Eramet Aktie

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our H1 results. I know it's a busy time for most of you with a lot of half year results being published today. So thanks for being with us. And I'm pleased to present to you what we think are very encouraging results versus the situation that we had only 6 months ago. 2025, as you know, proved to be a challenging year for Eramet in many respects.

And in H1, I think we have demonstrated that we brought back the situation under control. And despite challenging events at some of our key operations and especially in Senegal and in Weda Bay, H1 showed very solid and concrete progress across the group, demonstrating that the management team is fully operational and clearly focused on execution.

We delivered a stronger operational performance, which translated into a 45% increase in our adjusted EBITDA. Our adjusted free cash flow returned to positive territory despite our traditional seasonality in H1, and we have then stabilized our debt. And while further balance sheet strengthening is still needed, the funding plan is progressing according to schedule.

So today, I will first take you through the main operational and strategic highlights in an introduction. Then I will hand over to our CFO, Simon Henochsberg, who will then present the H1 financial results, the operating performance. Then we'll move to the funding plan, and we'll finish with outlook and guidance.

So a few words in introduction. Of course, safety first. It's, as always, our top priority. Our safety results have improved increasingly in the past years at the group level. And we are still improving this year, both on lagging and leading indicators, by the way. The group injury frequency rate keeps improving. It stands at 0.5 in H1 2026, which is good. However, this positive trend does not diminish the seriousness of the two fatal contractor accidents that we had in Weda Bay in January and in May. And raising the safety standards in Weda Bay is our #1 priority as a group.

We have targeted action plans at Weda Bay with a clear focus on operational discipline, leadership, accountability and prevention, especially with our main contractors. As you know, it's a fully contracted mine. So we are dealing with the contractors there. And we are pulling every lever that we have, with our partner to change the situation there. In other places, the performance is good, and we keep the momentum by continuously strengthening all aspects of our safety culture and standards.

So if I come to the operational performance, we showed strong improvement in operational performance, return to adjusted free cash flow breakeven after a big cash consumption last year. And I would like to highlight some of the key milestones that we delivered. First one is lithium, and we are very proud of it. The lithium business unit reached 90% nameplate capacity in June, in line with schedule, contributing positively both to EBITDA and cash this semester.

The manganese ore transport volume increased by 6% in Gabon, greatly helped by the railway, which is now performing much better and which is the result of huge efforts that we have put on it over the last years, both from a managerial and financial point of view. We unfortunately experienced a very negative event at Eramet Grande Cote in Senegal with a fire that we had in February. And -- but thanks to the strong mobilization of the team, we managed to partially restart the plant as soon as April.

So overall, our adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 276 million, up 45% year-over-year, only driven by our intrinsic performance. And the adjusted free cash flow was positive, slightly positive at EUR 7 million. And this result reflects the first impact of our resolution initiatives on cost, productivity and the cash discipline applied across the group.

The funding plan is on track, but its full delivery remains absolutely critical in H2 for the future of the group with a capital increase that has been approved by our AGM in May and that has to take place before the end of the year. And last but not least, we continue to reinforce our ESG position. As you know, Eramet Grande Cote became the first group site to reach the IRMA 50 performance level, confirming both the quality of the work done locally, but also our commitment to the highest responsible mining standards.

More broadly, we are making steady progress across all our Act for Positive Mining pillars with concrete actions on local economic contribution, partnership with all countries, community engagement and decarbonization.

Let me zoom on some of those key achievements. Clearly, few years ago, we made a very big bet on lithium, building on a first-in-kind DLE plant in the Western world with proprietary technology. And we are happy to show today that it was a good and successful bet. The DLE plant reached 90% of the nameplate capacity in June, only 12 months -- after 12 months of ramp-up, which confirms the robustness of the technology and the quality of the asset. We are targeting as planned, to be at full capacity by the end of the year.

Our cash cost is already good and track -- on track to reach our targets. The lithium market proved to be very dynamic, growing faster than expected. We'll come back to that. And thanks to this, Centenario is, as I said, already contributing positively to both EBITDA and free cash flow this semester and will contribute even more for the full year. We are then really confident that with the strong potential of our salar and our technology, this asset will be a strong contributor to the value creation of the company going forward.

In Gabon, the railway performance has improved significantly in H1. It is, as I said, the result of the managerial transformation that we operated over the last 2 years and a strong investment in the track renewal, that is now paying off. The transport capacity increased by 9% over the semester, allowing a 6% increase for Comilog manganese ore flows.

The performance -- this performance of the railway allow us to be confident in our capacity then to progressively get the full potential of the mines at Moanda in the coming years. And we know -- you know that we have invested heavily to debottleneck to grow this mine in the past. And the bottleneck was the railway and this improvement is making us confident that we will be able to get the full potential of the investment we have made in the past.

We have secured a new financing in Setrag of EUR 225 million, which will support the next phases of the renovation and capacity expansion of the railway. And last but not least, of course, in Gabon, in July, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gabonese authorities, clearing the path forward on the transformation side. And it is a very important step as now we have a common frame and a common road map to progress on the -- this critical topic.

In Senegal, we faced, unfortunately, a big fire in February in our Wet Concentration Plant. The operations across the site were fully suspended between, in fact, end of March and the end of April. A strong focus was put on reducing costs to the bare minimum to avoid too much losses during that period and until the full recovery.

And thanks to the strong mobilization of the team, the production partially restarted at approximately 30% of the capacity at the end of April. And we expect the -- to be back to full production after construction -- full production capacity in Q1 2027, restart by the end of the year and full capacity in Q1. The expected full net cash impact is around EUR 45 million after the insurance proceeds. So this is the result of both the losses during that period and also the reconstruction cost.

Now let's turn to the key financial figures. As I said, adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 276 million, supported by strong intrinsic performance, notably the lithium ramp-up, better manganese ore performance and productivity and procurement gains. This improvement also translated into a positive adjusted cash flow of EUR 7 million, helped by working capital discipline and very strict CapEx control. The CapEx are down 53% year-over-year, so significant reduction.

These are very encouraging steps. We -- that helps stabilizing the debt and reduce the leverage to 4.5. This is, of course, encouraging first step, and we delivered what we plan to deliver in H1. But obviously, further balance sheet strengthening remains necessary. And this is basically what we announced in February with a 3-pillar funding plan on which we are making steady progress.

The first pillar and obviously, a very important one is this performance improvement and cash generation plan with strict control of cost, productivity improvement and capital expenditure control. As I said, we delivered a first -- strong first half on this front, but we must, of course, maintain this momentum and continue. And we are ahead of the resolution program that was presented to you end of last year.

The second pillar, as you know, is a strategic review of selected assets with several monetization options under consideration, that are expected to lead to one or more disposals of minority stakes in certain activities by year-end.

And third, and obviously very important, the proposed EUR 500 million capital increase approved by our shareholders in May. It is targeted to happen in Q4, and it obviously remains a critical component of this funding plan.

So of course, this plan -- so most of it -- the second and third pillar are expected to materialize in the second half of the year. And these are obviously significant steps of our overall reinforcement and restore of the balance sheet.

And of course, last but not least, beyond our short-term operational and financial priorities, we remain fully committed to our long-term sustainability road map, Act for Positive Mining. In H1, we continue to make concrete progress across our 3 ESG pillars. I will give you a few highlights here. So I mentioned already Eramet Grande Cote, IRMA 50 performance level.

An important news since then, Eramet has joined IRMA as a mining sector member. We are now an official member of IRMA, and confirms our commitment to independent, transparent and demanding responsible mining standards. We also continue to demonstrate our local contribution to our host countries with EUR 2.5 billion of economic contribution to those countries last year. And of course, the MOU signed in Gabon that I described earlier, is also a strong illustration of our ability to build constructive and long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships with the countries where we operate.

I will stop here, and then I will hand over to Simon for the presentation of -- in more details of our financial results.

Thank you. Thank you, Christel. Good morning to everyone. I'll start with our financial results first, and I'll move to our operations afterwards. So as Christel said, we had an overall improving financial performance in H1. Turnover increased by 8% during H1. This is thanks to higher volumes, higher prices and this despite the weaker U.S. dollar in H1 compared to H1 2025.

The adjusted EBITDA, as you know, we adjust with the share of Weda Bay, and we removed SLN as it is fully funded by the French state. The adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 276 million, up 45% compared to last year. This positive EBITDA performance, combined with lower CapEx and good cash management allowed us to have a positive free cash flow -- adjusted free cash flow for the semester. This is far above the free cash flow that we had last year.

Unfortunately, this positive performance on EBITDA and cash does not translate into a better net income group share. The net income reached minus EUR 146 million in H1. This is the result of an impairment test that we had to pass on our asset in Senegal. This was triggered -- the test was triggered by the fire, and it took into account the lower mining reserves as a consequence of the lower structural prices.

As a consequence, our shareholder equity decreased, while our net debt, excluding SLN cash, remained stable at EUR 2 billion. This led to a net leverage improving to 4.5x and the gearing, which remained stable at 125% as per bank covenants.

More details on EBITDA increase. We -- this increase by 45% is driven mainly, fully by our intrinsic performance. 2/3 of this intrinsic performance is volumes, thanks to the ramp-up of lithium and the good performance in manganese. The rest is driven by all the cost savings that we managed to achieve in the first half. And as Christel mentioned, we are ahead of our resolution program, and this is what allowed us to deliver such a high intrinsic improvement.

We had a negative one-off impact of EUR 32 million. This is due to inventory depreciation in Gabon. So we reduced the value of manganese ore fines that we had in inventory. This is due to our revised mining plan and the priority we give to transportation of higher-value ore. And thus, we are slowing the pace of destocking of those fines. And this is the reason why we decreased the value in our inventory.

The external impact is negative by minus EUR 47 million. So we had a positive price effect during the semester, but this price effect is fully offset by the higher cost, higher freight costs, higher inflation and the weakening U.S. dollar. And we have on top of that a negative impact in Weda Bay with permitting limited to 12 million tonnes in H1.

We maintained strict CapEx discipline during the semester with CapEx reaching EUR 100 million, down from EUR 215 million last year. This is because, of course, we've completed our investment in lithium, but it's not only this. We've also reduced and deferred some sustaining and debottlenecking CapEx during the semester. So thanks to both of those items, we were able to reduce overall CapEx -- cash CapEx during the semester by 53%.

Regarding net debt, it was stable at EUR 2 billion during the semester. This thanks to our breakeven free cash flow and this without receiving any dividends from Weda Bay during the semester.

On liquidity, the liquidity at the end of June stands at EUR 1.3 billion, down from EUR 1.5 billion in December. This takes into account the RCF that remains fully drawn. The reduction of liquidity from December to the end of the semester is fully driven by the debt repayments, the sizable debt repayments that we made during H1. We reimbursed part of our term loan, private placements and bank overdraft and some other debt. As a result, the remaining debt installments in H2 are quite limited and it's the same for 2027, where debt installments are limited with 2028 being the year where our first bonds will mature and where we will pay the last installment of our term loan.

I'll move to operations. And -- but first, taking a quick look at markets during H1. So overall, we had a favorable price environment. It was offset by the lower -- the weaker dollar and the higher freight rates. But overall, we had a positive price impact. In manganese ore, the price -- the higher prices is mainly the reflection of the higher freight rates. In manganese alloys, we've seen prices increase due to safeguard measures and CBAM that were introduced in Europe.

In lithium, we've seen a price more than doubling compared to the same period last year. This is thanks to the huge demand pull that we see for lithium right now. In nickel, the price is also increasing. This is largely due to the permitting restrictions that we see in Indonesia. And regarding Mineral Sands, prices have been lower in H1 with some improvements in zircon prices at the end of this semester. And the dollar has weakened significantly compared to H1 2025 with 12 points, reaching 1.17 for the semester.

On operations, we overall had a good performance with manganese ore and alloys performing well and lithium performing very well. We had those issues -- permitting issues in nickel and the fire in Senegal. So more precisely, in manganese ore, we reached 3.2 million tonnes. This is up 6% compared to last year. This is mainly due to the railway performance. In alloys, operations have been going very well with increased volumes. In lithium, Christel said it, the ramp-up is going well. It's on schedule, and we reached 90% nameplate capacity.

In Weda Bay, we had exhausted our quota in May. So we produced the 12 million tonnes we could, and the mine has been placed in care and maintenance since, and in Mineral Sands The HMC production for the semester is 1/3 of what it was last year. This is due to the fire, but we managed to restart partially production at the end of April.

So into a bit more details, I'll first cover manganese. So on manganese, manganese ore, the dark blue on this slide. Manganese ore, we overall had a stable EBITDA. This is the result of higher volumes, but also this -- offset by this one-off impact of inventory depreciation because of manganese ore fines. But on the cash side in manganese ore, we moved from a negative free cash flow last year to a highly positive free cash flow this year. This is because this year, we had much lower taxes paid, lower working capital requirements and lower CapEx. So because of all those reasons, even though EBITDA remains stable, we have significant more free cash flow coming from manganese ore.

Regarding alloys, EBITDA increased as well. This is because of the additional volumes, but offset partly by the fact that manganese alloys prices outside of Europe have been going down, especially in the U.S. But on the -- and on the cash side, we moved to negative free cash flow in H1 because of higher inventories starting from quite a low base in H1 2025.

Overall, the cash cost for our manganese ore operation has increased due to the dollar depreciation. As you know, our costs are -- in Gabon are pegged to the euro. So we fully take the impact of the dollar depreciation. It moved from 2.3 to 2.4 FOB. The CIF price -- CIF cash costs, sorry, increased also due to the increase in freight costs. But taking all of this into account, the mine remains firmly into the first part of the cash cost curve.

In Setrag, we keep moving forward with our modernization and securitization program. It's a program we started in '25 that will expand until 2031. As you know, the goal is to have a reliable railway to increase the capacity by 50%. This will allow us to increase also the volume transported for Comilog at more than 8 million tonnes.

The financing of this program is partly done by a new debt financing that Setrag was able to secure. We -- of EUR 225 million and plus a component of refinancing of EUR 87 million. The remainder of the CapEx is -- will be financed by the cash flow of Setrag directly. There is a Gabonese part in this program as the state of Gabon is in charge of the ground infrastructure and the Gabonese part of the program is financed by an AFD loan and EU subsidy.

In lithium, so significant change compared to H1 last year. With the successful ramp-up and positive prices and cost improvement as well during the ramp-up, we were able to, first of all, have a positive EBITDA and have a positive free cash flow. We have a positive free cash flow of EUR 32 million. So this is a major change compared to last year, whereas you can see, we had a negative cash -- significant negative cash outflow in H1. Now we're turning to positive, and this is a key difference comparing '26 to '25.

This performance in H1 in Centenario confirms the status of this asset as a world-class asset. The optimized cash cost ex works that we target is still between $5,400 and $5,800 per tonne. With this cash cost -- as you can see on the left-hand side on the cash cost curve, with this cash cost, we are firmly into the first quartile of the cash cost curve. This allows us to secure very high margins with current prices.

It's also a very high-margin business even with long-term prices of -- a long-term price of $15,000 per tonne. And we believe that such a long-term price is what is the minimum necessary to incentivize the massive increase in supply that is needed to keep up with demand growth. It's all the more necessary as we are in a sector that is very capital intensive.

So now we own -- we fully own a world-class resource that has significant expansion potential. And so now we can move -- we can look forward. As you know, we have -- the resource base is huge. We have 15 million tonnes of lithium carbonate resources. We have a long life of mine. We have enough fresh water that can support those expansion phases. We have our own in-house DLE technology that is immune, by the way, to Chinese export bans that we see on technologies. We have the operational know-how.

We're the only one in the Western world. We have the operational know-how, and we have access to energy. So with all of those ingredients, we can look forward, and we believe there is a lot of value to be captured with the long-term potential of that asset, and we have launched studies both on brownfield and greenfield expansion phases.

The first phase of expansion for that asset is first a brownfield expansion of 11,000 tonnes. We would use the existing plants and debottleneck the existing plants where there is already some extra capacity, allowing us to reach 35,000 tonnes in total for that plant. Overall, this expansion phase would be with a lower capital intensity and would reinforce the position of that asset in the first quartile of the cash cost curve.

We've completed a PFS already. And this -- for this reason, we target a potential FID by the end of 2027. And this project would be eligible to the RIGI scheme that is in place in Argentina. As you know, this scheme provides regulatory stability, lower taxes, lower duties, flexibility on trade, flexibility on foreign exchange, and this project is eligible to RIGI.

On nickel, in Weda Bay, EBITDA remained stable during the first half of the year compared to last year. This is due to lower volumes because of the limitation on permitting, but this was offset by the higher prices, allowing us to have a stable EBITDA. Nevertheless, there were no dividends distributed during that semester because of the volume limitation as we're waiting for a revised permit and because the mine was placed in care and maintenance in May.

Regarding our permits, we're still limited at 12 million tonnes today. So as a reminder, the demand for the IWIP Industrial Park, which is downstream of our mine. As you know, it's a huge industrial park. It's the second biggest in Indonesia. It's -- the capacity in that park is 25% of the global nickel production. And we are the main mine ahead in the upstream of that industrial park, and we only have 12 million tonnes. This is creating a significant supply-demand gap locally. For those reasons, we've requested an upward revision of our RKAB in July as per the usual process put in place by the Indonesian authorities.

In Mineral Sands, we had the impact of the fire, which was offset by insurance in H1, but we also had a very negative impact linked to the lower prices during that semester, leading to a sharp decrease in EBITDA in H1. And we had, for this reason, a decrease in free cash flow in H1 of minus EUR 27 million, lower than what we had last year.

We expect to return to full production capacity Q1 next year. So we've already restarted partially the assets in April at 30% capacity. In July, we restarted the separation plant to be able to produce the finished goods, and we will restart shipments in August. We are working on the rebuilding, which will allow us to restart the plant, the concentration plant by the end of the year and to be at full capacity in '27. Overall, the cash impact is expected to land at EUR 45 million for the full year, net of the EUR 50 million of insurance proceeds.

And now I'll comment the funding plan. So we are making progress. Critical milestones are ahead of us in H2, but we're making progress in H1. On the performance improvement plan, we're delivering on ReSolution. We had solid performance in the rail in Gabon, and we're making also progress with productivity, cost savings, as you have seen in our variance analysis for H1.

Regarding the strategic review of assets, we're on track. We're considering several options right now. On the equity strengthening, the resolutions were voted by our AGM, which will allow our Board to launch a rights issue, and we target an execution in Q4. At the same time, we've maintained a strict capital allocation policy. So we've reduced CapEx significantly in H1, 53% less than last year. We didn't pay any dividends, and we maintain adequate liquidity, also thanks to the waivers we have obtained from our banks during the first semester.

On the time line, the free cash flow protection, this is a permanent focus of the company, and this has been ongoing, and we will keep focusing on this. On asset monetization, we're targeting an execution towards the end of the year. And on the capital increase, as I've just said, we are targeting an execution in Q4.

Let's move to outlook and guidance. So on the outlook, we remain cautious. We see the favorable price environment we have today continuing, but we also see persistent inflationary pressure on input costs. This is reflected in the consensus for H2. We see manganese ore prices and nickel LME being stable in H2 compared to H1. And we have, on the other hand, lithium carbonate with a consensus that is seen with an increasing price by 10% in H2.

Regarding the FX rates, the euro-dollar, the consensus is at 1.17. As a reminder, we have hedged half of our dollar exposure at 1.20, and this will last until the end of the year.

On volumes and CapEx, we confirm our guidance. I just want to focus on CapEx specifically. We were able to confirm -- we are able to confirm this guidance despite the additional CapEx that we have to spend in Senegal, and this is thanks to all the efforts that we made to reduce CapEx elsewhere.

I will hand over to Christel for the conclusion. Thank you.

