E3 Lithium Limited (ETL.V) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our Q1 update webinar here at E3. Sort of some housekeeping bits. I'd like to remind everyone that we are recording this conference call and the recording will be available on the website when we're finished. [Operator Instructions] And so before we get started, I'll just -- one motherhood bit to refer to the cautionary notes and forward-looking statements that are on Page 2 of the presentation that we'll be going through today. And these describe the information and outline the risk factors and assumptions that are relevant to the discussion today. So with that, I will turn you over to Chris Doornbos, the CEO of E3 to walk you through the deck.

Excellent. Thank you, everybody, for joining today, and I apologize for the technical difficulties. I just had a computer reboot last minute, which always happens when they're trying to go live. Excellent. So for those of you new to the story, welcome for those shareholders and interested parties who are very familiar with E3. Welcome back. It's very exciting time for E3 in terms of what we're developing internally. We thought it was a good time to update the market on some of the advancements that we've been making across the project. And obviously, talk a little bit about what's going on broadly and how that impacts what we're doing on a day-to-day basis as well. So just to get into the story, obviously, some forward-looking statements. These are available on our website. So for the people new to the story, E3 is developing a lithium project based in Alberta, our head offices in Calgary. Our project is just north of Calgary. Our Clearwater Project demonstration and pilot facility is about an hour drive from our office, and the project itself starts just north of a town called [indiscernible]. So very proximal to where we are today. This is a historic act for them. It was discovered in 1947 by Imperial Oil. They discovered it for oil. It has been producing since the 40s, in the Clearwater area since the 60s. It's pretty much out of oil. So the fundamental thesis for E3 and what we're building here is a repurposing of a historic aquifer and converting it from an oil producer into a lithium producer. And there's lots of advantages that, that comes with, including well-known infrastructure and reservoir, skill sets, local workforce, infrastructure, access to things like Power Road. Now I'll take you through a little bit of that as well today. But looking at the highlights of what we've developed, the company has been around since 2016. We started really developing this project in 2017. So 8 years or so of development that has led us to the completion of our pre-feasibility study last year that booked a reserve of 1.1 million tonne LCEs or Lithium Carbon Equivalent. And we've also piloted one of the first lithium extraction pilots for direct extraction in the world and definitely one of the first Alberta and at this scale. So we've been leading the charge in terms of the development of the lithium industry locally in Alberta. We are working towards our demonstration facility now, and I'll take you through that update. And internally, E3 has been able to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate at our facility. So we have our own development facility in Calgary. It's out near the University of Calgary. And that group initially started developing our DLE technology and is now focused on the broad scale. So taking the lithium chloride that we produce out of the DLE and converting it to lithium carbonate at battery grade. And so we now have a full suite of expertise and equipment in-house to do all that, and that has been dovetailing in with the demonstration facility. And I'll talk a little bit more about that fulsomely as we go through the project. And obviously, this is a made in Canada story. One of the big advantages that E3 has is that we will produce a battery-grade lithium salt at our facility in Alberta. That is not the case for the majority of lithium today. The majority of lithium is produced across the world and 70% to 80% of it is shipped to China for processing into battery-grade products. And they're very good at it and have become the leaders. There's obviously a big move to try to get a local supply and that local supply requires you to not just do the raw material extraction, but also produce the battery products. And I'll talk a little bit about the executive order that came out last night from the United States and how that dovetails into that as well. I'm going to summarize this at the end. This is our new slide deck. We just published this last week, a lot of work that Rob and [ Alexie ] have been doing at the company to get this out. And there's a lot of new information in it. So I do suggest for those who are familiar with the story, to take the time to read through it. We have updated it significantly, and we'll sort of summarize it as we go. But this really truly outlines what the critical advantages to E3 are. Before I get into the specifics of the story and then the update on where we're at with everything, one of the big things I wanted to just focus on and just to intro the sort of macro conversation because I think it's very topical right now. It's a very interesting time to be working in this industry and interesting time in general given what's going on. So I think it's an important aspect to touch on leading into it. And I think that there's probably a lot of Canadians right now, there's probably a lot of Canadians on the call and potentially some folks in the United States and Europe as well listening in. But I think every -- most Canadians will agree that there's some frustration and I certainly feel it as well towards what's happening in the global trade. And I think that I wanted to sort of bring that up today and talk about it as it relates to E3 because we -- what we're seeing now is that there's -- while there's a lot of frustration, it's caused by a lot of noise coming from the administration. But I think separating that from fact of what things are actually happening and facts are things like actual policies that are being developed are really important to discern what's actually going to come into the future. And obviously, it helps us predict where we need to go and how we're going to grow our business, but I think it's also of interest to our shareholders who would be looking at this as well in terms of what and where the product might go and the value of it. And so just talking a bit broadly. In November or so, we had a webinar that I -- we were talking about the newly elected administration and where we sort of saw some changes that might be coming? And I think one of the predictions that I made was that you're going to see less funding of projects and incentives that way and more moving towards an incentive price. So fixing the price paradox that we have right now and incentivizing that price to develop -- to get projects developed. And so prior to the inauguration, we had a couple of trips planned out in the United States, one for the inauguration where I met with [ Premier Smith ], and I'll talk about that a little bit later on in the presentation. We're also there in New York at a trade mission on February 2 and then back in Washington on April 2. And it's been interesting that I've been in the United States for both tariff