Atome (LSE:ATOM) — Business Update

0:00 Good morning, and welcome to the ATOM PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Olivier Mossett, CEO. Good morning, sir. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Good to

0:34 be presenting again. It wasn't that long ago, actually, to announce some quite material progress, that we have made, in the past few weeks. So for those, who do not know ATOM yet, I think I'll give you a brief description of what is it that we do and how we are doing it and who is doing it. So ATOM, as a company, you know, we are basically a green fertilizer developer produce produce producer. Right? Our whole aim is to decarbonize the global food supply chain, through the use of green fertilizer. And it really came from from the fact that what we saw, what now, four years ago, when we started, you know, looking at what was the potential of decarbonization was that the agri sector and especially the fertilizer sector, was one of these hard to abate sector, which really was not on the list of priority.

1:33 And it was, let's let's call it, a very well kept secret, that you have one of the most carbon intensive sector, you know, highly dependent on commodity prices, which, you know, nobody had really looked at disrupting, thanks to the new technologies of green energy which were coming up. So and I will go into a presentation on how do we go about making green fertilizer and what other markets and where's the opportunity. So once we are past the usual disclaimer, obviously, as I mentioned, you know, this is a a company we created four years ago, and, know, a a good idea is is is great. But if you don't have people to execute the idea, you know, that remains a dream. So we went about creating and putting together the best possible team to go and successfully develop ATOM as a green fertilizer company.

2:22 And it started with our chairman and largest shareholder, Peter Levine, who is, you know, quite well known by a number of you as far as, you know, a very successful entrepreneur into the energy sector having, you know, developed and actually sold a company called Imperial Energy for more than $2,400,000,000, I believe, back in the late two thousands. And, and then was also a, chairman of a number of engineering company. And that's quite important because at the end of the day, you know, green fertilizer is great, but you're making fertilizer, you're making a chemical, And it's all about the discipline on cost and the discipline on margin. You have to be able to show that sustainability is great, but you have to be able to produce cost competitively and be very mindful, about how you're developing your project. And he brings, obviously, not only his capital as the largest shareholder, but also his expertise and and his real focus.

3:17 Personally, I'm started my career as a power engineer with GE, moved to oil and gas with Schlumberger, and then the finance world with Standard Chartered, and my last world with us with IFC, the International Finance Corporation, as chief investment officer of the global energy book, which was about $7,000,000,000 across debt and equity assets. Then, obviously, our first project's in Paraguay. It's all about having the right people on the ground. And we have Jim Spaulding, who's our president of ATOM Paraguay, who used to be the head of the Itaipu Dam, which is basically the second largest hydroelectric dam where we derive our power from for our first project and also used to be minister of finance and one of the administrators at the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank. So somebody with a lot of credibility both, let's say, in the, you know, regulatory and political economy sense, but also as energy expertise because to make green fertilizer, you need green energy.

4:16 And as I mentioned, we are making fertilizer, so you need to sell that fertilizer. And, Terje Backen joined us last year as head of fertilizer. And Terje used to be a senior VP, of Yara and then EuroChem, which are two of the largest, European fertilizer company. And finally, we have myros on the board. Myros used to be, the head of the International Energy Agency's hydrogen unit, and you're bringing, you know, clearly decades of experience, into renewable energy and especially, you know, electrolyzers and hydrogen, which is obviously is to make green fertilizer. You need green hydrogen, and we'll get into that as well. So from our shareholders' point of view, as I mentioned earlier, you know, Peter is our largest individual, shareholder.

5:04 And then we have, Schroders, who, who has continually to increase, its investment in ATOM at every single step of the way. We have Baker Hughes, the American, engineering company, which provides a lot of, engineering kits, including compressors, who, joined the shareholder registry last year, Trafigura, and finally, myself, at about 3.6%. What's important to note is that us as management, we obviously are extremely aligned with all of our shareholders because we have put at every single step of the way money into the company alongside, shareholders at the same price as new share at the new shareholders at every single rate. So we really wanted to make sure that it was always going to be very, very clear to our investors, to our partners that you had a management which was fully and completely aligned with them.

