Good morning and welcome to the Atome PLC Investor Presentation. Throughout the recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab situated in the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press Send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself; however, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Chairman Peter Levine. Good morning to you, sir.
Good morning and thank you very much. Thank you for everyone, existing shareholders, new shareholders, investment advisors, analysts who have joined this call. Thank you very much for showing interest in our company, Atome PLC. Before I hand over to our excellent CEO, Olivier Mussat, I've been asked just to say one or two words. Now, Atome PLC has come a long way from an idea over dinner in the latter part of COVID times. It's come a long way. We're impatient. We wanna get there fast, just like everyone else does. What we have achieved in that relatively short period, from a standing zero start, from a company not involved in our industry prior to that, is nothing more than extremely rewarding and commendable.
We set ourselves a challenge when we started, and that challenge was to concentrate on actions, not words. Not to effectively build up things unnecessarily, to be humble where it's appropriate, and to be aggressive in terms of the business case where it's necessary. Above all, to focus on the fact that we are generating a business here, and that business must be a business which must be led on market demand and must be profitable and must be a market leader. Finally, must have an attitude towards costs and delivery of true shareholder value. I'm pleased to say that we are well on the path to this. We have risen to the challenge within a relatively short period of time, and within that time, we actually have become the industry leader and at the forefront of green fertilizer, which is an exciting business.
It's got plenty of scope for growth, and we are here. We have developed strategic partnerships. We want to be judged by the companies we are with and the quality of those companies. The quality of those companies can be assessed by Casale, our EPC contractor, a world-leading company in ammonia and fertilizer construction and technology. By Yara, critically important because with Yara, we have a, again, a world-leading offtaker, 43% owned by the Norwegian government, who will be taking all our offtake on a long-term basis. Critically important for measuring finances and also for the finance. The reason for today is, of course, yet another strategic partner, Hy24, a leader in its field, critically important as far as equity funding is concerned, and not only a partner now, but we hope a partner going forward.
We're absolutely delighted that Hy24 has joined with us and with our other strategic partners in building this. It is a significant step towards delivering final investment decision, FID, and completion of full financial close during the course of the next few months. We are, with the team, very much focused on this, and I'm delighted to say that we've all got a full management team and some really good and dedicated people, of course, led by our CEO, Olivier Mussat, who you'll hear from in a moment. This is an occasion where we want to demonstrate to you and show you how far we've come. The most important thing is where we're going to, and not just delivering the project, because that's the means to an end.
We have a very profitable business in Villeta, which is the subject of this call, delivering green fertilizer effectively to South America and the world. We've got a pipeline. We've got much more than that. We've just started, and we have exciting prospects. We're going from strength to strength, and you'll hear more now. We view the future with confidence, step by step, in a serious way, as a world leader in our field, at the forefront of what we do, respected, and indeed copied by our peers, which is, of course, the utmost compliment. I'll now hand over to Olivier Mussat, our excellent CEO, who will take you through the presentation. Thank you for your attention.
All right. Well, thank you, Peter, for the introduction. Indeed, it's about the people who are able to deliver a business and a company. Atome, for those of you who don't really know us well, I mean, the best way to sum it up, you know, we are the first and still the only U.K.-listed company focused on the development of green zero-carbon molecules.
Especially fertilizer. Why fertilizer? Because there's a climate issue with it, and I'll explain that later. Also it's a question of food security, and it wasn't lost on anyone that, you know, since the start of the Ukraine war, the realization that our fertilizer and food channels are actually quite weak. The ability to do something about it, not only for the climate aspect, but also to make sure that we continue to be able to feed a growing population, was quite important. The final point is really we have to realize that fertilizer industry itself, it's a $200 billion industry which had never really been disrupted, for a number of reasons.
While we will be talking about the project, the data and the status of a project and why Hy24 came in and why it is quite transformational for us, we really want to go and explain the value proposition of Atome, not only today with one project, but then it is the project that unlocks everything else and the business proposition. With that said, I will just go now into the presentation. Hopefully now everybody can see the PowerPoint. Grateful if you can confirm.
Yes, we have the slides up in front of us.