days. What it's enabled me to do is have a front row seat to what's actually happening down there and some of the conversations that are live, especially when we were in Washington. And I think some of the big things that I've gleaned from that are that you have to really focus on what policies are coming out, and the general thematic there is growing a local supply chain. And prior to this administration, that has been the overarching thematic of what E3 and has been working on towards with other companies in Canada is this pan-North American development of a robust critical mineral supply chain. And that started really in the Trump administration -- the first Trump administration, and it was signed in 2020 talking about the development of a pan-North American critical mineral supply chain and Canada is part in that. And that is carried through into the Biden administration where a lot of funding was announced in the United States and even funding into some Canadian projects through the Department of Defense to some of our peers. And I think that, that overarching thematic was there from a national security, energy security perspective. The world -- the North American world needed to develop its own supply chain. There's been a lot of talk in Canada about cradle-to-grave, Champagne would say something like that, building the battery ecosystem, cradle-to-grave. So that sort of philosophy has been around for a very long time. And I think what you're seeing now with the policies that are coming out is that same thematic come through. So 2 particular executive orders in the United States that I think gleam into what's actually going to happen. One was the executive order on Critical Minerals 3 weeks ago talking about both incentivized pricing but also funding. So my prediction was half right. They are still looking at funding mechanisms to get critical minerals production off the ground. And so that was very interesting, and we've talked to some people at the Department of Energy, and they were saying that they provided lists to the administration of all the U.S. projects, but they are also talking about Canadian projects in that conversation as well. And I would note that as far as we understand it, the Canadian projects who are funded by the United States are still receiving the capital that the grant that they've received is outlining. So they're still getting paid. And then you look at the one that dropped last night. So hot off the press was an executive and we're still digesting it. So I wouldn't say that I'm fully up to speed with it because it just came up late last night. But what it is, it's talking about conducting investigations on trade practices for critical minerals and how the United States can best position itself. And it did talk about partnering with other nations. It talked about what it needs to do on the pricing side of things to price manipulation from foreign actors. And that's definitely not Canada as a foreign actor in that scenario because we don't produce enough lithium to have any control on the pricing. So I think that there is that movement towards shoring up a local supply chain. When you look at the supply-demand fundamentals for the United States, 2030 demand is 800,000 tonnes of lithium. If you look at the supply side, internal to the United States, the best they can do all projects make it to the end of the road is 400,000 tonnes. And most projects -- not all projects will make it to the end of the road. So you're looking at a at least a 50% supply deficit in the United States. And so they do need other lithium and you're looking at what's happening now and China potentially up to, according to the Wall Street Journal, as high as 145% tariffs on goods right now, and so all of that sort of speaks to what's happening. And I think that's where you really need to focus is what are those policies and what do they mean and less about the sort of noise that surrounds them. And what that really looks like from a market perspective -- actually, before I jump to the market, we'll talk about the Canadian side of things because we are in election cycle. And bringing this home to Canada, there's both the -- both leading parties right now in the polls have a clear mandate towards developing critical minerals projects, both from a permitting reform perspective, which is less important for E3 given we are in Alberta, but important for Canada as a whole and also funding mechanisms to get critical minerals out of the ground in Canada. And I think what that's really showing is that, that vision for a domestic supply chain is shared by both of the leading parties and it's too early to tell who's going to get in. Things can go any direction in an election. But either way, I think you're going to see strong policy towards that. And obviously, we've been working with the current government. And there, we've been providing guidance in terms of our perspective on funding mechanisms and that perspective. What E3 believes would support critical minerals projects in Canada is basically a debt security opportunity so that you're able to go get the project financing as well as potentially some price protection mechanisms. And those 2 things, we suggested about a month before the executive order came out from the United States saying something similar. So I think what that's showing you more than anything is that there's a common understanding of what the mechanisms that are needed to get projects built and operating in North America. And so when you look at then the advantages of E3, which I'm talking about, I think being first to market, or early to market is one of the critical aspects for any project. And I think that's where we're going to stand out. So before I jump into that, though, just a little bit on the market. And I think there's also a bit of a disconnect here with things like our stock price and the lithium price relative to the growth of the market. And therefore, some of the sort of information that the mainstream media is providing on the growth of all these things and the sentiment generally. So these are statistics. I'm not going to go into price predictions into the future. But I just want to talk about the facts today. And the facts are that in the first quarter of 2025, the world bought 29% more EVs year-over-year from 2024, 4.1 million vehicles bought. And that's in a time where people are probably being a little bit more cost conscious. We're still seeing a bigger percentage -- a bigger overall growth -- absolute growth, but then there's also a growth of the actual sales of EVs versus ICEs as well. And then the other side of this is the North American side. Last year, Canada turned on its first major cell factory, is a joint venture with LG. Phase 1 is operating, Phase 2 will operate this year which is the full cell manufacturing. They were just doing cell assembly. Now they'll do the full thing. That's going to be operational very soon, if it's not already. PowerCo, which is Volkswagen is constructing their plant in Canada as well. There's a couple of other on the dockets still come. And then you look at this map on the right, this is the plants that are going to turn on in the United States this year alone, 420 gigawatts of power, 10 plants being built, and most of these are almost operational. And what that's really showing is that the North American supply -- this is a 90% increase