E3 Lithium Limited (ETL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thanks for joining E3's 2026 Annual AGM. My name is Jeremy Nichol, I'm part of the Investor Relations team here at E3. We're just going to give people a few minutes to join. While we're doing that, please make sure that your main display here on Zoom matches that as it would on the shareholder certificate just to make sure that, that we can verify you as a shareholder and properly count your vote. Like I said, we'll give people a couple of minutes to join, and we'll get started here shortly. [Operator Instructions]

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining today's AGM. It's a pleasure to be with you all here today. First of all, I'd like to introduce the E3 team that are in the room today. So first of all, a new entrant to the company, Tom Gear to my right, your left, our Chief Operating Officer; Brian Newmarch, who joined last year as our Chief Financial Officer. We've got Jeremy Nichol who you just met, we have got Sarfraz Somani, our Director of Capital Markets, who does all the hard lifting on this stuff, and then we've got Gina Huang, our Controller, who does all of the back-end lifting on the accounting and the administration of the AGM as well, it's been a big lift on her part. So thanks for the team for taking the time to join us today. We'll begin today's meeting with the formality and the official business of the shareholder meeting, after which we'll address. We'll have a short presentation and address any questions. So please hold any questions after the formal meeting. And with that, I would like to today to begin today's meeting, and so I will call today's meeting to order. My name is Christopher Doornbos. I'm the Chair and CEO of E3 Lithium, and I'll be chairing this Annual General Meeting today. The first order of business is to appoint the Secretary for this meeting. I appoint Rory Godinho, our Senior Legal Counsel as Secretary of the meeting. With the consent of the meeting, I would pass the conduct of the meeting to formalities to Mr. Godinho. Are there any objections? Thank you. Over to you, Rory.

Thank you, Chris. The first item of business is the appointment of the scrutineer for this meeting. Paul Bedard, of Odyssey Trust Company registrar and transfer agent for the shares of the company is present and I appoint him as scrutineer. If anyone hasn't registered with the scrutineer, would you please do so? I understand that we are making sure that all the names match on the certificate. So hopefully, those of you who haven't changed your names on the Zoom, have done so. Notice calling this meeting and all proxy related materials were mailed to the shareholders in accordance with the requirements of the bylaws of the corporation and the Business Corporations Act Alberta. I have an affidavit of mailing of Yamana Farkas of Odyssey Trust Company confirming the mailing of proxy related materials on May 15, 2026, which is available for inspection by any shareholder. In light of this, I will dispense calling for the reading of the notice, and we'll file the declaration of mailing with the minutes of this meeting. The scrutineer is advised that no proposed resolutions have had more than 25% of the votes cast against same. And accordingly, unless a poll is requested, all voting at this meeting will be conducted by a show of hands. And for those on Zoom, you can raise your hand on the Zoom of those present in person or represented by proxy or a verbal poll of those present by Zoom. I have the preliminary written report on attendance, which states that there are 35 shareholders represented by proxy, holding 12,197,772 shares. So we have a quorum. The bylaws of the corporation dictate that a quorum shall be at least 2 persons present in person, each being a shareholder entitled to vote at the meeting or a duly appointed proxy or representative of an absent shareholder and representing in aggregate less than 5% of the outstanding shares of the corporation carrying voting rights at the meeting. The notice of meeting has been given as required by the bylaws of the Business Corporations Act Alberta and a quorum being present, I declare this meeting to be duly called and constituted for the transaction of business. The first resolution to be passed is the approval of the minutes of the last Annual General Meeting of the corporation held on July 2, 2025, which have been reviewed by accuracy -- for accuracy by the Chairman of the meeting. I will now table those minutes. Unless a shareholder wishes to have last year's minutes read, we will dispense with the reading of such minutes and the minutes will be taken as read and approved and adopted as presented. The next item of business is to receive the financial statements of the corporation for the financial year ended December 31, 2025, together with the auditors report thereon. May I have a motion that the reading of the financial statements be dispensed with.

I so move.

Is there anyone, any discussion or questions submitted from any registered shareholder or proxy holder? If not I ask for a vote on the motion by a show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand -- would raise their hand on Zoom or say aye all in favor. [Voting]

All those opposed, raise their right hand or say nay. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the appointment of the corporation's auditor for the ensuing year. Management of the corporation recommends that MNP LLP, chartered professional accountants be appointed as auditors for the corporation. May I have a motion appointing the corporation's auditor for the ensuing year.