Perfect. Obviously, it's all about decarbonizing the global food value chain and making sure we have food security, food on the table. Our first project, which some of you have followed now for a couple of years, it's really the 145 MW Villeta project. Today it is the world's largest dedicated green fertilizer facility, and it is the most advanced. Why is it the most advanced? As you heard from our chairman, you know, in 2020 when we started thinking about our role into the green molecule's revolution, what we saw is that there was a massive gap in that market and nobody was really looking into it.
While it is the largest green fertilizer facility from an industrial scale, it is actually not that big because we really wanted to make sure we were not going to have technology risk or market risk attached to it. It is a demonstration in a way, but more importantly, it will become the blueprint for the next projects and to deliver more and more projects. We have a 300 MW Yguazu project also in Paraguay that is in early stages of development as well as one in Costa Rica with the intention, of course, is copy-paste. You know, while we've taken the time to do Villeta right, then everything will become a lot faster, thanks to the lessons learned. What is Villeta, right?
It's about 260,000 tons per year of green fertilizer. You make green fertilizer using renewable power. If you want to make it competitively, as Peter said earlier, it's all about making sure that it is a workable business without subsidies. You need competitively priced power in the middle of one of the largest fertilizer markets in the world. You may be in a very, very big market in Latin America. You still need to have the right partnership on the offtake side. The one who will sell your fertilizer at the highest possible price, and this is where Yara comes in, because obviously they are able to go and crystallize these premiums, and they have been at the forefront of zero carbon fertilizer.
Obviously, you need to finance it. We've talked about the way, you know, on the debt side. The idea for us is that whilst Atome itself is a developer, each project that we develop will have its own SPV, so special purpose vehicle, which will be financed at the asset level. This is where obviously we have been working very actively on the lending side with IDB, with Natixis, but also on the equity side in the process that we have run. We're following that process. We were very pleased to have Hy24, the largest fund dedicated to green molecules, coming on board at the project level and giving what is the equivalent of a pre-money value of $60 million net to Atome for each shared Villeta.
It shows that we are actually, you know, showing value very early, before we have even started producing. You heard about, you know, Casale, who will be doing the EPC, on a fixed price turnkey contract. Obviously, the intention is to target final investment decision, which means the start of construction, by the end of H1 this year. You know, what does that mean in terms of cash? Well, the reality is the first full year of production of the Villeta project alone on an EBITDA basis will be around $70 million if we assumed a price of fertilizer of about $420 a ton. That's actually quite conservative. This is the price of high carbon fertilizer.
Looking at the markets that we are in today, actually, the cost of fertilizer is higher than this. We just wanted to give you a sense of what it means, pricewise. As I mentioned, you know, it's a company is great, but you know, it's only as good as the people that you have behind it. Obviously, you heard of Peter, our Chairman and largest shareholder, who's come from a world of EPC, engineering, entrepreneurship and energy infrastructure. Personally, I came from studying as an engineer in the power sector and then moved on to the financing side. My last job was with the International Finance Corporation, which is part of the World Bank Group.
Importantly is to have the right people on the ground, which is where, you know, Jim comes into play as the head and president of Atome in Paraguay, who has experience both on the policy side and obviously on the power side. Mary-Rose, who joined the Atome team early on, who comes from the background of hydrogen as well as innovation and energy as she was the head of the International Energy Agency's partnership unit on hydrogen. Of course, Terje Bakken, who is our head of fertilizer, who had over 30 years career within EuroChem, Norsk Hydro and Yara, which are the largest European fertilizer company with global footprints.
At, in here, what you see is obviously our shareholders and partners, and we are, you know, very grateful to have a continuous support of Schroders, of Baker Hughes, and Trafigura and so on. But what I want to point out is obviously you see Peter at 18%, myself at 5.5%. Every single person in the management has invested their own money into the company. All right? That is for us, it's very clear, and I think it is also one of the things that gives our ability to find the right partners is that they see that we are personally incentivized and totally aligned with all of them to make sure that we deliver the project in the right way and in order to generate profit.