6:03 So I'll go to the next slide. So the investment case, as I mentioned, is, you know, our job is to develop projects and put them into production and so that they start generating income. So our first project is is what we call the project, which today is the world's largest green fertilizer facility announced as far as how much it has progressed. We have announced a few months ago that we had finished front end engineering and design that we had also, you know, basically identified and significantly negotiated the EPC, as well as the project funding, so that we would be able to get two final investment decision by the end of this year 2024.

6:48 And, today, we're gonna put a fair amount of discussion that we have, just announced, basically yesterday. A that Yara, was joining the project to be the offtaker. So basically buying all of the project one's production, on a long term basis. And so clearly for us, it's important because it it proves that the green fertilizer that we will be producing has a market and has one of the world's leader into the fertilizer industry and especially the low carbon fertilizer industry who wants what we are producing. So it not not only proves the data, but also it proves project two, project three, and so on, and the pipeline of projects that, that we are going to be, putting online.

7:35 So the whole idea and what what where we are at now is that we have basically derisked our project number one and prove the commercial validity, so that we can basically accelerate project two and project three. And so, you know, why is it important, what we are doing? And as I mentioned, there's a decarbonization angle. You know? You know, the fertilizer industry generates more carbon than shipping and aviation combined. And you may have seen as investors, a number of companies looking at decarbonizing shipping, decarbonizing fuels, as, you know, we fly around. The reality is fertilizer, today, half of the world's fertilizer are made, using hydrocarbons and especially natural gas, and that demand is growing. This graph on the right is quite important, in the sense that it shows in green organic fertilizer, and you see that organic fertilizer can feed about half of the world's population.

8:36 But our ability, to grow, as a population globally has been on the back of, making synthetic fertilizers derived from natural gas and coal available, and you see a direct growth, right, a very steep growth of that. And what it means that in a in a world where we are going to end up with about 10,000,000,000 people, in about, in in less than twenty years, It's only going to go one way and that that the security of supply for fertilizer is going to be an increasing problem as we know that hydrocarbons are going to get more expensive over time and that the pressure of the food industry to go green is also, going to increase as we have seen, recently, and and I will discuss that. So clearly for us, you know, developing green fertilizer is important on two points. It's crucial to reduce emissions, but importantly, it's even more crucial that we need to make sure that we can sustainably feed the planet in the for the future.

9:40 So how do you make green fertilizer? Right? So today, the way that fertilizer is made is you take hydrocarbon, basically, is c h four carbon, one unit of carbon, four units of hydrogen, which is natural gas. And then you make you separate the carbon and the hydrogen to make hydrogen. The I'm sorry. Looks like I clicked the wrong button. Apologies about that. And then after that, you make your regular fertilizer for the Haber Bosch process. So the only difference when you make green fertilizer is that instead of using c h four from hydrocarbons is you derive your h, your hydrogen, from h two o water. And to separate the molecule of h two o, you need a lot of electricity.

10:29 And, basically, the only way to make it green is if you use green electricity. So you take a lot of hydroelectric power to separate the h two o, and then you have green hydrogen, which then becomes green ammonia for the Haber Bosch process, which has existed for over a hundred years. And after that, you transform your ammonia into ammonium nitrate, and then your ammonium nitrate into calcium ammonium nitrate in our particular case to make green fertilizer. And, basically, what you're doing is you're selling a bag of fertilizer. So there is fundamentally no real difference between green fertilizer and gray fertilizer from the far from what the farmer is concerned. However, the carbon footprint is the biggest difference.

11:15 And it's all great to be sustainable, but if but you also have to make sure that you are producing something which is economical. And the only way to make cheap green fertilizer is you have basically cheap green power and baseload power. And it was it is all about what ATOM is doing is making sure that we have access to very low cost power to produce fertilizer at or at the same cost or at a lower cost than great fertilizer and selling it at a market where you need that fertilizer. So you can basically decentralize fertilizer, which is in in essentially, instead of having the old way of having a lot of very big plants in Saudi, in Rotterdam, in Russia, especially over US, and then shipping that all around the world. Now you have the opportunity to have domestic production of fertilizer using renewable power so you can produce what you're so that you can be close to your market and then generate more return out of it. So this is how Vieita was chosen, and this is how, you know, we ended up in Paraguay because Paraguay has the second largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It is the world's largest exporter of hydroelectric power because it sells it into Brazil, in Argentina.