in I'd say, battery capacity that has yet to turn on, but it's turning on this year. So what it's showing you is that the U.S. demand and North American demand for lithium is really yet to start. We're just starting to ramp that up now. And this is something we've been talking about for some time because it takes time to build these gigafactories. And to be honest, the batteries manufactured today are coming out of China. Companies like CHL and BYD make great batteries, focusing right now largely on LFP cells. And so the United States and Canada and Western electrification are probably about 10 years behind and we can probably catch up on that adoption curve because there's a lot of innovation that happened starting off and now you're in operations. And so for us, there's probably a bit of skipping of that early stage moving right into some of the building of the factories. And when you look around at the names of the companies that are actually building the batteries, they're generally Japanese and South Korean. And so that's who's building our batteries in North America generally. So focus back to the E3 project. So we are developing -- as our first project and our primary focus of energy and effort today is the Clearwater Project. It has a 1.1 million tonne reserve. We talked about changing some changes from the pre-fees, but the pre-fees we put out in 2024 outlined a 32,000-tonne, hydroxide plant with an NPV of $3.7 billion, and then we have now updated that. One of the other big things -- and I'll talk about that in the next slide. One of the big things that we also did in the last month and a half is we secured the mineral leases from Imperial. This is an agreement that has been signed in 2022, but it has been a long-standing relationship since 2019 on looking at access to some of their freehold land in the Clearwater Project. And that was concluded -- the freehold land was concluded at the end of February. So that now consolidates the Clearwater Project area. So the shape has changed slightly to where we're going to develop for the feasibility study and going forward based on where that land ended up being. You can see the white rectangle in the center. That's our plant -- the approximate location of our plant site. Some of the changes that are hot off the press since our last webinar that I think it's worth spending some time on. First of all, is the change in the scale up capacity. We talked about this in earlier days. When we put out the prefeas, we knew that this was a very likely scenario, but we wanted to demonstrate what the plan will look like. And so what we ended up designing is a 10-train DLE plant that could produce 32,000 tonnes of hydroxide. After that was released, we spent probably about 6 months reviewing all of the information, looking at new data that had come in and also continuing the engineering on -- towards feasibility. And what we decided to do when we looked at the phasing is break it into trains of DLE as the breaking point for size. And so when we talk about this internally, we talk about it as DLE trains. Each train has 30 columns. Those -- each column can produce about roughly, it's a little bit less, but roughly about 100 tonnes a year. So 120 columns, 4 trains, times 30 columns is 120 columns, produces 12,000 tonnes. So it's an easy metric to look at it from that perspective. And so when we scale this up, it makes a really nice break to go 4 trains, 8 trains, 12 trains, and that gets you 12, 24 and 36. We're focused right now on the 12,000 tonnes because that's the first phase. We could easily go from 12,000 tonnes to 36,000 tonnes directly by doing all the 8 trains next or just to do the next 4. That's to be determined, but I think it provides that flexibility, which is really going to come down to a capital question when it comes to financing the construction of the next phase. But right now -- all of the focus right now is on from an engineering perspective and for feasibility is on the 12 train. It will likely be that the feasibility will outline what the value of the full 36 is, but the engineering will be focused on 12. And the real reason why we did this is just to reduce the initial capital risk. So bring that capital number down significantly by building it in phases. It also reduces the amount of engineering required. And that -- when you're building something new and you're doing it with capital that you need to go raise from banks and stuff like that, ultimately, the number one question that you're trying to eliminate and all of the work we're doing right now is to answer this question, and that is how can you reduce the risk on the project? And so this is definitively a huge risk reduction exercise because the engineering is smaller, the capital is smaller. The other piece that we made, which should be that surprising given the market. By 2030, the prediction is that 70% of the consumption of lithium is going to be in carbonate form and 30% will be a hydroxide form. Based on the rise of high-density LFP cells and mid-nickel cathode, both using carbonate. And so from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense that you would switch to a carbonate. It may actually because there's a bigger demand fetch a higher price in the future and it is cheaper for us to make. Our process lends itself to carbonate first. That's how the prefeas was designed. So if you read through it, you would see that we went to a carbonate product, we went -- convert that -- or so we wouldn't crystalize that into a salt. We would convert that into sodium -- or sorry, lithium hydroxide and then convert that into the -- produce that into a salt. So basically, what we've done is we've cut out that last piece of the design. So we're not going to convert in the first plant to hydroxide. We'll keep it as carbonate and then we'll do the cleanup and crystallization to make a crystallized lithium carbonate salt, which is about the product will be sold to battery companies. That also has a significant capital and operating cost reduction to eliminate that piece of the plant and also the reagent that goes into conversion to lithium hydroxide. It simplifies the engineering. And also hydroxide is tricky to handle and can spoil easily. So it also reduces the risk of our final product and the sale of that product in transport. So there's a huge -- all of these things that we did and the announcement we put out in February, we're all focused on reducing that project risk. And what it does, it makes them more advertising for a strategic partner and for your banks to come in and finance it. So this is what the process flow sheet looks like now. And what we're looking at is a series of wells, similar to the previous design, producing into a direct extraction system. These are 30 column trains. The first set of trains, there'll be 4 of them built. That makes a lithium chloride. The lithium chloride then goes through a polishing and purification stage where we remove the last bit of calcium, magnesium and some of the other contaminants. We also reduced the water volume. Basically we concentrate it up. And every stage -- then #4 here, we do the final concentration, which is a big evaporator where we concentrate it by basically just evaporating water off. And all of that water removal, we reuse. So we take the water out and that goes back. We purify and we use it in our extraction process, creating