to bring more cost gains which are not here in these cash flows. But just with this conservative analysis of doubling operations and having some synergies on G&A and interest, we're bound to generate basically $600 million in free cash flow if prices stay where they are. If prices retrocede to about a thousand five hundred that's okay too will generate 384 million dollars in free cash flow meaning after interest at those levels what becomes really interesting is when we build a third line which could be done concomitant with the second line That means that at 770,000 tons of production, and again, we're just calculating efficiencies here on GNA, ESG, and interest. And we flattened the interest. We haven't cut interest further. We just cut G&A further because, again, to be a commercial person or to be an administrative person, you don't need to triple your numbers when you have triple plans. So interest is flat, but GNA and ESG was the only number that was reduced. What does that mean? Our all-in cash sustaining costs, including interest, goes down to $495 per ton with three lines. So, if prices retrocede to $1,500 by the end of 2018, when we plan to have this capacity in place, we could be generating $581 million in free cash flow. If the prices stay where they are, we could be generating $900 million in free cash flow. That's a significant amount, and it just shows how building long-term value means building a company that is geared to generate operating efficiency, operational excellence, and quite a lot of free cash flow to shareholders. As management operators, our interests are 100% aligned. We're building a business to last. We're building a business to create shareholder value for all of us, management and outside shareholders. So this slide shows the cash flow bridge, the cash bridge with its respective explanation. So again, more numeric demonstration that the discipline execution that we have delivered in 25 and continue to deliver throughout 26 has created this operational resilient despite the very volatile market conditions we have had operating cash generation this is why we didn't raise capital because we were able to generate the amount of cash to deliver and to execute on plan on target so let's start at the end of the third quarter 25 we had six million dollars in cash as forecasted and as discussed in those materials and I encourage you to go back to them we continued on the trend to deliver cash flow from operations. So, on a net basis, we delivered $31 million in cash from operations, mainly final price adjustments from transactions, from sales that had taken place on a provisional price basis, as we discussed earlier. Then, we had our cash operating costs. We have executed capex towards the mining upgrade and we had 26 million dollars of debt repayment and interest repayment as we shown in number one and number two debt repayment was just debt debt repayment amortization of principle interest expense was the annual cash expense for the hundred million dollars of long-term debt we've had in our balance sheet. So, we had a flat cash position between the third quarter of 25 and the fourth quarter of 25. This is financial discipline. We conserved cash. We burned zero cash. So, with the knowledge that there was a whole new business of lithium fines coming on stream which again we flagged during our third quarter presentation we had inflows in the first quarter 26 which were the cash sales of those lithium fines that we affected and closed on the beginning of year. So we achieved $30 million on the sales of the lithium fines and we achieved $5 million on the sales of the premium high grade. That was the beginning of sales resulting from our mining restructuring. Then we had a $24 million capex bill for the mining upgrade, mining restructuring and all that we had to do, but as we conserved cash and as we generated cash from that new line of business, which was reprocessing dry stack tailings, we were able to not only pay our CAPEX for mining, restructuring, and upgrade, but also to continue to do that principal repayment. So we paid down another $5 million in debt, which means we increased our cash position in the first quarter of 2026 by 100%. So we doubled the cash position. So this is, again, numbers. Numbers don't have an opinion. And it's very much in line with the strategy for cash flow discipline that we have laid out in the third quarter 25. We're giving you an advancement here or a preview as we call it. We have another $14 million of cash sales from what we call lithium fines business, the reprocessed dry stacking tailings. Then we have another $50 million of a true long-term off-take agreement prepayment that is poised to close by the end of the second quarter. And then we have about $32 million of the first installments of the $96 million off-take that we sign just in 2025 for the high-grade premium lithium, which is the 70,000 tons that we are planning to deliver in 2026. So again, we close the first quarter 26 with $12 million in cash and we have a significant amount of cash coming our way in the second quarter of 26 having executed pretty much most of the mining upgrade as you can see in the capex bill for 24 million dollars we paid in the first quarter of 26 plus the four million dollars we initiated in the fourth quarter of 2025. Now we're going to do a bit about the operational work we have done to restructure our mining operations. This was done for again the construction of long-term value for shareholders. We had to do this. We had to take control of our mine because without that we would not be ready to deliver the cadence that was necessary to affect the capacity expansions of the second and third industrial plants. Just to recap, we are fully integrated industrial mining operation. We have this proprietary clean technology that produces what we call the clean lithium. That means we have a mine that's integrated into an industrial facility. And again, stopping the mine doesn't mean the industry stops. Obviously, what we want is having a mine at full tilt and then the plant receiving fresh rock. But the plant can do many things given that we have dry stack materials. But once we think about doubling capacity and tripling