Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our hybrid global markets forum. The next presentation is from Nouveau Monde Graphite. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Marc Jasmin, Director of Investor Relations of Nouveau Monde Graphite, which trades on the NYSE under the symbol NMG, and on TSX under the symbol NOU. Welcome, Marc. Thank you, Lily. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to OTC Markets for setting up this presentation. Nouveau Monde Graphite is a graphite company listed on the New York Stock Exchange big board, ticker NMG, in Toronto, NOU. We trade, as at last August 13th, about 1 million shares a day on both markets, and about 60% of our volume is actually in the U.S. What we're building is a fully integrated graphite to anode material business in Quebec. I want to put in context maybe before I start the presentation that there are forward-looking information in the presentation. One should look at these factors considering the risk factors in our filings with regulators. This being said, all the presentation is what we believe are the best assumptions as we speak today. Getting back to the presentation, just want to mention that our plan is to be fully integrated. We are building about two hours north of the Montreal Airport, a 106,000 ton metric mining project, which is under construction since the month of May. Of this, we will be taking about 25% of the production and sending it to Bécancour, Quebec, which is about two and a half hours east of Montreal, to transform it into battery anode material, which is earmarked to support Panasonic Energy's De Soto, Kansas plant, and perhaps as well, the plant they have with Tesla into Nevada. A few years ago, we also bought another project, which we called Uatnan. It was bought from Mason Graphite. We paid $21 million on an enterprise value basis for a company that had put $100 million in the ground. We bought this for two reasons, basically. If we go back five years ago, Panasonic wanted to build five battery plants in the U.S. They're now down to two. The EV market was booming in the U.S., so our customers were asking us if we can grow with them if the EV scenario were to go forward. Basically by buying this asset, we answered, "Yes, we will be able to grow with you." Perhaps more important, this was also a defensive move. We wanted to protect our fully integrated vertical model, and we knew that companies such as POSCO out of Korea, as an example, wanted to come to North America. Would love to be fully integrated from mine to anode material under our own nose, go see our customers and say, "Why Nouveau Monde Graphite? POSCO can do it as well. Uatnan was the only other project that had been permitted in recent past, and basically, we figured we sort of cornered the market and blocked important market players from entering the North American market while protecting our vertically integrated model. Both offensive, defensive, but very strategic. The potential of Uatnan, it could be up to five times larger than the Matawinie mine. It was initially designed as 50,000 tons for 240 years by Mason Graphite, and we switched that around for a project of 500,000 tons for 24 years, which could provide the economies of scale and keep the OpEx profile quite low. One thing that we've done very differently is that we've built, since 2018, demonstration plants. At a high level, these demonstration plants allowed us to provide for the samples to qualify with our customers and basically sign the offtakes. Without this long game, long vision, we never would have signed the offtakes because the customer always says, "Show me your product made on commercial scale equipment." It's over CAD 125 million that was invested since 2018 with the purpose of qualifying samples and signing the offtakes. This is now behind us, and we are now in the execution phase. Basically, the mine construction has started in May. It is going on track, on budget. It's progressing well. We try to update relatively frequently with pictures so the market is able to follow that progression. It's underpinned by offtake, and I'll get into that in a few slides, with Panasonic, with Traxys, and with the government of Canada. If everything goes well, and we expect this project to be up and running by the end of 2028 before getting into a ramp-up period, then we copy-paste, we move on to the Uatnan project and basically, repeat and move forward from there on. If we look at the basic shares outstanding, we're talking about 329 million shares. Right today, this morning, that translates into about a $350 million market cap. If we add the only funded debt that we have of $12.5 million, it gives you a 365. If I subtract the cash position, which you see there, that was CAD 461 million, June 31st, it would bring a current enterprise value of about $40 million. I'll get into the financials a little bit later, but please keep that number in mind. I did mention the trading pattern. We are currently covered by eight analysts. The average target price is $3.19. On the right-hand side, you see our current shareholders, which can be split into three big categories. At the bottom, starting