12:32 And it's also in the center of the largest fertilizer import market in the world, because, Brazil and Argentina and Paraguay and Uruguay import more than 30,000,000 ton of fertilizer per year. So it's a great place to do your first project, to derisk your proposal, and use that as a basis to to go into project two, project three, and so on. And so project one is really the proof that it works. Right? And it's not just a good idea. It's an idea that actually works where you don't have to take technological risk. You don't have to take power supply risk, and you don't have to take market risk because you are in the middle of a massive fertilizer market. And so Vieta, first project, a 145 megawatts, in Paraguay using low cost baseload power from hydroelectric power, which will allow us, to produce over 260,000 tons per year of green calcium ammonium nitrate.

13:30 So that's, equivalent of, displacing about 500,000 tons of carbon per year. So it gives you an idea of the scale of the opportunity from a decarbonization point of view, from a carbon green income point of view. And the project location was chosen because it is close to the ports where all of the fertilizers are currently imported into the country, and it's close to the supply of power. So, again, you minimize risks along the way. So the strategy of developing projects in project infrastructure is you go about derisking projects every single step of the way. So what we have done over the past two years, we have signed a long term power purchase agreement. We have acquired the 75 acre site. We have appointed advisers, and contractors and finance advisers as well, and also environmental advisers. And that's very important because it allowed us to basically get environmental social impact assessment done using IFC and World Bank standards, which have been accepted by the government in Paraguay, which has given us the license to operate so we can start construction now, and also has given us free trade tax zone so that for our exports, we will have 0.5 taxes on export of our products.

14:51 So it's all about optimizing everything along the way so that we are ready to go, as soon as possible. We have announced a couple of months ago that we had finished front end engineering and design. This is a significant piece of work because this is the first time a a large scale industrial, project, has achieved that status, in engineering. So it's basically all about proving that using low technology, you can put everything together and get into production, once, once you get into detailed engineering. And the final, call it, piece of the puzzle ahead of financing was solving the offtake, and we are very fortunate that, Ya, you know, basically stepped up and say, yes. I will take on a long term basing basis all of the green fertilizer that the project will be producing.

15:42 So why is it significant? Well, you may have seen a number of projects recently, in in the, ammonia and hydrogen world, which have received offtake agreements. And as I mentioned, it's all great to produce something, maybe green, maybe not. But if nobody is willing to buy it, you're not gonna get very far. And it's all about bankability. It's all about financeability. And so what we have signed with Yara, which is obviously, as I mentioned earlier, one of the largest fertilizer companies in the world, you know, they have more than $15,000,000,000 of turnover. They trade more than 22,000,000 tons of fertilizer. So clearly, you know, at 260,000 tons a year, we represent Epsilon for their production.

16:32 But they are very, very committed to developing, the low carbon, fertilizer market and because they see a real opportunity. And just last week, they announced that they had signed an agreement with PepsiCo, who you may not know is one of the largest potato grower in the world, that they will be supplying zero carbon fertilizer on a long term basis for PepsiCo. Right? So it's really showing you that there is a market that the food market really wants to move forward and wants to decarbonize. And so in, in that offtake agreement, you know, that's that's basically sales agreement that we have with Yara is we are committed to take all of our production, 100% of it, on a long term basis, with terms which are what we say basically an upside sharing, with really a line of sight on the green premium. So what we mean by that is that the higher the price they achieve, the higher, premium we can get. Obviously, the more they get compensated. So there's a clear alignment of what we are trying to achieve and what we are trying to achieve.