I move that MNP LLP, chartered Professional Accountants be appointed auditors of the corporation for the ensuing year and that the directors of the corporation be authorized to fix the remuneration paid to the auditors.

Thank you. Is there any discussion or questions submitted from any registered shareholder or a proxy holder. If not, I will ask for a vote on the motion by a show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand or say, yay. [Voting]

Thank you. Will all those opposed raise their right-hand or say nay. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried in MNP LLP chartered professional accountants be appointed as auditor for the corporation for the ensuing year and that the directors be authorized to fix the remuneration to be paid to the auditors. The next item of business is to fix the number of directors. May I have a motion that the number of directors of the corporation be set at 5.

I move the number of directors to be elected at this meeting be fixed to 5.

Is there any discussion or questions submitted from any registered shareholder or proxy holder? If not I ask for a vote on the motion by a show of hands. Will all those in favor, raise their right hand or say yay. [Voting]

Thank you. Will all those apposed raies their right hand say nay. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried and the number of directors be set at 5. The next item of business is the election of directors to the ensuing year. There are 5 directors positions to be filled. Management has nominated Christopher Doornbos, Alexandra Cattelan, Kevin Stashin, Sonya Savage and Tina Craft for election as directors for the ensuing year. All 5 nominees are current -- our presently directors of the corporation as stated information circular dated May 04, 2026, that was sent to shareholders. Five persons have been nominated to fill the directors' positions. A motion that the 5 persons nominated as a single resolution be declared elected would be an order. Therefore, I would just first ask for a motion that the shareholders authorize the election of the 5 nominees by a single resolution. Is there a motion to that effect?

I so move.

Any discussion? If not, I will ask for vote on an motion by a show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand and say, yay? [Voting]

Will all those opposed raise their right hand or say nay. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried and we will nominate 5 directors by single resolution. May I have a motion that Christopher Doornbos, Alexandra Cattelan, Kevin Stashin, Sonya Savage, Tina Craft, each be elected as a director for the coming year until their successors are elected or appointed in accordance with the provisions of the company's bylaws. Is there a motion to that effect?

I so move.

Any discussion? If not, I'll ask for a vote on the motion by show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand or say, yay? [Voting]

Any opposed? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried, I declare the following people elected as directors; Chris Doornbos, Alexandra Cattelan, Kevin Stashin, Sonya Savage and Tina Craft. The next item of business is the approval of the corporation's Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan. I hereby table the approval of the Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan. A copy of the plan is attached as Appendix B to the information circular for this meeting, and the text of the full resolution is set out on Page 30 of the information circular. Does anyone require me to read the resolution in full? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve the company's Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan on the terms of the resolution set out on Page 30 of the information circular. Is there a motion to that effect?

I so move.

Any discussion? If not, I'll ask for a vote on the motion by a show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand and say yay or say yay? [Voting]

Thank you. Will all those opposed raise their right hand or say nay. [Voting]

Thank you. I declare the motion carried by ordinary resolution. The next item of business is the grant of options to insiders under the plan. We require the approval of disinterested shareholders of the corporation authorizing the grant of awards under the Omnibus plan to insiders of the corporation as a group, pursuant to which the aggregate number of common shares of the corporation, which may be issued may exceed 10% of the number of common shares issued and outstanding, which is the insider limitation. The text of the full resolution is set out on Page 31 of the information circular. Does any one shareholder require me to read the resolution in full. If not, I entertain the motion to approve the corporation's insider limitation -- sorry on the terms of the resolution set out on Page 31 of the information circular, could be voted on by disinterested shareholders only. The scrutineers advised that 1,958,256 common shares represented in person or by proxy are held by insiders or their associates or affiliates and accordingly will be excluded from voting. May I have a motion?

I so move.

Is there any discussions or questions that have been submitted to any registered shareholder or proxy holder? I want to ask for a vote on the motion by show of hands. Will all those in favor raise their right hand or say, yay. [Voting]

Thank you. will all those opposed raise their right hand or say nay. [Voting]

I declare the motion carried by ordinary resolution. We have now conducted the formal business of the meeting. If there's any other matter a shareholder wishes to raise for which notice is not required. All the business of the meeting has been concluded, I'll entertain a motion that the meeting has concluded.