with Eni and moving left, the strategics hold about a 28% stake. Eni, large oil and gas company out of Italy, bought into a financing in May at a $1.84. They have a 12% stake of the company and will likely be, in the near term, joining the board of Nouveau Monde. You have the governments, which act arm's length, but still an important block with about 39% of the shares outstanding, about equally split between the Quebec government and Investissement Québec and Canada Growth Fund. In the case of Canada Growth Fund, they invested the $25 million check in 2024. They did participate in the latest round at $1.84 for $90 million, but we were the first investment that they've done into a mining venture. If you look, for example, at Panasonic, which holds a 4% stake, it was the first investment they actually directly made into their supply chain. So a lot of envy from many investors with the current shareholders and a very comfortable mix, if I can say, between government, strategics, and other shareholders, which was important for governments to show that real investors looking for real returns were willing to support this project. So very important for us to strike the right balance with the investor mix. If I move on to the next slide, maybe a little bit of details about this private placement that was done, part of the financing finished, closed in May, should I say. I'll bring your attention to Eni, who wrote a $70 million check at $1.84. Some investors have definitely let us know that they did not like the pricing, which was a 22% discount to VWAP. On the other hand, the value of having an Eni with vision, money, active themselves into battery cell manufacturing plants through joint ventures in Europe, they can bring us places we never even dreamed of. We figured over the long term, having an Eni on board was worth it to make a financing at $1.84. I'll remind you that the private investors or those that are 13F filers, tagged along, made their due diligence, and basically we did the financing at $1.84 with extremely strong strategics, including one very strong one that can also help us on the business development side as we move forward. The offtakes that we have, there are three of them basically that are important. The overall market for graphite is about 1.2 million tons per year as we speak, and it's about split 50% anode material, 30% with refractory bricks, and about 20% for higher margin specialty products. I'll start with the Canadian government. People may ask, why the hell did they sign an offtake? The market may not realize this, but Canada has been supplying the G7 for the last 36 years or so with high-quality graphite for specific niche applications. There is only one producing mine as we speak in the whole G7. It's Northern Graphite's Lac des Îles mine, which is known to be end of life, high strip ratio, high cost. The Canadian government wanted to keep that pole position, and instead of us going to each and every one of the customers throughout the G7 for very small volumes, asking them to invest, which would have taken forever, the Canadian government said, "Let's do this buyers club. Let's make a deal with Nouveau Monde." It will allow it to be bankable quickly, and then we can go market with them on a profit-sharing formula to all of these smaller but very attractive, in terms of margin, customers. Panasonic Energy is for anode material. Anode material is not necessarily the best market in the sense that you compete heads-on with the Chinese on a worldwide basis. On the other hand, that's where the higher volumes are. If you're not into anode material, it's very difficult to justify 100,000 ton mine as we're building. This allows us to keep our OpEx low because we get the right efficiency size with 106,000 catering to Panasonic Energy, keeping OpEx that will benefit all of the sectors, also getting into chemical processing, which we think may define us more as a critical minerals company than a mining company with associated multiples when you look at each side of the business. As we know, critical minerals companies are much better valued than typical mining companies. Finally, Traxys, which is a refractory brick business, about 30% of the market. These act as protection for steel foundries. Basically, you make the bricks and the walls, and the steel industry is actually doing pretty well right now in the U.S. because of tariffs. This equilibrium between all three sectors, we believe, acts in the best interest of diversifying our customer mix, sales mix, and so on. Finally, Eni, which I've mentioned, we've signed an LOI when they invested. We are looking to see how we could supply some of their joint ventures in Italy with product as well, and this should be seen as being part of our growth path as we move forward. I did discuss the Canadian government rapidly. I did explain the rationale. I think the key word here to remember is bankability, and they were very instrumental helping us getting that bankability. Also, keep in mind that we were named a major project of national interest by the Canadian government last November, and the PMO, Prime Minister's Office, and Major Projects Office were