17:34 And, also, they are providing risk protection on the downside, which means that if the the price of fertilizers, starts coming down, they would actually step up to the plate and provide support within that fertilizer price to make sure that the project is always bankable, during the good time and the bad time as well. So, really, it's all about derisking, the the commercial project, as much as we can so that we when we go talk to our lenders and to the investors at the asset level, they feel comfortable that we have a fully derisked project. And I will go to the next slide. So clearly, as we mentioned, this is, you know, it's project one is great, but we are not a one project company. You know, we have a thesis, and and a business case, which is deploying green fertilizer companies, green fertilizer projects across the world and try to copy paste, copy paste, copy paste our model and our engineering so that, you know, project one is x, project two will be 5% cheaper than project one and so on so that we end up being increasingly, commercially, competitive, and always stay ahead of the game. So we've started working on project two in Costa Rica.

18:51 So for for those of you who do not know Costa Rica is that like Paraguay, it's it's a democratic country. You know? It's very stable country as well. It is highly dollarized as a country. And, also, Costa Rica is the second largest exporter of pineapples in the world and one of the largest exporters of bananas in the world with a very green brand as well. So there's a clear alignment that if and they are importing and per capita, they're one of the largest importer of fertilizer in the world. So there's a clear alignment of goal that, you know, they want to have green fertilizer facilities in the country and also to export to the region and beyond because you have access both to the Pacific and to The Atlantic via The Caribbean. So it's a great location. So whilst power purchase agreement, which is the basis for everything, is already done in Vieira, Where we are now is we are negotiating with the the the national electric company of, of Costa Rica, a power purchase agreement. So we are quite advanced, now.

19:54 We started our work about a year ago, and the expectation is that by the end of this year, we will have agreed a power purchase agreement, and then we can move into prefrontend engineering and design and all of the commercial agreements. And as I mentioned, it's a 120 megawatt. It's roughly the same size as VETA, and it's all about being able to copy paste what is essentially eighteen months of engineering into another location and have, you know, the efficiencies that come with it. And in Paraguay, we've been working on a second project, a larger project that we call Iguacu of 300 megawatt. And, obviously, this would be twice the size, of project one with the ATOME, and we have basically have, allocated reserves from, from Ande, the national power company.

20:44 And now we are negotiating the terms of the power purchase agreement as we have finished what is called the electromechanical study, with Ande, which basically proves, you know, the availability of supply, where this where this power will be delivered, and how does the grid behave. Because at the end of the day, we are large consumers of electricity at an industrial level, and you have to ensure that you are not putting undue stress, onto the grid and that you will have stable power for the next twenty years and beyond. So these are two projects which are you know, which have matured quite a bit and same thing. We expect to reach power purchase agreement by the end of the year. And we've been working on a few other projects, but are relatively, too early to talk about. It's relatively immature, but it's just to show that we've had a pipeline, of, projects building up slowly. But, clearly, our focus is project one, and most of the work that we have been doing was securing the heads of term for the offtake from Yara and, which is the first time globally that any offtaker has come up and say and has committed to buy green fertilizer on a long term basis.

21:53 So, you know, the feed for Vietai was a world first. This heads of terms off take is also a world first. So, you know, from a timelines point of view, kind of resuming, you know, the work done so far on this particular slide and what is left to do. So now that we have the, you know, the heads of terms agreed, we are working with, print the French Investment Bank in Texas and, the Inter American Development Bank to put the financing together at the project level. And we will be issuing, what is basically, what we call an, info memo to, the banks and the equity investors at the project level, with all of the commercial terms, all of the CapEx terms, and and the commercial proposition to come in and invest at the project. Right? The intention is that each project will have its own SPV and live its own its own financial life and have its own equity investors in it.

22:49 So we expect, to, to basically have all of our investment, equity investment and funding package tied up, you know, over the next quarters and then reaching FID by the end of the year once, once the financing is, is tied up. For the Equaso project and the Costa Rica project, as I mentioned earlier, we are in PPA discussions. And once that PPA is done, then the prefrontend engineering and design will start. And, of course, you know, we're always being asked about, you know, what does it look from a financials point of view. Obviously, you know, we we are not publishing our own forecast, so we will base present here what, SP Angel, which is one of our brokers, has has been put together and has and is available, in the public domain. And so these numbers are, you know, pretty much illustrative and use $420 a ton of CAN as, as a basis. And to and why $420?