a closed loop system. And then you get a highly concentrated lithium chloride. You add sodium carbonate to it. And if you control the temperature and concentration, you can precipitate lithium carbonate. We've been doing that in-house now for about 6 months. We've announced that we're able to make battery grade that's been verified by third-party analysis. So we have a battery grade lithium carbonate that we can produce in our lab. The reason we did that is because we're going to -- we are built -- we have built and we'll deploy that same equipment out into the demonstration. So we are basically building the conversion system for the demonstration. And what it really demonstrates, I think, broadly is that making a carbonate product is simpler than making a hydroxide product, given the process that we're deploying. And so -- and being able to do it in our lab and confirm that we can make better grade, I think adds a lot of confidence that the process that we've designed is going to do the same for commercial. And then all of that, brine that we've taken lithium goes back in the aquifer. And what this really develops is a closed loop system. And this is very attractive to financiers and to battery companies, especially to car companies. Because we produce potentially some of the greenest lithium out there because we do not have a withdrawal of water from the environment, and we do not dispose of water into the environment. So everything from water perspective is closed loop. It's all contained within the system. We don't create a tailings pile. We don't have a tailings pond. And the other thing is that all of the waste that we generate is sodium chloride water. That is our waste stream. Other than the brine that we've taken the lithium out of that goes back in the aquifer, the only other waste stream we really produce of any volume is sodium chloride water during the conversion process, and that's just saltwater. So that just goes back into the brine as well. So we're able to -- and we can recover some water out of that as well for our process. So we're able to have a very nice uniform system that is closed loop. We also have a very small surface footprint because these are just well pads and a facility. And I think everyone's familiar with the reserves and how this looks from cross section. But just to give a brief overview, this is the Duke aquifer that's about 200 meters thick, it's 165 kilometers long, 45 kilometers wide. It's about 60 cubic kilometers of brine available. It's 19% of Canada's lithium reserves and about 55% of Canada's M&I resources in just the Bashaw district. So this is a significant opportunity to produce battery-grade lithium products into the industry. What that looks like from a surface perspective, this is our schematic of the plant that we released in the pre-feasibility study. This is ever changing as we go through and design this for feasibility, but this is effectively what you're going to see. From the base principles, it's not going to change much, just the layout, but effectively, this is what we're going to build. This is very small. The main part of this is 700 meters by 700 meters in surface area. So it's a very small surface footprint, and we've secured this facility site and I'll just skip ahead. And we announced this last year. And since that, we -- and before that, and since then, we moved very closely with our stakeholders in the area. This is an old gravel pit that is at the end of its life. We worked with the county to now looking to repurpose that. So it's an industrial site. And we're going to continue to use it as industrial site for our plants. So we've not had to disturb new land to build this process facility. It's very well situated. It's directly below a 240 kVA power line. It's about a kilometer off of the main highway on an all-weather 2-lane gravel road, what we call grid roads in Alberta. And it's about 10 or 15 kilometers from Highway 2, which is the 4 lane highway that runs between Calgary and Edmonton, directly from Olds. Olds has a very strong workforce that work in the industry that we can draw people from to operate the facility when we get into commercial operations. That's also where the rail spur is located to ship our product out the door. So this really truly sets us apart. We went out early to get this plant site. We've actually been working on securing this for over a year now. We announced it in November and we're going to be working with our local stakeholders in the area, and we're going to have an open house as well in May to get to know them a bit better. So very excited about the progression of the project on the ground. This is the summary of the PFS economics. So it's on the website, you guys can look through it. It's a fundamental basis for what we're doing. We're obviously changing that a little bit now and when the fees comes out, it will be a slightly different versions of that. I want to take a little bit of time to talk about permitting and regulatory in Alberta. This is one of the big things that I think E3 stands out because of our ability to permit in a system that's well established and fully provincially mandated. So this is the list of all of the permits in general that we will need to get commercial operating. Some of them are for the demonstration project. You see the wells in the facility. Those have both been submitted. And then there's a directive 6551 scheme application. That ties us together. That's for the production test that we plan to run this fall. So that ties our permits together for the demonstration. And then for the Clearwater Project, the big one that work on right now is the D56 facility and the Environmental Protection Enhancement Act, EPEA application. Those go hand in hand, you submit them at the same time. It's not an EIA, just to make that clear. It's still environmental assessment, but it's not an EIA. It's provincially mandated and we have early indication that it is likely will remain outside the EIA framework, both provincially and federally. And I think that's a really important aspect because if that continues to be true, the permitting windows that the Alberta government publishes that you can look at in the public and go see is about 6 to 9 months for these licenses generally to get granted, especially the big ones. We're estimating longer than that, just to be conservative, but we anticipate having this application submitted, hopefully, sometime mid-year and then estimating around a 12-or-so month process to get through the AER, which can be 3 to 6 months longer than they normally take. And I think that's a good conservative estimate for where we think we'll have the permits in hand. And then there's obviously the wells and pipelines that we'll be submitting, which are individual licenses for each one. And then there's a couple of other sort of municipal and minor applications that have to go in as well. And that summarizes everything that we need. So the goal is right now to aim for a mid-2026, fully permitted project. And I think there's -- the benefit for E3 is that we can stand up and point to the proxies that, that actually is happening in Alberta. And hopefully, we'll be able to hold to those time frames. And obviously, we don't control them specifically because the permitting process in Canada is what sets Canada apart as a mining jurisdiction because we have a clear set of