In here in this particular slide, I should mention that this presentation will be available this afternoon on our website. It gives you know, a rough idea of what is the value proposition of Atome on its existing projects and its existing pipeline of projects. Which is what we have on all of, you know, obviously the production of Villeta, the potential of our pipeline, and also the way we have financed our projects. What you see is that today we have an average analyst target price of around 187p per share. Obviously, when we look at what the market cap of Atome today, this is quite a large multiple.
What we also saw is that just the $60 million value that Hy24 is giving us is a multiple of our current share price. All that to say that we are really ripe for growth, and what we are seeing is clearly that as we deliver, that value is going to crystallize. A little bit of background of the market itself, right? Why is it that, you know, we need fertilizer and especially green fertilizer? What we are seeing is over the next 20 years, you know, our population is gonna grow by more than one billion people. That means that we need 60% more calories, more food on the table than what we today have. It's going to put a lot of pressure on fertilizer.
This graph on the right is quite important because it shows you in green what are, let's call them, you know, the organic based fertilizers, which have been, you know, obviously growing slowly but surely, but only feed about 3.5 billion of the population. In the early 1900s, when the Haber-Bosch process was invented, that creates ammonia and then that creates nitrogen fertilizers. What we really saw is that it has helped the growth of the population and feed us, right? Today, 50% of all fertilizer are synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizer. All of these fertilizers are based on hydrocarbons. This is the problem in itself, where these 50% of fertilizer which are feeding the population is responsible for 5% of all global gas emissions, number one.
Number two, what we also see is that because this is derived from natural gas, most of these fertilizers comes from jurisdictions which are also not immune from political risk. To give you an example, 30% of all of the fertilizers you see in red, all of the nitrogen-based fertilizer, come from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which obviously creates a massive risk on food security. The idea for us is that green fertilizer, zero carbon fertilizer, by making nitrogen fertilizer using renewable power, you are able to ensure that you will have supply of fertilizer no matter the political risk, and on top of that, it will be carbon free. It's all about producing more with less and to ensure that we can continue to feed the world in the right way.
The idea is also that when you look at the fertilizer market, obviously it is first the farmers that we think about who are using the fertilizer. Actually, what we have to realize is the carbon footprint, although it is very high for the farmer, it represents a tiny bit of the cost when it comes to your end product. To give you an example, in potatoes, 30% of emissions made from producing potatoes comes from nitrogen fertilizers. Actually, going green represents less than 1% of the total cost of your potatoes. Which is why it is the absolute lowest hanging fruit for companies like Danone, Starbucks or M&S to go and tackle right away and reduce the emissions right away in the right way, right?
Because obviously, that is going to make sure that they meet their sustainable goals but also ensure that they have a security of supply over the long term. We've seen a really interesting movement where even in Latin America today, Yara is providing low carbon fertilizer to the sugar industry, and because there is a demand not only for green, but in the end, security of supply. That's what basically we call the pull model. It is the market which is pulling fertilizer companies to produce at lower carbon emissions. There's the push issue, which is what we are seeing is the reason that these companies are going green is both for helping make the world a better place, but also because they have increasingly carbon taxes applied to them.
There is a profit element, there is a cost element. What we are seeing now is that in Europe, in the U.K., there are Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, basically taxes, which will be enforced on the import of fertilizers. And that is going to have an impact of possibly increasing fertilizer costs by 20%-30% if it has a very high carbon footprint. It is, you know, it is an opportunity for us to play a very significant role and to provide a solution today and not a solution tomorrow. The process to make green fertilizer is actually relatively simple. Today, regular nitrogen-based fertilizer is made using basically hydrogen. But as I mentioned earlier, it's hydrogen coming from natural gas as you separate CH4, carbon, hydrogen.
What we can do at scale now, and this is relatively recent, it's only been for the past five years that we've been able to do large scale green hydrogen. It's by using water, H2O, and using a lot of electricity to split the H2O into H, hydrogen, O, oxygen. That hydrogen goes into the regular Haber-Bosch process, which means hydrogen is mixed with nitrogen. That then through the Haber-Bosch process becomes NH3, nitrogen and three hydrogens. Once you have your ammonia, you run it to make it ammonium nitrate through basically mixing nitric acid, which is made from ammonia and concentrated ammonia, and adding regular ammonia. That becomes ammonium nitrate. Once you have your ammonium nitrate solution, it's a liquid, you add dolomite or limestone to make basically you use calcium oxide to make calcium ammonium nitrate.
