管理層發言
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Sigma Lithium 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. If you require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero. A recording of this webcast will be available on the company's website. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anna Hartley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
I would like to welcome you to our second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today is Ana Cabral, Co-Chair and CEO of Sigma Lithium; and Felipe Peres, CFO of Sigma Lithium. I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during this call, including any production guidance, expected company performance, updates on mining operations, the timing of our projects and market conditions, may be considered forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements in our presentation and press release, which are available on the Sigma Lithium website. I will now be turning the call to Ana Cabral.
Thank you, Anna. I'm now going to introduce you to Sigma Lithium's Second Quarter of 2026 Earnings Presentation. Without further ado, I'll go to the next slide. During this quarter, we continue to deliver on execution excellence, cost control and operational resilience, driving value creation for our shareholders. Sigma is a large-scale, low-cost and traceable producer of lithium materials. We do not have tailings dams. We do not use drinking water. We do not use hazardous chemicals. We do not use dirty energy. One hundred percent of our energy is renewable, and we have not had an accident in over 1,100 days. At the bottom, there are three pictures that illustrate that. Pictures are more than a thousand words. We uphold at Sigma the highest global mining standards. When you look at the left, you see our mining waste rock piles. We actively regenerate them by planting saplings so they are integrated into the environment. That's aligned with the highest G7 standards. When you look at other G7 jurisdictions with high standards, you can see the same rehabilitated waste rock piles adjacent to the environment. Again, this is a high-standard waste rock pile. We go above and beyond what others do. Some other operations elsewhere have tailings dams. Again, very high standard, but we don't have any of that. That's why we believe we can generate significant operational efficiency because we can deliver our material and maintain traceability and sustainability. For example, we have managed to upgrade our mining operations in record time. Moreover, we have managed to achieve record recoveries in our Cleantech industrial processing plant. On this slide, you can see the images of our waste rock piles fully rehabilitated and regenerated with vegetation saplings. Once these piles come to their final shape for their intended use, that's the work we do. We do artificial germination and they become integrated into the landscape. One can only see the area as waste piles because of the terracing. In front of them, there's our new fleet. Again, a picture is a thousand words. Now, without further ado, I'm going into the financial highlights of the second quarter of 2026. We've had an incredible quarter. Reliable and disciplined execution enabled us to surpass all of our targets. We delivered strong cash flow, generating $27 million in cash from operations during the first half of the year. We also were able to generate high margins as a result of disciplined cost control. We maintained our high gross margin at 60%, and we delivered a record 47% EBITDA margin, the highest in our history. That's a result of disciplined cost control, lower costs and increased production volumes. We delivered 35,400 tonnes of lithium oxide concentrate this quarter, an increase of 52% over the first quarter. As a result, we also had another record, the highest net revenues in our history at $55 million this quarter. Again, discipline. We remain a low-cost leader, decreasing costs even further: $401 per tonne plant gate, $452 per tonne CIF, $668 per tonne all-in cash costs. That gives us tremendous resilience, an entrenched competitive advantage and an ability to be a cash machine. At current price levels, we're well into excess return territory. Due to our commercial flexibility, we were able to realize strong net lithium prices for SC5, which demonstrates how our clients are supportive and are fans of our high-purity product: $2,089. This page illustrates further what our low-cost stewardship does for us — it delivers strong cash flow and high profitability. It is all about the costs. We increased production by 52%. Then as a result of the low cost, we are able to deliver the margins we referred to before. More importantly, the revenues of $97 million for the first half of the year. All of it enabled us to continue to repay debt in a very disciplined approach to our balance sheet. We managed to repay 25% of our debt over the last year, total debt. Over the last two years, we deleveraged the balance sheet by half; we repaid 43% of our total debt. We're now at probably the lowest levels of debt ever in our history. This enables us to continue to execute on our significant near-term growth strategy. By year-end 2027, without building a second plant, we will be able to increase production capacity by almost two times. Once we build two additional plants, we will be able to increase production capacity by 2.5x from 2027 to 830,000 tonnes. That capacity will be installed by the end of 2028. That's the result of two additional plants. We decided to embark on this growth strategy to take full advantage of our efficiency and the very favorable lithium markets. This slide illustrates further our cost leadership. This is the result of financial discipline and precision in growth strategy and CapEx. Again, a page with numbers that are a thousand words. We delivered a decrease of double digits across the board. Plant gate and CIF costs decreased over 30%. Now