Thanks, Simon. So just in conclusion, you have seen that the performance of H1 is showing that Eramet is moving in the right direction with a stronger operational performance, stopped burning cash and progress in the funding plan. We know it's -- that is a first good step, but we still have many things to deliver in H2. And our priorities are very clear: safety first, and in particular, the focus on Weda Bay, I commented on.

The second is disciplined execution of our operational improvement plan and including the full ramp-up of Centenario. We are very close to it now. The continued improvement of the railway in Gabon, allowing us to grow -- continue to grow the manganese ore flow and the recovery of the operations in Senegal.

Third, of course, we must deliver the capital increase in Q4 and complete the funding plan, which is, of course, essential to strengthen our balance sheet and unlock the full value of our great portfolio. And finally, we are working with the Nomination Committee of the Board to ensure a smooth leadership transition while maintaining the full continuity in the execution of the group strategy.

So overall, we enter the second half with confidence, thanks to this strong, I mean, delivery in H1, but also with the pace and discipline needed to deliver the key remaining milestones.

So thank you very much. And now I will stop here and let the floor to the room and the chat to answer the questions.

Thank you, Christel and Simon. So we will start with the questions in the auditorium and then move on to the questions on the call and end up with the chat box. So please state your name and your company. Who would like to start first? No questions? Okay. Jean-Luc.

I got 2 questions. One related to the depreciation of reserves in Gabon. Is it due to pricing effects or to something else? Second question is on Weda Bay minerals. It's striking to see your allocation of production reduced by 3/4. How can we model longer term the production of and the contribution of Weda Bay with such uncertainty in the short-term?

I will let Simon answer the first question. It's depreciation of inventory, not reserve.

Thank you. So as you know, in Gabon, when we produce ore, 70% of that is lumpy ore, which has a high value, 30% are fines, which have a lower value. We produce both and we sell both. But as we have usually a bottleneck on transportation in Gabon, we try to maximize value by pushing the volumes of the higher value, and we have inventories of fines in the mine.

And we -- in the past, we've used the price fly-ups in manganese to destock those fines accordingly. We've revised our mining plan recently. And what we see is that in the next 2 years to maximize our value, our present value, we will keep pushing the higher value ore and we will destock at a slower pace the lower value fines. And so the present value of those fines has decreased, and this is why we reduced the inventory.

On Weda Bay, I share your view. It's very difficult also for us to manage a mine with these ups and downs in the permit allocation. So -- and especially, we are not the only one. As you know, this is a very big mine, which represents a significant part. I think it's about 20% or more of the overall Indonesian nickel production. So it's huge.

The point is -- and a lot of investment has been made at the bottom of this mine with a huge industrial park and this industrial park consume, as you have seen in the presentation, more than 100 million tonnes of nickel ore in the year. So even for the industrial park at the bottom of the mine, it's very difficult because they don't know on how much ore from Weda Bay they can count each month and for the rest of the year.

So it's an overall issue that we have. We are very agile in Weda Bay. And thanks to the model, which is a full subcontracted model, we managed to reduce our cost significantly when we are not operating. But of course, we don't remove, I mean, all the people because we have to be able to restart at any time if we get an extension of the permitting. So it's a balance that we have to find.

We have obviously reported those issues to the authorities. As you know, we have filed our request for an extended permitting for the rest of the year. This is the time of the year, July and beginning of August, where usually they give a new allocation of expansion. So we are expecting to have news on the future permitting in the coming weeks, but we don't have a precise timing. And of course, we don't have any idea of the volumes that will be allocated to Weda Bay.

Any other questions?

We move to the chat maybe.

Okay. So we'll start with the call. Operator, I hand over to you. I believe Paul is connected.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Paul Kirjanovs from Bank of America.

It's Paul Kirjanovs from Bank of America. I had 2 questions this morning for you. One on CapEx. So I see CapEx decreased as per plan as guided. But just to understand a little bit better, how much of that decrease is structural reduction versus deferral into 2027 and beyond? Or, if asked a little bit differently, how much more flexibility do you have on CapEx to reduce it further potentially?

And then my second question is maybe if you could give a bit more color on the asset monetization? So are you still kind of using the same approach? Is everything still on the table? Are you still looking for both majority and minority stake sales, et cetera? So some color here will be super helpful.

Thank you, Paul. Indeed, on CapEx, as you've seen, we are reducing CapEx significantly in 2026. This is our policy, given the situation we are in, we are -- we have made all the efforts to decrease significantly CapEx. And you're right to point out that we have EUR 100 million in H1. This is probably a historical low for Eramet.

To answer your question, it's not sustainable to be at this level for a group like us. So this is why we maintain our guidance between EUR 250 million and EUR 290 million for the full year. And this is the level at which we fully cover our sustaining CapEx, and this is a sustainable level outside of any additional growth CapEx we may have in the future.

Now regarding the asset monetization. So we are -- as we said, we're still considering several options. We're on track with -- we're advancing multiple options that are progressing well. At this time, we cannot comment further on what that may be, and we will communicate to the market in due course once we have something to announce.

It's very important also to have several options as we don't want to do any fire sale, and we want to do things that make sense, strategically speaking for Eramet, and also at the right value. So it's important that we keep several options going on.

Any other questions on the call? Okay. So...

Once again -- yes, on the call for the moment, there are no more questions.

Okay. So we will move to the question on the chat box, and we have a few questions on Gabon.

So you recently announced the signing of an MOU with the Gabonese government. What will be the cost of building a manganese smelter in Gabon? And would you be open to industrial partners on this project?

So we signed an MOU that is putting a frame and the road map on how we will move forward with the studies and also with the requirements, the pre-requirements to be able to do several type of transformation in Gabon. So first, I would like to highlight that building a smelter is not the only one. For example, we are studying seriously the transformation into manganese oxide. Manganese oxide is first transformation of manganese that then goes into batteries, EV batteries and also to high-performance steel. So many countries are interested as it is a critical component for both electrification and defense and specialty steel. And -- so this is one way.

So smelter and manganese alloys is another one. Today, it's premature to give you any number on the CapEx. We are at the early stage of the studies. And what is very important in the road map that we have commonly established with the Gabonese authorities is that we are clear on both sides that they have first to provide energy. We all recognize that energy -- competitive energy is absolutely key in order to be able to build such kind of high energy-intensive type of transformation.

So it's -- today, we are working together on this prerequisite with the Gabonese government. And we also agreed on the fact that this -- any projects that we will put there should be economically viable, so having a profitability. Regarding the potential industrial partner, yes, we are open to have potential industrial partners in this transformation. But today, I mean, we are at an early stage in the studies progressing, but early stage and it's premature to give any number.

To follow up on this question...

Yes, it doesn't work.

Yes, sorry. To follow up on this question, you -- in your MOU, you presented three scenarios, which one is likely to take place first?

Again, it's what I mentioned before, manganese oxide is less capital intensive and more important, does not require so much energy, as it is the case for manganese alloys. So the prerequisites are certainly easier to put in place. So it could happen earlier than a manganese smelter that requires more infrastructure, I would say, and especially competitive energy, which is not available for the time being.

We have a question on MineralSands. What is the remaining carrying value following the new impairment? And what is now the remaining mine life following the reduction in reserves?

Simon?

I'll start -- Charles, maybe you want to comment on the remaining reserve first?

Yes. So the...

And maybe we have not introduced Charles before. Charles Nouel is our -- for the one who don't know him, but he's our COO and has been for the last 3 years.

Okay. So the mine life has been reduced following the review of the structural shift in the Mineral Sands market with lower prices and lower prices as evidenced by current prices, but also by the different consultants and specialists in Mineral Sands. So it is now around 15 years, it -- and it will be reflected in our reserve statements in next year documents. And it is in the current one as well.

Yes. We have -- we already had a decrease -- the decrease as a result of price led to reserves shifting from between 14 million and 15 million tonnes of heavy mineral and this shifted to 12 million tonnes now, and this is the decrease in reserves that led to that impairment. We do not comment on the valuation of that asset in our books as it stands.

And we have a final question regarding the RCF. So can you remind if the RCF is still fully drawn as of June '26? And whether you plan to repay it through '26?

So yes, the RCF is still fully drawn. We have a liquidity that stands at EUR 1.3 billion at end of June. So as I said, this liquidity is down from EUR 1.5 billion end of last year because we've been repaying debt during the first semester. So now it's at EUR 1.3 billion. So we have a comfortable level of liquidity. It's also due to the fact that we have this RCF fully drawn. Our policy -- especially with the uncertainties that we may have, our policy is to keep this RCF fully drawn until we have executed our funding plan, starting with the capital increase.

So it was the final question from the webcast. Thank you.

So thank you very much. And so it ends this session on the H1 results. And of course, we have, as I said, a very important H2 in front of us, but we are confident that we are all set to be able to deliver what we have planned. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Eramet's annual results presentation. I know most of you from my past as Chair and CEO of Eramet in the last 8 years. And as you know, I have resumed the role of CEO on an interim basis at the request of the Board.

It was not part of my personal plan. One year ago, I decided to not to seek a third mandate for personal reason, and I have not changed my mind. However, when the Board asked me to step in, I felt the responsibility towards the group, towards its stakeholders and above all, towards its teams. I know this company extremely well. I know its strengths, and I know what it takes to navigate a difficult cycle. And I want to see the group succeed.

So, this is a temporary mission. A search for the new CEO is underway. But I will stay as long as needed to ensure continuity and stability for the group, and I will hand over once a successor will be appointed. In the meantime, I'm fully engaged and fully accountable. And as you will see today, I have a strong team with me. So, operational and financial continuity is fully ensured at Eramet.

So, the agenda of today is the following. I will do an introduction. Then we will go through our 2025 financial results, and it will be presented by our acting CFO, Simon Henochsberg has been in Eramet for a few years now. He is our Head of Strategy. He is coming with a strong financial background and experience in banking. And he is today in charge of Treasury, Financing and Investor Relations.

Then, we will focus on our operating and financial performance by activity and on the group performance improvement plan. And this will be presented by Charles Nouel. Charles Nouel is our COO. He has been in Eramet for 20 years. He has been in the COO position for 3 years now. And Charles is also in charge of the implementation of the ReSolution program.

And then, we will move to our funding plan. And you have seen in the communique that we have announced today a comprehensive funding plan. And so, Simon will present it, and I will come back for the conclusion.

So, let's start with introduction. Clearly, 2025 was a very difficult year that stretched our balance sheet. We faced strong external headwinds with cyclical lows almost across most of our commodities, combined with a weakening dollar, which is a rare and particularly adverse combination in our industry.

We also encountered permit restriction in Indonesia and operational challenges in our manganese logistics in Gabon. We emerged from this period with a stretched balance sheet, and this required decisive actions that we have decided, with the full support of our Board, to restore a sustainable capital structure and provide solid foundations for the future. We will obviously come back to that in a minute in the presentation.

At the same time, we have also achieved major milestones in our strategic road map. And we are particularly proud of the ramp-up of our Centenario plant in Argentina, which progressed successfully and which is really a great achievement and position us very favorably for the future. And in Grande Cote in Senegal, we are also very proud to have achieved the IRMA 50 certification. As you know, IRMA is a very demanding international standard in terms of sustainable mining. And we are one of the few mines in the world being able to achieve this level of certification. So, despite the big difficulties of the cycle, we progressed strategically on our road map, and I think it is a very important point.

So, let's start now with safety. As you know, safety remains an unconditional priority at Eramet. Our incident rate stands at 0.8, which is a good standard in the world, and it is below our target of 1. As you remember, 9 years ago, when I joined the group, the safety performance was at a totally different level, and I think that the progress that we achieved over the past years is something that we can collectively be proud of.

However, the situation at Weda Bay Nickel is deeply concerning. We recorded 3 fatal contractor accidents in 2025, and we had an additional one in January also with contractors. This is totally unacceptable, and corrective measures have been implemented. The contractor management has been strengthened. We have taken measures on road safety and operational controls have been reinforced. And we are also taking measure on lightning prevention and protection measures because we have had issues with lightning strikes. Safety is a fundamental priority of Eramet, and this is the first pillar of our ReSolution plan. And our target is clear. It's 0 injuries and 0 high potential incidents.

So, let me now come to the broader macroeconomic environment. 2025 was marked by historically low commodity prices and unfavorable FX evolution. The macroeconomic environment and particularly the slowdown in China has weighted heavily on industrial demand. For our basket of commodities, and this is what you see on the right side, the pricing environment was comparable to 2015, which is the lowest level in the decade. And that has been compounded with a strong adverse dollar effect, which, as I said, is a particularly rare combination in the industry. So, these sharp declines had a significant negative impact on our results, which amounted to nearly EUR 300 million in 2025.

These external headwinds, combined with the permit restriction in Indonesia led to a very deteriorated adjusted EBITDA, which reached EUR 372 million in 2025. It is down 54% year-over-year. You remember that we were over EUR 800 million in 2024. The intrinsic performance is also below expectation, notably in manganese logistics and because of the cost of the lithium ramp-up phase. So, you see that basically out of the -- I mean, the huge decrease of the adjusted EBITDA, 80%, roughly speaking, was coming from the external factors and 20% from disappointing operating performance within Eramet.

As a result of this much lower EBITDA and tails off CapEx, notably in lithium and Gabon, the adjusted free cash flow was negative at EUR 481 million. And the net debt reached EUR 1.9 billion, and the adjusted leverage stood at 5.5x. The gearing reached 125% under the covenant definition, but we obtained a waiver for the December '25 covenant test date. So given the context, no dividend will be proposed for this year, and you will see also for next year. So, clearly, the balance sheet is stretched, but liquidity has been preserved and as we will see, remains solid at the end of December and access to financing remains secure.

So, in response to this difficult situation, we have implemented a comprehensive funding and performance plan approved by the Board. It relies on 3 pillars that you can see here on the slide. The first one is, of course, the performance improvement and cash generation at the level of Eramet, driven by the ReSolution program. It covers more than 50 initiatives already underway, and Charles will detail these initiatives later on.

The second pillar is a strategic asset review, exploring partial monetization options with the objectives of generating cash in 2026. The third pillar is equity strengthening, with a planned capital increase of around EUR 500 million in 2026, the [ principle ] of which has been agreed with our reference shareholders.

The priority of this plan is clearly deleveraging, in order to secure a stronger and more sustainable future for the group. Simon will give you more details later on, but I think it's a very important step going forward to reinforce the balance sheet of the group. With the strengthened balance sheet, we will be in a position in the future to fully leverage the quality of our asset base.

Just 2 examples here. We operate the largest and one of the highest-grade manganese ore mine in the world, as you know. The debottlenecking of the logistics and the rail infrastructure in Gabon is starting to deliver results. And so, this is positioning us very well for the future.

In lithium, Centenario, as I said, is successfully ramping up. We are several years ahead of most competitors in direct lithium extraction at industrial scale. The asset is first quartile, scalable and long life in a structurally attractive industry. We think that our first quartile low-cost asset base will secure profitability and support cash generation as the commodity prices emerge from the low point of the cycle.

Let me now zoom 1 minute on this first-class lithium asset. The plant, as you know, has started beginning of 2025; in fact, very end of 2024. Our plant has reached close to 75% of nameplate capacity in December last year after overcoming the problem caused by a faulty equipment, the fourth evaporator that was delivered by one of our supplier in the first half that has delayed the start of the plant for about 4 months. But the ramp-up trajectory in the second half was very good, was steep, benchmark in the industry and in line with our revised plan.

Our proprietary Direct Lithium Extraction technology is now operating at industrial scale, and we have demonstrated that it's working. In 2026, as you have seen in our guidance, we target a production between 17,000 and 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate, reaching close to 100% capacity by year-end. And at the same time, we are focusing on cash cost optimization, particularly through improved reagent consumption and process efficiency.

Longer term, the salar, as you know has a great potential of exceeding 75,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per year with options for low capital intensity expansion short term. But we will do this expansion in a very disciplined manner and involving partnership.

And just to finish this introduction, I would like to talk about CSR. As you know, I put CSR as a central pillar of our strategy 8 years ago. CSR remains central to our model and our act for positive mining road map continues to structure all our actions and we progress on it as planned. Achieving the IRMA 50 at Grande Cote in Senegal is a significant milestone. It positions us among the most advanced mining group globally in terms of responsible mining and transparency.

And we continue to see top-tier recognition of our commitments from different CSR rating agencies. And we put here the example of our CDP rates on water that moved from B to A-, which is a very, very good level in our industry and the recognition of this continuous improvement journey towards excellence in CSR.

So now, I will hand over to Simon for the financial results.

Good morning to everyone. Thank you, Christel, for the introduction. I will start by commenting our 2025 financial results, and I will comment later on the funding plan that was announced yesterday.

So, regarding our financial results. First, as Christel mentioned, we need to come back to the market situation that we experienced in 2025. Across all of our commodities, we had lower prices combined with a U.S. weakening, which is quite rare for us, which had a double impact on our financials.

Regarding prices, the impact on manganese ore was minus 18% in 2025 compared to 2024. This is due to excess supply coming from South Africa, and it's also due to an Australian high-grade ore producer that came back on the market during the year. Regarding demand, steel production remains stable.

On nickel, we also experienced a downgrade -- a decrease in prices by 10%. We managed to keep the prices of nickel ore stable in Indonesia, thanks to the premium we were able to get because of the permitting tension that we saw during 2025. But overall, on a global scale, we were in an oversupply situation, both on Class I and Class II nickel.

In mineral sands, we've seen a structurally oversupplied situation emerging. This has been putting pressure on prices, and I will come back to that. This explains the impairment that we had to pass on our asset in Senegal.

On lithium, the prices were low in 2025. We've seen the prices recover recently in the past few weeks. We had indeed a temporarily oversupplied market in '25 despite the very sustained demand that comes from both EV and ESS. But again, we are starting to see a rebalancing on that market in recent weeks.

Coming to our financials. Our turnover for the year decreased to EUR 3.2 billion. So this is 7% below what we had in 2024. So this is mainly due to price impacts, and we did have some extra volumes with the start of our production of lithium in Argentina. Regarding adjusted EBITDA, as you know, we adjust our EBITDA with the share of Weda Bay Nickel. We also retreat the losses of SLN as this operation is fully funded by the French state and does not impact economically Eramet.

So, on adjusted EBITDA, it decreased from EUR 814 million last year in 2024 to EUR 372 million in 2025. This is a decrease of minus 54%. This decrease in EBITDA translated into a lower net income for the year at minus EUR 370 million. This is also due to the impairment that we had to pass on our assets in Senegal, an impairment of EUR 171 million. This is the reflection of this persistent oversupply that we are seeing in this market and the downward pressure on prices.

The adjusted free cash flow for the year landed at minus EUR 481 million, so lower than what we had in 2024. The impact on free cash flow is less important than what we see on EBITDA, first of all, because we were able to reduce CapEx in '25 and because we implemented a cash boost plan during the year.

Due to this cash consumption, we saw our net debt increase from EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 1.9 billion. Our shareholder equity decreased as well. I'd like to mention on shareholder equity that there is the impact of the net income, but there is also the impact of the FX rate, which is very adverse as we have a lot of assets that are denominated in dollars. As a result, our credit ratios landed at 5.5% for the net leverage and gearing at 125%. As Christel mentioned, we asked for a waiver from our banks for the test date of December 2025 that was granted unanimously.

Regarding the usual EBITDA bridge, I think the picture is quite clear. The external impact on our EBITDA was substantial in 2025 by minus EUR 359 million. This is 80% of the decrease in EBITDA came from external factors. In those factors, the 3 main drivers, again, are quite clear on this graph. The price impact was nearly EUR 200 million. The FX impact was nearly EUR 100 million. Taken together, you have nearly EUR 300 million that are linked to price and FX.

And we had the permitting situation in Weda Bay with a new permitting constraint during the year that forced us to revise our mining plan with a higher cash cost, lower grades and a product mixed with more limonite on which we have lower margins. We also had CO2 quota sales on manganese alloys that brought EUR 46 million. And on the intrinsic, we had some positive impact on grades mainly in Senegal, and we had in 2025, the cost linked to the ramp-up of lithium.