regulations that ensure the protection of the environment and how projects get built. So it's a very important piece of what makes Canada stand out as a top-tier mining jurisdiction. And I think it's really important that we go through it. But I think it's just -- the way that they've developed it in Alberta means, it's very streamlined. I've talked about this and I think when we talk about the stakeholders, I think it's really important to outline E3's philosophy. We have a very internally -- we all are Albertans. We all live in this province, a couple of us are from this area and are locals. And from that perspective, we really want to develop a project that ensures that we are good stewards of the land and I think that that's where we're looking at from our viewpoint. And that's why when we look at the water management, I mean, we didn't have to do a zero liquid discharge plant. It does cost a bit more capital to treat our own water and produce it for the process stream that we used for the direct extraction. But we chose to do that because it enables us to have a closed-loop system. It enables us to ensure that we don't have any interaction with freshwater in Alberta, and that's really important to the company. And it will also be something that the regulatory body will care about. And then obviously, our customers care deeply about that sort of stuff in terms of our water use and water consumption. It's one of the main metrics. The other is carbon capture. So Alberta 87% of the grid is natural gas. That's where our power source is, you can't get away from it. But what you can do and what we're looking at is have our own internal power source that we can also use to get heat for the plant, which reduces one of our energy inputs. And then that enables us to have the ability to bolt on carbon sequestration and reduce our carbon footprint. And so that is definitely something that we plan to do. Obviously, the carbon sequestration may not happen day 1. It may be something gets bolted on later, but we always will have the ability to do that. And then at the end of this, all land, and this is the stock standard Alberta way of operating is that we reclaim 100% when we're done. So if you're done a well, you reclaim; if you're completed the facility, you reclaim; and there's bonds you post to ensure that, that happens, but I think it's just being good stewards as well. E3 has been growing its team. We're currently over 30 people focused right now on getting all the right people in place to take on the big task of designing this. At some point in the future, we'll start building up an operations-based team that will look at construction and then later on operation of the plant. So right now, the focus of the team is the design team. And that's probably the majority of the technical people we have on staff between our engineers in the office here and our reservoir folks as well as our engineers and our technicians and our chemists in the lab. All of those are focused on developing this first project from a design perspective. And then we've got a corporate support staff as well, obviously, because we're out there talking to strategics, we're talking to government and that's managed by Brian and me. One of the things that I'm most proud of at E3 is our track record of success. We don't overpromise and underdeliver. We generally under promise and over deliver. It can be hard because you do need to talk as a public company about what you're doing more so than you would if you're a private company. So you do have to sort of make commitments and stand up and say we will do this. And so for us, I think it's been really important that we've been able to accomplish our goals. And when you look at the history of us and if you were to track like when Chris said we're going to do something and then doing it, there's probably over 90% hit rate on that stuff because we are very conscious of it. And I think that's really important for our stakeholders, and specifically our shareholders to know that we commit to doing things and we get them done. And the big things for this year are the demonstration facility, the submission of our regulatory applications and advancing the feasibility design of the plant. I expect the feasibility to be done in 2026. And our goal right now is to have the feasibility, the permits and the demonstration all completed and ready for project financing conversations. So talking to funds and project financiers about the project, having all of those pieces in place and able to deliver them a fully big package sometime mid-2026. And so -- and that really -- those conversations start early, but we're already having a lot of them, but that's where you start to solidify investment and debt financing for the construction of the plant itself. And so all of again -- as I mentioned earlier, all of that is geared towards derisking. And you get to the point where it's derisked enough that you'll be able to secure debt financing, you'll be able to secure a large investment from groups that are looking to put money into these types of projects. And there are a lot out there that are looking to build on the supply chain and their domestic or Western supply chains. And they're in Europe, they're in Canada, they're in the United States and those conversations still very live. I don't think that anybody tracking the space believes that this is not -- the electrification of transport isn't something that's going to be coming eventually. And I think the pace is going to be variable, and that's going to be the conversation. But as you saw earlier even in sort of uncertain times, we're growing the EV market by almost 30% year-over-year. So it's still coming. And even in Canada and the United States, you're seeing a larger and larger adoption. An interesting stat I like was that Canada sold 3x more electric Mustangs than traditional ICE Mustangs last year. So I thought that was a pretty interesting stat to show that we are still buying electric cars. And then the other piece of this is -- when I look at it -- because I bought another car -- an electric car, and I did a very deep analysis of what car to buy and I published it actually on Substack, and the big allotment of cars that are coming to market are this year. You're going to see 2025 and 2026 probably a doubling of available models -- electric models. And I think -- again, like it's all just -- it's coming, it's building slowly but surely over time, but you are seeing the growth definitively there. A little bit on our capital, and then I'll open it up to questions, just looking at the time here. So we have raised a total of $118 million at E3, $75 million of that has been raised on market, which puts our average buy price at about $1. And then we've also attracted something I'm very proud of because of the amount of work and trust that you have to build in government to get $42 million worth of support funding. The team has been building these relationships as well as myself to demonstrate. Because as I've said before, you don't get to $2 million Alberta Innovates grant unless you get the $100,000 grant. And you don't get the NRCan grant without the Alberta Innovates grant. You don't get the SIF grant without the Alberta Innovates grant. You don't get IRA without [indiscernible]. You know, I mean like they all build on each other and the success in every single one of