all-in sustaining costs are back to normal, which were at the third quarter of 2025, which means that we still can decrease them a bit further as we increase volumes and normalize production. Our all-in sustaining cost was $668 per tonne in the second quarter. Again, that puts us well into excess return territory at current lithium prices. Here is an additional illustration of that. If we compare net prices — meaning price adjusted to 5% grade — we are delivering against CIF Asia approximately $1,400 per tonne of cash profit. Now when you compare that with our competitors, you can see that we're almost neutral to lithium prices, almost as if we are the floor. That cost discipline, which enabled us to execute on our strategy so successfully, has now been reflected into our cost guidance. We are now adjusting our updated guidance and lowering it to reflect the executed delivered all-in sustaining cash costs in the second quarter. So that comes down to $668 a tonne for the year of 2026. Therefore, we are on track to deliver on the year 2027 guidance of $620 all-in cash cost per tonne as we continue to increase production volumes. This page illustrates how we have been able to deliver some of the lowest costs in our industry while at the same time maintaining one of the world's best safety records for employees. Over 101,000 days have gone by and our employees go back home to their families safely. This is a result of our employee engagement and our strict safety processes. Everyone feels that they are responsible for their own safety and their colleagues' safety. Our TRIFR is zero. That's another zero, again demonstrating our execution excellence. This next page illustrates how we've been able to achieve operational efficiency and maintain our high margins across the board. Gross margins stayed at 60%, EBITDA margins were an all-time record of 47%, operating margins remained at 32%, and we maintained profitability with a positive net margin. Therefore, here is an illustration of our debt reduction enabled by financial discipline. We repaid 25% of total debt in the last year, 43% of our total debt over the last two years. When it all comes together, one can see how our strong performance translates into cash and fully converts, making our operations self-sustaining and resilient. We sell everything, not only the high grade, but also our tailings, which are dry stacked. That adds quite a lot to our cash generation, as you can see on this page. We actually had, at June 30, end of second quarter, a cash position that was enhanced by a sale of lithium materials high grade. In addition to that, we've also been able to sell current inventory of lithium materials of varying grades, mostly high grade. In other words, we are going to be 100% circular very soon and just sell everything that our plant generates. From high grade to low grade, we have a very wide spectrum of high-purity products that just increase our resilience and help us be fully sustainable. Without further ado, I'm going to start on our operational highlights and our production and capacity outlook, especially in light of the recent events. We have surpassed our high-grade lithium oxide production, and we're demonstrating significant operational efficiency. Our mining ramp-up surpassed guidance, and we delivered 35,000 tonnes in the second quarter 2026. That was an increase of 6% over guidance. We are on track to deliver on our previous guidance. We just pushed it forward by three months. We are in a very good position to negotiate an agreement with the state of Minas Gerais, and we have cleared most of our main points. As a result, we're going to execute as planned our additional fleet upgrade and deploy 75-ton trucks and 98-ton excavators to our site in order to increase haulage capacity. That's how confident we are that we're going to be able to successfully advance into primarizing our mining operation and continuing to ramp up our production. So when you look at it as a whole, a year later, the conclusion is that the increase in safety and the increase in operational efficiency fully validated the decision to primarize our mine. We have all of our operations under full control. And we are deploying haulage and excavators that significantly increase our productivity and our capabilities to increase geometry of the mine as we will discuss further into this section. Here is a detailed discussion of our continued execution of the fleet upgrade that is going to take place in the third quarter of 2026. We delivered on our first half targets, increasing the scale and the haulage capacity by 40%. So we're continuing on the upgrade by now bringing the 98-ton excavators, replacing some of the 75-ton excavators and bringing in 75-ton trucks to add to the fleet of 60-ton trucks. Now that the geometry is wider, we actually have more flexibility at the waste removal areas. So this is the second stage of deployment of large equipment. Larger machinery means more productivity. So it enables us to maintain our low cash cost operating position. Therefore, it increases our resilience as a company and helps us navigate throughout the cycles. This slide illustrates visually how the work we've been conducting for the last couple of months of reassessing the geometry has paid off. We designed a new pit shell that enabled the company to access a large amount of high-grade spodumene ore. We constructed ramps and brought in larger trucks, so we are able to unlock this larger block of material that will feed our industrial plant. The results are on the page quantified. The size of the block is 83% larger than the block we were able to access with the old design. At 1.1 million tonnes of fresh ore, we can produce 200,000 tonnes of lithium oxide concentrate. So all in, an 83% increase in raw material delivers almost a 100% increase in oxide concentrate production. Lastly, this ore is very high grade, 1.4% fresh rock. This is how we are able to operate throughout