Regarding CapEx, we were able to reduce CapEx in '25 compared to '24, in line with the guidance we had provided to the market. Sustaining CapEx remained constant year-over-year. But with now the new addition of sustaining CapEx from Centenario as now we have this plant is in operation, which led to a sustaining CapEx of EUR 26 million.

On non-sustaining CapEx, we kept investing in Comilog. This is to debottleneck the loading in Moanda and the ship loading at the port. We kept investing in Setrag to revamp the railway to allow for organic growth. And we kept investing in Senegal, where we are debottlenecking our plants and where we are also investing into a decarbonization project.

We had some remaining greenfield CapEx linked to our plant in Argentina with the end of the construction. This amounted to EUR 96 million for the year, leading to a total CapEx of EUR 412 million.

Regarding net debt, this is the result of what we described. The net debt increased from EUR 1.4 billion to EUR 2 billion. This is the result of a low EBITDA, still high CapEx as we were still investing. Taxes paid, with EUR 137 million of taxes paid, of which EUR 80 million in Gabon, which includes a settlement of a tax audit which is a one-off payment. We distributed some dividends, including EUR 56 million to minorities, which is mainly in Gabon.

Regarding our liquidity position, our group financial liquidity stands at EUR 1.5 billion at year-end 2025. This includes our RCF. In January this year, this RCF was fully drawn for precautionary reasons. It provides the group with ample liquidity, especially as we have very manageable debt maturities in '26 and '28. The decision to draw this RCF in full was made by the previous management. We are currently evaluating the adequate level of cash we want to maintain going forward.

Regarding our debt maturity profile, the bulk of our maturities are in '28 and '29 with the 2 bonds that are due that year. With that, we have an average maturity of our debt that stands at 2.8 years.

With that, I will hand over to Charles to describe the operations.

Thank you, Simon. Hello, everyone. So, 2025 operating performance and financials. In terms of operating performance, we've had mixed results. Disappointing in manganese ore. We had a low base on the -- in 2024, and we didn't manage to do more. I'll come back to that. Basically, it's around the logistics challenge being on the railway, but also on the terminal operations.

In terms of manganese alloys, we were constrained by the market, by the ability to sell our products. We have a production capacity that is a lot higher than what you see there and what we actually produced. On the positive side, 42 million at Weda Bay when we received in July the additional RKAB when we managed, in the last part of the year, to produce so much is a very positive operational performance. Again, I'll come back to that because it has some negative impacts as well.

Mineral sands, it's a record production. Mineral sands used to be around 600,000 or 700,000 tonnes. We gradually increased to 800,000 and now nearly 1 million tonnes. And the lithium started with difficulties with the Forced Evaporator. But in the second part of the year, the ramp-up that we achieved going to 75% in December and it's continuing currently to increase is extremely positive and is a real success.

Now, commenting the manganese performance, the main driver to explain the difference between '24 and '25 is around the price and the exchange rate. On the -- that's for the manganese ore. On manganese alloys, it's about the prices, yet we have been able to compensate that through CO2 quota sales.

Regarding the free cash flow, we have, of course, the EBITDA. But on top of that, we continue to invest in Gabon on the train line, but also on the infrastructure of the mine. This is coming to an end, that part. And we paid heavy taxes, as Simon has mentioned. On the positive side, it's the free cash flow of the manganese alloys that is much higher than the previous years. And again, this business delivered some significant free cash flow.

In Weda Bay, the main difference is about the grade and the quality of the material that we sold compared to the previous years. This was heavily impacted by the permitting. Permitting is about the famous RKAB permit, which is the permit to produce and to sell, but also the forestry permit. And both these permits were delivered extremely late, and we had to redo our mine plan continuously through the year.

And in the end, we had a very unoptimized mining plan. This is why the grade went down because we had to sell some low-grade saprolite. We had to sell a lot of limonite as well because the second part of the RKAB that we received was exclusively limonite. And that had a very big impact on our operation and our sales.

The second part also is that, when you have a suboptimal mining plan, you have increased haulage distances as well as increased strip ratio, and that impacts our productivity.

Regarding mineral sands, it's a record production, as I explained, yet the prices dropped to very low levels, and that impacted our EBITDA. And on the free cash flow side, we still have CapEx, CapEx of expansion, CapEx of decarbonation. And those will finish in Q1 with start-up in early Q2 this year. So, expect some small amount of -- smaller amount of CapEx last year and finishing end of Q1, beginning of Q2.

Lithium, we started. The first semester issues with the Forced Evaporator impacted our cost. Our cost of ramp-up were higher than anticipated. We also had the end of the CapEx for the construction and also some VAT losses due to foreign exchange.

So, that's it for our operations. The teams have fought hard through the year to compensate all the difficulties that we had. I'm actually quite proud of the teams, especially in lithium, and I'll come back to it also on the railway. GCO in Senegal delivered excellent production. So, although it's mixed results, we are seeing some real improvements in terms of operational performance. And this will be -- is what we will build on, on the operational performance plan.

We have 3 pillars. The first one was explained by Christel largely. Our goal is to get to 0 injuries and 0 high potential incidents. We are launching some coaching of our first-line managers on site. We are -- we have reviewed all our production system to embed safety deeper into the routines of our personnel.

In terms of operational and commercial improvement, we are targeting EUR 130 million to EUR 170 million EBITDA. I'll come back to that. This improvement is the uplift that we must deliver within 2 years.

CapEx, as Simon showed you, the amount of CapEx that we've spent in previous years, EUR 496 million in 2024, EUR 412 million in 2025. We are now going to spend between EUR 250 million and EUR 290 million. That's a very significant drop. This drop is due to some growth CapEx that are now finalized, but also a much more disciplined approach regarding sustaining CapEx. Overall, this is a 30% to 40% reduction in the amount of CapEx that we will spend.

The operational improvement plan is spanning on all our businesses, manganese ore, manganese alloys, mineral sands, lithium, Weda Bay as well and also commercial. We're looking at volumes and the volume part is the majority part of this EBITDA uplift, but we're also looking at productivity and especially in mature businesses like manganese alloys as well as costs in manganese alloys and mineral sands. We're also, of course, looking at cost in lithium to reduce our specific reagent consumption. That is the #1 driver for our cash cost.

Looking into more details regarding manganese ore. As I said, we've had disappointing results in 2025, not managing to produce more than the previous year. But in late 2024, we started a comprehensive plan to work on the basics, on the fundamentals in Gabon. We started early 2025 with a mindset and behavior plan on both operations in Comilog and in Setrag, and we are seeing the improvements.

We are seeing, for example, a sharp drop in the number of accidents, showing more discipline, more drive of the managers. The second part that is absolutely key over there is asset management. We've had issues in all parts of our assets in terms of maintenance and reliability. We've launched programs, and we talk usually a lot about the track maintenance, the track renewal. But what we are seeing late Q3, early Q4 is an inflection in some of the leading indicators.

We had less rain breaks. We had better reliability of our rolling stock. And last year, we did a record replacement of the track, 84 kilometers for sleepers, 58 kilometers for rail. So that's -- these are the leading indicators that we follow. The lagging indicators are -- have started to improve late Q4 last year and are continuing to improve. This is the kilometers, the running distance of all our trains that is slowly but surely improving.

These are all the things that we're working on, the track renewal, the track maintenance, the traffic management, the rolling stock reliability, the reliability also of our terminal operations. This is what we're working on. This is why we are confident because we have this inflection on the leading indicators and this improvement of the lagging indicators, we are confident that we will deliver 6.4 million to 6.8 million tonnes this year.

Regarding lithium, we've talked about it several times already. 75% is what we delivered in December. We are continuing to improve. And with this improvement, that should lead to 100% capacity, close to 100% capacity by the end of the year. We are reducing our cash cost mechanically. But on top of that, we are reducing our specific reagent consumption. And the target for our cash cost is now at 5.4 to 5.8 in 2025 terms. Remember that the 5,000 was in 2024 terms.

PT Weda Bay Nickel, this is a bit of a complicated slide. Basically, the message is IWIP has 73 RKEF production lines and 12 MHP production lines. The percentage of ore that was delivered by Weda Bay Nickel mine to the IWIP Industrial Park was around 40%. With the current permit, we only have 10%. Remember that last year, we got an improvement in our RKAB, and we will request an increase as soon as possible. Longer term, our AMDAL and feasibility study is still valid. It's still at 60 million tonnes, and this is our target to deliver 60 million tonnes.

And now, I will give the floor -- leave the floor back to Simon for the funding plan. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Charles. I will now comment the funding plan that we have announced. So, we have built, with the support of our Board, a 3-pillar comprehensive funding plan to strengthen our balance sheet. This plan is based on 3 pillars. The first one is the performance improvement plans that Charles just described. This includes the ReSolution initiatives, and this is already underway.

The second pillar is a strategic review of assets. We are targeting a sizable asset monetization in 2026, and various options are being considered. The third pillar is the equity base strengthening. The project is to launch a capital increase of around EUR 500 million in 2026. While we implement this plan, we are adapting our capital allocation policy. The priority is given to deleveraging. We are limiting investments, as you've seen on CapEx for 2026, and we are suspending dividends for the next 2 years.

Regarding liquidity, while we implement our plan, we will preserve liquidity and maintain our RCF. We have obtained, in that regard, a waiver from banks in December '25. We will be seeking to obtain another waiver from banks to cover 2026 as we implement our plan. In that regard, we have had very constructive discussion with our banks in the recent weeks and are confident about this process.

A bit more detail on the third pillar, the equity base strengthening. This plan was approved by the Board of Directors of Eramet yesterday. Reference shareholders have approved the principle of a capital increase of around EUR 500 million in '26. The appropriate resolutions will be proposed to the May 2026 AGM and reference shareholders are committing to voting these resolutions. Overall, with this funding plan, this will enable Eramet to normalize credit ratios, both the gearing and the net leverage and improve our financial liquidity.

Regarding the implementation time line, the first pillar, the performance improvement plan is something that is already underway and is fully embedded in the budget for 2026. The second pillar, asset monetization requires some preparatory work while we evaluate all the options. The targeted execution window is to the back end of the year around Q4.

Regarding capital base strengthening, the resolution will be published end of March or beginning of April for an AGM taking place in May. This will enable an execution during the second part of the year.

I will now cover the outlook and guidance. In 2026, we are seeing a more favorable environment. We've seen prices increase recently. All the spot prices are much higher in January than where it were in 2025. This is already reflected in the consensus price for the year. We are seeing in manganese ore an increase in price. This is confirmed in the sales we have done in January, and this is also consistent with the low level of inventory of high-grade ore we are seeing in China today.

On nickel, we have also seen an increase in prices. This is in part due to the permitting situation in Indonesia, which is creating a supply gap and putting pressure on the ore price. On lithium, the market is rebalancing, and we have continued to see extraordinary growth in both EV and ESS applications that keeps pulling demand and that contributed to an increase in prices. And the spot prices we are seeing today are above the consensus that we show here.

Regarding the FX rates, we are using $1.20. This is the consensus, but this is also the rate at which we have conducted the hedging operation in January. We have decided to hedge 2/3 of our exposure on the dollar, and this was conducted end of January.

Regarding our guidance for 2026. On manganese ore transported volumes, we are seeing -- expecting an uplift from 6.1 Mt last year to 6.4 Mt to 6.8 Mt. This is not translated into lower cash cost, unfortunately, because the FX rate impacts negatively the cash cost. For nickel ore, the RKAB is on 12 million tonnes, but we will request an upward revision as early as possible.

Regarding mineral sands, we are expecting a stable production. This is the reflection of the increased throughput that we have with the investment that we've made, but also lower grades that are expected in 2026. For lithium, we are targeting a ramp-up to the nameplate capacity during the year. This will allow us to increase the volumes to something between 17,000 and 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent.

For CapEx, we target a sharp decrease to between EUR 250 million to EUR 290 million. This is mostly sustaining CapEx and -- but we still have in 2026, some debottlenecking CapEx, EUR 70 million in Gabon to debottleneck the logistics and EUR 30 million in Senegal, which is the end of the investments that we have already started.

Thank you. I will hand over to Christel for the conclusion.

Thank you, Simon. Just a quick conclusion before we move to the Q&A. Clearly, 2026 will be a pivotal year. It's all about execution. It's execution in safety, reinforcing the safety standards with a specific focus on Weda Bay; it's execution on the group operational improvement plan that Charles has presented, delivering, I mean, all the initiatives with, as you have understood, a specific focus on the full ramp-up of lithium, which will generate a lot of value and the debottlenecking of the logistic chain in Gabon; it's execution on the funding plan and especially protecting the cash flow, strengthening the balance sheet and so advancing the asset monetization in 2026 and preparing the capital increase. Above all, it's about restoring the financial flexibility of the group and rebuilding the value creation capacity for the next cycle.

I'm convinced that we will be successful. We have great assets. We have a very committed team, and I can tell you that I have found back a team that is very committed to deliver for the future. And we have, as you have seen, the full support of our Board. So, I trust that altogether, we will be successful on this plan.

So, thank you very much. And now we will move to the Q&A session.

For this Q&A session, so the team will be here to help me answering your question. So the one who have presented already, so Simon Henochsberg and Charles Nouel, but also Maria Lodkina. And Maria is the Head of the Controlling department. She is co-managing today the finance department covering controlling and accounting. Maria, if you can join and team is here for -- so Sandrine, please, on the question.

Okay. So, we will start with the questions from the audience, and then we will take the questions from the webcast. So, okay, first question?

So, I can't see you with the spot, but...

If you could introduce yourself as well, so [ Auguste ]?

It's Maxime Kogge from ODDO BHF. So, I have a first question on the capital increase. So, am I right to assume that the full capital increase will be at the Eramet level? Or could it also involve some disposals of minority shares in the subsidiaries? I'm thinking about lithium, for example.

And related to that, if I do the math, so you have 5.5x of net leverage right now with EUR 500 million of capital increase that leads us to, on my calculation, around 2.5x net leverage by the end of next year. And we are still quite far away from the 1x net leverage long-term target. So, can you give us a sense here of when you could achieve that long-term target?

So, I will answer the first question and let Simon answer the second one. Just on the capital increase that we have shown in the third pillar of the funding plan is at the group level. So, the EUR 500 million is at a group level. And as we have said, there will be resolutions proposed to the general assembly and our reference shareholders have committed to vote those resolutions to be able to deliver this capital increase by the end of the year.

On -- it does not mean that we could not sell a minority shareholding in our subsidiaries, and it is part exactly of what we call the asset monetization, I mean, process that we are -- we have launched, in fact, because we have already selected some -- have selected some assets, have some ideas, started some discussions so that we could be able to deliver this also in 2026. So -- but this will be in the second pillar, which is part of the -- what we call the asset monetization in 2026.

And regarding the pathway to the 1x of net leverage, that is your long-term target?

On that question, so, indeed, our capital allocation policy for the coming 2 years has been adapted to -- as we face the situation, we've have a net leverage of 5.5x at the end of 2025. The way we have sized our funding plan is, first, this improvement program, which is designed to generate cash and increase the EBITDA level, which is a big component of a decrease in the net leverage.

The second part, the asset monetization, which is not necessarily the biggest lever to decrease leverage and the third pillar, which is the equity increase. Coming back to 1x in 1 year is not feasible in our view, depending, again, on prices, EBITDA may increase to a level that allows to go back straight to that level. It would be interesting to -- if you remember what happened in 2015 and 2017, where Eramet leverage went up very fast. It also came back very fast in the year afterwards as prices were increasing. But in any case, to answer your question, the capital policy allocation has been adapted for the next 2 years to face this special situation and the target of 1x can only be resumed after we pass that period.

Okay. I have a second question and last one, I have to leave the floor to my colleagues. It's about lithium. So, lithium prices are currently quite high and remain to stay so for long, given the strong tailwinds. You have an operation that is running now quite smoothly. So, now it could be the perfect time to launch the Phase 2 of this project. It could have been perhaps the case already in '23, '24 when you had plans already to launch it because you would have benefited now from these very high prices. So how should we think about this expansion there? You have huge potential, but it seems that you're very much constrained. So, could the capital increase perhaps include a path to fund this project? Or is it something that will come a lot later?

It's a very good question. As I said in the presentation earlier, we have huge potential. And the first one is a very low capital intensity expansion of the existing plant. We have some debottlenecking potential within the existing plant, which can increase, quite significantly, the production with a relatively low CapEx intensity. So, this will be the first step before we build a second plant which is also part of the long-term growth plan for lithium in Argentina.

On this first one, as I said, we will be very disciplined. And part -- it can be done with partnership, bringing a partner that could allow us, without stretching further our balance sheet and spending too much CapEx to accelerate this expansion phase, bringing a partner in this assets, in the joint venture. It's part of the things that we are considering in order to leverage the growth potential of these assets at the right time in the market.

Auguste Deryckx, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have 2 questions. The first one is on the capital increase because reference shareholders supports this operation. Should we assume that they will participate at least to the extent of their stake in Eramet? And the second question is on divestments. Is it fair to say that the easiest asset to sell are a minority stake in the lithium mine and mineral sands?

Again, on the second question, I will not comment on the assets. We don't want to sell at discounted value. That's why we are considering several options that are all in line with our strategy. We don't want to sell things that would, I mean, endanger our long-term strategy in critical raw materials, and we don't want to sell at a low value. So, we are taking all this in consideration. But we think that with all these constraints, we still have options and will not comment further as you can -- and you can understand why at this stage on which asset is targeted.

On your first question, I cannot comment for my shareholders. The only thing I can tell you is that both shareholders have approved the funding plan in the Board, and it was -- this funding plan was approved unanimously at the Board level that they have committed, as we said, to vote the resolution in the AGM that will allow the Board to execute this capital increase, so -- which means that they are supportive of this concept and project of capital increase. Now the modalities of the capital increase and who is participating to what will be detailed later on, and I cannot comment further at this stage.

[indiscernible] It's a pleasure to see you back, but that was not the plan. Can you comment on what happened? It was really -- it came as a surprise to us all. So that's my first question.

A couple of years back, that's my second question. You mentioned that of all the things that would hamper your operations would be a naval blockade. Does the present level of geopolitical tension seems to you as moving towards this kind of risk for the group? Or do you think we're really cool for the coming, at least for 2026 as far as you can see?

Just so, I think we have already commented, I mean, through our communique and in the press, I mean, the reason for the dismissal of the previous CEO. It was really a question of divergence in the way decisions were made, the level of transparency, the way of working, especially with the Board. So -- but also with the teams. So, I think it's nothing to do with financial issues, nothing -- no fraud, no ethical issues. It's really the way decisions were made, lack of transparency, lack of alignment, divergence in the way of functioning.

So, at this level, we need -- and it's also the culture and the values at Eramet, we need collaboration. We need consultation. We need transparency. And when those things are happening at this level, we have to make decisions. So, I'm back, as I said at the beginning, for an interim period. But in that period that will take the time it will take. I'm fully committed and accountable to lead the group. And of course, I will step down as soon as we'll have found a new CEO. The plan remains the same mid-term.

On your second question, I'm not sure I got exactly what you meant, but I think that it's -- again, in terms of strategy, and maybe you can precise the question, but on strategy for Eramet, we continue to have a good momentum, and it's also part of the answer to other questions. Eramet is really a strategic company exposed to critical metals necessary to secure the Western value chain and enable the energy transition. And we think that with all what has happened in the world in the past months, we are even more critical for Europe and for the Western world in terms of producers of critical raw materials.

Well, very specifically, what happens in the Middle East with this buildup between Iran on one side, the U.S. on the other side and their respective allies, you think what everybody is saying, it's going to be okay. But if it's not okay and if these people start fighting, what happens to your relationship with China and whatever you have to deliver there? That's my point, especially from Indonesia.

