I would now like to hand the conference over to Shaun Verner, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us on the call today. With me, is our CFO, Steve Wells. Start of the year has seen extensive corporate and operational activity, and today we'll provide you with an update on that and our markets, including recent important developments in the reset of our balance sheet to position the company for long-term growth and success. Slide three of the presentation we released alongside the report today steps through the key elements of the investment thesis for Syrah. We have a clear advantage in natural graphite and active anode material markets as the integrated first mover outside China. No other company today has both an operating graphite mine and integration with a fully operational commercial scale active anode material facility, and is positioned to supply into the U.S. domestic battery manufacturing market.
We strongly believe that this will deliver advantage as the market continues to bifurcate into China and ex-China demand pools, particularly considering that other new projects have long lead times and significant capital requirements in front of them. Secondly, Balama is the largest and highest grade natural graphite resource and operation outside China. Its scale and ore quality give us meaningful optionality as demand grows and as ex-China customers prioritize diversifications, both for natural graphite feedstock in industrial and battery markets and for integrated active anode material production. Importantly, the equity raising and strategic funding proposals we commenced execution of last month will effectively reset our balance sheet. On a pro forma basis, as at 31 March 2026, Syrah will have up to $178 million in liquidity and no cash interest or principal repayments for three years.
This provides a transformational improvement in financial flexibility and stability, setting the company up for the market development and production ramp-up pathway ahead. We've strengthened alignment with the U.S. government, both through the Development Finance Corporation and the Department of Energy, with both an immediate and future pathway to direct U.S. government equity holding in Syrah. Proposed loan to equity transfer is a significant endorsement of the importance of Syrah's assets in securing critical mineral supply security for U.S. energy and battery supply chain interests. Moving on to slide four now. Our critical underpinning values at Syrah are safety and sustainability. As we continue to develop as a leading ex-China critical minerals producer, we are guided by three core objectives: being positive for the communities in which we operate, being sustainable for the environment, and providing secure, high-quality supply for our customers.
In the first quarter, performance against our key safety and sustainability metrics was very strong. The health, safety, and security of employees and contractors will always remain Syrah's highest priority. As we strive for zero harm in our operations, we saw our total recordable injury frequency rate remain very low at 0.4 incidents per million hours worked. Our safety focus is underpinned by our work on critical risk hazard management and in-field leadership interactions, which are a daily priority for the leadership teams on-site. For the full year of 2025, we saw continuing improvement trends in our injury frequency rates across both operations and further refinement of our asset risk profile. These trends and initiatives continued strongly through the first quarter of 2026. Syrah's operations are clearly aligned to leading global sustainability and governance standards.
Last year, Balama became the first graphite operation globally and the first mining operation in Mozambique to achieve the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance or IRMA 50 level of performance for sustainability. Syrah has invested a decade towards strengthening our differentiated performance, including a strong safety record, investment in training and developing a highly skilled workforce, ongoing community interaction and development, human rights due diligence, and reducing our global warming potential of integrated production to a level significantly below Chinese supply alternatives. Along with our ISO certifications and external auditing required under our U.S. government funding arrangements, we continue to prioritize health and safety and environmental management systems, confirming our commitment to operating sustainably and driving continuous improvement.
This sustainability focus, along with our lower global warming potential relative to other suppliers, should provide Syrah competitive advantage on these parameters as the most sustainable source of integrated natural graphite anode material available at scale today. Moving to slide five and a more detailed look at our performance in the first quarter. Balama operated on a campaign basis during the quarter and delivered a total production of 24,000 tons. It's very pleasing to see that recoveries were above 86% in the quarter, and there's been continual improvement over recent quarters. It's worth making a specific mention of the operational performance in the most recent production campaign through March, where we produced 16,000 tons at 87% recovery whilst maintaining very high product quality. The team is confident that further improvement at higher throughput for greater cost efficiency is achievable.
Since recommencing production after the non-operating period through most of the first half of 2025, the Balama operational team has delivered increasingly strong performance. Given three quarters of Balama campaign periods now since the restart of operations and the lifting of force majeure in mid-2025, comparisons between quarterly periods demonstrate this continuous improvement, and operating comparisons year-on-year will obviously be more relevant from half two onwards. Natural graphite sales in the quarter totaled 20,000 tons. The ex-China market for EVs, for batteries, and for anode material were in a state of flux for most of the quarter, with lower year-on-year EV demand growth, increasing energy storage growth, and ahead of the ITC decision specifically for the anode material to market.