the remaining months in full capacity, meaning using the main circuit and the reprocessing circuit because of the amount of high-grade fresh ore being delivered to the plant. This slide is basically to outline how our production expansion plans remain on track. Our forecasts were pushed forward by just three months. So the production forecast with only Plant 1 for the 12 months forward remains at 240,000 tonnes of high-grade lithium concentrate per year. By the end of 2027, including all circuits that the first plant has, and that includes the reprocessing circuit, our production forecast is at 330,000 tonnes per year. That's a result of the plant recovery of 70% in the main circuit and a fully working reprocessing circuit for the other material. As it comes to construction, we plan to have an installed capacity at the end of 2027 once we complete the construction of the second plant of 580,000 tonnes of high-grade lithium concentrate per year. That incorporates the first plant and its reprocessing circuit capacity. Therefore, we plan to greenlight Plant 2 at the beginning of January. We have flexibility on how to execute our construction of plants. There is a scenario where we could greenlight both Plant 2 and Plant 3 at the same time at the beginning of 2027 in January. But if we don't, we would build them sequentially. So by the end of 2028, we expect to have 830,000 tonnes of installed capacity for production. With that kind of capacity and with our current plant, the cash flow forecast — and again, we're just estimating Plant 1, which is already built — varies according to current price ranges estimated by Wall Street research analysts. So at the low end of the range at $1,500 per tonne, we could be generating cash flows that would go from $166 million if you take into account 12 months forward or $360 million once we contemplate production during 2027. If the prices go to $2,500 per tonne, we would be looking at cash flows that would be $235 million if we just stay on the production for 12 months forward, but once we deliver the 2027 production, which again can be done with just one plant, we reach $0.5 billion in cash flow. This is a direct result of our low-cost position, high margins and efficiency. In other words, we do not need a lot of volume to generate quite a substantial amount of cash. We're now going to make our final remarks and the conclusion of our second quarter 2026 earnings presentation. Sigma Lithium plans to deliver substantial returns to shareholders this year in 2026 and beyond because of our significant growth profile of production within the next 12 months. We plan also to significantly increase incremental industrial capacity. We're going to resume construction of Plant 2 and potentially build Plant 3 at the same time, given that we are in a very robust lithium market environment; this is the time to build and to build at scale. More importantly, we have proven execution capabilities in a very experienced team. We have built our first plant in record time and commissioned it even faster. Just recently, we primarized and automated our entire mining operations, upgrading the fleet once and now we're upgrading it again to increase haulage capacity. All of that was done while maintaining the world record in employee safety with over 1,100 days without accidents. Our operational resilience is based on these two pillars: financial discipline regarding when to deploy CapEx for growth — and the timing is now — but more importantly, on relying on and monetizing our structural low-cost advantages to convert that into cash flow, which basically sustains the company throughout all lithium markets. Our sector is going through a unique moment in growth. We are enabled by AI instead of being disrupted by AI. The demand growth from battery storage is, in fact, driving global lithium demand. AI data centers and energy security require battery storage. Battery storage requires lithium, and therefore, lithium demand is set for a decades-long growth period. The bar charts below demonstrate that if you compare 2025 year-end demand with 2026 expected lithium demand in lithium carbonate equivalent, we have a growth of 900,000 tonnes of LCE. If that is translated into our product, lithium oxide, you multiply by approximately eight. So that is approximately 7 million tonnes of lithium oxide concentrate to supply this year's demand projections. If we forward that almost another decade to 2035, global demand is expected to be 5 million tonnes of LCE. If one were to translate that into lithium oxide concentrate product, that would be approximately 40 million tonnes of production. In other words, that's multiple sizes of Sigma. At that level, at 800,000 tonnes per year expected in 2028, which is going to be our expected production with three plants, we will be supplying a fraction of global expected demand, approximately 2% only. That is the scale of the growth of the sector, and that is a demonstration of how companies need to be well positioned to deliver growth with low CapEx fast, which is precisely what we plan to do by 2028. Our share price, if you look at the left, has been behaving very much in line with the sector. And that is actually a piece of good news. Again, the demand growth and the fundamentals are far too strong and rise above the short-term volatility and noise. Our company has very strong operational and financial performance fundamentals, and that is the foundation of our value. Here, our low cost and our strong cash generation are those foundations. Therefore, we're clearly positioned for a re-rating because at an expected 75,000 tonnes of LCE equivalent of production capacity constructed by the end of next year, we are very much in line with some of our peers, which have market caps double our market cap. So that is what we expect to happen over the course of the year: a significant re-rating. And now we move on to the Q&A. Thank you very much for joining us today.