23:52 It's actually the price at which you would be able to sell can calcium ammonium nitrate in the region, in the in in Argentina and in Brazil today. Right? So and that's on a gray basis without any green premium, without any carbon credit today. This is purely us displacing the gray stuff which is existing. And these numbers show that, you know, we don't need a green premium to actually be commercially viable. And that is absolutely key because, you know, we don't believe in sustainability without profitability, and we keep repeating it and repeating it. And so with that estimate that SPA has put together, it shows that, from the first full year of production of a project and which at the moment is estimated at 2028.

24:38 So we will start up at the end of twenty twenty seven, and then 2028 should be the first full twelve months of production. When you make 260,000 tons a year, of fertilizer, and you assume $420 net back price to the plant, you're looking at an EBITDA of around $7,270,000,000 dollars a year, so total revenue of 110,000,000. And if you assume another project coming online, you would look at total, EBITDA group of about a $190,000,000 by 2030. Obviously, each project is going to be about eighteen months behind, behind each other. So, you know, it it kinda gives you a sense of of of the of the numbers, that are being discussed. And it's one of the reason that when we presented the project to the lenders, they were very excited, because they saw a bankable project, which caters food security issue. You know, let's remember that a third of all fertilizers comes from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, so there's a real problem that needs to be discussed.

25:42 And also climate, issues, which is why, you know, IDB, IFC, DFC, and a number of these multilateral institutions are very interested to finance such projects and including, green focused infrastructure funds. And so what we are looking from a financing strategy for VETA is to bring together long term debt, finances at the asset level and also infrastructure level players who invest at the asset level, not at the top core, not at ATOM PLC, but in the asset. And so that gives you, hopefully, a rough idea of, you know, again, you know, assuming SPA's numbers, what the project would look like. So to do a a little bit of a quick summary, right, we, you know, we were the first one to come up with the idea of, focusing on green fertilizer as a as a real strong opportunity, which is going to be the future of food and the future of fertilizer.

26:41 Again, decentralized fertilizer facility close to the market. And, since we were created, two companies which are still private have, you know, emerged, you know, using basically a lot of what we had put out publicly. They are working in different geographies, but it just shows that we've been right, and that we continue to, basically spear, I don't want to say a revolution because it would be extremely, you know, pretentious from us, but clearly the disruption, which is happening and which is accelerating. And that 140 megawatts is today the world's largest dedicated green fertilizer facility and the most advanced one. Right? And that's having now the offtake agreement with Yara, which I can never understate how important offtake is in this world, significantly derisk our project. You know? It's all great to have a good idea to put the engineering, to put the money in. But if you're not producing something that somebody that wants to buy and at a price that is that makes us economical, it's not going to work. And that Yara offtake is extremely important and is extremely good news for us as shareholders, as investors, and as management team.

27:50 And that now, you know, for the next months, basically, what? Five months, I guess, is we are going to be working extremely hard on the project funding and the project equity level to deliver from final investment decision by the end of twenty twenty four. And clearly, you know, for us, it's we don't want to start there. You know, we've we want to continue growing. We want to continue to accelerate the growth because as I mentioned earlier, there is competition, and, you know, we're not doing all of this hard work, and investors are not believing us just to do a one project. We want to continue, and, and develop, ATOM as much as we can and develop the opportunity and the growth that investors and shareholders expect of us. So I think I am pretty much at the end. So, we can move to questions, I guess. Olivier, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the q and a tab situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via investor dashboard.

28:58 As you can see, we've received a number of questions throughout the presentation. I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end. Alright. So I see a few questions already, so thank you for that. So there's a question from Kelvin, which says, electrolyzer technology providers will be using and, you know, have you yet produced hydrogen on-site? So, because we have baseload power, so twenty four seven power, available, we don't have to take what we call technology risk. Right? So, we don't have to use the latest technology of PAM or or SOEC, which which are now slowly I mean, emerging and emerging slowly at scale, but we still have a fair amount of risk attached to it. So we will be using alkaline technology, which has been the same technology for the past hundred years, which is proven.