capacity, we mean that our mines need to operate a full tilt and in perfect cadence so that our plant can deliver on the 70% recovery levels it actually has demonstrated it can achieve in the fourth quarter of 2024. Think of it as a blast furnace. If we turn it on and off, it will not maintain those levels of efficiency. So if the same amount of material is not fed into that dense media separators per hour it won't achieve 70% recovery and for that we need mine planning mine execution that delivers piles or delivers fresh rock to the wrong pad on the same quantities regularly at least on a weekly schedule so this is kind of the overall concept of a hundred percent vertically integrated operation here is a picture of a green tech plant at night unquestioned unquestionably a beautiful beautiful industrial installation this is what we've done with the green tech plan that allow us to get to the 70% recovery we had a 2.0 version of the plant, which was the version we operated from July 23 until December, November 2024. That was not recovering 70%. It was recovering anything between 50, low 60s, almost 60. The dry stack tailing units was not working as we wanted. Anyway, we actually invested a significant amount of complex to get the plant to what we call the current stage, which is the 3.0 version that we plan to double and triple, meaning we're building another one of this, and then we're building a second one of this. But in order for that to happen, as we said earlier, we need mine and plant to work in How did we get to the 70% recoveries? we automated industrial operations. We have software, we have SCADA, we have algorithms, we have detection of anomalies automatically, we have correction recommendations automatically. It's self-learning metallurgy, self- learning for mineralogy. It is a bot that basically keeps on getting better and better and better when it's fed the same mineralogy. This is a picture of our fully automated control room. Then we have the mine. The mine had quite a lot of work to be done. It was using less than efficient small equipment. It was using too many pieces of equipment. At one point there were 48 small 40-ton trucks trafficking through the mine. So a lot had to be done there. First we had to fix geometry you have to be widened and here on the picture you already see the result of widening the geometry so we've done intermediary strip with the objective of widen geometry and increase the mine life and increase access and open other areas with or there were closer to surface so what we've done we basically open additional mine fronts now to accelerate the ramp up how did we do this by using larger equipment, larger fleet to remove strip faster. So larger equipment increases efficiency on the excavators, on trucks, across the board. In parallel, while we did that, mostly in the fourth quarter, the green tack plant continued to operate. So we reprocessed the lithium materials from the dry stack tailings during the fourth quarter 25 and the first quarter 26 with superior recovery not the 70 percent recovery but it enriched it enough to create decent cash flow to create a decent sale value a decent value added so that it could generate the cash flow in the revenues we achieved both in in in the later fourth quarter but also throughout the first quarter so what we're hoping to happen and we've seen happening already now in March was that recoveries get closer to 70% as we resume delivering fresh rock to the plant now this is how we're going to bring all that software knowledge to the plant we started and we continue so we have fast mining implemented in process for mine planning. We have the same software implemented for fuel control. We have fatigue automatic software detection. We have a cost control app sitting on iPads and iPhones for all the mine operators. So we have loading and blasting simulations for optimal results with minimum loads, minimum vibrations. So we're bringing the same software technology, the same intelligence to the mining operation. And that is starting in the control room for mining, which is here, as you can see in a picture. This is a picture of the first wave of larger equipment. The equipment is going to get bigger and bigger. This is the kind of the small large equipment so but more important than that we own production control we drive production control mine planning is ours blasting control is ours we hired a third-party driller for blasting so we're managing different contractors with our owning house mining team that allow us to gain confidence on deploying larger equipment on investing larger equipment and on basically doing the calculated analysis of where should we be blasting for safety for optimal geometry but also for efficient or recovery now we're going to talk about how we're going to continue to expand we are resuming the construction of plant two this year so we're going to double industrial capacity for the high grade premium lithium oxide. And we're not that far. In other words, once we get to it, we're going to go from the 240,000 tons that we're guiding to 520,000 tons. And that is not that far away. More importantly, there's the potential that we may build two and three sequentially. So we're never going to decommission the construction crews given that the capex involved here is actually very little and the capex efficiency is very high meaning it's going to cost us 18 million dollars to conclude the second plot and it's going to cost us a hundred million dollars to build a third plant so with With $118 million, we are able to take our production from 240,000 tons a year to 770,000 tons a year. That's a substantial increase, and that's one of the most efficient capex ratios in the whole industry. So this demonstrates what can happen when we double and then triple production. We run the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world. We are the largest lithium mineral producer in the Americas. But here we have all of our peers. We have the lithium producers in the Americas that produce from the lakes in Argentina. And that includes the Chilean and the American producers. We also have the producers from Australia and we have the producers from Africa. So although we are