instrumental accelerating things for us because much of the heavy lifting we had done on our own for the last five years or so. Except they were very timely getting us to the finish line and getting the construction underway. We've put a few data here on pricing. We've used historical public data from Northern Graphite, which shows a basket price, you see it on the right-hand side on top, of about 1,500, I'm sorry, with my glasses, 1,565, a little bit over 1,500 over the long term. Keep that in mind because I'm going to show you a little bit later on our sensitivity to the prices of graphite, which we think can really enhance our model and our financial profile going forward, amongst others. This is to give you an idea of all of the markets we're able to cater with the help of the Canadian government. There are 221 companies there, U.S., Germany. It gives you an idea as well as the applications where you can use graphite, and there are many of them. Many of them offer the potential for value-added product. I can use as an example, if you are to put graphite with certain types of polymers, you can do stealth material, which is high value and typically commands extremely high margins. We know we can do this type of material. I'll refer you to a previous press release we put through our R&D efforts last year. These are the type of things that we can do, and there are many of these growing customers, not to say small, that really can offer us an extremely interesting margin profile going forward. Geopolitics, elephant in the room. Three big blocks here. I'll start with China on the left-hand side. China controls about three-quarters of the world mining assets in graphite. However, they are net importers as we speak, and they control more than 95% of the production of uncoated spherical graphite that is necessary for lithium-ion batteries. Elephant in the room, always a risk that something gets cut off from China. We've seen it in rare earths, China against Japan. They can put the choke quite quickly on a market, and this helps us in the sense that our customers, like Panasonic, absolutely do want a second player that can support them in their production chain. Extremely important. Second block, North America. No significant production as we speak. The Northern Graphite mine has temporarily closed last December. They're trying to restart it. I'll comment positively on Nouveau Monde, but you can look at the balance sheets of a few of our competitors. We do think with CAD 461 million in the bank account, that we are in an extremely favorable financial position. Third block is Africa. Africa exports some of its graphite to China since they are net importers, and a lot of the African model now is to ship it, transform it into the Middle East. That looked great until six months ago, but all I'm trying to say, it's really a beautiful place to do business in North America to serve North American and European customers, and it is a great advantage geopolitically for our asset. Considering we're under construction, we should very well be the only graphite producing asset in North America in about three years. Although there is competition, others are coming, there's ample space for a few good players. But we do believe we have a first mover's advantage in this market. In the first place, we may ask, why the hell should we care about graphite? It is known that graphite is the most important component of the anode with respect to the weight. But if you look at the cost, it's only about 12% of the overall battery cost. What I'm trying to say is that although customers do not like to pay a little bit more with a smile, it will not move the needle that much if they do pay a premium for security of being in North America, a premium for carbon neutrality, or a premium for logistical savings, which are all things we're looking at and discussing with our customers. Also, you do know that there is synthetic graphite, so typically natural graphite has been cheaper and greener. Natural graphite typically offers more capacity. Synthetic graphite will give you faster charging. The takeaway that we'd like the market to have, they always come as a combination. It really depends of the cost structure the battery maker is trying to do and what for physical characteristics they want to see in their batteries, and what's the cost point that they're aiming for. Once a recipe is set, it's not something that you will change on a monthly or quarterly or yearly basis. You know it works, so you usually set those recipes and do not change them. In the case of Panasonic Energy, we do know they're much more skewed against natural graphite, although like many others, they do use a mix. I'll move quickly on this one. Now, McKinsey came out with a pretty good post about two years ago, "Graphite, the most risk-exposed battery mineral." I'd rather see it as the biggest opportunity. Although the market does have its challenges, the opacity in pricing and others. Investors tell us all the time, much easier to trade a gold stock, a copper stock, or a silver stock. However, those that do look a little bit longer, will appreciate that this is an extremely interesting