29:50 It's a workhorse of a hydrogen sector. And we are now basically at the let's call it the final two, of the, providers, who have put you know, after a long bidding process. So we are pretty comfortable with with either of them, and that contract will be awarded, at the end of the year. So we haven't yet produced hydrogen on-site, of course, because we are putting the entire project together. So we're not gonna be producing hydrogen if you don't have the entire plant put together. So, one thing we didn't discuss in here is that once we have FID, the construction time between the FID and production is between thirty one to thirty four months. So clearly, you know, it means that we will start, producing hydrogen, into I mean, ammonia into fertilizer by the end of twenty twenty seven.

30:44 I have a next question from Michael. Congrats on the progress. Thank you so much. When do you envisage breaking ground, and what's the expected time duration of completion production? I guess I just preempted that question. Alright. So, FID end of this year. So, I mean, technically, we have already broken some ground because we had cleared some of the land, to do some testing for the piling, and the civil engineering. But, clearly, the big work, will start as soon as we, declare FID because we already have the license, to construct and to operate from the government. And that's quite important because there are a number of infrastructure projects, which have had many, many issues, because they couldn't get, permitting on time.

31:30 In The UK alone, you may have seen a lot of issues, with projects such as h two s, where, let's just say, that operationally, they didn't have all of the ducks in the row. And for us, it's all about derisking, all about making sure that the moment FID is declared, we start putting the shovel in so that we can deliver, production, between thirty one to thirty four months with the expectation that, if we, if we start commissioning at the end of twenty seven, full product, we will have in 2028 twelve months of continuous production. There's a, there's a question around from Steve on where is, you know, what is the Iceland project? Why isn't it part of ATOM plan going forward now? So we announced I've, I can't remember. It was maybe four months ago that, yes, Iceland was originally part, of the portfolio of projects we were looking at.

32:25 But what happened, since, the start, was that, we saw the Ukraine crisis arrive. The price of power increased significantly in Iceland, a little bit unexpectedly so, so which made it very difficult to be economical, to prove it to prove to be able to produce grease green ammonia. And on top of that, there was pretty much an energy crisis due, to the fact that following a number of earthquakes in Iceland, the availability of geothermal energy really went down. And so from our point of view, it meant that everybody everything was it was running moving to the right. The timelines keep getting longer. The availability of power supply became an increasing question. So we decided that we would park Iceland, for for the time being. And should things change in the future, we will obviously revisit it. But at present, we don't have an economic case, to being present, in in in the country.

33:23 So from Brian, and I see that you know, I can see why ATOM has focused on green fertilizer. However, does the company still plan to decarbonize others area of of operations, including regional river and road transportation, and even if mainly as a way of tackling ATOM's scope three issues. It's a good question. Scope three means that if you transport fertilizer, it's better to transport that fertilizer to the market using a zero carbon, truck, for example. The reality is we have to be extremely focused and which is why, you know, we had a sister company, quote, unquote, from our, chairman, Peter Cole, Greenhouse Capital, which been which has been looking at decarbonizing other arrays of operations, including, obviously, river, road, and beyond.

34:14 But for us, you know, it's it's important. This is you know, this this sector is too important not to be fully focused on it, and we will continue to do so. I would say, however, that the moment we're able to prove that you can successfully use, renewable power in Paraguay to decarbonize something as difficult to decarbonize as agriculture, then it it paves the way for other projects around, around basically transport. So from Costa Rica, how accelerated does it could you do it compared to Vieja? That's a question from Charlie. Can you share any key learnings from Vieja that you will take to other projects? So, yes. I think, clearly, there was there were a number of learnings along the way.