I move this meeting be terminated.

Any discussion? If not I'll ask for a vote on the motion by a show of hands. Will all thoise in favor raise their right hand or say yay. [Voting]

Thank you. any opposed? [Voting]

Thank you. I'd like to thank all of you for participating in our meeting today. And now we'll pass the conduct of the meeting back to Chris, and I believe he's going to give a shareholder update.

Thank you very much, Rory, for supporting us on that. Now that we've finished the formality of the meeting, I'm going to just do a quick 10, hopefully minute-ish update that on sort of a year in review and a year look forward is my plan. So -- and Jeremy is just going to share one particular slide with some nice pictures as I talked to sort of give some context to what we're doing. So I would say, if we look back on the last 12 months at E3. A large part of what the company has been doing is gearing up for execution of what we're doing today. And to give some context to that, since our last AGM, and looking back to what the company's main success factor has been the last, say, 24 months is that we published a pre-feasibility study 2 years ago. And we took the design for the direct extraction, [ carbonation ] part of the system that we designed through the pre-feasibility study, and we scale it down. We designed it in detail in the later part of 2024 fabricated in 2025. And this time last year, so 12 months ago, that equipment showed up on site. And just to give you guys a reference, that's what the slide on the bottom right, that's what bought and that's what we designed internally. And so there's 4 skids there that take brine from the aquifer and take it all the way to a high concentrated lithium chloride and then we carbonate that into a lithium carbonate. And so that equipment showed up on site in July of 2025. We put it together. We got it running in early [ September of 2026 ]. And within 3 weeks, we were making battery grade lithium carbonate. And I just want to highlight to the shareholders the importance of that feature because we took a concept and we created something tangible and in 3 weeks, that concept was producing our final product at spec. And I think what that does is it shows that the validity of the design, the robustness of the design, enabling us to get not only the product out the door, but also aspect that we can sell to customers in only 3 weeks is incredibly impressive. And a big back to the team, the engineer term at E3 and our techDev team for that accomplishment because it was massive. Subsequent to that, the company raised a bit of capital. The markets were tough in the fall. We will raise a bit of capital and supporting us with this was ERA. So ERA, the Emissions Reduction Alberta financed part of this with $5 million. We went on and we drilled 2 wells. And those 2 wells are at a new location that we've never looked at before. So from a subsurface perspective, we added a couple of really good data points to the reservoir development plan. And those are finished in the spring and completed. We put a pump down them. And so now we have a new site. And if you look at the top right, that's that new site. The tent is the same. The equipment that was over at the other side, we brought all that over. The team is just finishing now reassembling these skids at the new location in the tent that you see in the top right. We also -- about 3 weeks ago now turned on a downhill pump, producing at 1,400 cubic meters a day. Just to give you an idea that in the first 24 hours of operation that pump we moved more brine out of [indiscernible] than the entire history of E3 combined. Just to even idea the volumes. Of course, in the history of this, we've moved way larger volumes. In fact, when this was producing oil back in the '70s, it was moving more water to produce oil than we will in our first commercial plant that we plan to build. So the volumes are well known. But from an E3 scale-up perspective, that pump put down, we turn it on with 1,400 [ cubes ]. The pump can deliver more, the wells can deliver more, but we said that at that rate because that's what we need to do to do some of the testing that we're doing. The first 3 to 4 weeks which is in operation today. So our Phase 2 demonstration facility is fully operational. And what it's doing right now is a reservoir test. So we're conducting a subsurface test to see the granularity of the reservoir and how it's producing fluids through it. At surface, if you look at the top right photo, on the left side that you'll see our pipe. That is one of the wells. It's connected to the other well, which is out of the picture, and those are about 10 meters apart. So brine of that one well goes across what we call it crossover spool and back down the other well, they're directionally drilled so subsurface at depth of 200 meters apart. And that 200-meter gives us a lot of granularity across the different producible zones and the reservoir teams has got to do some finite modeling that gives us some granularity for our reservoir development plan. I'll come back to the reservoir development plan in a second here. Finishing out 2025, 2026, for the last 12 months, we submitted our commercial licenses. We also got a commercial license. So we got a directed 56 facility license for the demonstration facility, you see on the top right. That was granted in, I think, September last year. We got that license. That is the first license ever given by the Alberta government, the Alberta Regulator for a lithium specific facility. Now the directive that we applied under is still the same directive if this was an oil and gas facility, but first one issued for lithium. In January, we submitted our