commodity, where if someone positions themself in the North American market as a first mover, they may benefit. Panasonic, just to mention, they invested in 2024, $25 million. They had to flip on a coin because the EV sector has been changing quite rapidly in the U.S. specifically, actually, I should say worldwide. But you do see that energy storage is picking up much of the slack. You do see that Panasonic is moving quite quickly in there, and statistics on energy storage are surprising the market just about every month. We are extremely pleased and happy to have such a customer. They have never had a recall of a battery in their whole life. They were very clear that they would not start with Nouveau Monde Graphite. So beyond someone who can sign an offtake, they provide technical support, and they are, as the typical Japanese perception, very much on the ball, following this stuff, very structured, and 100% committed to our mutual success building this anode material plant in North America. Takeaway on the right-hand side, perhaps Panasonic Energy U.S. CEO, early 2025, nothing more important than to diversify away from China. Let's be very clear, we will not replace the China supply chain, but as good business people, everyone is looking for at least one. Sorry about that, reliable second source, and we do believe we are in a natural position to do so. We do have an offtake. We are building the mine, and we do believe we will have this first mover's advantage. Tariffs rapidly, people say are there any tariffs against Canada from the U.S.? I will say that critical minerals is really one of the sectors where both governments, U.S. and Canada, see eye to eye. One should not necessarily look at the tariffs against Canada, which basically there are none right now because of the USMCA, but what existing U.S. customers pay for Chinese graphite. This changes, I would say, not every day, but it changes quite often. But still, that does increase the cost for North American consumers or battery makers, and it definitely helps us negotiate what we believe is a price that should reflect the fact that it's worth more if it's produced in North America for the North American markets. Defense, quite significant market. Rapidly, anything that goes up in the air quickly comes back to the ground quickly, typically has graphite because it's a mineral that withstands extreme heat to extreme cold very well. We all see the headlines everywhere. It's a growing market, and it just for us, can expand the pie of end uses in the very near term. Remember that these sectors are typically high margin, smaller volumes, and the Canadian government did see this opportunity when they decided to step in with the offtake that they signed with us. Construction has started. We try to update the pictures as much as we can. We actually started erecting the steel structure Friday two weeks ago. It's very lively. Our objective is to get the most done before what can be a harsh winter in Quebec, and to have the full outside structure closed for next winter, so we can start working inside, leading us to a commissioning at the end of 2028. That would be followed by a six-month ramp-up period. This is obviously a top priority. I will remind you that we did get the equity to do it. We have the debt that is committed. We are building, not Those of you who look at the Lassonde curve say, "Okay, you started building." We may be crossing the desert with respect to the construction milestone or FID milestone. However, we do expect other FIDs for the transformation asset, and we do hope that the market will see this as a potential catalyst. I will discuss a little bit more in a few slides. A little bit of data. CapEx is CAD 421 million for the mine. I will remind you that in other disclosure, we added CAD 53 million to bring this to $474 million. This was asked by the lenders actually to take into account potential price escalation, which obviously we do see in today's hectic and challenging world for logistics. This being said, the guidance was CAD 139 million, NI 43-101 compliant for revenue, OpEx CAD 44 million, which gives you a CAD 95 million EBITDA. I will compare it to current enterprise value that is probably close to $50 million, and we are talking of a CAD 95 million, NI 43-101 run rate EBITDA in 2029. So I will let the market do the stats, but, we do believe that there may be a case here that we could argue that maybe we are undervalued. After-tax IRR was 15.8% on unlevered on capital, not on equity, which obviously would be higher. We have run the same sensitivity based on the Northern Graphite real prices that we have seen of about $1,500. The takeaway when you look at the after-tax IRR is that we gain about 300 basis points on the IRR just on this price sensitivity. So quite important for us and that the market sees the torque. If we go back, our contracts basically have floors to protect the debt, but there is no limit on the price that can be reached. That was a red line in the sand for us because it would have limited the upside for the equity investors. So the offtakes do provide for the market to capture the upside that is there. Quebec, we