our grants, the purpose of them we've been able to achieve, and that garners support and trust in the organization to continually build. And what this is really doing and if I ask -- if someone asked me why we get support we do, and we're probably one of the better government-supported critical minerals companies out there, is -- I really think it's twofold. It's -- one is that we are developing a new industry in Alberta. And this -- if we're successful in developing this industry, this is the government's perspective, we unlock the whole thing and this is significant. This is Canada's lithium jurisdiction in Alberta and Saskatchewan. We will produce the majority of Canada's lithium. We will probably produce the same amount of the United States' lithium and potentially a lot of Europe's lithium, just from Western Canada. And so that potential is unlocked with the success of the first project that gets built and so we're at the tip of the spear. And I think that, that garners us a lot of work. And the other thing is just our track record of success. We get the capital, we spend it. We achieve a milestone, we move the project forward when we derisk it. So a little bit on our demonstration facility. This is coming minutely. We've put an announcement out today. Very excited to show you what this equipment is starting to look like. So we posted the valve array, which is somewhat similar to what you see here on the right in our pilot, but much bigger, much more complicated because it's 30 columns, this was 3. And so that is there and then our polishing skid, which is something we didn't build in the first round, a pilot that we're building for the demonstration so that we can get the purified lithium chloride, so we can convert it to lithium carbonate. So that's all on track. We expect it to arrive on site. Sometime at the end of Q2 or early Q3, it should be here. And then it's -- then we have to assemble it and then we have to commission it. We have some brine on surface. So we'll start with commissioning from the brine that's already there, and then we'll start operating it with brine produced live. And I got this question this morning from one of our shareholders, is this going to be live brine flowing through the demonstration and 100%. Once it's up and running, it will be. We're going to have 2 wells operating our production in an injection that's part of Phase 2. And that's performing a reservoir test, and then we'll pull brine off of that and run it through the DLE system and then put it back in. And so what's really doing at this scale is a full demonstration. It is demonstrating every aspect of this project. We're also going to be demonstrating later in the year, Phase 3. And Phase 3 is where you go from collecting data. So the first 2 phases are about collecting data, right? Reservoir data, operational data, sorbent resilient data, all that sort of stuff that we use for feed to feasibility. And then the Phase 3 is really about derisking. So that's one full-sized commercial column operating. We're also going to be operating the evaporators to produce the water, to test the nuances of that and get that information. And so when that single column turns on, and we're anticipating to start building that later in the fall, and then it will operate through the winter, that's going to be 120th scale. So it will be one commercial column of a 120 that we will build for the commercial facility. And as that operates, that really significantly derisks the project. And that's where you start to see those project financiers come in and really provide that support you need. Because they can go it there, they can see it, they can look at the data from it, they can hire an engineering firm to look at it as well, to assess it and to sign off that this is all working as it should. And basically, what that comes back is that the performance metrics that we are estimating and our economics are being demonstrated live in the field. So that sort of takes us to the development time frame. So right now, we're in derisking phase. We're constructing this demo. We're building -- we're looking to produce battery-grade carbonate that we can send that off to start the prequalification work. And then that moves us into project development, which will be later in '25 and into '26. And then we hit final investment decision and hopefully loan and financing to get the project built. And then that starts the sort of path towards within production, which means we're drilling a facility and we're aiming hopefully, if everything goes well and the money comes in when we need it to late '27 early '28 to have this thing sort of brine flowing through it, which moves us pretty quickly. When you look around at what projects can come on stream when, we're definitely in the top list of companies that can build a battery-grade product in the time frame we can, and that's very exciting. And I think that really what sets apart above all else is our speed to market, our time frame that we could potentially get to market given all things that we can do and given realistic time frames. These are not optimistic, like the permitting time frame is realistic. Our engineering time frames are realistic. I think -- and so then when you look at what we're able to do and when we're able to hit it, this should be a goal we will be able to achieve, assuming that we can finance it, which is probably the big last piece that we have to put in place. And it's a lot of effort for Ray, Brian, myself and Rob is working on that side of it. Obviously, there are some other opportunities at E3. We have Saskatchewan, we have Garrington, working on a Garrington updated resource, which will come out shortly. We put up the Saskatchewan on last year, 2.5 million tonnes. So there's lots of opportunity for value-add and growth as E3 builds its portfolios, and we're looking at these assets very closely in terms of what we can do with them in the short term to medium term because we have a lot of development in the Bashaw District. So that provides some opportunities potentially do some partnerships or other things to get these other assets up and running. We've also been working very closely with Pure Lithium. Jason came in to manage that, and he's been doing that in the demonstration. And I think one of the big things that has come out of this is that we made a whole pile of batteries with E3's lithium. We talked about that in a previous announcement. We're going to hopefully get some results out to you guys shortly. This is a very exciting project. [indiscernible] will be coming to Alberta in May to go through a bunch of stuff and look at some of our facilities. I think it's probably her third trip to Alberta. So very excited to have her come and this project continues to go. It's obviously not the first plant we're going to build as a battery plant. We're going to build a lithium carbonate plant first. But I think this is the big future potential for Alberta is building batteries here. And it works really well at the source. That's what the real key advantage here, is that you build it at the source and our lithium chloride makes very good batteries. And so we're going to be talking about that hopefully shortly. All right. So I think that wraps it up, Rob. Hopefully, we have a bit of time for some questions. We've got about 10 minutes left. It's a bit longer than I wanted to, but...