the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world and we're the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas, we are the eighth-ranked producer in the world as a whole. Now look what happens when we double and we triple. When we double, we go from number 8 to number 6 or number 5. Then when we triple, we go to number 4. All of these companies have valuations substantially higher than ours. In fact, we're valued as a non-producing company. So the effect of doubling production and tripling production is not just numeric. is also a clear demonstration that we can be up there in the rankings with a concomitant valuation. And that is what it means for us to build long-term shareholder value. And this is what we're planning to do. This is the slide that shows how close we are to getting there. we have made a decision in the fourth quarter 24 and in the first quarter 25th of accelerating the construction of plant two and unfortunately because of tariff volatility lithium prices collapsed in more than 50 percent so we deployed capex and we deployed our liquidity in the fourth quarter 24 and in the first quarter 25th towards a construction well that is not the so good news we managed we delivered throughout 25 as we've shown we overcame because the business was structured to generate cash flows and live through organic cash flow generation but here's the good news we're almost there we've almost finished civil foundations so what is missing really ordering equipment and assembling equipment and that can be done quite rapidly in the first plan we were able to order equipment and assemble equipment in much less than 12 months so this is how finishing building the second blonde is actually a very expedited exercise in construction, managing procurement of equipment, and managing assembly of equipment. And that's it. This is a fully licensed construction, fully licensed operation. It's just within our control to do this. So, Sigma is very well positioned to deliver substantial returns to shareholders in 2026. And here we're going to show why. This slide demonstrates how Sigma continued cash flow generation, production cadence in 2016, and growth by building phase two that would yield 520,000 tons of lithium will certainly position us for re-rating of our stock. Why is that? When you look at our peers that produce lithium industrialized oxide from minerals in Australia, they have a larger main plate production and a significantly larger cash flow. However, as we increase production, that means our cash flow will much more than increase because we have this competitive advantage of high margins, low cost, and operational resilience. So our increase in nameplate production will bring a disproportionately larger increase in cash flow generation. More so, that happens irrespectively of pricing environment because of our low-cost operational resilience. The next slide just shows how we're going to get there. We've demonstrated operational discipline. We delivered on all fronts in 2025. That's what we've seen on the right. We leveraged and repaid debt. We increased operating cash margins. We built a new line of revenues with now selling lithium fines, high purity from our dry stack tailings. We increased mineral reserves by 40%, which shows we can operate for 66 years with one line, for over 25 years with two lines, and most likely for over 25 years with three lines. We strengthened commercial strategy by basically capturing seasonality. We monetized final prices in line with contract seasonality in the fourth quarter. And we closed two significant offtakes, almost $150 million in offtakes, $96 million to fund our working capital throughout 1996, to fund our upgrade and restructuring of mining operations and then a $50 million typical offtake that will basically be invested in building phase two. So how are we going to continue to deliver in all fronts in 2026? We're going to resume steady-state production from the mining operations, That integration, mine, plant, cadence that was shown before, that will resume the cadence of what we call the premium high-grade lithium. We're going to close financially on the off-takes transaction signed, and we're going to close on two more off-takes as we disclosed when we discussed off-takes here. We're going to receive the development bank disbursement for the funding we already spent on Phase 2, and we are in discussions with several other banks for Phase 3. We're going to repay $100 million of shareholder debt funded by one of the offtakes that are in negotiation, 80,000 tons per year for three years. And we're planning to commission the Plan 2, the Green Tech 2, by the end of 2026. So with that, I close, very proudly close, the full year results of 2025, where we cross the Rubicon of probably one of the most volatile lithium environments this industry has seen. And we're entering 2026, a wash in significant cash generation coming from numerically delivering operational efficiency. So with that, I close this presentation for the full year of 2025. We're very, very proud of our team. We're incredibly proud of how we worked, how hard we worked to cross the Rubicon off one of the most volatile lithium pricing environments I have ever seen. And I've been here for 10 years as a C-level executive. We've done it without raising capital. We've done it without a hiccup in our operations. We're entering 2026 in a much strengthened position. Why? We have the resilience that's basically quantified. We already earned our revenues by building a completely different product line. We resume production cadence at the end of the first quarter, and we're entering 26 with roughly $48 million of quarterly revenues, which is a significant accomplishment considering we're just coming out of a volatile 2025. All of that without raising any dollars of new capital. Fewer organic, disciplined cash generation. And that is the quintessential competitive advantage of this company. This operations efficiency delivered and quantified in the numbers we've shown you. We're very proud of our team, and I want to thank all of our clients and stakeholders who have been there with us, holding hands and helping us cross 25 and enter 26 in this very strengthened position.