Yes. And again, as you know, in the world of today, it's difficult, I mean, to navigate. We have to be agile. We have to be flexible. Today, that's true that we do quite a lot of our sales in China because China is a big consumer of raw materials and metals in the world. But we have developed, as a contingency, I would say, in the last months and years, we have developed ourselves elsewhere, especially we have grown a lot in India, for example.

So, today, we need to be agile. We need to continue to observe what's going on in the world. But -- and that's why I said that I think we are well positioned in countries today that are remaining quite independent from those blocks. And I think that in Indonesia, that's true that what we see in Indonesia and what we see in many countries in the world today is the increase of nationalism and more and more political decisions, and we have to deal with those change in our countries. So, I cannot comment more than that today.

Jean-Luc Romain, CIC. I have a question regarding your RKAB, which was allowed by the Indonesian government, which is much lower than last year and probably much lower than you expected. Given the ability and what you mentioned in your press release to ask for higher RKAB, what kind of level do you think you could achieve? That's a difficult question. And -- well, should we expect a big drop in volumes this year compared to last year?

It's really very difficult to answer this question. Obviously, as we are -- we have been surprised by this level of cut. You may remember that part of the national -- I mean, strategy of Indonesia was to rationalize the level of allocation of RKAB in order to decrease the potential oversupply of nickel on the market and have the price increase in the coming months and years.

What they have announced is that they would like to cut the RKAB overall by, let's say, 20%, they say, 20% to 30%. We have been cut by 70%. So, I'm not saying that we will come back to 20%, I don't know, but it's obvious that the level we are today is much lower than the average volume they want to decrease in terms of production.

So just as -- we will resubmit, of course, request, I mean, to be in line with what we had last year, and we will see. Last year, just as a reference, we got EUR 10 million additional -- I mean, RKAB during the year. So, I don't see why we should not get at least this, this year, but we hope that it could be more. because we had RKAB of EUR 42 million last year. So, EUR 42 million, minus 20% to 30% is not EUR 12 million.

Any other questions in the room? If there is no other -- there is one.

[ Bernard Vatier ] from [indiscernible]. Can I ask a follow-up question on Weda Bay. Considering current permitting you got, should we assume that you will hardly receive any dividend from Weda Bay in your free cash flow forecast for FY '26?

And second question, maybe on the asset disposal plan or monetizing of assets. So, we've mentioned various optionalities. What about Weda Bay? Can you give us more color about your partnership with Tsingshan because you bought back their share in Centenario. Could you consider selling them the stake in Weda Bay or given current circumstances, it's difficult?

So, on the dividends, I will let Simon precise that, but we are not expecting no dividends because the consequence of having such a low RKAB, if it were staying at the same level, would be a significant increase in price. Already last year, when they started to cut the RKAB, you have seen that the premiums on nickel ore in Indonesia over the formula that is official in Indonesia have increased significantly. And at some stage, the premium were higher even than the price -- the formula price itself. So, we have a kind of -- of course, it does not offset everything, but we have kind of offsets coming from the prices. So, the impact on the cash and on the EBITDA is not as big as it could look like when you look at the absolute number.

That being said, we will have a negative impact. So, on dividends, of course, it will depend on what we get at the end. And one thing that is for sure is that we don't expect to have dividends in the first half of the year. It will be more on the second half of the year once we have a better view of what will be the RKAB for the full year in Weda Bay.

Simon, do you want to add something or Maria?

Yes. Just a small precision on the dividend amount. We cannot give the very exact number. But in any case, we expect a significant increase versus '25. First, December was a brilliant performance of Weda Bay team, meaning that the big cash is in the second half of 2026, which will convert in dividend distribution. The amount will be, of course, dependent on the RKAB situation. But as can be seen from our financial statements, the 2025 level was very low, and it will be compensated in '26. And as Christel mentioned, the very significant part of the compensation is coming from the high premiums, and it's already clear from what we can see now in the market.

Just on Weda Bay, again, I will not answer directly your question. What we are seeing is that, we are reviewing different options on different assets. So, it's not the same setup and on the different assets. So, we -- I won't tell you more at this stage, but we look at different options, obviously.

Are there some other questions?

Yes, please. Nicolas Delmas, Portzamparc. Just 2 questions on my side, maybe. One, could you quickly comment on the ongoing negotiations in Gabon regarding local ore transformation? And second one, could you also give some more information regarding asset impairments in Senegal?

Maybe you want to comment on the second question. Asset impairment, Maria?

Yes, impairment in Senegal, as Simon presented before, most of the effect is due to the depressed market and the price assumptions used in the evaluation. It has been done in accordance with the IFRS rules and purely linked to the current projections for the long-term prices.

And to add a comment on the prices, we are seeing this market change structurally. There's a lot of HMC imports in China from new sources from Southern Africa notably. So, this is -- there's a lot of new supply that is coming on the market, and we see a high level of stock. This has already been reflected in the prices, which have decreased quite significantly. And we are seeing this as a structurally oversupplied market, which is the reason why we have taken this impairment. By the way, our competitors in mineral sands, Kenmare and Iluka took impairments as well this year for the same reasons.

Maybe one word on Gabon. As you know, on the -- I mean, the request of Gabon to transform locally the ore. It was a highly political decision. So, I mean, it's -- we respect the decision of the state. We are -- of course, we have been discussing with them since then, and we continue the discussion. We have been partners, as you know, with the state of Gabon for now more than 20 years.

They are -- they have a significant share in Comilog, our subsidiary in Gabon because they have close to 30% and 29% share in Gabon. And it's a significant part today of the revenue of the states in terms of tax, dividends, et cetera. So, we are discussing on the best way, I mean, to answer this political request without, I mean, impacting the economics neither of Eramet or Gabon overall as we are altogether, I mean, really relying on the success of the present model in Gabon. So, discussion is ongoing. And of course, it will take -- still take some time, and we will keep you, obviously, informed if there is any, I mean, further decisions on this side.

So, yes, Jean-Luc Romain?

Jean-Luc Romain, Sorry, I have another question regarding the grade of the ores you were able to sell from Weda Bay. You mentioned, Charles, that this was saprolites and other less rich ores. In your concession, do you have higher grade ores that you could sell in the future, which would improve the economics? Or should we expect, over the long term, a reduction of the grade of ores?

We do have many different deposits. It's a very large concession. And of course, we have deposits that are richer than others. A good mine plan is a mine plan where you start with the higher grades. So, over the life of a deposit, you always see if it's well managed, the grade going down.

Now, what happened last year was a bit of this, but also, as I explained, a suboptimal mining plan due to the permits received late. So, what we're trying to do every year is to compensate the lower grade of geological grade by a better mining plan. That's what I can say. Every year is -- you have to fight, you have to improve your productivity, you have to improve also the dilution that you have on the mine and you have to improve your product mix between the different types of material that you mine, i.e., some -- the high-grade saprolite, low-grade saprolite, limonite.

The #1 effect at Weda Bay is the split between saprolite and limonite. And last year, we had 42. The extra 10 was 100% limonite. Limonite is around 1.1 in grade, where saprolite is, say, around 1.5, 1.6. This is what we have in the deposit. So, the average is 2/3, 1/3. That's what the deposit gives you. And then, you have to work on this. When the RKAB goes down, we try to reduce the amount of limonite and increase the amount of saprolite that we sell.

And when it's going down as low as 12 million, we try to do 100% high-grade saprolite, yet the geology is what it is. And to get to the high-grade saprolite, sometimes you have to move some limonite and sometimes it makes sense to sell this limonite. It's an economic decision every time. It's not geology or mining. It's about optimizing with the set of geology and mining that you have, how do you maximize your revenue -- sorry, your EBITDA.

Other questions from the room? No. We will move to the...

Yes, we'll take question from the webcast. Many have already been answered, but I will take the additional ones. Can you give us an update on the situation of your CFO? And regarding the search of a new CEO, can you give also an update as well as the progress for this search?

On the CEO, I mean, the -- as you know, the dismissal happened on the 1st of February. So, we are at the very beginning. So, it's -- we are starting. So, I cannot give you any specific details -- further details. We are just starting.

The situation of the CFO, I think we -- it's clear. We have made a communique on that. We had an internal alert coming from several people within the organization, especially on the management of the finance department. And serious enough so that we have decided to suspend, I mean, its activities. So, for the time being, for the time for an investigation, an external investigation that will take place in the coming weeks.

So, as these investigations are taking some time and it takes several weeks, we will take the time for a proper investigation and then see what really the reality is and make the appropriate decisions afterwards.

Coming back to the asset monetization, do you have already identified some candidate or some possible partner? How much amount do you expect from this monetization? And do you consider only minority stake? Or could you consider selling a majority stake or even a full asset?

We are considering minority stakes. That being said, Weda Bay was mentioned, we are already in a minority position in Weda Bay. So, it can be a lower minority stake. So, it's -- but today, there has been no decision to exit -- to fully exit one of our key critical metals. It's a way of answering this question.

Maybe on the size, Simon, you want to -- you will not give any number, as you can imagine. It's -- we said sizable, it means several hundred millions.

Coming back to the capital increase, why don't you organize an extraordinary general meeting to be able to have the authorization earlier and do the operation earlier? And is it already fully underwritten?

I think I already answered the second question, second part of the question. On the first part, we have the Board that will vote on the resolution of the general assembly mid-March. So, it's coming very soon now. We need to work on the modalities of this capital increase. We will propose to the Board the resolution. Then the resolution will be proposed to the AGM that will take place in May.

So, we thought the time it takes, I mean, to prepare also such an operation, we think that, I mean, having the resolution voted and so all the authorization ready in May is an appropriate calendar for the time being.

Regarding financing, can you explain why you draw all the RCF beginning of the year? What was the rationale behind this decision?

Simon, do you want to answer this one?

Yes. So, indeed, the RCF was fully drawn end of January. This decision was made by the previous management. We are -- as you've seen, the amount of liquidity that we had at the end of the year is EUR 1.5 billion, which gives ample room to maneuver in the coming years, especially as the debt repayments in 2026 are quite manageable.

And -- but on the same time, on the free cash flow, as you've seen with our guidance and our outlook, we have a consensus price that is improving. We are guiding on an increase in volumes. We are stopping -- the investments in lithium are done now, and we have free cash flow that will be generated from that operation. So, all of that is positive for the free cash flow generation of the group.

All in all, we are evaluating -- we are also in a business that is quite volatile. So we have to have enough precaution. That being said, having the entirety of the RCF drawn is not necessary in our view. We will refine the analysis in the coming weeks, and we have already engaged discussion with banks in that regard.

A small final question regarding the dividend to make sure we understood correctly. When you mentioned the 2-year suspension, it's a dividend for 2025, which would have been paid in 2026 and the dividend for 2026?

Yes, that's the case.

Okay. Thank you very much.

So, if there is no other question, again, thank you very much for your attention, for your attendance today. Again, it has been a challenging year, a very challenging year for Eramet. But I think we are really taking the necessary and decisive actions to bring it back to a sustainable capital structure and to be ready with solid foundations for the future. So, thank you for your support. Thanks.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Eramet's Lithium webinar this morning in which we will be showcasing our lithium technology. recently commissioned Centenario business and our long-term strategy towards lithium as a company.

I'm Geoff Streeton, Chief Development Officer of Eramet and member of the Executive Committee and I look after the company's growth and development and also the company's commercial sales activity. in this presentation, I will be joined by Jean-Baptiste Hogard, Senior Vice President of Lithium; and Fabien Burdet, Chief Process Officer for Lithium.

I remind you of the disclaimer around the material we're presenting today just in terms of forward-looking statements, et cetera.

So we'd like to just begin with a quick into -- a view of what the focus of the presentation will be. Firstly, we'll start with the technology side, introducing Eramet's DLE technology and that we're now ramping up at Centenario. But also, we wish to highlight not just our DLE technology, but our integrated technological capabilities right through to operations. And that's been something that we have spent over a decade developing and which we recognize is a very, very important part of a successful lithium brine daily development.

Jean-Baptiste will then take you through the history and the performance of our Centenario asset, which we regard as a world-class asset with strong growth potential. We will go through the milestones from development and execution and where we see the ramp-up going both this year so far and into next year. And we'll talk about the challenges and the optionality of the asset going forward. And then finally, I will focus on our view of lithium, how we see the outlook, our growth options and what we view as the key levers for success in this industry.

Before we hear from Fabien, we're just going to share with you a brief video introducing the Centenario asset.

[Presentation]

So I hope that video has given you a brief introduction to what the asset looks like and feels like. And I'd now like to welcome Fabien Burdet up onto the stage to take you through our technology. Thank you very much, Fabien.

So the purpose of this first part is to demonstrate that today, Eramet is establishing a leadership in the lithium extraction from Brian. We'll talk about DLE but more than that.

So first, during the development of the process, we've been convinced that directly to extraction was a game changer. And now with the successful ramp-up of Centenario, we are demonstrating that directly the extraction is a game changer and more that, that Eramet's DLE is a game changer. And in comparison with [ hard ] mining, best example is the spodumene of Greenbushes or natural evaporation, with the best example is Atacama salar, okay?

Why this is a game changer because of high selective and high performance of lithium extraction. First, because of the recovery yield of the lithium. We are recovering more than 90% of the lithium that is contained in the brine. And you will see later a bit more than that. Also, a high selectivity, that is key to produce directly as a first step, a pre-purified and preconcentrated solution. For example, magnesium, that is really a problem in natural evaporation to select the deposit is not any more a problem.

We are rejecting more than 99% of the magnesium. Then short lead time. This is an hydro plant, the early plant. And so we are talking about residence time of hours and not anymore of months in a pound and also a very low special footprint because also this is an hydro plant. Centenario is less than 50 hectares. And at Centenario with natural evaporation would be more than 1,500 hectares. So really a game changer. Also a game changer is that you don't need to have favorable natural evaporation conditions, you can do lithium extraction where lithium is, for example, in Smackover, in Rhine Valley or in Altmark in Europe.

So this is a unique story that started 15 years ago. And thanks to continuous R&D and industrialization in lithium extraction and processes. Today, we have a strong team experts dedicated to Lithium in the innovation center. We have pilot scale equipment and 1 demonstration units directly in Centenario, so in representative conditions. And so this team with this tool has already demonstrated that they are able to design full process flow sheet, including DLE but full process flow sheet from the brine to a final lithium product.

Demonstrate also that able to develop an industrial DLE sorbent, and we will talk more about that later, pilot and adjust all the selective processes to have the right recovery and right purity of the product and also test and rank technology, so technology watch, to be sure that we are using the best available technology in Centenario and also in our future plan. And today, also this story is really the R&D is connected with the industrial life of the plant with the strong support of the operational startup, and Jean Baptiste will talk more in detail about that.

So those sorbents really at the heart of our process. And so today, we are demonstrated in Centenario in industrial condition that our assortment is highly efficient. And also in terms of independence, it is proprietary and produced in Europe. That is quite key also today. So the soon, sorry, a bit of technology. So this is an aluminum-based urban. And what is important with this family of sorbent, it has the magical property to be regenerated with water only. no region, so a lot of saving in terms of reagent and cost and footprint also for CO2 in Scope 3. So in this sorbent, we have the full poll of it, fully industrial exclusive production in Europe.

And you see the performance on the right of the screen. So in all the dimension, you see that the dark blue curve is ranking first position. So this is Eramet's sorbent. It's first position ranking in all lithium selectivity, as I said, rejection of made all the impurity. Water consumption, that is key, where environment when the water is cast. Reagent consumption, the magic property with water regeneration, okay? And after really a game changer in terms of lithium extraction capacity. What is that? It's the size of the lithium reservoir inside the structure of the urban and also the lithium production rate, that is the ability to feel high-speed reservoir and to produce then the lithium chloride high-speed. So property very important to have a compact facility.

Today, the performance of the sorbent inside Centenario plant is demonstrated. DLE recovery yield design, 90% reality, industrial rate, more than 95%. So we will have optimized the lifetime of the deposit and the usage of the lithium of the deposits. As I said, ideally selectivity with 99% of reduction of magnesium, for example, but also calcium, potassium, all the classical impurities and also the famous lithium production rate that is totally in line with the design, so with the compact units of the DLE.

DLE is a must, but it's not enough. You need to master all the elements, starting by the deposits, pumping the right quantity, quality of brand managing the depleting brine out of the DLE today with a natural lagoon and tomorrow with the reinjection that is under a strong study directly on site. And then you need to master the other blocks of the process. We are talking about concentration to enhance the lithium concentration, but also to recover the water, okay?

We are using different technology to recover the water and have a minimum water footprint and then really moving all the impurity because we are talking about high-quality products and removing all the impurities doing the precipitation, antifriction drying packaging of the lithium carbonate high-grade directly sale label.

So to wrap up everything. Today, we are establishing the leadership in the lithium extraction from brine, not only on deli, but mastering all the elements resource development with a team dedicated to have an extensive knowledge of the brine deposits and including day 1 DSG, the CSR in all the work, full process ability. So full ownership of the high-performance DLE, but not only also being able to do the integration of all the different process units.

And now Jean Baptiste will demonstrate that we're also mastering the ramp-up of our plant.

Good morning, everyone. So very happy to be with you today. So Fabien, we wanted to start with the technology and process side because we think that's really the cornerstone and we're convinced now it's the cornerstone to have a successful DLE plant that is really efficient in terms of cost and sustainability. So I'm going to cover with you the other aspects of the projects, which are from derisking, construction start-up and the ramp-up where we are today.

In terms of giving you some context of the assets. So we're talking about the salar of Centenario [indiscernible]. So it's a unique salary in the sense that it's fully consolidated. So met as the full the full ownership of the salar unlike many over salar. It's a very big seller. So it's more than 67,000 hectares, so 50 kilometers north to south. And it's a lot of lithium resources. In terms of resources is one of the best salars we have in the lithium triangle with 15 million tonnes of resources.

Very specific on this salar, it's very [ desertic ]. So on the salar itself and the 700 square kilometer, we only have 7 families, so 9 inhabitants. So we don't compete there for water or take water directly from the -- we take from the ground, its surface water and we don't compete for space. And the closest village, which is in an over catchment is 74 kilometers away, the village of Santa Rosa de los Pastas Grandes. So that's for the salar.

In terms of the plant, so it's a 24,000 tonnes lithium carbonate plant. Lithium carbonate is gaining a lot of traction together with LFP and it's now more than 50% of the world demand, and that's growing. It's 100% owned by Eramet. So we've acquired back the assets in October last year from our former partner, Tsingshan. It's also fully invested. The plant has been designed to produce battery grade as shared by Fabien. And the last thing is I'll cover that, it's in ramp-up since July, so for now 5 months.

Health and safety. So the approach of Eramet is to go to 0 harm. So we have very specific challenges given the location of the site attitude of close to 4,000 meters. It's remoteness, 320 kilometers from Salta and there chemical and water treatment nature of these operations. So in terms of health, the way we manage hypoxia risk and the risk of remoteness in case of a health issue is we get upfront medical check. We get the highest standard that we can get in the removed medicine with the clinic on site. And we get an emergency of acquisition procedure when we need that. That's the last barrier.

Process safety wise, so it's about chemical management team and gas. So here, we've done risk study during the engineering phase, but we've redone a full risk study as well before the ramp-up. So we've done that in 2025. we get a dedicated organization. And here is the last barrier, we have a team, a fire brigade at site at the entrance of our site in Centenario. And then the last 2 very peculiar change, we need to manage our the road safety, half of the road is unpaved, 1,000 meter high down to Salta. And the contractor management, so we are working with local contractor mainly in a province that used to be agricultural province, and that has been transitioning to industry and mining over the last few years.

So here there is a bit of work to elevate the safety practices of our contractors. So as a result, in the construction phase, the intense phase 2023 and 2024. We've managed to be significantly below the average construction in Argentina for the frequency rate. And now that we are in operation we need to continue working to reach the 0 harm target that we have as a group.