Yes. So let me jump to a few of them. I'll start with sort of a theme that's coming through the e-mail over the last couple of weeks that I know you can touch to is current geopolitical environment with any supply chain risk that E3 might be exposed to and how we're mitigating that?

Yes. I think every company has some inherent supply chain risk. I think we're all facing a little bit more supply chain risk right now, given sort of the trade wars that are going on. And so it is something that E3 is very conscious of -- prior to the last couple of months, something we were conscious of. So it's not something new, it's something that we've been planning for. One of the key reasons why -- like E3 and our philosophy right now is to design and own, more specifically the design of our facility and build it to be optimized for multiple different companies, sorbents. And the rationale for that is that I don't believe, and we're proving that, that you need to do a partnership deal with the technology provider to get access to certain pieces of technology. And we've come to this conclusion because we also developed our own sorbent. We still have development ongoing of that sorbent and our decision in 2022 to switch to a commercially available sorbent was simply that we didn't want to have to build the sorbent manufacturing facility before we built a lithium manufacturing facility. And so again, it was like a derisking exercise to ensure that we got to the right path here. But because of that, because of the understanding we had about how these systems work, we set out to work with engineering firms and vendors of sorbent. And so we weren't necessarily going to technology companies. And while we have tested a bunch of them, what we've realized is that we can -- the system and process optimization is best only in house. So we have process engineers, we have our team in the lab. They do all of our optimization testing. And whenever we're looking at a sorbent, it comes to our lab in Calgary. So every single sorbent that we tested, we have tested. So the vendor sometimes tests the sorbent before you provide some preliminary results, and then they ship as a whole pile of it, and we do that testing in-house. We have a mock little unit that is similar to the commercial system in terms of a multicolumn. We call it a simulated moving bed, which provides basically a similar sort of array that the 30 column will have. And so we put in there, and we do a bunch of testing and we get the results, and we understand the performance metrics one against the other. And what that's going to enable us to do and then that will follow through the demonstration. So the demonstration will have that same 30 column system, we'll put sorbents in and we'll be able to test how those operate. And what that's going to be able to do is help us when we go to commercial tender for all of the different materials that it will be an RFP process for the sorbent and the design will be RFP for the vessels and the valves and the piping, but it won't be to a company to say, design and build this system for me. And I think that, that significantly reduces the supply chain risk. There are sorbents that come out of China today, there are sorbents that come out of North America, there are sorbents that come out of Europe. And so you can go to tender and get access to those -- basically buy by the tonne. The other thing is that you're starting to see the major chemical companies make these materials. And I think that's going to be the ultimate game changers that they're going to be manufactured by big companies that make similar products because these are -- these type of sorbent resin materials are used for multiple different metal in water extraction processes. And so this is just a lithium specific one. But if you have water soft in your house, you have a calcium specific one, but the fundamental principles are the same. So as these big major chemical companies start to offer some of these materials as part of their suite of sorbents and resins, that is a game changer because now you're just going to one of them and you're ordering your kind of material you need and it gets delivered on the date and you put it in your tanks. So hopefully, that answers that question.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. For this next one, I'm going to combine a number of questions that came through to the chats. Hopefully, the participants can see that. I've blended them together. But it's been a repeat question in terms of our cash management with the funds and the grants available to us with an add-on there is, are there any additional grants that can be sourced at this time. And let me just finish Chris with sort of extended answer, and you've already touched a bit of it during the -- during your presentation on the strategic partners, but sort of long-term financing objectives for the larger commercial project?