That calcium ammonium nitrate is essentially a bag of fertilizer that can be shipped anywhere in the world. But clearly, we are in Latin America. This is a market which imports huge quantities of fertilizer, so it is very easy to put it on the truck and then deliver it to the market that needs the fertilizer. This goes a little bit further into the project and what we have done to date. As we've announced back in 2022, we signed a long-term power purchase agreement with ANDE, the national utility. As I mentioned, you need power, you know, a fair amount of it, and it needs to be green, right? It needs to be zero carbon renewable power.
Which is why we have cemented our partnership with ANDE, which takes power from the second-largest hydroelectric dam in the world called Itaipu. We have bought the site. We have brought in all of the advisors and contractors needed. We have gotten our environmental and operating license, which means that all of the permitting is done so that we can start construction now. We've done all of the environmental social impact assessment using the World Bank Performance Standards. Because for us, yes, just because it's a green project doesn't mean that you shouldn't do things right on environmental and a social point of view, because this is your long-term social license to operate. The government has provided further support by allocating us a Free Trade Zone.
On the engineering side, we have finished the front-end engineering and design, and this is the first time ever that a full engineering design study was done for a large-scale green fertilizer plant. On the next steps, obviously the financing side, and we've mentioned many times that Natixis has been our financial advisor and helping to put together the debt package. We are looking at about $400 million of senior debt. IDB Invest has already indicated support of up to $200 million. We've talked also that, you know, IFC has also been engaged, and we're also talking with a number of DFIs and ECAs into finding the best possible structure for the project.
We expect that we'll make some announcements on that in the next couple of months to tell you exactly who is going to be the lender. At the moment, we are very fortunate that because this is a project which is climate positive and food security, it has a lot of interest with the financing institutions, which is why for $400 million, we had received nearly 5x of oversubscription. Of course, if you have a debt on one side, you still need the equity on the other side. Which is where, you know, the Hy24 announcement is so important, because we have always said that we were going to target 60% debt, 40% equity.
That means that we're in the process that we have run with Natixis. We really went and in a very methodical way we went and reached out to a number of private equity players. A number of them expressed interest. Through that competitive process, you know, we were very, let's say honored, but at the same time happy that we have basically found an alignment with the the fund, which is the best fund in the hydrogen and green chemical world in Hy24. In the next steps, we had signed the heads of terms on the EPC with Casale, our technical partner for the construction of a plant.
We are now in the final stages of completing the EPC contract, which we will announce in the coming month. From Yara, as obviously we had announced the heads of terms, the commercial terms, and completely agreed on the commercial terms with Yara, and now it's all about moving these commercial terms from a head of term into the final form of agreement, which comply with the requirements of project finance. Expect some announcements coming through that. Once we have all of these steps and we finish the book build on the debt and the equity, we will reach final investment decision. I mentioned about Hy24.
Obviously, it was quite important for us to present to the potential investors a deal which was what we would call fully baked at the end of the day. I mean that the project is here, it's permitted, you have all of your major contracts already there or en route. You already have a financial structure that is well understood and, you know, with, let's say, a 90p risk on the price, so that you can present the best case to your investors, so they can give you the most value to the project. Once you have all of these things set, which is what we have done, you approach investors and say, "Well, this is the project. This is the types of returns you could expect to make.
Can we discuss the structure and how you would align with us?" For us, it means that where we are now, having had this agreement with Hy24, is we can move every single thing that we've done today into firming up and into delivering to the FID. From a, let's say, reputational point of view, it's also very important to us that it really shows, as Peter had mentioned earlier, you know, you don't do these first-in-kind projects without having the right partners. You know, credibility is extremely important. Obviously, Hy24 brings more than just money, right? They have some of the best investors in the green chemical world. They bring skills as well and the right contacts.