So the development phase. There have been 10 years between the discovery of Centenario by Eramet in 2012 and the start of construction in April 2022. So during these 10 years, it was all about derisking the project on 3 fronts. So the first one is on the social acceptance. So the team is working. There was early community engagement in Santarosa and on the salar. And we do things today, we continue supporting all the posters on the salar with weekly visits. We've advice on the way to grow things and with their animals on farming. We do a lot of health and education in Santa Rosa and in San Antonio, the Los Cobas.

So basically, all of that has led to speak obtained in 2020. And the next step for us in social is to go to [ Irma ]. That's the group approach as well. So that's our next horizon for the coming years. The environmental impact assessment was approved in 2019, and we're in the process of renewing this EIA. And of course, our local team is more than 80% from Salta and it's almost all Argentinian team.

So the second derisking over the last 10 years was on the geology side, with 2 main things. The first thing was about consolidating the salars. So initially, there were 65 tenements. And that was a journey to consolidate all of that. And we now own 95% of this very wide salar. And the second part was to grow the resources up to the 15 million tonnes of resources that we have now with 120 wells with a lot of geophysics and a lot of geological modeling. The last part of the derisking was on the process flow sheet. That was extensively covered by Fabien. But ultimately, was ended up with a pilot at sites during 5 years at Centenario.

So now the business case of our project is very supported by the fact that we are operating in Salta and Argentina, which are very favorable jurisdiction to operate and that our -- this very favorable environment is even being reinforced in the last 2 years. So in Argentina and in Salta, the lithium is fully consentible. You can own the full resource, which is our case. We have a very transparent royalty system. So we pay in our case, 3% of an equivalent to EBITDA in terms of royalty.

And before going to a final investment decision, we've negotiated long-term stability on both the tax and the foreign exchange control. So in our case, we locked income tax which is now 35%. We've locked export tax of 0.3, which is now 4.5%. And this is valid for 30 years. And when it comes to foreign exchange control, we have a specific decrease that enables us to extract to keep some of the proceeds in U.S. dollar. So all of that has been reinforced in the last 2 years, both at federal level and in the province.

So the inflation, which was more than 200% in 2023 is now 25% for this year, so less than 2% a month, which is a drastic change. Export control restriction. So as of next year, we'll be able to pay it in U.S. dollar without previous prior authorization. So that's also a big game tender. They are well-known incentive mechanism for large projects in Argentina, so the [indiscernible], which, if and when we go to next phase, we can benefit from that. So lots of incentive when it comes to income tax and the foreign exchange control.

And lastly, we've seen and we are seeing a lot of projects going through. So more than 10 projects in copper, in lithium, in gold. So it's creating a lot of infrastructure that are coming when it comes to agents when it comes to infrastructure. So it's is very positive as well for our business case. So construction, what we're talking about in our case is building a plant at 4,000 meter high. Highly technical plants, chemical plants, with remote access in a province, as I said, that was mostly agricultural and going to industrial province. And under AV disturbances when it comes to the macroeconomics because we build that with a high inflation locked U.S. dollar system.

So we've been successful delivering that project in 3 years. But what it takes to do that is a lot of work on first, being able to build highly regulated infrastructure. So when it comes to the gas system, we had to build a gas compression plant, a long pipe system, an airstrip. So then you have to manage your contractors. In our case, 14 contractors and you need to set the standard in terms of safety, quality, productivity, advance to schedule. And then you have to manage the custom clearance importation. So all that we've done with specific action plan and teams. So that took us 3 years, but we've learned a lot in that process. So probably the next stage would be much shorter.

So how do we compare ourselves to our greenfield project in Argentina? So this graph is about capital intensity of the project. So in our case, it's $950 million. So it's 40,000 tonnes -- $40,000 per tonne. So here you see on the X-axis project status, y axis is the capital intensity. So this chart comes with a set of messages. The first one is on the right, we are the only bubble to be dark, so it's for DLE project. So it's the only project of DLE that went through as a greenfield in the last 3 years.

The second thing is you see that our capital intensity has been matching the one of conventional pumps. The third thing is you see that all the projects that are coming online on the left of the chart, they are mostly DLE. So we are shifting it. It becomes almost the new normal. But all of these projects, they are in project phase. So it's -- they will probably take 3 years before we see the next greenfield daily. So that's how ahead we are in terms of timing. And in terms of capital intensity, we are on the low side of all of these upcoming projects. So some of them are twice higher in terms of capital intensity.

So of course, for our next phase is what we want to be when we are on the left of the chart is to be below the $40,000 per tonne. We want to be materially lower in terms of CapEx intensity. That's the target for the future.

Okay. So now the most important is we do all of that to produce, generate cash flow and high-quality materials. So where do we are? Where are we now? They were -- H1 was all about the start-up and commissioning of this plant. And we transitioned the plant first of July from the project execution team to the operation team. And since then, in 5 months, we've reached 66% of the nameplate capacity of this plant, which is 2,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate per month. So it was very quick and steep ramp-up.

So if you compare that to McNulty benchmark, the Serene is for a very mature project from project using mature technology Series 2 is about projects that use mature technology, but add to that some prototype technology that have been piloted. So you see that we are -- for the time being above, we're a bit better than the curve, but the plan moving forward is to stay in that 2 series. And then when we compare ourselves to other greenfield projects in Argentina, we've reached 65% in 5 months when our project did -- the next best one took more than a year to achieve that same point.

So a very, very steep ramp-up. We want to continue that journey. So we want to be mid 2026 and then reach the 90% and then reached the full volume by end of next year, volume being the first party today. So what's behind this curve? There are 3 very important elements behind that. The first one, and these 3 elements will enable us to deliver the rest of the ramp-up. The first one has been and remains our ability to manage the problem that you face in the ramp-up. So it's problem-solving we have OT process engineering challenges. So the ability to sort the projects and then to get expertise from Eramet Group. So we have on-site, we we've moved 50 experts rotating over the last years. So all of this is absolutely key to sustain the steep ramp up.

The second element is we are talking about a new operation team in a new plant. So behind that, what we did is our pilot plant was, in fact, the training center. So a lot of the key people that are in the operations team have been trained in this training center over the last 5 years. specifically important on the process side. And here again, this new team has been heavily supported by the Eramet Group experts that we flagged since a year on site.

And the third component, which I think becomes a blueprint for the rest of the group is the fact that a very clear ramp-up plan, a very clear set of risks have been identified. In front of that, we put some critical milestones that we need to deliver so that we sustained the ramp-up curve. So that 3 elements will continue to put that in place so that we continue to have a successful ramp up until full volume completion.

Now in terms of cash cost. So we will go to a range of 5,400 to 5,800 per tonnes of lithium carbonate produced. So part of that journey from where we are today to this 5,400, 5,800 range. is coming from the volume effect, of course. And then it's about the optimization that we will do. So part of the optimization is on the reagent, which is a big chunk of the largest chunk of our cash cost. So unique consumption optimization that's process again and unit cost optimization. And then there's a lot of -- there is some optimization coming from the energy side as well.

We are very confident we will get there. Why? Three things. First, the reagent consumption that we've seen in the last 5 months are very, very close to what we had for design. So there is no surprise there. And the second element is energy wise, we have a very efficient system that comes both from our connection to the gas pipe and the power plant, which is a cogenerating power plant, so more than 80% efficiency. And the third element is all this optimization initiative as part of the group initiative, we've identified that as the full potential of the asset. And so we have a clear list of actions and we know exactly what to do for the next 2 years so that we get we get to this 5,400, 5,800 range.

So with this cash cost, if we plot some scenario on the cash cost curve, we are on the very good side of the first quartile. If you had the CIF 1,000, roughly 1,000 of CIF. So even in low cycle, like the one we've experienced in this year in 2025, we will still be a cash-generating asset. So it's an asset that is geared for by weather as well.

So now the start -- the ramp-up in terms of sales and marketing. So I think we've been successful in the last month to enter the battery value chain. So we today have 20 customers, very high-profile customer, car makers. So you see some of the names here. In terms of realized price, so with an average price over the last 9 months of 8,500. When you compare that to the battery grade SMM index, which was 8,800 for the same period, that tells us about the quality of our first production. 90% of our sales go to the EV chain in China, and half of it goes directly to end users, so cathode makers. Lastly, we have a partnership with Glencore for half of our volume, 5 years and 50,000 tonnes. So we work with them as a co-marketing in a co-marketing scheme.

So what's ahead for our future. I think the first thing is we continue to prove the business case of this asset, of course, we have -- we reached both the volume, then the cash cost and the quality of battery grades. It's an asset that is geared to work for the next 40 years. So then as said, we're on the salar with massive potential. So the lithium carbonate resources that we have, combined with the fresh water we have enable us to support production early production of more than 75,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate. We could do even battery if we continue to improve our process on some of the aspects like the freshwater consumption and the depleted brand management. So that's the potential we have.

So the way we approach that and what I'm going to tell as to be put in the context of the first priority of Eramet Group, which is to deleverage the balance sheet. But the way we approach that in the case of Centenario is to study options, and we've been doing that for the last year. That feeds a set of criteria. First, we want to deliver entirely lower capital intensity. So remember the chart I show on the capital intensity. We want to be on the left below the 40,000 line materially.

Two, we want to make sure that the new project will be delivering the scale effect. So you've seen that there are 60% of fixed cost. So we want to make sure we capture the scale effect as well as improving the input costs, which are mostly reagents and energy. The third thing is we want to go -- we want to be quick. We want to have a quick time to market with a desk derisk projects. So that's mostly about reusing some of the proven technology we have in our current plants and making some improvements.

And then we want to do that in the context that we can benefit from is that's the filter we use. So today, the most likely option for the first expansion would be brownfield, which makes -- which is the best one to match all of this criteria. And then we're talking about replication for the subsequent phases.

Beyond Centenario, as you can see, we have a competitive advantage. So we've first mover, very strong process demonstrated construction, demonstrated startup, demonstrated ramp up. So we think there is a play as well to use that to get our way in Tier 1 assets in lithium. That's not on the slide, but that's part of the game plan as well.

And then lastly, coming back to Centenario, what we want to do is we want to do reinjections. So we are working hard on that. because this has a lot of value in terms of depleted brine management. That's a solution to that. But also in terms of aquifer equilibrium footprint, special footprint, when we close that loop, our operation basically will be less than 5 tons, a plant of 500-meter on 800 meters. And then that's all it is. So very, very limited special footprint. So for us, reinjection is the next horizon technically.

So thanks a lot. I'll hand over to Geoff.

Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. And before I move on to the strategy and market side of this presentation, I really want to pay tribute to the more than decade work by our teams to deliver this project. Our exploration team, the work done on CSR and community engagement from the very beginning our research and development capabilities that have brought forward what you've seen today are project teams that have developed and constructed this. And now the operational team that is in very capable, bringing things forward in to ramp up, and it's a tremendous achievement, what's been delivered here.

So I don't plan to spend too long talking about the market outlook. It's a topic for which there is an enormous amount of discussion available across the lithium investment community. We obviously internally spend a lot of time looking at the outlook for lithium to drive how we perceive both the value that we believe we can create from the investment we've already made as well as the future value optionality that we see. I think what really is clear to me is how rapidly the lithium sector is evolving.

If you look at it over time, it's evolved from a chemical industry niche market not that long ago to suddenly a whole host of new demand sources, a whole host of new customers, a whole host of new producers emerging. And then you're looking at really rapid growth in those underlying new sources of demand, but also constant change in the form of the lithium that is needed by the market. The challenge of that, of course, is how do you prepare for that in the context of long life assets where your market may change in what it needs from you.

But when we look at the market, obviously, there is the ESS -- the EV sector, which has been the driver of the energy transition demand for lithium until now. And obviously, that demand is continuing, and there is a lot of market commentary as to how that plays out. What has really obviously been a great upside for us has been the emergence of the energy storage sector when you look and talk about the electrification of the global economy, how important energy storage is particularly as mature grids migrate to greater energy content.

We see the energy storage sector being the dark horse that can really potentially open up demand for lithium. To some degree, it's a very different market to the EV sector with very different sensitivities and different levels of demand. And so we are very excited about what could take place there.

But we also see emerging demand for lithium as the form of energy storage across the electrification of the economy. So not just in storage and electric vehicles. But what's really starting to take place now is the electrification of heavy transport, so trucks and machinery. We're really starting to see an emerging vertical electrification potential. We're starting to see, obviously, the industrialization of robotics as they move beyond factories into more and more into particularly mature economies where the demographics are going to start requiring more and more robotic support.

So we see really huge potential growth, but we also are always incredibly mindful that the global resource endowment of lithium is also very high, and the market is showing that you can respond to these demand signals and the supply side is able to come through in projects such as what we're presenting to you today. And as we talk about our strategy, it's as we approach this emerging blend of strong demand outlook, but also being very mindful of the strong supply response that can come to that.

The challenge for us as a lithium producer is that we're designing and building assets that have to last for decades, to supply a very rapidly evolving market. It is not a constant commodity which is unchanged in terms of what the market wants. So as we look at it, and we're trying to think about where do our projects position what is their outlook? What is their value creation potential. We're looking at how will the lithium cost curve evolve? You're seeing, for example, a significant emergence in the last few years of large-scale potential lithium projects, both in brine and DLE but also in terms of some of the mineral-based projects, really large-scale projects potentially coming through, which would bring large volumes into the market in relatively short space.

You've obviously seen the impact of low production costs DLE, such as what we're presenting to you today. We're seeing sovereign governments choosing to support projects and as part of achieving security of their own supply chain. And we're seeing host resource country demands for in-country and local transformation of their products. And all of this has impact for how the best cost curve will evolve, both in terms of the quantity of product but also the cost structure of that product.

We obviously are mindful that there is this large volume of projects being considered. But how will they go from a certainty of execution perspective? The social acceptance of projects is challenging in certain jurisdictions. We've seen that already. We seeing a lot of uncertainty around access to core technologies as lithium becomes more and more of a geopolitical and trade commodity, we're seeing the emergence of potential restrictions on access to technology necessary to produce lithium.

And obviously, there's a lot of emerging but low maturity technologies where on one side, we need to remember their low maturity, but they could emerge to come significant disruptors in how lithium is produced, and we need to factor that into our project considerations.

Then when we look at what does our market want? What is the product? What is the end product of the intermediaries or end customers that is needed? What is the form of that product, the quality, the scale? Do they want battery-grade lithium carbonate or are they able to take an intermediate technical grade? Maybe we will see in time other forms of lithium emerge. We've obviously seen a lot of attention in recent years about lithium hydroxide versus lithium chloride versus lithium carbonate, what will be the outlook for solid-state batteries. So there's a lot of constant change in this industry where you need to anticipate and not necessarily lock in one fixed product outlook because you need to be agile to respond to that over time.

And of course, this sector, there is a very, very high emphasis on sustainability and quality requirements. And that's a challenge to deliver in terms of the quality requirements. It requires very, very strong process control and QA and QC capabilities. but also the sustainability, which we've endeavored very hard to deliver here we Centenario, but we need to be mindful that the industry is growing rapidly, many participants, and there is a risk that the industry grows so rapidly that social acceptance becomes a pressure that has to be -- has implications for the whole industry.

Then on the demand side, who are our customers, and I mentioned earlier, the customers of the lithium sector have evolved hugely from being a niche chemical sector to now a burgeoning electro mobility, et cetera. We've seen enormous concentration of demand more recently into the North Asia and particularly Chinese lithium processing sector. We're seeing, again, concentration of ownership of the core technologies of the demand side. And obviously, we're seeing a lot of geopolitical influence in supply chain concentration. And so all of these factors create very significant strategic challenges as you think about investing in long-term lithium assets.

We believe that Eramet is very well equipped to succeed in being a potential and now emerging participants in the lithium value chain. Obviously, we see though that you need to have the key success factors to succeed in lithium. Reducing the capital intensity of lithium conversion is for us an absolute must. So yes, our lithium DLE technology that we're showcasing here is incredibly exciting. And as you've seen, we're very confident that it is now ramping up well. But the low cost of production it delivers is at the cost of a very high upfront investment and we need to find a way to reduce that capital intensity to ensure that this sector can remain competitive with the other sectors that are also ramping up and evolving.

We need to continue to derisk the process flow sheet. We need to be able to have open access to technologies, and we think that's a key lever for Eramet. Assets have to be resilient and cash-generative and value creative in price down cycles. The lithium sector has a long history of being a commodity that spends a lot of time in a relatively low price phase close to the marginal cost of production. And you need to be confident that you're not just relying on the occasional price spike to be a value creative business. It's very, very important that you can be a sustainable, cash-generative value-creating business at the long-run prices that we often see in lithium.

And you have to be able to execute and operate responsibly. And that mean high ESG standards, strong focus on social acceptance and the branding of your product and strong focus on cross collaboration with your peers, your customers, the sector, the communities that host you, the regions that host you and the industrial environment.

So we think that matches very well with Eramet's capabilities. we believe we're demonstrating here strong established expertise in lithium project development, flow sheet design and now construction and delivery, technology leadership in lithium. Particularly, we have in-house proprietary and now proven processes that are subject to no external control, no external licensing and we have in-house control of the manufacturing of the core inputs to those technologies.

We are able to work with third-party technologies to optimize our process. We're able to deliver end-to-end process optimization and apple intensity. We have a portfolio of growth options here in Argentina associated with Centenario. We have a growth option in France, and we're actively seeking through exploration and development activities globally, future growth options to bring into the portfolio.

We also have a continuous innovation capacity both at the business here and at our research capabilities in France at our center outside Paris, where we're able to really focus on maintaining the competitiveness and the ESG performance of our technology, driving down consumption of reagents, driving down consumption of energy, driving down consumption of fresh water.

And as a company, all of this is underpinned by our emphasis on corporate social responsibility and particularly our act for positive mining road map, which provides a framework through which we seek to absolutely minimize the social and environmental impact of our operations.

So what does that mean for us in terms of our strategy? I want to talk about this through 2 lenses: our commercial strategy and then -- and that's the commercial strategy of how we position ourselves in the market, and then our investment strategy. So on the commercial strategy side, we are still at the moment in the ramp-up phase. We're not at this point, we have not entered into long-term contracted sales to any one customer. Our emphasis at the moment is introducing our product to the market, a large number of sales of smaller parcels to a wide range of potential customers to make our product known, enable them to get familiar with it, to enable them to test and use our product.

It is really encouraging how much we're already selling into the direct end-user sector who are taking our lithium carbonate straight into their battery products today. We want to, over time, of course, diversify our customer base. Now this is a customer base that we believe is emerging over time as the geopolitical and supply response to the demand for EV plays out. But we want to particularly be able to sell to effectively any global market. we will focus particularly initially on South Korea, Japan and Europe and North America. But we need to be mindful that we have a limited product, and we believe it's a product, high ESG credentials, high market recognition, and we want to maximize the value of that.

We want to push for that recognition, both in terms of its quality, the ownership structure, which we believe is incredibly simple relative to many other companies, where we can deliver into any market free of any geopolitical influence or credentials of how we produce and working towards the assessment of the project. We also are very focused on where can we maximize the value of our product into the niche industries that also consume this in carbonate outside of the traditional battery sector.

And we want to develop long-term customer relationships through technical collaboration and qualification, but we're very, very conscious of the need to absolutely focus on the maximization of our sales. and we're not rushing to lock commercial strategies and long-term sales contracts until we really understand the value proposition of our product in the market.

Then on the investment strategy, and this is a topic that we offer and ask. We've got now at Centenario a successfully ramping up project. What's next? So firstly, for all of our interest in wanting to grow our lithium business, I want to put this into perspective. Our shareholders have invested the best part of $1 billion in the creation of Centenario. That's an enormous investment in the scale of Eramet's enterprise value. It's our single largest project investment. And we have to demonstrate the value of that investment to our shareholders, to our board before we can really come back asking for significant further investment.