commercial application for the same license. So it's directive 56 license application for our facility. Obviously, the commercial facility is going to be quite a bit larger. It was a paired within a application, so we are not federally regulated. We don't require federal EIA on this project, but we do acquire a baseline environment study, of course. So that was submitted in November and a license in mid January. That's currently under application to date. The other big lift in that regard has been -- we've been out in the community in force over the last -- really over the last 2.5 years, but obviously, with an active permit application under review. We've been on it a quite a bit in the last little while. Supporting community, we Bought some cows forage clubs in the area. We're participating in high schools in small ways, we're in regular conversations with our neighbors and our stakeholders in the area. so that's been a big lift for the team as well. And the other big piece is that we've launched the engineering for the commercial facility post pre-feeds. So the [ feed ] section of engineering is underway. We focused the first part on power because power is going to be the longest lead item that we're going to have to buy. So we focus the first engineering on the power, and that's ramping up. And then we're also launching feed on the rest of the plant, which has all been put out in detail. A couple of weeks ago, we put a good detailed announcement around that if you want to read more on that. And then the last big thing that happened in the last 12 months is the global partnership initiative through Enercan. So $36 million grant, funding 75% of our demonstration Phase 3, which I'll talk about our feed study, which we're working on and 75% of all our technical staff for the next pretty much 2 years, a little less than 2 years. That currently is retroactive to April 1. So all of our expenditures starting April 1 are expensed against that. So a huge opportunity for E3 to really move the needle on this project, considering all of that financing, we can just put our heads down and get work done. So looking at what that means for the next 12 months, Phase 2 of the demonstration facility is operating today. In July, we'll start building out Phase 3. That includes starting with the operation of the skids that are already on site. So we'll start operating those. We'll also start building out a single module, commercial module. So that -- procurement of that currently started. Well, as we take delivery of it through the summer and the fall, we're putting that together, and we hope to have that running by the end of the year. And that is a 100-ton equivalent system. And it's a demonstration unit, but it's one commercial module in a commercial plan that we have 120 of those modules, so it's a 1 to 10 scale of commercial, from the whole plant and a module itself is one-to-one scale. It's hugely important for us because the other big thing we're launching -- in force right now is our commercial initiatives. We're all over the world today talking to potential strategics and offtakers. One of the big catalysts for them is to see that demonstration facility operate at that scale. And so getting that done as quickly as it can, it's a huge goal for the company. Well, that's all obviously our engineering work will continue, and we hope to have our feed out through the end of this year and early next, and then we'll produce the public version of that, which is the NI-43 run feasibility study, which we published and available to the public in due course after the feed is done. So sometime in the first half, probably the first part of next year. Our goal right now is to be shown already before the next 12 months. Shovel Ready for us means the permits, the engineering complete, the demo complete and our first initial commercial agreement complete. So that's our goal for the next 12 months. It's an aggressive goal. We're scaling up the team right now, obviously supported through GPI and Enercan. We're currently about 44 employees on staff, we'll be probably 60 by the end of the year. That includes operations staff, we're hiring a couple of full-time operators who will operate the administration facility and then the goal is to move those to the commercial plant. So we have expertise in operating that the commercial plant. These operators were aiming to hire locally from our local workforce. This is a project located near town of Olds in Alberta, and we want to support the local community in that area. A lot of our shareholders are actually also in the community in that area. And so hiring as many local operators as we possibly can with the right skill set is a huge goal of us. And it's got job posting up right now for a general call for operators in local communities as well. So that's the big lift that we have. We do have a couple of minutes for questions. We can open it up to a couple of questions before we close the meeting.

If you do have a question, you just ask that you raise your hand and we can unmute you to ask.

Yes, raise your virtual hand for those who are in. All right. Well, without any questions, I really appreciate all of your collective support in getting you through to this point. We've got a big 12 months ahead of us, a lot of major catalysts. When you look at the catalysts that have created a lot of value in our peers, those catalysts are the ones that are in front of us today. So we have a very exciting ride in the next 12 months and beyond, obviously, but the next ones are very, very big for this company. from a derisking and value perspective. So we appreciate all of that, and we'll see you again next year.

Thanks, everyone.

Thanks, guys.