Okay. So at the end of the year, E3 finished about $18 million in the bank. 1.5 years before that, we raised a total of about $28 million. So we're generally fairly good stewards of capital. We are working towards a demonstration facility and drilling some wells. And so the equipment is mostly paid for now and it's going to show up here, as I mentioned, into Q2, early Q3. We're going to turn that on, we're going to get it operating. In terms of like the bigger capital needs and where we're going to go, obviously, to build a facility, we're going to have to bring capital into the company. And we are active, I see a question on here about how are we active in the strategic partner and all of that sort of stuff. And I think it all ties together. Because last year, E3 developed a strategy on our project financing and our strategic partner and are now implementing that strategy. And what it effectively entails is first early conversations with potential strategics and with funding organizations. It's like the EDC and EXIM Bank to governments to banks and the full spectrum from a financing perspective and then from a strategic partner, building relationships, demonstrating again, like, "Hey, look, we're going to do this." And then a year later, "Hey, we did it, and here's the results." And so we have very strong relationships with a significant amount of industry players. In Washington a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting down with a couple of the CEOs of lithium companies like -- the industry is aware of E3. They know what we're doing, they understand and trust the development process that we're going down. So that was Phase 1. And then Phase 2 is sort of putting a metal to the road a little bit and going out and looking for strategic partner and that process has started and I can't really get too far into the details of that. But I think that these processes take a long time and you start early, and we're starting early. I think a large part of the big funding, so we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars on a debt financing package that we'll need, that will be post demonstration. So they want to see that derisking excess. That's why it's so important for us to get it done. But we don't need that today. We need it after the demonstration. So it's all fine in terms of our timing. But you have those conversations now and start building the who's interested sort of story as you go. And then looking at the strategy has always been to source non-dilutive capital as often as we can from various different sources, and that includes the grant funding that we've received. It also includes how we might see an investment come into the E3. Maybe it's a project level or something like that or an option payment to get into an interest in the project. Because I think that E3 sees -- like when you look at our expansion potential, and it's hard to talk about, because you get -- you can cross that with compliance. But if you look at our ability, you just look at the square of Clearwater and then you look at what else is in Bashaw alone, that should give you a proxy to what the size of opportunity that we have here. So this is not a one-and-done plant. This is multiple plants over the course of a decade or so, maybe even a bit longer in developing that to potentially be one of the bigger lithium producers globally. That's our potential and how we realize that potential is by getting the first one built. So we got to get this first 12,000 tonne plant build. But because we have that scale potential, we're more willing to give up a piece of the first project to ensure that it gets built and to solidify this industry and then E3 with that revenue and with that validation can go off and build its own projects. And so I think when you look at that perspective, we're pretty open, therefore, to the types of structure of arrangement that we could work with to bring capital and strategic and financing into the company because we can give away a piece of the project without giving away the company because we're not a one-and-done project. So hopefully, that answers that philosophically. I can't get into the details, but we're very active. It's a big part of what we're all working on right now, is building that towards when we do need capital in the future that we have those partners, and we have that -- those sources available.

Okay. Those are sort of the main themes on it. So maybe right before you sign off, Chris, I'll sort of answer a question myself and it related to current share price and what we're thinking of doing about it. So yes, I've been pretty active in sourcing different social media and public relations type of platforms that we're going to use. So you will see us be a little bit more active going forward to make sure our message is getting out there across a larger range of different channels.

Yes. And I think the other big thing that Rob has brought in to do and he's been in the seat now for 6 or 7 weeks, is to grow the institutional following in base. And I think that's a big part of the energy and effort that he's putting in and will continue to put in. And it's sort of gradually and suddenly with institutions. They're not buying with them and then they all buy lithium all at the same time. And every time you see these big stock price swings, and you've seen it twice now with E3, generally, and this is a generalization, when that happens, it's sort of like, if it's a market-driven thing, it's everybody is sort of piling in all at the same time. But how you strategize around that, you sort of know that, that's how they operate is that you get them all in a little bit. So you work with them very closely to get them to understand the story and the potential. And hopefully, you see them start to take small pieces. And then they watch you a lot more closely, they're on your team. And so you sort of build those reputation with these funds that are investing in. The Canadian mining industry investment has suffered as of late, and I think that there's going to be a revival of that because the policies that you're going to see change. There's going to be a shift and you've already seen it with the current administration in Canada, and you're going to see it, I think, continue even louder regardless of who gets in, that there's sort of been this like mining is bad, and I think that, that is going way very, very quickly. And it has already started to go away. They're talking about permitting reform to get mines built faster coming from the current government. And so I think that you're going to see and they're talking still both -- both parties are talking about permitting reform, talking about building projects, how are we funding projects, let's get these things going. And I think that, that -- seeing that, that you need our philosophy to the government has been, you need wins on the board, and that's what the government needs to focus on. You don't need to focus on sort of like flow through is great for junior companies, and it really helps your funding in those early days. What you also need is a mechanism at the end which is why we suggested security debt financing that the mines see themselves get to that final line and get producing because that's where the shareholders make their returns. And those returns come back into the market because people are excited about the industry. And I think you're going to see more and more of that with the policies they're bringing in. They're going to see projects like E3s become successful and that love of the industry is going to come back very, very strong. And so that's sort of like right now, it is all about just getting the face time. And I think that's where Rob has been very effective.

Thanks, Chris. If we're going to wrap it up, I'll let you know that, again, that this has been recorded. So we will post this on our website. A few weeks from now, we should be getting out our year-end financials. So that will be a next update from us and please do reach out from the -- to the [email protected] site that I can get messages to you, and I'll endeavor to get back to anyone that sends me a question or pick up the phone and keep you guys informed what we're doing.

Awesome. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining today.