We have to ramp it up successfully. We have to operate it successfully. And the market and the pricing outcomes have to enable us to be showing that, that $1 billion of investment is actually returning value to shareholders. That's cash. Our shareholders need that reward. And that is our highest priority for this business today before we continue with very significant investment into further production.

Secondly, in the context of Eramet today, we have made a very large investment here. We have been in challenging market conditions. And our focus today is on priority of allocating the cash generated by our businesses to reducing our gross debt and delivering a deleveraged platform against which we can then grow.

Having said that, we absolutely believe, first and foremost, don't go chasing bright shiny objects elsewhere when you have a bright shiny object already in your backyard. And that, of course, is the Centenario asset. The resource base that Jean-Baptiste showed to you before, 75,000 tonnes plus of production potential. So the highest priority projects we have in our growth portfolio for investment is, of course, optimizing the future extraction and ramp-up of the asset base of Centenario here in Argentina.

We also then have other project options that we're developing, but the best value investment we have will, of course, be maximizing what we have at Centenario first. We will continue to innovate. We really fully understand how important ongoing innovation will be to maintain the competitiveness of what we have and the competitiveness and capital intensity of future project expansions at all new projects.

And we will continue to enter into start targeted strategic projects and investment partnerships with other strategic listing investors where we can bring to the story, our technical capabilities, our track record and really, really a focus on maximizing shareholder returns over necessarily wanting to on our own, to deliver large turnkey greenfield projects because we see here a lot of value to be created by being the company that can unlock lithium success for strategic investors.

So that's our approach and how we see it, but I want to really emphasize our single greatest priority in our lithium business today, is rewarding the shareholders of Eramet who've invested in the asset that we're presenting to you today. And that's what the team is focused on, and that's what we need to deliver first.

So thank you very much for watching the presentation part of this event. And we're now going to move to the Q&A section, which we will start with questions from the audience here in Salta and then move to questions from the online audience. Thank you very much.

Okay. So first question. [ Jason ]? I believe there should be microphones available.

Jason Fairclough, Bank of America. Just -- I mean, you mentioned the Sun Capital here, right? How do you think about the earnings power, the cash flow generation power of this asset on a go-forward basis? And how much sustaining capital are you going to be spending to keep this thing running at design capacity?

Sure. So obviously, the earning cash generation potential is entirely driven by lithium price from here. I think we presented to you how we see the production costs and the CIF cost structure of this business. And then it comes down to that available margin. Firstly, we've been putting our product into the market now for 5 months. We're actually, in fact, even longer in terms of some of the very initial batches we're typically selling so far at only several hundred dollars less than the battery-grade benchmark for the price we've been selling.

So we're able to capture very well even today where we're yet to start marketing a battery-grade product, the very, very vast proportion of the battery grade index. So from a value creation perspective, we're very confident. Obviously, the cash margin creation is driven ultimately by price outlook. But if we're in a world where once we're substantially ramped up, we're strongly in the $5,000 to $5,500 price range, then the cash generation potential becomes very significant, 24,000, 25,000 tonnes of production. You may well be if you're at a $13,000 price, for example, you're talking at $8,000 a tonne cash generation potential or $7,000, depending on CIF impacts.

So we see strong cash generation potential, but it's very much from now going to be driven by ramp-up delivery, volume delivery and then how does the lithium price evolve, which obviously is outside of our control. But we're obviously seeing after what has been a couple of difficult years for the lithium industry, we're starting to see some positive trajectory emerge in recent times.

So sorry, just a follow-up. In terms of sort of sustaining CapEx?

Of course, in sustaining capital. Look, typically, we anticipate a business like this would require several percent, low single-digit percentage of its of its invested capital base. Sustaining capital here in the first phase today is, obviously, should be relatively minor. We're in a new plant environment for the first few years. as you start to build up an inventory of maintenance issues in the plant that need to be addressed as you start to approach a world where you have to start investing in new wells to bring on new sources of production across the salar. We would anticipate that the sustaining capital would rise from maybe 2% or 3% of the asset base to something a bit higher.

Just a follow-up, if I could. In terms of the expansion potential, I mean, obviously, the resource is absolutely enormous, right, enormous. So how do we think about the gateways or if you like, the milestones for thinking about the next stage.

So Jean-Baptiste, I think, presented a little bit about the resource potential. We believe with what we've demonstrated today through the drilling and resource assessment to date that this salar can support at least 75,000 tonnes per annum of production where once this plant is fully ramped up, we'll be at roughly 1/3 of that capability. So we see effectively an opportunity to triple the production base over time in terms of the resource and in terms of the fresh water availability. We need to really focus on driving down, however, freshwater consumption in the process to ensure that does not become a constraint and we need to really focus on brine disposal through reinjection to again ensure a brine disposal doesn't be more constrained in unlocking that potential.

The second aspect for us is we have to prove the value of what we've done first is the sunk investment. And we have to ensure that the investments we propose going forward, which, as Jean-Baptiste said, would initially be expansion of the existing plant before we then would contemplate building a separate plant elsewhere on the solar. We have to ensure that those investments can be made at a significantly improved capital intensity to what we've delivered here at just under $40,000 a tonne.

[ Austin ] here from Macquarie in Australia. Just a couple of questions. The first one is on the strategic investment, you highlighted like through partnerships and other considerations, you definitely have an amiable resource base that over 90% owned. That is not a very coming Argentina. Would you consider some sort of a joint venture to fast track your growth given that you have a plant that is working in the ramp-up, you have this salar and you have a unique technology leverage?

Yes. Look, there's no out no doubt that we today are able to present something that would be very compelling for a strategic investor in lithium. We're now close to being able to say we have the first new generation of DLE derisked ramping up well, fully constructed and operating with significant growth potential. So obviously, from the perspective of if we were seeking a strategic investor into our lithium business to help with that, we believe we're now approaching the time where we can develop and present a very compelling proposition for that.

Whether we choose to do that, of course, would depend on, firstly, how the market evolves, what might potential investors present to us. You can never say never. In terms of if somebody was to knock on our door and make a compelling proposition that from the perspective of our shareholders and strategy. was going to deliver more value than continuing to develop the asset ourselves, we absolutely would have to take that seriously.

Obviously, in the context of Eramet's current capital structure. We're conscious of the need to look for opportunities for external equity funding as well. And to focus that can enable us to direct cash to reducing our gross debt. So absolutely, a compelling investment into the business is something that we would always seriously consider. It would have to be a compelling proposition. We've gone to a great deal of effort to bring back the ownership under salar control at 100%. And any change from that strategy would have to be one that we don't believe in any way would impede the business in terms of the markets that can operate in terms of how we can grow it, but it would have to be one with a partner which we think can help us take the business forward. But it would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Just a quick follow-up on the market side. Lithium market is at a very early stage compared to other commodities, right, and that the price has been very volatile. What's your thought on setting up price flows of ceilings sales agreement. I mean, few of your peers are doing that already.

Yes. So look, obviously, structures that can help both protect the producer in a low environment and reduce the exposure of a buyer to extreme price upside are something that, to date, we've not done. We're in ramp-up phase. At the moment, our emphasis is on introducing our product to the market introducing it from in terms of its quality and its credentials. To be able to start to enter into more of the, say, sophisticated sales structure such as what you proposed, you have to establish yourself. You have to be a reliable producer for someone to enter into structures that potentially can be more value creative, you've got to be able to give them confidence.

So we feel it's probably a bit early for us to be trying to lock down production, try to lock out it through those sort of structures or through just committing to any one significant buyer. But absolutely, we are very focused on exploring how to get the maximum value of our product. what are the niche markets we should be targeting. What are the key buying relationships we should be targeting. But we want to first really strongly establish our product in the market and create a competitive demand for our product over other products that are available.

[ Chris Williams ] from [ Adamas Intelligence ]. Perhaps a question for Fabien. Could you talk to the unique attributes of the DLE plant. With respect to the product specifications you've been able to achieve today in the ramp-up phase and perhaps the full potential that the plant could deliver in time to deliver a battery-grade product? Okay.

So what is quite key is that today, we are talking our DLE plan, but the DLE unit is delivering exactly the performance that is in the design. And up to that because, for example, the recovery yield is 95 when the design was 90. So we are in line with that. The performance of all the purification units are also in line, and we are missing the startup of 1 polishing units, even not having the polishing unit, so the last unit that are tracking the last impurity to be very high quality. We are producing some batches that battery grade quality, okay? So now the priority is the volume. To have the volume we need to have the stability and the stability is the first step, really very important step to achieve the quality.

So today, not having the full nameplate capacity, not having yet the full stability. We have yet battery grade batches, some battle batches and a lot of technical grade batches. So yes, we are very confident to reach the battery grade quality, let's say, having the demonstration of the positioning of the performance of the plant today.

Any other questions from the audience here in Salta? Yes.

Yes. Nico Delmas, BNP Paribas. A quick question. If you actually were to expand your plans through brownfield investments, what would be our credible targets in terms of CapEx intensity metrics and cash flows for the expanding plants?

We're we're not really yet ready to provide specific guidance on what we see as being the, let's call it, the metrics of our potential expansions. We're still evaluating a range of alternatives. And until we've assessed what we believe to be the highest value optimizing alternative, we don't want to really comment too specifically. Suffice to say, Jean-Baptiste spoke, we believe that the expansion of the existing plants footprint can be delivered for materially less per ton of lithium than what we've delivered so far at just over $39,000 per tonne. So there's some guidance for you there around how we see the capital intensity of an expansion.

In terms of cost, clearly, if you're expanding an existing plant and you -- for those of you who have had an opportunity to visit the plant, this is a plant that has a relatively straightforward labor requirement. And therefore, we believe you could expand the existing plant without really materially impacting your workforce requirements. So the opportunities for fixed cost spread across the greater production base are important. And given fixed costs are 60% of our current production cost, that is there, and that would have a material impact on the cost -- the incremental cost potential of an expansion.

If you were to build a separate plant elsewhere on the salar, perhaps sort of northern end, 50 kilometers away, clearly, that has a more complex assessment that you would have to work through in terms of its unit cost potential.

Another question from Jason.

It's not that many, obviously. So obviously, we had a lovely drive down on the road yesterday, 7 hours. How are you thinking about encouraging improved infrastructure for the region?

The first priority as is today is to make sure on the -- because there's a lot of trucks input output that goes to site. So for today, we have a second road with -- which is different. We have protection system for the drivers as well. We have this court system when we come -- when it comes to reagents. So that's for today. I think the plan moving forward is to effectively collaborate with the other mining players because we're -- a lot of projects in the Puna using the same routes. So that first, we can improve the mining roads, which is never provincial or federal and then work together on the provincial and federal roads to improve that.

Then it's probably longer term, there's a train that goes up to [ Pocetos ]. So there's -- that could be an option as well to eliminate a lot of the reagents from the road, but it's a longer shot given the state of the railway today. And then when you take the other part of the equation, which is our team and bringing people to sites. So today, our air strip system is limited in capacity. So again, here, the way forward is to make sure that we fly as much as possible our own employees and contractors at site. That's the way -- that's the sort of road map we have to manage that bit of the project.

Maybe if I could just build on that, Jason. I think when you look at the lithium industry in the region, for its long-term global competitiveness, absolutely, the improvement of logistics chains for the delivery of the key input materials and product out is a critical element and for the safe transportation. So I think if you've got safe and efficient logistics, if you look at our cost base, all the reagents that are coming into site, a very significant percentage of their cost is logistics and transport.

And logistics and transport is ultimately about time and transport time and anything that can be done that improved safety and efficiency of the system is going to be critical to maintain the ongoing global competitiveness of the lithium brine sector emerging in the salta and the Puna A region.

Okay. If I could just follow up with one. So Geoff, you have a bigger role than just having an eye on lithium. So how do we think about lithium in the context of Eramet? Is this a priority product from here? Or is this still just one of the portfolio materials?

Well, obviously, for the last few years, it's been our most significant growth investment that we've been undertaking. Now that the growth investment is largely delivered in terms of the plant that is now commissioning it becomes one of our product bases as opposed to being the new emerging product. In terms of investment portfolio allocation, First, as I said earlier, our priority today as a company for the next 1 to 2 years is absolutely on delivering cash back into the business, improving operational performance. and less of an emphasis on growth investment across our portfolio.

When we look at our other markets today. We are obviously needing to continue to invest in improving the reliability of our logistics chain business. We need to achieve the full potential of our manganese business there, improving rail and port logistics is the key focus of that investment as opposed to investing in growth of the mine per se, unlocking rail and port there unlocks capacity in the mine for very, very little incremental investment in the mine.

When you look at our mineral sands business, we have been investing in the last year in an expansion in processing capacity at [indiscernible] to increase production capacity there by nearly 20%. Now the mineral sands business has, obviously, particularly in the last 6 months, entered quite a difficult market phase brought about by a range of factors on both the supply and the demand side. I don't anticipate that we would consider significant further growth investment in mineral sands for the time being beyond delivering the expansion that we anticipate committing in March of the [ Grand Colan ] there. In our manganese alloys business, our primary focus is absolutely on operating performance and delivering value over volume. So we're not in a growth investment growth mine set in our manganese alloys business either.

And then we have our nickel business in Indonesia at WeetaBay, where we absolutely would seek to be able to increase production of the mine in line with growing demand from the Weetabay industrial park that sits at the base of the mine. But that's an investment that is not particularly capital intensive to achieve. The nature of that mining business, it's more about mobilizing operational resources, contracted mining fleets, contracted road haulage fleets, expanding the road and pit developments, but not in a very highly capital-intensive way like deep open cuts.

So we see strong growth optionality there, but it has to be growth optionality matching demand and also permitted production within the Indonesian regulatory context. So across our business, we see growth options, but our absolute focus for next year is delivering operational performance and cash back into the business.

So I think we'll move now to questions from the online audience. Thank you.

So sure, I don't have all the details of Rio Tinto technology. I have some clue of that. Maybe I will emphasize what is the very specific of our solvent and our DLE, and I think will be -- will explain that. I didn't mention this property of our solvent, but our solvent is delivering the high performance, but at low temperature. So you have many competitors solvent that need to warm up the brine, they need to warm up the water regeneration to achieve a good performance. We are not doing that. We are pumping the brine directly, and we are feeding the DLE at the temperature -- that is the temperature outlet of the well.

So you can imagine we are talking about 1,600 cubic per hour at nameplate capacity. If you need to warm that, -- it's a massive amount of energy. So when we are talking about sustainability, it's also energy efficiency. And I think the solvents was really developed in the idea, one of the first KPI was work at performance at low temperature. And so we did that. We have a very specific solvent delivering the full performance at low temperature. So I think this is one of the main difference of our solvent. I will say maybe we have also another difference. This is a next-generation solvents, Rio Tinto technology is major, already proven, but it is a technology for the 19th.

Today, we have the third generation of solvents inside the plant. high performance, high also mechanical performance. So we have a long lifetime. And I think this is also a big difference against competitors. And even if we are ranking position 1, we are still doing innovation, and we are in the way to develop a fourth generation to even higher performance, not just for the performance, but also for the sustainability, even more pure solution of lithium chloride, so less reagents for the purification, so less truck, less CO2 in Scope 3, having also something even more with a big reservoir, high speed.

So it's also water consumption, compaction of the plant. So it's also CapEx intensity because if my DLE is more compact, more selective, the plant is smaller, I need less also purification units. So I think today, we are demonstrating that we have the best DLE because this is the only next-generation DLE fully in control. And we are continuing to developing that to innovate. And so I'm sure that in the future, we will still be first position.

So another question on the global process recovery. Regarding the efficiency in the current process, can you please give us some color in the global process riper yield when the plant achieved full production?

Okay. So very good question because the year is important, and it's not only the yield but the yield is important because this is, let's say, all the streams are going back to the DLE international recycling to catch all the lithium. And as you have seen, 90% in the design, but 95% in the reality, the industrial reality that we have today. So this is a first good performance to achieve a global yield that will be high.

Today, we are targeting global recovery yields higher than 80%, okay? We have some upside to go to higher, but it's also linked to region costs because we need to have some trade-off in terms of I can improve again my recovery yield, but I need some regions. So as today, the idea is to generate cash, the idea is to have the lower OpEx as possible. So today, we are maintaining our target at higher than 80, but we have some opportunities to view a better on that.

And I think that's a very important element that it's easy to focus on sort of very core production metrics but you need to be really optimizing your production plan around what is the price of the product you're producing? What is the margin that can be generated above different quality grades. And then what is the cost of the reagents needed to produce those. And it's a constantly evolving mix that would see us, we believe, evolve our production targets, our grade targets, our yield targets, our quality targets to meet the market and maximize volume at any point in time.

So another one on CO2, water consumption and brine. So what's the CO2 footprint and the water consumption per ton of lithium products? How do you compare to other DLE projects and the rest of the industry in general? And how do you handle waste from production, so I suppose by waste it's depleted brine since you do not reinject the brine from the time being.

So CO2 footprint. So you have seen the number inside the presentation. So we are really on the low side on the CO2 emission per ton of lithium carbonate produced because it's 6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of LCE. Full scope Scope 1 plus 2 plus 3. So including the direct emission of the process, the power plants are fed by gas, but also the regions. So this is very low number for lithium producer. If you compare to lithium production from spodumene, we are not at all in the same levers. Thanks also working at lot operators, so it's also energy efficiency.

So for the CO2 footprint, water consumption. So we will not discuss today the numbers because as we have a ramp-up, we want to disclose, let's say, strong numbers that we will not let's say, other things in a close future. But what we see today is that this is in line with our design. The older units that are built to recover the water. So reverse smoothies for evaporation in the water treatment plant. We have also internal recycling DV. We have internal recycling. Everything is on line with the design. So we are pretty sure to deliver a low water consumption that is good.

Also, in terms of optimization and innovation, water consumption is very important Yes. But we have the chance to be in a salar with a full control. We don't have competition on the water, okay? That is not potable water. It's it's really, let's say, brackish freshwater that should be purified to be used in the process. So no competition with our posters, they are using the surface water. We are pumping the water 100-meter deep. So it's, let's say, not the same water, not with also all the white life and the plants because they are using also surface water.

And having, let's say, today, we will take only 10%, 15% of the global recharge of the salar. Why? This salar has huge lithium inside, but also the size of the salar is really an advantage. You can see the salar like a big funnel that will take all the rain, all the snow across the year. And so we will do around the nature with store this water on the side of the cell are protected. And let's say, we have a lot of water without competitor, not other industry due to the -- all the tenements are owned by Eramet. And so we will achieve the full potential of the salar.

In terms of other projects in other locations, if the water is even more scarce, thanks to the R&D, thanks to the technology watch. So we have also technologies to save more water that is the priority and save it without energy and even more recover more water actively recover more water. So let's say, we have some targets to be less than 50 cubic per tonne LCE. We have some design that deliver less than that. And so we are very confident to deliver full potential of Centenario but also to adapt the full process because it's adapted full process technology to fit in other environments when water is more subject.

Perhaps Jean-Baptiste, you'd like to comment on reinjection and its importance in the long term development of the asset.

Yes. So reinjection. So we're in the drilling. Currently, it's 4 wells that will help us then next year start proof point of the concept that has been developed for injection. So that's something the industry is talking a lot about -- but the reality in size, no one has done that, but we're very confident with the concept we have. So again, next year, we'll prove the concept and then we'll move forward to a project.

And as I was saying, the special footprint when you reinject complete game changers. So instead of having ponds that are 4 kilometers by 3 kilometers, you have a plant that is 500 meters by 100 meters. So it's a completely different world. And then that also solved the depleted brand management because you don't have to build artificial evaporation bonds. So that's a very key project from CTO group here in Argentina and our geology team in Paris.