This quarter included another break bulk shipment to Indonesia after the outcome of the International Trade Commission hearing, demonstrating continued demand for ex-China feedstock into the anode market. Confirmed demand drives our operating campaigns and our product inventory requirements, and we're carefully monitoring the ex-China active anode material demand position as customers adjust to a post antidumping and countervailing duty case world. Our weighted average sales price for the quarter of $630 per ton CIF was down 24% on the same quarter in 2025, when we sold a small volume of residual coarse flake inventory, but it was up 9% on the last quarter of 2025, largely reflecting customer and product mix. Our C1 cost during the operating periods was $523 FOB per ton, and freight averaged $88 per ton.
Importantly, this provides a good basis for lower C1 costs as we target lifting capacity utilization and increased volumes when demand is supportive. Along with indications of better than historical pricing as ex-China differentials are embedded, positive future cash flow opportunities, it's clear subject to demand increase. Balama has always had the potential to generate good margins at more than 50% capacity utilization, and a price premium is being achieved for ex-China sales compared to domestic and FOB China prices. At Vidalia, during the quarter, the operations team continued to build significant operating experience through small batch production periods and accelerating qualification interactions with multiple customers. We continue to work through customers' highly detailed and extensive qualification requirements, and we are making faster and more positive progress since the end of the antidumping and countervailing duty case.
It's obviously slower for conversion to sales than we would have liked. We're also responding to continuing refinements that have been requested by customers as their own processes and requirements mature in newly developing battery operations and product mixes in the U.S. Our product quality and performance is excellent, as the key technical performance outlined on slide 12 in the appendix of today's slides illustrates. We are absolutely confident that our product performs at the level required for customer consumption at mass production scale. We continue to deal constructively with a highly complex mix of policy, commercial and technical factors.
We remain singularly focused on achieving sales as early as possible, and the accelerating progress in qualification activities since the conclusion of the ITC case demonstrates both that there is domestic demand in the U.S. for near-term sales, and the policy environment is expected to remain positive for the next steps in commercial progress. Ongoing impacts arising from China's imposition of export license control and the potential for U.S. tariff and investment policy to favor domestically produced products mean that ex-China demand growth outlook remains positive. This will be important not just for Vidalia, but also for continuing growth in Balama's sales of natural graphite anode feedstock. We emphasize here the extensive work of our operating and commercial teams with our investment and development experience demonstrating the considerable time and capital required for others to follow, creating a sustainable lead time advantage for Syrah.
I'll hand over to Steve now to talk about the current financial position.
Thanks, Shaun, and good morning, everybody. I'll turn your attention to slide six to cover the cash flow. We started the quarter and the financial year with $77 million in total cash across restricted and unrestricted cash balances. Our net cash outflow from operations during the quarter of -$27 million included receipts from sales of natural graphite shipments of $11 million. This was a higher cash outflow than the December 2025 quarter of -$18 million for several reasons, including receipt of a customer payment for a large volume break bulk shipment being delayed into April for a March shipment, and certain one-off annual expenses falling due in the quarter, including corporate and Vidalia taxes and insurance and staff incentive payments. The group incurred legal costs associated with the debt restructuring and equity raise that was announced in March.
We also built inventory from our Balama production campaign, leading to a working capital increase at Balama and ongoing expenses from Vidalia through this low production qualification period prior to the revenue phase, also impacted by the one-off costs referenced earlier. Cash flow improvement should come as a result of the recent acceleration in the qualification process at Vidalia, which is expected to expedite ramp up in sales in the second half of 2026. At the same time, a critical focus remains on increasing sales from Balama to facilitate improvement in cash flow in the quarters ahead and bring Balama to operational cash flow breakeven as soon as possible.
At the end of March, the company had a closing cash balance of $52 million, of which there was $9 million of unrestricted cash and $43 million of restricted cash in both facilities under the various loans. Of the restricted cash, $3 million is available to fund Balama operating and capital costs, and restricted cash of $13 million is available to fund Vidalia costs. Of note, the $72 million equity raising announced in late March is not captured in these figures, given settlement of the transaction occurred in April. The funds from the equity raising and the expected forthcoming disbursement from the DFC loan will be applied to operating in group accounts as per the use of proceeds in the equity raising and strategic pro-proposal presentation.
We are also carefully monitoring the impacts of the Middle East conflict on near-term diesel price and availability and freight costs, mostly relevant to Balama. With that, I'll hand it back to Shaun.