That's quite key to have them as part of a project because it demonstrates that actually this is a solid project which has gone through, let's say, a number of gating events. While Atome obviously maintains the day-to-day management through the life of a project, so that we can show and develop more value on the project itself, but also, they will accompany us into the next projects that we have on the pipeline. That's quite key to have a very strong partner so that they can grow with you. To give a little bit of Hy24, it was basically created with FiveT Hydrogen in partnership with Ardian. Ardian, it's one of the world's largest asset manager. It's about $177 billion of assets under management.
Jointly, they have created the Hy24 twenty-four fund focused on clean hydrogen chemical infrastructure. Here below, you see the partners that they have who are basically limited partners, investors into the project. We're talking about Air Liquide, Total, EDF, Itochu, ABN AMRO, CDPQ, and so on. It really shows that, you know, this is pretty much the gold standard of investor, which is coming in, and honestly coming in into the first time into a project in Latin America. First time for Hy24 looking at a fertilizer project and in Latin America. It really shows the strength of a project overrode every single risk that could have been seen on that.
In the heads of term, as we talked about it, right, it's a binding exclusivity for us to continue building together the equity group to get to $230 million. Them anchoring the investment and actually, you know, we have already talked to a number of investors who will come in the project. This part of the process is ongoing. The idea is they will invest between $100 million-$115 million. Depending on the appetite and the type of partnership that comes in, although they're coming at $115 million, but can create space to create the best equity club together.
Obviously for us, from a value today and the pre-money valuation, as we discussed, it's about $60 million. It represents roughly what we call in the oil and gas world, a carry type of mechanism, which means that we are getting about 20% of the value of a project for what we have done to date, right? It's an extremely compelling valuation, and it is pretty much within the guidance that we had been given to the market. As far as the next project, I mentioned earlier Yguazu, and I'm accelerating just a little bit because I really want to give time to Q&A.
On the 300 MW, where we have already earmarked the so let's say reserve the power capacity from ANDE, and we will go into full development once we reach FID on Villeta. For us, getting Villeta across the line is the top priority because then it will help unlock and accelerate everything else. As I mentioned on Costa Rica, we have a framework agreement with ICE, the state power company. Again, this project is maturing, but we need to focus on getting the project to start of construction in Villeta. From a timelines point of view, this kind of goes about, you know, what we have been saying just earlier.
The next steps is going to be the definitive EPC contract, the definitive Yara offtake, and of course, the definitive equity agreement as we finish book building the equity group. After that, we get into the debt financial close. That is the summary at the end. What you see is really we continue to be the world's most advanced developer of green fertilizer project and by a long shot, nearly more than two years ahead of anybody else. This will be the first dedicated green fertilizer facility, bar none. This represents real value, not only on future EBITDA, but on the current value.
Most importantly, and again, I can never stress that enough, is that now we have the best possible anchor within the project with Hy24 to get this near-term catalyst done and get to financial close. With that said, I will move to questions if I can.
Perfect. Olivier, thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions, and you can do so just by using the Q&A tab that's situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments through the questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. As you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and Olivier, if I could just hand back to you to read out the questions where appropriate to do so, I'll pick up from you at the end.
Yeah. Happy to do so, and sorry for the noise. 10:30 is the alarm call over here. Let's start with some of the pre-submitted questions. Can management provide insights on the current stage of sale and distribution of renewable fertilizer, particularly in the heads of terms? How does management assess the market environment for attracting further buyers? To, you know, to explain it in very, very quick ways, more than 95% of all fertilizer available in Latin America, and especially Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is imported. This is more than 30 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer. We represent less than 1% of that in that market. We can sell multiple times over, you know, all of our production within a 1,000-km radius. The market is there; it's not the problem.
The trick, and this is why having Yara is important, is how do we get the best premium for what we are producing? Not only because it is logistically there, and as I mentioned earlier, if you are dependent on import, you have a risk in your agri operation. There's a premium for having your production at home or close to you on a completely controllable basis. Logistical premium. The second bit is obviously it is zero carbon, and as I explained earlier, in a couple of years' time, so by 2026, 2027, there will be carbon tax imposed in a number of jurisdictions for nitrogen fertilizer, so non-green fertilizer. Suddenly you will have something equivalent to about 20% of the cost of today's fertilizer, of tax added on top of it.