And I think it's important to recognize that today, the project is not permitted to reinject. In fact, it's not an activity that is permitted anywhere in Salta. And the proof-of-concept project that we want to do over the next few years is to demonstrate to the regulators here that it is something that can be done to improve this long-term sustainability of the project. And we feel that here, this is a really important opportunity for us to maintain our industry leadership and be, hopefully, the first project to be not only a first new generation DLE, but also first fully reinjecting. That would be an objective that we would love to work towards. But it will also require a change in the regulatory expectations here in Salta.

Another question from the logistics standpoint, our Chilean ports an alternative to reduce transport costs.

So our baseline was -- is today using Rosario in Argentina. And we've done our first export to Chile last month. So moving forward, we want to have the options to either use Rosario. We've also gone as a fallback and then to have options in Chile. And depending from the season, the load of the different ports, then we can switch from 1 to the other.

In terms of cost, very surprisingly, the Argentinian road to Rosario was the most competitive one. Then if you look at the full cost to China, then Chile makes a bit more sense. But on first sales were FOB Argentina.

A question on the agreement with Glencore. So at current market pricing, do you expect to generate any cash flows until you fully repay the Glencore prepayment facility?

Sure. So the agreement we have with Glencore was a general financing provision to Eramet. It's not a project linked financing arrangement. And then Glencore is able to, with us co-market 50,000 tonnes of product over a roughly 5-year period. There is a commercially confidential marketing fee associated with that. But effectively, the cash generated through that arrangement is fully able to be returned to Eramet and then would be used to meet all of our global financing objectives, not just the Glencore agreement.

So to date, we're fully up to date in that agreement. We are now well and really able to meet the volume requirements at our current rate of production and going forward under that agreement. And it's proven for us to be a very useful agreement because Glencore has been marketing lithium carbonate products for a number of years now and has a deep market presence, a deep market knowledge that we're able to rapidly leverage. And here we are already only 5 months in, we have sold to more than 20 different customers, and we're really leveraging that deep book of Glencore to be able to access that market.

Another question on the marketing strategy. On the commercial marketing side, in your discussion with customers, will you prefer long-term contracts at fixed price? Or will you favor spot price exposure?

We've made no firm decision. So as I said earlier, today, our emphasis that on the fact that we are not yet fully ramped up. We're not yet a stable producer for whom we could make a compelling value proposition to a long-term contractor. Our absolute focus today is to work out what is the value of our product in the market relative to our competitors. What are the market segments that most highly value our product, who's willing to pay the most for it and then determine over time once we settle and stabilize our production base and have a strong understanding of the market value proposition, then we would look to optimize the contractual nature of our sales agreements.

Whether that means us enter into long-term sale contracts, whether that means we remain spot, that would be a policy decision we would make once we believe we really understand the value proposition of our product in the market through proven sales testing, and it would be would be a policy through which it would be all about value. we have across our portfolio of commodities we sell today, a whole range of sales arrangements, and they're all driven by maximizing value and depends on the dynamics of the market and the nature of the products we're selling.

Last question from the online audience. As far as expansions are concerned, what is the deadline to be eligible for RIGI?

So RIGI is obviously a policy framework of the Argentine federal government. The announced framework is -- was originally brought forward as effectively a stimulus to initiate investments in -- particularly in mining investment into Argentina as part of the new incoming government. And the current framework has a date effectively in the middle of next year by which projects need to apply. So under the current framework, we would need to apply by the middle of next year if we wanted our project to be considered or any future project you consider for RIGI.

Now how the Argentine policy evolves towards investment frameworks obviously, is in the hands of the Argentinian government. I don't want to speculate on how their policies may evolve. But we would look at what's happened in Argentina in the last year. I think RIGI has been a very successful framework from the perspective of the global mining investor community at attracting attention and activity into Argentina. And I would be very surprised if the Argentina government wanted to just sub they abruptly end what has been a very successful framework for them. And no doubt they would seek to put in place subsequent investment framework policies that continue to position Argentina as a conducive environment because it's been a successful policy pool.

I think we're largely running out of time now for questions. I would, of course, like to mention that if anybody has subsequent questions, you're very welcome to contact our Investor Relations group through e-mail or other means to put those actions to us.

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Jean-Baptiste and Fabien for joining me in the presentation today. And I'd like to thank the audience here in Salta and those of you who have joined us online. We're very proud of what we've delivered here at Centenario. Our focus is now on delivering value from the investment that's been made, but we think we've got something very exciting. We know there's a lot of people across the lithium industry watching us. We know there's a lot of people from across shareholder base watching us, and we're very excited to see how things go from me going forward.

So thank you very much to everybody, and I wish you all a very good day. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. Very nice to be here. Thank you for investing the time with us today. We have today myself, Paulo Castellari, CEO of Eramet; and Abel Martins-Alexandre, the Chief Financial Officer for the company.

I think I have met some of you, but I think it's still worth investing in a few words just to introduce myself. I have been with Eramet for the last 6 months, and I have been working in the industry for the last 30 years. I have been able to operate in many different ways in companies in major capital projects, different functions, marketing, finance, you name it. So it's been a privilege and an honor to be here with Eramet in joining the team.

I want to hand over to Abel so that Abel can introduce himself to you, and then we'll take you through what is it that we're going to cover today. Please, Abel.

Thank you, Paulo, and good afternoon, everyone. I know a number of you, and I look forward to meeting everyone I have not met as yet. So I am Abel Martins-Alexandre or Abel Martins-Alexandre, as Paulo would otherwise say. So I've got 15 years' experience in financial services, but also 15 years' experience in the mining sector.

So thank you, Paulo, for having me in your leadership team. I think my experience comes very handy when it comes to supporting you and the team in improving operational performance, but also in very much having a more disciplined approach to performance management and finally, to restore financial strength. So thank you, Paulo. Paulo?

No. Thank you. Thank you very much, Abel, and indeed, it's great to have you in the team, and it's going to be a great journey, I'm sure.

So before we actually start, let me tell you why we're here. I have been with the company for now for 6 months, and I have -- I was looking forward to having the opportunity to first share with you what we have been learning, but also what is it that we had ahead of us. And as Abel said, I think it's going to be very interesting to leverage Abel's capabilities, experience on what is it that we have ahead of us.

So I wanted to start today's conversation the same way we start any engagement at Eramet with a safety share. It's a very important moment for us where we have the chance to reflect on performance, on experiences that we leverage across the group. We have been facing serious challenges in 2025 when it comes to safety. There's no other way of saying it. We have had 5 -- sorry, we have had 4 losses of life in our operations in 2025. And obviously, this is simply not acceptable. Our sympathy, our thoughts go to the families and friends of our colleagues. But rest assured that we are very focused to address the situation with the experience with the capabilities that we have on the ground.

Although we have had a challenging and we're having a challenging year in terms of safety, we also -- I have also seen pockets of excellence in terms of safety here in Eramet. Our operations in Senegal, for instance, have been lost time injury-free for the last 6 years, which is a fantastic achievement by any standard. So we are confident that we can leverage these achievements across the group. So we're confident on that.

So not only safety sits at the heart of everything we do, but also it's a very important stepping stone to actually bring efficiency to our operations. In my experience, I have never seen a safe operation that is not efficient. I mean having a safer operation will be able us -- will enable us to have less stoppages, more efficiency. So we will be able to leverage a safe operation into what is it that we want to achieve in terms of efficiency.

So wanted to give you highlights and the key messages, what is it that we're going to discuss with you today. Sharing that 2025 has been a challenging year when it comes to environment -- in terms of the macroeconomic environment, commodity prices. We also suffered with exchange rates. We want to talk to you about the 2 very important exercises that we carried out over the last 6 months on safety and on operational improvement.

We want also to share with you proven execution capability. We want to share with you what's been happening at Centenario, which will be a step -- will be the playbook that we want to use going forward for all our operations. We will provide you more detail on ReSolution, the group-wide program that we launched that targets between EUR 130 million and EUR 170 million run rate EBITDA within the next 2 years. And also want to share what we have been doing this year to address the challenges that I just mentioned now, delivering between EUR 60 million and EUR 70 million one-off cash improvements still this year.

So to start setting the scene, I mentioned I have been with the group for the last 6 months. I have been able to visit all our sites -- all our operating sites. I have been able to visit most of our sales offices. I have engaged with more than 2,500 of our colleagues, which was a very, very important piece for me, something that I always did everywhere I worked. I strongly believe in that. I have been able to learn a lot from everywhere I've been, and it's been great to learn, but also to confirm some of the thoughts that I had.

I have been able to see the quality of our teams. I have been able to see the potential that our assets have. And I have also seen very interesting stories across the group. In Senegal, I have engaged with our sustainability managers, for instance, who have been sharing their experience with IRMA, which is a very, very important piece for our longer-term strategy.

We have, as I mentioned, had mixed experiences in terms of safety. But as I said, I mean, there are pockets of excellence. I have also been able to see our ability to have people moving around the group, which is something that is very interesting because we have a vast footprint in terms of our operations. So it is very, very interesting. I strongly believe that we have been given 2 ears, 1 mouth for a reason, and I intend to work them under that proportion. So this process of learning, understanding, being on the ground with the team has been very, very important for me. As I said, more than 2,500 of our colleagues, I have met with state leaders, unions, our customers, clients and again, a very, very important piece in the journey that we're taking ahead.

I mentioned that what has been happening in Centenario is a playbook. It's a very good example. It's showing how is it that we want to operate going forward in Eramet. I think you remember that after the start-up of the plant in November 2024, we faced challenges with a piece of equipment that presented malfabrication and challenges in the commissioning side.

In June -- May, June, when we started looking at the project, we have been able to step back and review the plan that we have ahead of us in terms of the ramp-up. We have reviewed our plans. We have reviewed our risk management practices. We have carried out a detailed statistic -- statistical simulation of the entire system at Centenario and that brought us very, very important pieces to redo our plan to look at benchmarks, bringing new practices and the results are there.

Right now, we are at 65% nameplate capacity. We have been delivering on our plan consistently, and we are very well positioned to deliver on the plan that we have revised. So it is a very good example of how is it that we wanted to take the business forward around planning, around disciplined action and around being realistic on the plans that we put forward.

I want to hand over to Abel now so that he can share with us what is it that we have seen in 2025 in terms of the challenges, both on the short and on the long term. Please, Abel.

Thank you, Paulo. So I mean I joined 2 months ago -- 2.5 months ago now, I must have been struck by the challenging macroeconomic environment in which we have been operating, which is not unique to ourselves, but might be affecting some of our commodities a bit more than others. So at the macroeconomic level, there are really 4 factors that you will know well about. I mean number one, we've had a manufacturing contraction in China for the last 6 months. That's exemplified by the PMI below 50.

Also, I mean, we have a business that thrives on open trade. The U.S. tariff has increased significantly, as we all know, to 18% versus 3% a year ago and we have recently been affected by the safeguard measures from the European Union, for which the impact still needs to be fully assessed. We have had a persistent downward trend on industrial commodities since 2023. And question as to whether we are in a lower for longer scenario.

And finally, as you alluded to, Paulo, the exchange rate has been adverse to us as well since we've had an appreciation of the euro versus dollar or 13% year-to-date. Now how is it reflected in our commodity prices? I won't go through this chart. They will be well known to everyone. But where we are at today is probably at cyclical lows. We are, in some instances, at prices as low as COVID times. At times actually average prices are as low as 2016, that's the case of the average price today for manganese ore, for example, or 2019, and that's the case for ilmenite and zircon.

So we are really in a significantly depressed pricing environment. Market consensus and the market expectations point to a recovery of these prices over time and certainly in 2026. And of course, all these commodities would have different points at the economic and commodity cycle. But the thing I want to emphasize is that we are not managing the business purely hoping on pricing recovery. We are managing the business based on being a great operator. And Paulo, you'll come back to that and of course, being very efficient on cost.

But clearly, we are in commodities that we like, in which we believe the long-term fundamentals. And they remain unchanged. The structural growth drivers remain very strong, and there are 2 ways of looking at it. Number one, on the energy transition electrification-led commodities that is mostly lithium and nickel, I mean, we see a doubling of the demand in the next 10 years. So significant CAGRs. This has not changed, and we're only getting started on this front.

And secondly, the commodity is geared towards more economic growth and in particular, the demand for crude steel production remain intact in terms of the long-term fundamentals. We are starting from a very large base, and we actually see growth in steel, in particular, in India, but in the rest of emerging markets in particular because the steel intensity in these markets is still relatively low compared to China and the U.S. and OECD countries for that matter.

So headwinds at the moment, the long-term fundamentals remain intact, and we might be seeing a recovery in 2026, although again, the way we manage the business is all about being a great operator, disciplined and ensuring that we manage costs very effectively.

On that, I'll hand over back to you, Paulo.

Thank you. Thank you, Abel. So what we heard about the short-term challenges that we have been facing in 2025. We also had a view on the long-term fundamentals. What I wanted to do now is actually establish a link between these long-term fundamentals, the capabilities that we have in place at Eramet and how is it that we're going to leverage those and use those linked to our Tier 1 assets.

So looking at some of them that we list there to share with you, I mean, over the last 6 months, I -- some of my beliefs have been confirmed and also I have been learning a lot. Starting with active for positive mining, the way that we do business and continues to be a very important piece, a cornerstone in terms of a competitive advantage for us that we will continue to work on. The fact that we have a high-caliber team of exploration experts. Some of you may know that both Centenario and PT Weda Bay were exploration discoveries by Eramet's teams. So a very, very important capability that we have in-house.

We also have been working closely on the DLE technology that we have rolled out in Centenario successfully. The fact that we have been able to prove our ability to deliver on the project and on the ramp-up, as I shared with you, the Centenario playbook and also the fact that we have a well-established marketing team with long-standing relationships and a deep knowledge on the markets that we operate. This will be the backbone to actually leverage the value that we have in each of our assets.

Going through each part of our portfolio from Gabon to Indonesia, Senegal and Argentina, all our assets are long life, high grade and low cost. All our assets are scalable and very well positioned in the cost curve. So we are translating that to cash costs, as I said. When it comes to manganese, we are the largest producer of high-grade ore manganese. We are well positioned in the first quartile of the cost curve and the same applying for Centenario that right now does not play a very big role in terms of the size of the industry, but it's a well scalable asset that will provide us the ability to have a more significant position in the industry. But as I said, all assets, long life, high grade, low cost that will enable us to take the journey we have ahead of us.

So having set the scene, having spoken about the long-term fundamentals and how is it that our capabilities will enable us to leverage value, I wanted to share some of the fundamentals around ReSolution, the program that we have put in place, 2 exercises that we carried out over the last 6 months that were fundamental as the starting point. We carried out a group-wide safety diagnosis to understand where is it that we are. I shared with you some of the challenges that we have. And at the same time, the pockets of excellence that we have in the group when it comes to safety, but it's going to be the starting point for the plan. I'll share a little bit more with you later on.

And also the Eramet performance review, which we referred to in July when we went -- when we talked about our half year results, an in-depth operational review of everything of all our operations, setting up a baseline, understanding the drivers that we need to focus to realize value.

Three main groups that ReSolution is organized under, the first one being around safety. A second one, looking at operational excellence and commercial excellence. And the third one, looking at financial resilience. These 3 blocks all linked and supported by a group-wide value office, where we're going to centralize all the information, the processes, understanding, giving it the right pace, giving it the right relevance and visibility across the group so that we also work on this culture of performance, a culture of accountability and ownership.

If we looked at each of them in a little bit more detail, in terms of safety, what is it that we've done so far? We have updated the group safety policy. We also have been able to establish this very strong and important link between operational safety and performance and we have drawn out a 2-year road map to enable us to reach our goal of zero harm. We will continue to work on risk management as a founding base for safety, but also for operating performance and work on the culture to support zero harm, as I said, a very, very important starting point within the program.

We then look at operational excellence and productivity. I shared with you in the beginning that this piece of ReSolution is -- sorry, is expected to deliver between EUR 120 million and EUR 150 million EBITDA uplift over the next 2 years. We estimate that just over half of it will come from productivity improvement, just over 1/3 of it will come from cost efficiencies and process efficiencies and another 5% to 10% from improvement in terms of procurement.

We have looked at all our businesses. We have more than 50 initiatives already identified, and we will continue to find other initiatives to feed the portfolio of improvement as any other improvement program that we have done in the past, looking at operational improvements, maintenance practices, focusing on costs, productivity looking at opportunities to push volume and, of course, dilute fixed cost and as well as focusing on the safety side across the board.

If we looked at a little bit into more detail, starting with the value chain of manganese. What we have done here is that with my experience in working with both products, typically, there are very good opportunities, good value opportunities when we start looking at integrated planning, when we start being sharper in our practices around sales and operating planning and also on commercial excellence, which we'll cover in a minute.

So leveraging all that, starting with manganese ore, what we want to do is to continue improve our logistics side, I mean, train unloading capacity. We wanted to work on the maintenance side so that we can shorten the maintenance time. Moving to the transport part of the value chain, looking at ways to improve our cycle times, optimizing traffic, introducing new practices, new tools to improve asset reliability. And then finally, on the manganese alloys piece, making sure that we have ways to optimize raw material blends so that we can get a better mix in terms of our final products. And also, we've been working on ways to monetize our byproducts at each of our plants.

If we looked at the rest of our portfolio at the PT Weda Bay, the focus is to continue working with our majority shareholders. On the safety side, we're very confident that getting the safety right will bring operational improvements and that's the focus at PT Weda Bay Nickel. Looking at mineral sands in Senegal, we wanted to make sure that we continue pushing volumes so that we can leverage on cost control and on cost efficiencies and also working on the zircon side with improving our product recovery, which will also bring benefits.

Finally, on lithium. We will continue to focus, of course, on the ramp-up. But there is a very good work underway to optimize reagent consumption, which is, of course, an important piece of our operating costs as well as continue to work on the product grade so that when the time comes, when the prices are there, we're ready to capture better margins in lithium.

Still on lithium. And as I shared with you in the beginning, I wanted to invest a little bit more time on what has been happening on the ramp-up for Centenario. I mentioned that the first half of this year, we faced challenges with equipment during the initial commissioning. But since May, June, we have redone our plans. And as you can see there in the orange curve, we have been able to outperform not only other projects of similar scale and similar nature, but also, we have been able to outperform the benchmarks with the shaded area and that's like there with the McNulty curves.

Right now, we are at 65% nameplate capacity. We plan to reach 90% by mid next year. And then by the end of 18 months, from May, June this year, we expect to reach 100%, again outperforming any standard in the industry. We will continue to work, of course, on having a dependable, a stable system when it comes to production, but at the same time, focusing on costs. We have shared with you in 2024 the cash operating costs for Centenario at $5,000 per tonne ex works. We all know that during '24 and '25, we experienced inflation and also negative FX impact in Argentina. We estimate that to be -- to have a negative impact in our cost.

But as I mentioned, we are looking at optimizing reagents, looking at volumes to see what is it that we can offset in terms of costs. And we are targeting a $5,400, $5,800 per tonne operating cash cost once we reach nameplate capacity. Again, an ongoing process, but the important thing is that we will be able to reach a stable, dependable system when it comes to volumes and then start working in optimizing our costs.

I wanted to hand over to you, Abel, so that you can share with us the work that we've been doing on the commercial side, which is, of course, a very important lever in the program as well, please.

Thank you, Paulo. And of course, being a great operator is absolutely key for us. And Paulo, you've indicated a significant EBITDA uplift that we can draw from operational excellence, but good miners are also good marketers. And there's nothing new in what we are doing here. I mean there's nothing that we have not done before, and commercial excellence is a good example of it. Good work have been done by our commercial teams who are really good and more will be done.

I'm particularly interested in this as I've worked on commercial excellence programs before and every mining company goes through this journey of trying to increase its -- the value stemming from commercial excellence. So we have identified to date a run rate EBITDA potential uplift of EUR 10 million to EUR 20 million to be delivered within the next 2 years. And that's really to start with 4 main levers. It starts with evolving our go-to-market approach for lithium. I know we speak quite a bit of lithium. We like it. We're very excited about our project, but also about the capacity we have to actually target higher growth, higher-margin regions and segments of the market. So that's the first level.