are blessed. We pay our hydro about $0.04 all in, which is extremely cheap. As a takeaway, this allows us to be competitive with China with respect to OpEx. CapEx is more expensive, same in the U.S., same in Europe. That is why basically we told our customers and governments, you need to help us with investments and help us that capital expenditure price tag lower, which we have been able to do so as we are speaking. But obviously, we are always working on lowering this. I will skip the process, which basically explains what CSPG is or coated spheronized purified graphite. Bécancour plant, we are targeting an FID within the next few months. We did buy a brownfield facility, which is adjacent to ours. It allows us to lower the CapEx and do the project faster, which was excellent news for Panasonic Energy. You can see the inside. We are also looking at ways to valorize our tailings. As some may know, sulfuric acid has been on a tear. It has been a market that has been extremely tight and challenged by the war in the Hormuz Strait or the war in Iran. We actually have a lot of tailings, we have a lot of sulfur, and we already have the CapEx to separate it that is already in the project. We are looking, it is very preliminary, at ways we have discussed with potential off-takers, and we believe this could be a growth path going forward. We have third parties who told us they would consider investing themselves the CapEx to do it. This is basically a new market dynamic that we are exploring very closely because we believe there could be great hidden value in our tailings because of the emerging or changing sulfuric acid market. The key here is to control the mine. Remember, we can do a lot of stuff when we are vertically integrated. Our idea is always to expand our margins, to get into new businesses, and to create net present value. Keep in mind that is absolutely key. Today, our EBITDA run rate will be about CAD 95 million with the mine. If you add all of the opportunities we may have, maybe with Bécancour, sister plant in Europe, tailings, whatever, you rapidly could see that we may one day be at $250 million EBITDA in the midterm. I will let you do the math, but we do have some blue sky scenario. Multiples, I have mentioned right now, current EV to run rate EBITDA is like 50 for a CAD 95 million. Do we deserve to be so penalized? The market could judge. We believe not, because the numbers are the numbers. If we build it on time, on budget, and within what was NI 43-101 disclosed, we believe the value will emerge itself. We let you put the multiples that you wish to put for Nouveau Monde Graphite, but keep in mind that for a critical minerals company, the mine may be eight, let us say, to 12x, but the transformation side may be 15 - 25x. We are working actively with the analysts that they recognize us as a critical minerals company, not only as a mining venture. My coordinates are here. I will take a few questions. I am sorry I was a little bit long. I will take maybe a question or two, but I will be available with this contact information to be reached out. I invite investors to do so, not necessarily through blogs and online. Just call me. Bear in mind, I am traveling all the time. We have a schedule that is about every day till December, even January, digital, online, in person. Please bear with me when you reach out. That is my job and that is why I get up every morning. Thank you very much. Do we have time for a few questions? Maybe I will read this one here. As you develop additional plans, which parts of first facility design could you replicate to save time and capital? The principle is we wish to have brownfield operations. There are many good buildings available, Europe, Canada, and we do think that could save time and actually go for the timeline. What could the Eni relationship unlock? Basically, Eni is building joint venture plants and battery material. They can bring additional volume, they can bring expertise, they can open up doors for new types of businesses. They are a huge company, about a EUR 72 billion market cap, and they are extremely big and involved all around. Let us see now. What are local residents telling you now the construction has started? Basically, they are saying, "When can we get a job?" They are lining up. Keep in mind that Saint-Michel-des-Saints was a lumber town. The major employer there just cut 300 jobs. It is shut down now because of the tariffs, so people actually wanted to make it. Could defense application be valuable? I did cover that. Which advanced material application looks closest to become commercial opportunity? There are many of them. It may be done through M&A, although we want to keep the focus on building the plant. I believe stealth material, it can definitely be of interest or anything that is in combination of polymers would be something that we are definitely looking on. Final questions. Could tailings recovery become a growth project without equity raise? I have answered that already. I invite you to reach out directly. I thank OTC Markets very much, and this will be the end of the formal presentation. Look forward to seeing many of you on one-on-ones later.