分析師問答
Our first three questions come from Joel Jackson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your questions.
First, what was your exact production in Q2 of normal lithium concentrate and exact production in Q2 of the lower grade concentrate/fines/tailings? Two, you generated $30 million of cash flow in Q2. If the mine does not restart for the rest of Q3, what is your expected cash flow or burn? Three, what are the best and worst-case scenarios for mine restart? And when it restarts, how many months will it take Sigma to ramp it to full grade lithium concentrate production?
Joe, it's great to hear from you. Let me just do the following: let me put the page of the presentation on the screen so that I can better answer your question. The entire production for the quarter was high-grade material. We've done that so that we would highlight that the plant and the mine have gone back to a fully ramped position of production of ore. So that's the first part of your question. The lower-grade material that we produced during the second quarter wasn't sold, and it's going to be sold now. When you look at the cash flow projections, this number here, the $32 million does include the low-grade material that was produced during the second quarter, and we deliberately did not sell it in order to have a clean quarter of production and sales. So that answers the first part of your question. Then the second part of your question regarding the fact that we generated $13 million of cash flow in Q2 — well, it was more if you look at the accounting, but then you have the net inflows given that $27 million was sold but did not convert into cash, right? How much do we expect to generate into Q3? Well, that's the exact $27 million that didn't convert into cash that was sold and is going to be added to the material that was produced that was not high grade and that will be sold. So for the third quarter, just to begin with, as of today, we have approximately $60 million to receive in cash flow. That's the value in blue, $32 million and the value in dashed green. Best and worst case for mine restarts: best case would be to restart next week. Worst case restart, I think it would take about two weeks. The dialogue is going quite well. Conversations have been very constructive. But given the nature of the notifications we received and given the fact that these are mostly false accusations executed by local inspectors, we are being quite strict when it comes to the terms of the agreement because we want to be cleared of any wrongdoing. It won't be just a settlement. We would like to be fully cleared given that the accusations are false. And as we have a significant amount of cash flow to come into Q3, we are obviously negotiating from a position of strictness. After all, our reputation is on the line.
Our next three questions come from an analyst. Please go ahead with your questions.
First, regarding the two offtake prepayments, the $96 million associated with the 70,500-ton one-year agreement and the $50 million associated with the 40,000-ton-per-year three-year agreement: could you clarify how much cash Sigma has actually received from each agreement to date? And specifically, has the $50 million been used to repay debt as previously indicated? Two, regarding the temporary suspension related to the TAC negotiations, could you please clarify exactly which operations have been suspended? Is the suspension limited to mining activities? Or have both mining and processing operations been suspended? Secondly, given that a production suspension is clearly a material operational event for the company, why wasn't the market and shareholders informed immediately when the suspension occurred? Could you explain the company's reasoning behind the timing of the disclosure? Three, during the current production suspension, are you still able to process and ship lithium middlings? How much lithium middlings did the company ship in the last quarter? And how much are you planning to ship this quarter? Also, have you signed any additional sales or offtake agreements for lithium middlings?