Thank you very much for the presentation. We will now begin the Q&A section. To ask a question, just queue the question in the Q&A button. Please beware that your company's name should be visible for your question to be taken. Our first question comes from Fortune Era. The company has indicated a production target of 520 KT in 2027. Does this imply that Plan 2 is expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2026? More specifically, when do you currently expect Plan 2 to begin commissioning and how long do you expect the ramp-up to full capacity to take?
We are going to have another presentation on plant construction, but we'll tell you what we're planning to do now. As we've shown in a slide previously, what there is between us and new production is essentially resuming ordering equipment, assembling equipment, and commissioning that plant. That can be done quite rapidly. If we use a timetable from the previous plant, it can be easily done in under a year. We are going to order equipment in the summer after the close of the second quarter. The reason being the off-take we just signed will be the main driver for us to deposit and prepay the equipment that we need to build Plan 2. We believe that it will take us anything between 8 to 12 months to actually build and commission that line. So Plan 2 will be fully commissioned early 2027 and as a result the guidance for 27 is not a guidance for production is a guidance for installed production capacity and we will be further updating the markets as that unfolds but what we can say is we're almost there with three-fifths of our timetable accomplished in the construction of plan two and what stands between us and that level of production is purchasing building and commissioning which we've shown we can do quite rapidly a follow-up question in the guidance
section titled Cash Flow Forecast at Various Realized Lithium Prices, could you please clarify whether the price assumptions of $1,500 and $1,700 refer to Sigma's expected average realized selling price for its concentrate or the benchmark SC6 China FOB price. For Sigma's concentrate grade of approximately 5.2 to 5.5% lithium oxide, what is the typical Realized price as a percentage of the SC6 benchmark price.
You're unmuted.
Yeah, unmuted. Let me unmute. Me unmute. Apologies. So we are using, we're not using the gross prices, we're using adjusted prices. So when you think about the nameplate price, we take nameplate price from SMM, and then And we typically ship 5.2, 5.3, lithium oxide, great product. So the adjustment is done dividing that level of oxide by SC6 in older contracts. In the newer contracts, we divide by 5.5. The results are kind of the same. So when you look at the prices on that table, they are net prices. As you probably are all aware, gross prices have reached $2,400 just two days ago. So $1,800 and $1,500 are far below the current level of nameplate prices at Shanghai Metals Market.
Our next question comes from Lamartini Gomez. Question for Ana Cabral. Can you give us your directional sense of how much each plus 10 US dollars per barrel increase in oil prices impacts the demand for lithium?
Unfortunately, I don't have that number, and I am not really an oil expert. What we can say, though, is 15 to almost 20% of the fossil fuels we use here are just the fuels that power the trucks, the run-around operations. In other words, every litter of diesel in Brazil has mandatorily 15% of biodiesel. Now that percentage is slated to increase. So we actually are, let's put it that way, 20% less impacted by the increase in diesel prices than any other country in the world because we have this fantastic, we call biofuels program in the country, which was actually created 30 years ago during the last oil crisis for this exact reason for energy security of Brazil. And we are the beneficiary of that when it comes to our emissions. So our trucks generate 20% less emissions because the fuel by law has 15 and we're putting 20ish percent biofuels for every liter of diesel our next question comes from Robert Cook please detail the timing of phase two and three to completion both 2028 anything more specific well I was mentioning what we're going to do on phase two and again we're going to keep you giving the markets updates uh pretty regularly on that phase two uh by the summer we're going to be ordering equipment so close second quarter order equipment as we demonstrated that will be funded by the growth of take we signed 50 million dollars or more than enough to prepay or deposit towards the equipment we need. To be specific, now what's between that ordered equipment and production is essentially assembly. In the previous plant, we had a thousand men on site assembling that plant, that line. That was done in eight months. We used what we call air procurement for some of the parts that were delayed so that we It could cut short delivery times. We use a lot of what we call acceleration techniques, which in this budget are factored If we use the accelerated timetable, it means we're going to spend under $7 million for extra men, extra shifts, and air fright for some of the equipment. What does that mean? It means that we could have a built plant by the first quarter of 2027, assuming we start in a summer. And then there's commissioning. What is the advantage of doing a plant that is a carbon copy of a plant we've been operating by then for almost four years? That is the plant we really know. And as a result, we believe we can cut commissioning times significantly. And more importantly, start benefiting from