Which means how do we make sure that from our point of view, we get the green premium, the green benefit? Clearly, we want and we are able to be competitive with our product, which is zero carbon, with the imports, so that's important. How do we get to the next premium, right? It's basically going down to the market and talking to the Marks and Spencer, the Nestlé, the Dreyfus of this world who are basically the one who are and who will get the most benefit of having low carbon fertilizer. Which is why we're not stopping obviously at one project because it's a big, big need that needs to be addressed and it's a big opportunity.
Remember when I started, it's a $200 billion market, which is prime for disruption for many things, but also, it's prime for disruption because it has a problem. It has a carbon problem, and it has a supply problem. I will go to the next questions. What are the next steps to reach FID? Obviously now that we have Hy24 giving us, you know, the clear line of sight on the equity, it's about moving our EPC contract to a final form contract. It is about moving the Yara contract, the Yara heads of terms into the final contract, which is happening, as we speak.
It is finishing putting together the club on the equity side and, with all of that, which is obviously the progress that we are making, is closing the senior debt financing, so that we can reach FID. Now this is actually just about process. Like we've done all of the hard bit, all of the long bit to make sure we select all of the best partners at every single point in time. Now we really go about delivering and, you know, coming from an infrastructure background, this is the type of things that I used to do all the time. Now this is basically mechanics. Like all of the risks about, okay, who do we want to choose? Why do we choose them and so on, it's gone. Now process. The next question.
What are Atome's priorities for 2025? Well, first half, Villeta. Second half, growth. Paraguay, Costa Rica, other countries, and I think it's one of the advantage that we have about being publicly listed is we have credibility, we have transparency, and we have other developers who have approached us. Of course, the Hy24 announcement hasn't been lost on the sector, and we had a number of renewed interests from developers who are saying, "Well, can we find a way to partner?" Because clearly, Atome seems to have the strategy and the methodology right to get projects to FID, to financing, to completion. Next question. The RNS mentioned Atome joining the equity club. How would Atome fund this?
Past placings have favored a small number of investors to the detriment of existing small private investors. It's a good question. What we have is, number one, as mentioned, we are carried 20% within the Villeta project as it is. We have the option to participate pari passu with Hy24, with the new investors. Obviously, you know, while on the carry mechanism, we believe it is the best result that we could achieve for us as existing shareholders. But also, that, this mechanism offers us the ability to put money at the same terms as Hy24, and obviously, these are strong terms. You know, Ardian, Hy24, these types of funds are not charities, right? What we see is it's an attractive proposition, and we will evaluate at the time.
As I mentioned, it's a book build. What we will do, obviously from a funding point of view, is if we decide to go ahead and fund at the same terms as Hy24, present it to the market and explain what the advantage is and why we should do this because we believe it is the best thing for shareholders. I think on the comment at the detriment of existing and small private investors, what you would have found is in the previous raises that we have done, we have been pretty transparent and even saying to the market, please reach out to our brokers, you know, to [ SP Angel], to [audio distortion], to express your interest to participate in these rounds. We will continue to do so.
As I mentioned, as management, we will also continue to invest our own money into the project and show that we are fully aligned with all of our shareholders and all of our partners. The next question, why is this agreement so significant for Atome? What value does Hy24 bring to the project? Hy24, it's, you know, it's a EUR 2 billion equity private equity firm, and they have a number of things across firm, right? They have these relationships with its, you know, whether it's with Air Liquide, with Itochu and so on. They have in their shareholder roster elements of helping us deliver and accelerate on our own projects. They have also the firepower to go and grow with us into our future projects.
As I mentioned, this is not just about money, this is not just about credibility. Of course, credibility is important, and you know, it's one of these things that, Peter, our Chairman, mentioned earlier on. Like, we started with a very experienced team, but without that much credibility. But we knew that the idea was right, that the time was right, and that our process and experience was right. We really went about doing things in a very, let's call it, you know, measured and patient manner. Not to get stuck into the hype and really sometimes be pretty ruthless in choosing where we were going to go and our partners. That has brought credibility to us.