35:00 And, you know, can we share them? Honestly, this is a little bit of our secret sauce as well. You know, we are learning some some painful lessons at time where we have to do a lot of redesign, a lot of value engineering to make sure that the ETA would make sense, which is also the reason that, you know, if you look at, let's say, what we were expecting to see two years ago compared to where we are now, we have moved, a little bit our timelines to the right, because, you know, I think a number of, expectation on the engineering side, took more time to get right. And, clearly, as I mentioned, it's all about making sure that you can be bankable, that you can produce fertilizer cheaper than anybody else. So it's been really all about that focus. So Costa Rica, can we go maybe about twelve months faster than the time it took to develop, Vieita? I think that's a reasonable estimate.

35:52 And and, clearly, we will continue to follow that same approach, but the starting point for Costa Rica will be from the moment we sign the power purchase agreement. So that's that's really the the very important point. Right? You only you only want to invest significant amount of money the moment you know exactly what power you have, what is the price of that power, what is the quality of that power so that then you decide where is going to be the location of your project, what type of fertilizer you're going to produce, and so on.

36:23 So, sorry. So a question from Miguel. You mentioned the potential need for green reinforcement in Paraguay. Who will fund the investment? How confident are you on a realistic timeline? So it's well, it it's a two two sided question. Right? So the way we design our projects, whether it's in Costa Rica, Paraguay, and elsewhere, is we make sure that we are working with an existing grid for the long term and, obviously, taking into account that there will be progressed on. And so in our electromechanical study, with Andy, we have a very good idea that where we would put the 300 megawatt will not put excessive load on the existing grid. Right? And they and I think the team in Paraguay has obviously, you know, direct discussion with because we we we will be one of their largest customer.

37:15 You know, the plan of grid reinforcement in Paraguay is available on Andy's website. And, actually, you can find it in the, Inter American Bank, the IDB, and the World Bank, websites because they have proposed to provide support to Paraguay to, increase the size of the grid. So, I think Paraguay is quite smart that they're taking a thirty year view of the grid and the power demand. And what you will see is they are really doubling up, the potential because today, more than two third of that power is being sold to Brazil, to Argentina at a very low price. And it is much better for Paraguay to invest, to have more power available in Paraguay so that they can really upgrade the value of that electron and create more job, in the region and also jobs which have and use that power to also increase economic benefit. Because if with that power, you can have access to green fertilizer, make you, let's say, protected against more expensive imports, and it makes more it makes you more sustainable as a whole. It's all in the benefit of Paraguay. So we can only applaud that side of thinking from the government that they really want to go and continue to optimize the use of electrons in Paraguay.

38:39 So there's a question on Steve. You know, have we looked at the World Bank grants via via the ATOME, which we recently awarded an Uzbek project with $5,000,000 for 500,000 ton reduction in carbon emission? So, I mean, you know, clearly, you know, I spent nearly ten years within the World Bank Group at IFC, so we have very active discussions with them. And the same way that one of the reason we are working with Yara is they also have very, very good green view of the world and of the green market for fertilizer and the carbon advantages. So, you know, we are certainly looking at all of the potential options, and where we will optimize the best value.

39:25 And so, you know, have we looked at it? Yes. We have.

39:32 So, you know, the and question from Andrew. And, even with access to low cost renewable energy, how confident are you that the technology to be used at VETA for extracting hydrogen from h two o will be economically viable? And so the confidence comes from the fact that we will be using, alkaline electrolyzer. And they have been in operation for a long time. The producers that I mean, sorry, the manufacturers of electrolyzers that we are talking to have a proven track record of system, of very large systems. Right? So we are a 100% confident, that it is completely viable. Right? There is zero technological risk into what we are doing, and that's that's very important to complete continue to to to to push, which is we know the price of a product coming in. We know the price of a product coming out. We know what quality, and we know what efficiency. And that's very key. In our base case, in all of our economics, we are not assuming that maybe the technology will be better in five or ten years' time. You know, we've been offered by vendors to, you know, to say, oh, you know, but my technology has disadvantage or that advantage.