Thanks, Steve. Moving to slide seven, I'll make some additional comments about the recent funding initiatives that we announced last month. The equity raising and strategic funding proposal package is an important milestone for the company, providing stability and positioning Syrah for long-term growth. The package strengthens our balance sheet, provides significant liquidity, and delivers flexibility to grow as natural graphite and anode material markets and government policy continue to evolve. We're targeting financial close for the strategic funding proposals in the second half of this year, and we look forward to keeping everyone up to date as we progress through that process with our key stakeholders. Moving to slide eight, which outlines the U.S. government policy initiatives that are supportive of Syrah's position.
Firstly, we of course note the recent development in March of the U.S. International Trade Commission's negative determination in the U.S. active anode material, antidumping and countervailing duty case, which led to the reversal of preliminary specific tariffs on Chinese anode imports. Whilst we were disappointed with that outcome, the Department of Commerce investigation findings of significant dumping and subsidization by the Chinese anode material industry hold and are a powerful message that we expect will continue to influence U.S. policy development and the potential application of other tariffs. For example, through continuing review of Section 232 actions and Section 301 tariffs, as well as other policy related to tax credits, strategic stockpiling, and development support.
The U.S. government is highly incentivized to develop and support local anode material manufacturing capability for unfettered access to a critical industrial input and to protect the U.S. market from China trade practices. There are many potential policy levers that are supportive of Syrah, some in place now and some potentially in the future. These include the remaining 35% tariffs on Chinese anode material imports, Section 45X production tax credits available for Vidalia today, estimated at $7 million-$9 million per year prior to phase down in 2030. The huge importance of ex-China supply of anode material to enable battery manufacturers and auto OEMs to continue to qualify for 45X tax credits of their own, which currently deliver more than $1 billion each annually to the major players.
The U.S. government's Defense Logistics Agency tender for natural graphite, as well as the U.S. $12 billion Project Vault to stockpile critical minerals, including graphite products. Syrah also retains a U.S. $165 million Section 48C tax credit awarded to Vidalia for further expansion post phase two. These policy positions improve the economics of producing active anode material in the U.S., directly benefiting Vidalia and strengthening demand for Balama feedstock globally. Looking at the right-hand side of this slide, expected ex-China demand growth for lithium-ion batteries remains attractive, and U.S. existing demand and future growth will require a greater proportion of ex-China supply of active anode material to ensure supply chain security and to maintain cell and auto manufacturer eligibility for the tax credits mentioned earlier. Finally, on slide nine, we provide some additional details about the outlook for our operations and business overall.
We're well-positioned to increase production levels subject to market demand as the ex-China market grows. Over the medium term, ramp-up of Balama to targeted levels is dependent on both policy developments, which are expected to enhance support for ex-China producers, and overall market growth in both industrial and battery segments. These will obviously be the key factors in the timing of positive cash flow from Balama. At Vidalia, we're ready to ramp up immediately, and we expect the commencement of commercial active anode material sales in the second half of 2026. Our expectation is for positive operating cash flow from the operation from mid-2027. Finally, as outlined earlier, our pro forma liquidity after the equity raising and strategic funding proposals is approximately $178 million, providing significant financial flexibility to ramp up our operations towards targeted levels and to continue to develop the business.
As we move towards increased sales from both assets, we continue to discuss, particularly with U.S. customers, the required conditions for further capacity expansion at Vidalia. With that, we're happy to move to questions, and thank everyone for joining the call today.
The first question today comes from Austin Yun from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Shaun and the team. Just a couple of questions from me, please. The first one is just on the broader market, given the petroleum coke price is going up. If you could share some color on the synthetic side, do you see any increase in price from that end? The second question is around the operational metrics. Like, in the last quarter, you indicate that the graphite production could be just over 30,000 tons. I can see it came below that. Just try to understand the driver behind it. Thank you.
With regard to the broader market, artificial synthetic graphite has a couple of factors impacting price, seeing some price increase. The first is increased demand, specifically around data center and energy storage specific usage and growth outlook in that market segment. The second is some price pressure or some cost pressure from arising from the Middle East conflict and availability of input materials and price of input materials. That is largely only impacting the artificial graphite space at this stage. We haven't seen much flow through to the natural graphite market. Clearly, if that, if both of those factors continue, there will be, you know, further flow through to the broader active anode material market.