That has allowed people who are specialist investors with an extensive track record in the green chemical space, and even in the fertilizer space, that actually we were doing things right, and that we continue to do things right. I think next question, I think there's one about milestones. I think I'd again to go back on the milestones. EPC final form, offtake final form, equity club finalized, and then delivering the debt, and then we start construction. Could you explain the $60 million valuation and how this was calculated? Well, it all comes down to negotiation at the end of the day. As I mentioned, there was a process.
We knew what type of valuation we wanted to get, which is something which would look at around 20% carry. There are different ways to skin that cat in the structuring world. We also took hard decisions between, okay, how much value for the shareholder, for the new shareholder, for the existing shareholder, and what is, and also what does that particular shareholder bring? And is it worth doing pluses and minuses and figure out, okay, maybe that investor is giving us a higher value, but we believed that, okay, maybe it wasn't the right investor, and vice versa. There was a long competitive process.
As I mentioned, we were very happy that we have the right partner with a valuation which is exactly what within the range that we had given to our shareholders for the past year. Are you able to say what percent or approximate percent target of Villeta will be left with after project-level equity finance in place? Well, done on progress and hard work so far. Thank you very much. I appreciate the comment. The team, I would say, is thankful for that recognition because, yes, everybody has been working extremely hard on it.
As I mentioned, what we are looking is that once everything is said and done, it's going to be equivalent to roughly a 20% share once this is done. What we are certainly going to go and continue to push is we are targeting a conservative 60/40, 60% debt, 40% equity. In the next few months, we will continue to try to optimize this and get even more value to us as Atome shareholders, but also to Hy24, right? We are partners. We want them to make money because if they make more money, we make more money. Another question, are you able to say how close you are to the PPA agreement for Yguazu? As I mentioned, it is the power is reserved.
We continue to have a very, very active dialogue with Ande. Until we reach FID, we are not going to move that to a PPA. The line of sight is very clear, and the alignment on Ande is very clear, right? You know, the moment that we prove that we get FID on project one, then we can move on to project two. Another question from Miguel. Equity commitment from Hy24 is firm or subject to approval by limited partners. Obviously, you're not able to make any announcement whatsoever if you haven't been going through a very rigorous process of due diligence and also process of approval within the existing Hy24 system.
I mean, you know, with Ardian as their backer, you don't become a $170 billion+ equity firm by being, you know, let's call it loosey-goosey. How strong it is? It is obviously extremely strong. It is also a question of trust but verify. We still have to deliver the full form of offtake, the full form of EPC and so on. We are working hand in hand and in order to put everything together. You know, is it very firm? Well, you know, I think you just have to look at the message that Pierre Etienne put out on our joint statement, right?
I think it's clearly; we are fully aligned; they are working with us to make sure that we have the best terms along the way. Another message, this looks encouraging. Thank you. Will you announce progress on the critical milestones in the project so that investors can monitor the progress? Yes, we will. Sometimes, you know, we have been wary about communicating too much because we are also educating our competition. But as I mentioned earlier, like we've already given the blueprint of how we do things. We've been extremely transparent and sometimes overly transparent on how we do things. Now it's all about delivering these milestones. Yes, there will be the announcements as we go. There's another one from Rory.
What opportunities are represented by the potential ratification of the E.U.-Mercosur trade deal? I think it's an opportunity to be able to sell more products from Mercosur into Europe. Of course, if you can sell it and show that you have a lower carbon footprint than your competition, it's quite strong. Is it going to have a really direct impact on us? You know, honestly, not that much, because this is kind of once remote, and the market is already so deep, that we are not dependent whatsoever on that trade deal. However, I think it will continue to show that this is a strong region of interest for Europe and beyond the world.
Obviously now that Paraguay has met investment grade over the past few months and is sure to be one of the strongest economy, I think a lot of the, let's call it political risk, for lack of a better word, perception has really gone, and it really shows that this is a preferred partner. You know, obviously without getting political at all, what we are seeing happening into the U.S. at the moment, meaning that a lot of the supplies coming from the U.S. will be either at risk or at risk of being taxed when they get into Europe.