40:47 You know, we politely declined and say, we will not take technology risk for our first project, and we will only buy from vendors who can prove to us that they have system working in large scale. Question from Miguel. Has Yara indicated interest in also becoming offtaker for Costa Rica or phase two? How many potential, offtakers were bidding? So, obviously, I'm not going to go too much into these details. You know, Yara is not the only international fertilizer company. There's a number of them. But it is, you know, the largest globally for calcium ammonium nitrate for specialty fertilizer products. It is also one of the most advanced when it comes to the green and the renewable, and the blue, but clearly, you know, the green side.

41:37 So we are very confident that they are able to extract the best value and make sure that the value of what we will be producing will be recognized. We view it as a strategic relationship across the continent. So, clearly, when we decide for Vieta, sorry, for Iguessu project, for Costa Rica project and beyond, who we want to choose for the offtaker, They will already be in the room in in discussions. Do they have exclusivity for the other projects? No. But we are also very, very clear. Right? It's you know, if if Yara performs as well as what we think they will be performing, you know, we would be stupid to start a relationship with somebody new. Right? So for us, this is a strategic relationship. And then, there's a question from Eva. You know, what is the tenor of the Yara offtake?

42:26 And, you know, what can we say about it? So what we say publicly is what we will stick to. You know, as I mentioned, for us, it's part of our secret sauce. We don't want to educate our competition too much. And we're also respectful from Yara that they don't want to educate their competitors too much. So, hopefully, that's okay as an answer. And I don't believe we have more questions. Olivier, thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And, of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the investor meet company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments? So, so I think the what what I want to close with is just like it's, you know, with with what we are seeing today is exciting to us.

43:20 Right? We we are now seeing from last week, PepsiCo announcing this partnership with Yara. We've seen, you know, moving forward. You know, we are seeing, let's say, Cefetra and companies like Marks and Spencer being very, very open, in discussing that they are now looking to decarbonize their entire value chain. So what we are seeing is that, you know, all of the hard work that we've done and all of the belief that we've had that the fertilizer market and the food market was changing is is becoming a very fast reality. I think the other side is, you know, our, let's say, very risk averse approach to development, is also paying off. Right? And and I think what we have seen is a number of companies who have largely overpromised, and on expectations, we were not commercially viable because they just assume that too many things will go right, and we never assumed anything.

44:19 We always looked at what was the price before and what is the price going to be, but what is the lowest case that we can live with to make sure that we will continue to be able to operate even at a very low cycle so that it enables us that when the price of fertilizers become high, we will be able to obviously make, the most hay during that time. At the end of the day, you know, we believe in the green, but I will go back. You know, sustainability without profitability doesn't work. The other side is clearly, we are seeing also a shift in the industry. Right? We are moving away from gigawatt, you know, million ton scale type of facility into smaller decentralized, fertilizer facility. And and this is what the market wants.

45:06 This is what the market needs, and we are putting that together, to make sure that what we are doing in project one, we can do in project two and project three and so on. So I think I want to to leave you that, right, which is, you know, look look at how many companies have been able to get strong offtake and which companies have been able to get an offtake for a 100% of their projects. And that's across the entire hydrogen ammonia industry and especially the fertilizer industry. And and you will see that ATOM is extremely you know, is is in a a very unique position from a public market perspective and which offers that opportunity to investors, whilst all of the others who've been doing, you know, decently, they're all private. Right? So I think we are thankful to our shareholders, to their patience because developing these projects takes a long time, a lot of belief, but, you know, we are thankful that investors have continued to trust us.

46:05 And, and, of course, we are always open. You know, if somebody want to ask this question, we will also always be as open and honest and truthful as, you know, we can be, because this is also what we believe in. You know, we believe in transparency. We work in countries which are also extremely transparent, which are extremely politically stable, and we want to continue to be able to say that. And and, obviously, you know, within the confine of, you know, what we want to really reveal to the competition because we have a secret sauce, and and, you know, we basically will, you know, we will defend that secret sauce very, very fiercely because this is what we will derive value from. So, again, thank you very much, for everybody's support. And, and, again, thank you very much for Yara for joining the ATOM and especially the Vieita story.

46:55 You know, I think it's a great partnership, which is only at the start. Olivier, thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? It can only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of ATOM PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.