With regards to the operational side, you know, as we've always said, the production volumes largely reflect the immediate demand and inventory requirements. And that's the primary reason the actual production performance of Balama was outstanding from a recovery and quality perspective. It was just the timing of the campaigns related to demand. That demand was obviously impacted through the quarter around the uncertainty in advance of the ITC hearings or the ITC case outcome. But, you know, positively, we saw a large volume break bulk shipment to Indonesia post that hearing outcome. And, you know, we have a view that there is still positive demand ahead for the ex-China markets based on diversification of supply and also further policy measures.
Hopefully that answers both questions.
Thank you. I'll pass down.
Thank you once again. To ask a question, please press star one on your phone. The next question comes from Andrew Harrington from Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Morning, gents. Thanks for your time. I have a few questions. Simple one. If the revenue from that last delivery had come in to the March quarter, what would have been the total for the quarter, just to perhaps normalize that period?
Yeah, it's probably about $5 million that shifted from Q1 to Q2.
Okay. Thank you. What's the situation with Tesla? Is there any update there?
Yeah. As we said in the call and in the presentation, you know, we continue to work through the qualification processes. We've seen an acceleration in the interaction around qualification from a number of customers, particularly post the antidumping case outcome. I think, you know, the whole of the U.S. market and the ex-China market was looking for a degree of certainty. Whilst that case didn't go our way, the certainty that's provided now seems to have encouraged, you know, a number of customers to move ahead more quickly. You know, as we said in the call, we are positive about the potential of sales of active anode material at commercial levels i n the second half of this year.
Is there still a date in the calendar we should look for in terms of that, the use to provide sort of the extensions, et cetera? What is the status there?
There is an outstanding date around the cure plan for the termination letter that still sits out there with Tesla and which is the first of June.
Okay. Thank you. If I may, one more. What's the sort of the view in terms of ramping up? I mean, you're producing essentially to demand.
Yeah.
On campaigns that you'd ideally wanna produce sort of at a rate, you know, much higher than you are now, obviously. Like, could you produce continuously at a smaller rate, of 100 a year? What would, what, you know, what's your view as to when you get there and then whether that would even work?
Yeah. I mean, we're operating at an annualized rate of, you know, sort of 100 to 120 across the past few quarters. The key determinant of the ramp up from here on is the growth in both the industrial and battery segments. The key driver this year of demand in the battery segment will be BTR's Indonesia facility and the demand there. We have a strong view that U.S. and other ex-China customers are still absolutely motivated to see ex-China purchase and ex-China sourcing. You know, there are still real challenges out there with export license controls of material out of China, eligibility for tax credits, et cetera, which incentivize U.S. buyers in particular of anode material to purchase ex-China.
We think that BTR Indonesia will still have a solid demand profile and potentially growing demand profile through the course of this year. That's the major driver this year. We're also doing a lot of work around increasing our position in the industrial markets both for fines and coarse flake graphite. You know, we're not in a position to sort of give guidance around what that ramp-up profile looks like. We're really just starting to see now, you know, post the antidumping outcome, some of the purchasing intent ex-China from the consumers of the material in the U.S. It'll probably take another quarter or two to flow through.
As I said, both from Vidalia, from the perspective of acceleration around qualification and, you know, from the ex-China sale of material from Balama post the case outcome, we have a positive view of where demand will go.
Thank you. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Thank you once again. To ask a question, please press star one on your phone. We'll pause for a moment to allow any last questions to join the queue. The next question is a follow-up from Andrew Harrington from Petra Capital. Please go ahead.
Sorry, Shaun, I wanted to pass it on. I didn't wanna hog along. In terms of BTR Indonesia, how does the U.S. view them in terms of ex-China or not ex-China? How does it, you know, how does it fit?
I think it's still evolving to some extent. From the perspective of the antidumping and countervailing duties case and investigation, that was specifically related to exports of material from China. We saw that a very significant proportion of natural graphite exports or imports into the U.S. shifted from China to Indonesia through the period of that investigation, which coincided with Indonesia's ramp up. That facility was not captured under the scope of that antidumping and countervailing duties investigation. In other areas, BTR is seen as a designated prohibited foreign entity with regard to eligibility for some tax credits.
From that perspective, the Indonesian facility under its current ownership structure, is deemed, you know, a Chinese-owned facility related to those tax credits. The answer is complex dependent on which policy element we're talking about. It's also evolving because there is still guidance to be issued by the U.S. authorities around ex-China facilities.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
No worries. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.