If they are taxed, it means that it's only going to push the price of fertilizers up, which obviously is not great for the world. It's not great for our food security, but will enhance the attractiveness of our project. Not only as it gets built, but also as we start producing and because we will be one of the first, or if not the first, large scale green fertilizer project. From James. In the regions, do you see opportunity for scaling up production, given the limitation of surplus? The foundation of the analysis and, you know, part of that discussion around dinner that Peter mentioned earlier is like, it was really about high grading.
Where are the places in the world to have access to existing power that we can tap on very, very quickly and then grow from that. It's for us you start with base load hydroelectric power. From a growth point of view, then, once you start adding a little bit of wind, a little bit of solar and so on, and you go from that. Also, this is the first project in its kind. You have to reduce every single risk along the way. As you go through project four, five, six, seven, you take a little bit more risk as well. What we are seeing also is that there's been a dramatic reduction, and it continues to reduce cost on battery storage.
It is still nowhere close to as competitively priced as existing hydro. From a few years' point of view, you know, for us, where is the next growth story? We definitely see that we will be able to copy-paste and then take maybe a little bit more risk on the power side from where we are today compared to the relationship we have with Ande, where we take a little bit more CapEx risk for project five, six. It will be very, very clear, and everything else anyways will have been already de-risked. This is how we kind of continue to grow. A question from Anil. Congratulations on your funding. When this was announced on Friday, the share price dropped around 6%.
Could you shed some more light on this? I think I would love to be able to predict the markets. I can only, you know, refer you back to what our analysts are saying when they're saying, "Well, actually our share price should be about 187 on average." Yeah, I think markets are incredibly difficult to predict. What I could say is that we had seen an escalation of our share price in the days before on the expectation of the announcement.
Like, again, I you know don't really have a crystal ball, but what I know for sure is that, you know, as an existing shareholder, we are obviously extremely conscious about our share price, and we continue to believe, and we will put more effort and money into the company as we get to that FID and to that production scale. Question from Mark. On what terms is the debt going to be placed at? How much interest versus the remaining equity which needs to be raised? From all of these processes started all the way back in the summer last year. When it comes to pricing, you know, we're looking at a long-term price or long-term debt, so we're basically talking 10-year plus at attractive rates.
We can't really disclose them at the moment, but what we are seeing is because between the ECAs, between the DFIs, and with the fact that Paraguay is now investment grade, the pricing is, you know, definitely quite attractive on the debt side. And on the interest, how much interest? It varies in the remaining $150 million of equity. Again, that process started, right? We started back in the summer.
Now, the difference is obviously with the anchor of Hy24 with us, a number of investors which were in the room have either expressed renewed interest or continue in the process because they said, "Okay, we will come in, but we need a specialist anchor to come in with us because we may know the region really well, but we don't really understand the chemical side of the business." Which is again why Hy24 is so important because it will help catalyze a lot of these discussions that we have. It is basically, is it a multiple of the remaining equity? Yes, it is. We certainly hope that we'll be able to make some announcements over the coming months. I think I've answered all of them.
Yeah. Olivier, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors and of course, the company can review all the questions that have been submitted today. We will publish those responses out on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide, you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, Olivier, could I just ask you for a few closing comments?
I think the closing comment is like we are, I mean, we couldn't be more excited. I cannot, you know, I am a little bit French, so sometimes a little bit overly conservative. The reality is, yes, I think everything that we've worked so hard on is basically panning out, as we wanted it to pan out. Now this is all about delivering. Delivering with the right people, with the right partners, which will generate growth, which will generate interest, and obviously enable us to get to the next stage, to the next stage of growth, to the next stage of partnership. I think for us, it's all about continuing what we have been doing and mechanically going into delivering these contracts to FID.
We will update the market as these events happen. As I mentioned, you know, this presentation will be available on the website this afternoon. Please go and download it because I haven't gone into every single detail of presentation. Again, we try to give as much details and data as we can. Of course, you know, we remain open to any questions that you want to ask us. I guess the future is bright. Maybe we say the future is green if you look at the background of Atome. Yeah, Q2 will be an extremely exciting time as we get to FID on Villeta. Thank you very much and thank you Hy24 for joining the Villeta adventure.
Olivier, thank you once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete. This I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Atome PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.