the get go, begin with the same levels of recoveries. instead of going through the curve of going starting with 50% recoveries up to 70% recoveries, we underwent from the 2.0 version of the plant to the 3.0 version of the plant. So without being more specific, we're quite confident that we're going to have plant two by, you know, anytime in the first half of next year. But that's the reason why we're making a clear distinction between installed production capacity and production. Production is dependent on the commissioning and we're going to keep the market vastly updated as we go along. Now plant tree. Plant tree is what we're very proud of actually because given our operational success, given our cost resilience, and given our strength as a business throughout cycles will be shown basically in 2025 has not gone unnoticed by the main development banks throughout the world by the main players throughout the world by the main financiers throughout the world so we do have dialogues going on for building plan 3 building plan 2 and 3 together is not new in fact in December 22 when we filed our DFS for expansion that was the plan it's so much so that we invested in building infrastructure for three lines the goal was to do one two and three sequentially and maximize what we call construction synergies unfortunately lithium took a tumble in 24 and we quickly aborted that plan and we stopped to just the first plant by the end of 24 we resumed plant 2 and we went all in again with the volatility of tariffs in In 2025, we aborted that plant, and we stuck to plant one. But doing one, two, three is actually what we have been designing this industrial complex Why? We spent the money in the infrastructure, and that was not a small feat, meaning we have the water to feed three lines, we're licensed to feed three lines, we have the sewage in bound treatment station to feed three lines we have the power substation to build to feed three lines so from an infrastructure point of view we are ready for three lines and this is why we delighted to actually say that that has not gone unnoticed and we have let's say no shortage of choices from where to get funded with the appropriate kind of debt, development financing debt, to build these three lines.
Our next question comes from David Fang with CICC. Can we have some color on how SGMA would mitigate any potential fluctuations in fuel costs and power costs? What percentage does diesel cost account for in your cash costs or AICSC?
I don't have the number by heart but I can talk about power you will have zero effect in power in other words when you think about power our power is fixed at two dollars per kilowatt, two cents of a dollar, meaning 0.02 dollars, two cents of a dollar per kilowatt hour. This is fixed. One important point, power is renewable here in Brazil. So it's coming from hydroelectricity down and we have a five-year agreement which is set to expire two and a half years from now. So we're going to be good with power. Diesel is the element that is a little bit less straightforward to explain. First, because we got biofuels on the mix and that That is mandatory by law. Secondly, because our oil company is state-owned and they have what we call a diesel compensation account, which works like a shock absorber during oil crisis. In other words, the diesel costs don't go straight to the consumer as they increase globally. Petrobras absorbs some of that shock initially using what we call the oil compensation account, And then its release is in the market. And that was created because all transport in the country mostly is done by trucks. And trucks are individual entrepreneurs so that they have time to plan to actually send that cost into their customers. So we're going to revert back to you on the percentage of diesel in our cost with that knowledge.
Thank you. This concludes the question and answer section. I am returning to our CEO, Ana Cabral, for her final remarks.
Well, I want to thank you, all of you, and, in fact, everyone watching us for the trust. We have gone through 2025, which was one of the most volatile years in lithium, delivering exactly as we said we were delivering, delivering resilience, operations, demonstrating operational excellence, and executing to plan. We already started 26 on a fantastic note because of what we've learned in 2025 as far as becoming more and more and more resilient. So that's the effort, the collective effort of our management team, of our workers, of the team here in Valle do Jequichinhoa, essentially working like what we call racing horses. We lowered the flap, we focused on our lane, and we raced our own race without looking to the sides, focusing on the target. And that's how we've been running this business, and this is why we achieved these results. So once again, I want to thank on behalf of our management-operated shareholders here that work at the company and control the company, we want to thank all of our outside shareholders and reiterate, our interests cannot be further aligned. There isn't another company in the sector that's management owned, management operated, where employees are shareholders. So for all of you watching, we're in this together, and I want to thank you for staying our shareholders because we crossed 2025 and we are incredibly well positioned to deliver stellar 2026.
Thank you. Thus, we conclude the fourth quarter of 2025 conference call of Sigma Lithium. For further information and details of the company, please visit the company's website, www.SigmaLithiumResources.com. You can disconnect now.