That's a lot to unpack, so let me take your question in pieces. First, regarding the offtake agreement for $96 million: we have received $60 million to date. There are additional amounts of that payment to be received in the third quarter. So out of the $96 million, we have received $60 million. That's out of the 70,500-ton offtake agreement. Then regarding the second offtake regarding 40,000 tons of material to be shipped over three years, given our exceptional ramp-up, we are increasing the amount of that offtake, and we're currently negotiating that increase. And indeed, when that agreement gets closed — meaning financially closed post-increase — it will be 100% used to repay debt as we announced earlier. In fact, we're going to repay the debt no matter what, most likely by the end of the third quarter. There are a few liquidity alternatives available to us in order to repay that debt; we will either repay it or refinance it with other creditors. The reason is our substantial cash generation position made it clear that we are in a very good position to move forward. The second part of your question, which is related to the TAC, we did disclose that immediately. In fact, it happened while I was on vacation. We put together a press release immediately thereafter as soon as we could make sense of the notifications we received. So that ties back to the rest of your question, meaning, is it limited to mining activities or have both mining and processing operations been suspended? If you read the notifications, it's pretty difficult to say exactly what was supposed to be suspended. So we undertook the initial approach of stopping both operations, mining and industrial. Later, as negotiations progressed, we learned that it was a temporary suspension. But as we sat at the negotiating table from a position of strength, we did not reinitiate industrial operations. They are vertically integrated anyway. So the only thing that we would gain by resuming industrial operations would be to restart the reprocessing circuit. Now we're probably in a position to restart industrial operations, and we will. But we hope to have an overall final conclusion of this by next week. So I think that answers the second part of your question. I'd like to reiterate: in the middle of my vacation in July, we did put out a clear announcement about the TAC and the suspension as soon as we could. During the current production suspension, are we still able to process and ship lithium middlings? Absolutely, and that's what we've been doing. That, in fact, is the source of our resilience. When you look at the third quarter financials, the $32 million and the $27 million reflect just that in addition to high-grade material that had not been sold by the cutoff of June 30 and that hadn't shipped to the port in time to make the sales cutoff of June 30. So when you look at the volume sold of 24,000 tonnes versus the volume produced of 35,000 tonnes, there's still a bit of high-grade material there that was sent to be shipped. The remaining amounts shown are middlings. We don't call it middlings; we call it low-grade high-purity because middlings are materials produced by flotation plants where the spodumene particle is broken. That's why our material carries significant value. In a DMS plant, the spodumene particle isn't broken; the crystal is intact. So it can be easily reprocessed with a 60% recovery into sometimes 4.7% material by our clients. Lastly, you asked whether we had signed any additional sales or offtake agreements for these materials. We don't sell them on an offtake basis. We sell them on a spot basis, and we're going through a very healthy bidding process for these materials. Just to illustrate, we have 300,000 tonnes of material left, and we have a bid for $65 per tonne. And again, as we decided not to sell any fines in the second quarter to have a clean quarter, that will probably be in addition to these two amounts on the screen, the 320 plus 27. We have 300,000 tonnes of fines, high-purity lithium fines at a current bid of $65 per tonne. So very healthy market, very robust demand. I believe I answered all of your questions.
Our next question comes from David Feng from CICC. Please go ahead with your question.
May we know if the new timeline for planned construction of Phase 2 or Phase 3 is more relevant to the mining plan adjustment, funding considerations or any other factors?
Not really. Let me go back to the forecast here. Good things can come out of difficult situations. Last year, when we changed the mine contractor, we started to rely more on our reprocessing circuit at the current industrial plant. That circuit was perfected, adjusted and tested with varying amounts and types of feed. The result was that we learned the plant capacity: the current plant capacity is actually 330,000 tonnes per year once it's fully fed with fresh ore. Why is that? Because both circuits are working at the same time: the main high-grade circuit and the low-grade circuit, which then gets reprocessed and turned into high grade, 5.1%–5.2% concentrate. So with full feed of fresh ore — meaning 160,000 tonnes of fresh ore per month — that plant can actually deliver 330,000 tonnes of material per year. We've known that since December 2024 when we upgraded the plant; if you look at the amount produced in the fourth quarter of 2024, when we solely fed the plant fresh ore, that was the annualized throughput. As we've previously disclosed and discussed, we have not been able to deliver fresh ore at the cadence required ever since because troubles with the old mining contractor began shortly after that, during the first and then the second quarter. By the third quarter we ended up changing contractors and primarizing the mine. So essentially, what we will do is go back to full capacity of the plant by having both the main circuit and the reprocessing circuit at full tilt once the mine delivers fresh ore at full capacity, which is 160,000 tonnes of ore per month. What we've done this quarter is a demonstration of that: we produced 35,000 tonnes of concentrate because we've been feeding fresh ore to the plant.
This concludes our question-and-answer section. Now I am returning the call to our CEO, Ana Cabral, for her final remarks.
Well, I want to thank you all for bearing with us during this presentation. We're very confident in what we're doing. We have a significant growth profile. We've proven that we can execute under pressure, and we have the experience to deal with most issues. More importantly, we can prove — and we have been proving — that we're demonstrating validation of ESG under stress. In other words, our governance and compliance are being tested out there in the open. Our social and environmental credentials and track record withstand attempts to challenge them and withstand scrutiny. Our operational resilience is there. Look how far we've come. No one expected us to do this without raising additional capital. That's the result of our structural low cost and financial discipline. So again, I reiterate what's happening in the market, plus the way this company has been battle-tested positions us incredibly well for what's coming ahead in the second half of the year. Thank you very much for listening.
The second quarter 2026 Conference Call of Sigma Lithium has concluded. For further information, please visit the company's website at www.sigmalithiumresources.com. You may disconnect now, and have a nice day.