The second level and probably the more important in terms of EBITDA contribution, where again, we're only getting started is on supply chain excellence. At the end of the day, mining is also a logistics business and there's a lot we are going to do to boost efficiency, resilience across the value chain through advanced planning, through logistics, through optimization of inventory and, of course, through disciplined execution. I mean we -- there's a lot to be done in terms of sales and operations planning, which we are not yet doing in a disciplined way as we see being done in other companies, for example.

The third pillar is on the sharpening of our product market fit. Again, there are -- we have good products and good segments where we carry good margins. We believe more could be done and will be done on this front. And again, it's focusing on the higher-value segments and tailoring our offering and our markets -- our products to that effect.

And the third lever is very much about upgrading the performance management in the way we measure and the way we report, but also in the way we look at contracts. I mean there are some contracts where we may not do the margins we want. So we are reviewing these contracts to make sure that we have a better pricing to make sure that we embed value in use and technical marketing aspects to it. And there's across the commercial excellence program, almost 20 initiatives that we have identified that we have measured for which we have a planned execution and that's the start of this commercial excellence journey. So which adds to the operational excellence program that you just described, Paulo, within a broader program of transformation.

The third aspect, and I'll move to the financial resilience, which is, of course, extremely important to us and a key priority. We have started to take action 6 months and 9 months ago, already well before I joined, but we have continued in taking action. And that's to start with the cash boost program to reduce the cash burn that we have faced over the last many months. We've taken a number of one-off measures on costs, on working capital, on CapEx and we've reduced the CapEx, as you know, the guidance to EUR 400 to EUR 425 million. And you'll see our CapEx for next year reduced significantly. And we will take additional one-off measures, if necessary, in the future.

We are, of course, very much focused on maintaining an adequate level of liquidity, which we are satisfied with. We have secured our liquidity through the bank waiver that, as you know, we had requested as part of our Q3. And this is all about making sure that we continue to benefit from, as I said, adequate liquidity, but also access to markets at large and we'll continue to engage with our lenders from which we have their support. And more broadly, we have started a financial transformation program, which very much go to liquidity, making sure that we boost cash, making sure that we take action across cost, working capital, CapEx and to make sure that, of course, we also reinforce our balance sheet through deleveraging.

There will be a number of measures being taken in the next few months. The keyword across everything we do is discipline. And of course, as we go into the next year and into full year results, we will give you more indication in terms of how we intend to maintain financial resilience and strengthen our balance sheet.

So the commitment that we have is very much, as I mentioned, to deleveraging, to strengthen the balance sheet and to embed much more discipline in everything we do. At the end of the day, this business needs to improve its cash flow generation, and we have started to change the curve. We believe we'll turn back to a cash flow positive -- free cash flow positive situation in the -- during the delivery of this transformation program and we are very committed to financial strength.

So with that, I'll hand over back to you, Paulo.

Thank you, Abel. And I cannot stress enough how privileged we are to have Abel in the team because many of these actions that we have been talking about, be it in the commercial excellence side, be it on the financial discipline side, it's -- there are things that Abel has done before, and we're very excited to be able to leverage that.

So talking still about ReSolution, how is it that we're going to look at it. This is a group-wide initiative, as I mentioned, and we have an initial set of projects or initiatives that focus on operational, commercial excellence as well as other levers. Abel talked about the fact that we already have been able to deliver between EUR 60 million and EUR 70 million of one-off free cash flow impact in 2025. So these are actions that we have taken to address the challenges we've been facing this year.

The bulk of ReSolution as it is today between EUR 130 million and EUR 170 million EBITDA uplift over the next 2 years of which EUR 120 million comes from -- EUR 120 million and EUR 150 million comes from operational improvement and another EUR 10 million, EUR 20 million from commercial excellence. And again, it doesn't stop here, right? We will continue to look at opportunities during this process. But the foundations are in place, and I am more and more convinced that we have what it takes to deliver on that.

So to conclude, and then I would be -- I will be very happy to take questions. We -- I am convinced that having seen what I've seen, having learned what I learned, confirming many of the beliefs I have, but also learning a lot that we have what it takes to take the company to a different level to build a more efficient, more fit-for-purpose organization. We have done this before. We will do this again. We will be able to leverage the existing capabilities that I shared with you that are already in place, but also have been able to bring new practices, strengthening the team so that we can focus on what matters, doing it safely, responsibly.

Five very important pillars that will continue to guide us during this journey and beyond. Starting with what matters most, safety and positive mining. Act for positive mining will continue to be a cornerstone for us. It is a key source of competitive advantage is the way that we do business. Being ready to leverage the capabilities I mentioned and the quality of our assets to deliver operational excellence. Going through everything that Abel shared with us in terms of being disciplined and rigorous when it comes to financial performance.

Working -- continuing to work and to create a culture of ownership, of delivery of performance so that we are ready and we will have the ability to be ready for the future when it comes, given, of course, the fact that we are in the right industries, looking at the long-term potential.

So with that, I would like -- again, Abel, you thank you for being with us. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Very happy to take any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Paul Kirjanovs of Bank of America.

This is Paul Kirjanovs from Bank of America. I just wanted to ask on leverage, right? I see your release says you've obtained a waiver on your gearing covenant. How should we think about deleveraging from here? Is it fair to assume that we now reach sort of peak leverage and then it's all down from here? That will be my question.

Yes, Paul, thank you very much. So we are very much committed to deleveraging, as I mentioned, and it starts with generating free cash flow. And as I indicated, we have changed the curve there, and we expect to become free cash flow positive again during the period of delivery of this plan. That's the first point. And the second point is, of course, we are looking at a range of options to accelerate if we can, the strengthening of the balance sheet.

Great. And then maybe one -- if I can squeeze one more in on Centenario, right? You're saying you expect to be around 80%, 90% of nameplate by mid-'26. Is that when you expect to be also EBITDA breakeven? Or will Centenario already contribute this year?

You'll take that or...

Yes. I'll take this. So we expect Centenario to become EBITDA positive at the end of the ramp-up. And I think the question was about whether we would get 90% nameplate, right, by mid-'96. I think that's correct.

The next question is from Maxime Kogge, ODDO BHF.

So my first question is basically, there were some speculation that you might go for some disposals or even a capital increase. So nothing of that has been announced today. Can you tell us why you did not opt for these options? And whether you would still be able to consider them in the future? So that's my first one.

I can't really comment on speculations. The other point we can say, of course, we -- I mean all options are always open. But I mean, very much -- the reason why we're here today is very much to focus on our improvement program. Our #1 priority is to improve the operational performance of the business. That's very much what we are focusing on now.

And if I may, Maxime, as well, I think the -- I am very confident that the exercise that we've been through have elevated our understanding of our assets. It is the starting point of really taking the most value of our assets in a safe and responsible manner so that we're ready for any processes that we may have to consider in the past -- in the future.

Okay. Fair enough. And the second one is on manganese alloys. So there is no safeguard in place, but the implications are a bit complex as there seems to be a positive pricing effect, but also possibly a negative volume effect since you're based out of Europe for most of your production. So can you perhaps explain us what you view are the impacts for Eramet?

Yes, Maxime, to be quite frank, I don't think anyone in the industry has yet assessed the impact of the safeguard measures. You correctly say, our business in Norway, we have 3 plants there is out of the safeguard measures. It's a very complex picture. It's even a complex formula to actually understand the actual tariffs that are being applied or the duties, I should say, that are being applied. There will be a volume effect. There would be a price effect. We are currently assessing what that effect is. I think everyone else is trying to.

The market is a bit unsettled at the moment. So we'll have to wait and get a better assessment of how the supply-demand mechanisms settle. And also how the trade routes actually settle to -- depending on the different products, low carbon, high carbon, ferromanganese and silicon manganese. I think it's just a complex picture at the moment.

Okay. Right. And just the last one here is on nickel. So good that you have been able to tell us that you expect to reach the upper end of your production guidance for lithium. But as far as nickel is concerned, do you have more visibility whether you will be able also there to reach your higher end? I guess the bottleneck there is if there's a mining throughput, then the logistics and the ability of the clients to absorb your volumes in such a short period of time.

Well, it's -- I mean it's still an oversupplied market, as you know. We -- the products we market directly in particular in PI still carry a good premium. Overall, listen, it's an oversupplied market and the prices have not yet recovered in the way we wanted them to recover, of course. But there is a clearing price at any given supply-demand curve, and that's the same for the output that we market out of the assets there.

I should say, by the way, that -- for nickel, we confirm the guidance as for the other commodities today was not related to guidance. So we do confirm the guidance in terms of volumes and in terms of prices and in terms of CapEx, as I mentioned earlier on. And as far as nickel is concerned, we are in the 36 million to 39 million wet metric tons of external sales.

Next question is from William Dennis of Bank of America.

My question is on the covenant waiver in the release. I am curious if it's going to be tested again in June 2026? And what's the plan for that? And also, when it comes to Centenario, what is your view on the volumes you see for 2026 as well as the kind of pricing you expect going forward? That will be all for me.

Yes. So the waivers are tested at the end of June and end of December. The simple answer to your question is that we do want to maintain adequate level of liquidity. And we are confident that we can achieve that using a range of options at our disposal.

Just as a follow-up on the covenant test, what is the level? What's the gearing ratio?

So it's a ratio of net debt to equity. And it's at 1. I don't know whether we provide that otherwise in the market, but it's 1x.

Okay. That's great. And then on the question on Centenario?

I can pick that up, right?

Yes, Paulo.

So thank you, William. On Centenario, we -- it is early -- it's too early to provide the volume guidance. We plan to do that next time we meet in February next year. But we have indicated the ramp-up plans and we're confident to achieve those. Again, I think in terms -- and then to the second part of your question on prices, we see the same sources that everyone does. We're confident on the long-term plan -- on the long-term level, but consensus for next year is in the region of 10,000, 11,000.

Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you.

So we have questions from the webcast regarding Gabon. How will Gabon 2029 ban on manganese ore exports impact Eramet's turnaround strategy?

No, thank you for the question. We have discussed this last time we met. We continue to work -- as you know, we have a long-standing presence in Gabon. We continue to work closely with the government there, with the players there. We see ways to work together, and we'll continue to work together. Manganese is an important part of our business. And we definitely are confident that we'll find ways to continue working and operating Gabon.

We have a question regarding manganese. What happened to manganese this year? Were there new problems? Or were there problems that have been building gradually and which just came to ahead?

So in general, when it comes to manganese, we did face challenges. We have faced challenges in the beginning of the year related to logistics, which have been largely resolved. The key focus for us going forward will be around unlocking capacity that we understand, we have been improving a lot the practices at the mine in terms of planning, in terms of adherence to plans, making sure that we can manage grades in a much more effective manner. So this is very -- this is encouraging.

We continue to work on end-to-end planning because I think that's one area that there is room to improve. And again, the focus for the next coming years and also part of the improvement plan is going to be around our ability to accelerate the renewal of the track so that we can unlock the capacity that we know it's there.

You mentioned that you are still evaluating options to accelerate deleveraging. Why make announcements today rather than waiting for a complete plan?

So Paulo can weight in as well. But I think -- I mean, you will recognize that today is an announcement where we are providing a significant EBITDA uplift stemming from the asset performance review that Paulo mentioned and carried out over the last 6 months, stemming from significant amount of work that we've done across the organization, across the assets and stemming from a very disciplined approach to evaluating improvement potential, making sure that we measure them, making sure that we track them, making sure that we execute on them. So I think it's quite significant. And that's the first point.

The second point, there are broader aspects of the transformation program that we are embarking on. I've mentioned commercial excellence I've also mentioned transformation, and there will be a series of initiatives that we'll be taking to make sure that not only do we improve operationally, but also financially and financial strength is an important point. We will provide, as part of annual results on the 18th February more -- well, of course, guidance for the year, but also more information on how we are doing on the -- on our improvement program, including on our financial resilience program.

Thank you, Abel. If I may add as well. I think there's a couple of points from my side. First, we -- I have made the commitment to come back with the results from the performance review, and I was looking forward to that opportunity because there's many, many interesting learnings, confirmed again many of my beliefs and learned more. I am very confident this is a very comprehensive plan. And we've done this before, and it is evolving. It will continue to evolve. We wanted to make sure to be transparent. We wanted to be upfront to say this is what is it that we're pursuing, looking at the different levers.

But going forward, we also want to provide you more and more visibility, granularity on the plans so that we can track them as they evolve. It is a comprehensive plan, but it will evolve. But to me, it's really around the commitment of coming back to you and also making sure that we are able to track each of these levers that we shared with you today.

What gives management confidence that this time will be different when previous productivity plan failed to generate cash improvement?

I will start. The first point is that I can't really comment on what was done in the past. And there are different circumstances at different points in time. And if anything, I mean, this is a business that over the years has maintained great assets and has managed to retrofit the business in a great way. So now the first thing I would say on this is that we've been able to deliver on a cash boost program that we have delivered at the end of the year between EUR 60 million and EUR 70 million.

And that's not that significant given the operational and the macroeconomic and pricing environment in which we have operating -- we have been operating, which has been very, very tough. So it shows that we are capable of taking action. We will take more action as required on a tactical opportunistic way. Now structurally, things are different. We have, as Paulo mentioned, identified opportunities across the portfolio. We have identified productivity improvement, cost efficiency, process efficiency, procurement optimization program. These are identified in a deliberate way. They are being implemented. They are being tracked, teams on it.

So it's part of a transformation program that is extremely disciplined. And the same thing on embedding a culture of discipline -- sorry, a culture of discipline on cost, on CapEx, on trade working capital. So I think we are pretty confident and committed to delivering on that.

I mean if I may add as well, I mean, I do understand the question and the concern. But today, we showed you areas that have already worked. We shared with you what happened with Centenario. This is what we are putting in place for the rest of the organization. As Abel said, there is a very, very clear road map in terms of what are the areas that we need to explore, what are the KPIs that we want to track. We have put in place across the board a value office that will provide the visibility to the entire organization. And it's not going to be different with you.

We're not going to overpromise. We will show you progress quarter-by-quarter, looking at each of the value drivers, each of the initiatives. But more importantly, I mean we've done this before, I am very confident that we will be able to leverage the capabilities that we shared with you that we have learned and identified, but also bringing new practices and strengthening the team, as I mentioned. So very confident that it is a robust plan and a plan that will evolve with time. But again, making sure that we show you progress quarter-by-quarter.

Regarding the plan, what are the expected one-off costs associated to the resolution plan?

So we are not providing a specific indication on the one-off costs today. We will provide more information as part of our annual results on the 18th of February. I mean you see transformation programs, generally speaking, and I'm not providing any guidance here, but 20% to 25% of the costs being -- of the program -- sorry, 20% to 25% of the program generating cost the first year. I think we see probably similar numbers. We will provide more guidance on the 18th of February.

Important also to mention, right, Abel, that the work that we've been doing on CapEx optimization was strongly supported by a very detailed risk analysis. So what we are putting forward in terms of optimizing CapEx is already in place and it's based by and it's substantiated by detailed risk analysis and the numbers that we provided you in terms of the EBITDA uplift assume no major CapEx. So this is a very important assumption that we have put in place.

But as I said, quarter-on-quarter, we will update you on what is it that's going to be around the plan. But no major CapEx is associated with the improvement we shared and all the optimization CapEx that we mentioned have been substantiated by very detailed risk analysis so that we know where is it that we can postpone, cancel altogether or actually optimize.

Following on CapEx, could you share with us how much CapEx are required by the plan, especially at Comilog?

So again, we are not providing specific guidance on the CapEx related to the improvement plan here. I think we know that the main value driver for the business and for the improvement plan stems from, as Paulo mentioned, debottlenecking. And the range of CapEx that is required there to continue on the improvement program at the rail is between EUR 70 million and EUR 80 million -- or it has been over the last couple of years, between EUR 70 million and EUR 80 million. Again, the guidance for '26 will be communicating at the end of February.

So regarding strategy to increase exposure to metal related to energy transition, is it still a priority or not anymore?

No, that's -- thank you for the question. It's a very good one. It is definitely -- nothing has changed in our strategy. We strongly believe in the strategy that we put forward. I mean we are very well placed to both service markets that are well established in the current economy as well as markets that will grow as Abel shared in the long run. We have, of course, to be disciplined. We will be able -- we want to make sure that we look at reasonable and disciplined growth.

So right now, the priorities will be to make sure that we deliver a stable, sustainable system -- production system at Centenario so that we can reach full capacity, optimize our costs and then be very well placed to scale up that one deposit. And these are the short-term priorities, but the strategy hasn't changed.

So following on that, do you plan to significantly invest to boost production in Centenario by end 2027? And how quickly could you reduce growth CapEx back to versus '25 level?

So let's talk about CapEx first, right, because again, I think it's a wider conversation, right? Again, we're not going to talk about what is it that's going to be the CapEx plan for 2026. But important to mention that we are in a continuous process to optimize our CapEx because of the reasons you know around financial discipline, right? When it comes to investing further in Centenario, I mentioned it is a fantastic deposit, a deposit that's scalable, but we're not going to do any investments before we are absolutely in control of what the current production system can do.

In my experience, once you have reached out -- reached design capacity, there's typically further potential. So we wanted to make sure that we optimize the investment that is on the ground, and then we start thinking about what is it that's next. We continue investing sensibly on the studies. So we understand what are our options, so that we're not going to let go. But again, it's going to be around making sure that we optimize the current system.

I don't know, Abel, if you...

No. I would just add that as I mentioned earlier on, we will materially reduce CapEx. Again, this is all about making sure that we go back into a positive free cash flow position as quickly as possible during the -- certainly during the period of the plan. So growth CapEx will, in this context, significantly decrease. We're also increasing the discipline in regards to CapEx. So we want to get more out of less, so to say, more asset integrity, more productivity, better delivery.

Regarding SLN, is there a contribution from SLN in the resolution plan? And is there any opportunity to fully separate from SLN so it would help with the transparency of the reporting?

So nothing has changed on the arrangements with SLN. Right now, what we presented in resolution brings -- has -- does not include any improvement from SLN. And right now, what is it -- we're not going -- we don't plan to change anything related to SLN as per before.

I think we have a few remaining questions. Just in terms of market perspective and demand/supply, what makes you think that demand/supply will recalibrate in 2026 and going forward?

Well, the market seems to think so. we might have different views depending on commodities to the market. We do not see an immediate recovery in most of the commodities in which we operate. And we're certainly not managing the business on the hope of recovery, in general. I mean, of course, the long-term fundamentals are strong as we articulated. We do manage the business more and more so making sure that we are very well positioned in the cost curve, very well disciplined on cost optimization. So that's what I would say about that. And of course, our assets are well positioned to that effect, as Paulo mentioned earlier on.

And I think next week, you will also hold a webinar regarding your assets in Argentina, Centenario. What should we expect to learn more next week on this asset?

Let me kick off. And then those of you who will be there, will be with Abel. Abel will be with you over there as well as with the local team. I am very excited, very happy with the fact that we have been able to organize this visit next week. What is that you're going to see firsthand is what we described and shared with you today, a playbook, the way that we plan to manage our operations going forward. You will see an operation that has started the right way following very, very strict sustainability practices. You will see a number of world practices in play.

But as I said, more importantly, you will be able to see how it all brings together the current capabilities that Eramet has in terms of the technology, dominating the technology on DLE, the scalability of the deposit, you would be able to see the potential that we have in terms of growth and how well positioned we are for the long-term prospects for lithium.

This will end the Q&A session. We don't have any more questions from the webcast. Thank you.

Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for investing the time and thank you, Abel. And I, again, very much look forward to being in touch with you again soon. And I am very confident that we'll be able to share more and very, very excited about the future ahead of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone.