Good day, and welcome to the SQM Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal the conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelly O'Brien, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for joining SQM Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. This conference call will be recorded and is being webcast live. Our earnings press release and a presentation with a summary of the results have been uploaded to our website, where you can also find a link to the webcast. Speaking on the call today will be Ricardo Ramos, Chief Executive Officer, and Gerardo Illanes, Chief Financial Officer. Carlos Díaz, Executive Vice President of the Lithium Business, and Pablo Altimiras, Executive Vice President of the Iodine and Nitrates Business, will also be available to answer any questions.
Before we begin, let me remind you that statements in this conference concerning the company's business outlook, future economic performances, anticipated profitability, revenues, expenses, or other financial items, anticipated cost synergies and product or service line growth, together with other statements that are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements as the term is defined under federal securities laws. Any forward-looking statements or estimates reflecting the best judgment of SQM based on currently available information and involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated in such statements, including our ability to successfully implement the sustainable development plan.
Risks, uncertainties, and factors that could affect the accuracy of such forward-looking statements are identified in our public filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and in our earnings press release issued tonight, and these forward-looking statements should be considered in light of those factors. We assume no obligation to update such statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments, or otherwise, except as required by law. I now leave you with our CEO, Ricardo Ramos.
Thank you, Kelly. Good morning, and thank you for joining the call today. Our earnings during the fourth quarter of 2021 were significantly higher than earnings recorded during the same period last year. These results were driven by considerably higher sales volumes and prices across almost all our business lines. For the same reasons, our net income in 2021 was over three times higher than the net income reported the previous year. The fertilizer markets saw prices increase considerably in 2021, and we believe that average prices during 2022 will be higher than the average prices recorded during 2021. Our average prices in the potassium chloride business line during the fourth quarter reached almost $685 per metric ton, prices that haven't been seen in over a decade.
This pricing environment has also had an impact on the global prices of potassium nitrate, and our average price in the SPN business line was approximately 40% higher during the fourth quarter 2021 when compared to the same period of 2020. Positive news was also seen in the iodine market with 2021 surpassing pre-pandemic levels. This strong recovery led to a strong pricing environment during the year, with prices increasing over 11% in the fourth quarter 2021 when compared to the third quarter as a result of tight supply-demand equilibrium. We're expecting the upward pricing trend to continue during 2022. We are working on expanding our capacity and to bring on an additional 1,000 metric tons of capacity next year.
In parallel, we are working on the Pampa Orcoma project in the Tarapacá region, which will allow us to increase the effective iodine capacity by approximately 2,500 metric tons using seawater for the leaching operations, and it is expected to begin operations during 2024. In the lithium market, our sales volumes met new records during 2021 when they surpassed 100,000 metric tons. We sold over 31,000 metric tons during the fourth quarter with an average price of approximately $14,600 per ton during the period. Approximately 20% of the sales volumes we expect to sell in 2022 are contracted at a fixed price or at a variable price with specific floors and ceilings. While approximately 50% of the sales volume we have contracted have variable prices linked to a specific price indices.
The remaining 30% of our volumes for 2022 are still open. It's important to remember that we will see a lag between market prices and our realized average prices because of the structure of our variable price contracts. We believe that our prices in the first and second quarter of 2022 will be significantly higher than the prices reported during the fourth quarter 2021. Additionally, we believe that the sales volumes will grow to about 140,000 metric tons during 2022. We're extremely proud of the expansion in recent years. Our expansion to 180,000 metric tons of carbonate and 30,000 metric tons of hydroxide should be completed during the first half of 2022, ahead of schedule.
We have begun working on a new project at the Carmen Lithium facility in Chile that was announced. This project, we will further expand our lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide capacity to 210,000 metric tons and 40,000 metric tons respectively next year, with an expected CapEx of approximately $250 million. I remind you that this CapEx was not included in the $2 billion CapEx that was previously disclosed. We remain committed to our previously announced goal to reduce brine extraction, water usage, and our carbon footprint in the Salar de Atacama. These growth plans and environmental goals to be met with relatively low CapEx have only become possible after years of research and development, new improvements, expertise, and of course, a strong effort by our production and engineering teams.
Operator, we'll now go to questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from César Pérez-Novoa with BTG Pactual. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and congratulations for the stellar quarter and year. If I may, a couple of questions from my end. In the press release, you state that around 20% of your volume is tied to fixed parameters, 50% referenced to a benchmark and the remaining 30% open for pricing. Could you please provide added disclosure on this? To be clear, the 50% is tied to what, a pricing benchmark? Certainly what time pass-through would that entail? For example, 30 days indexation, 60 days, whatever, to the spot. The final 30%, would that go priced to the current spot?
Could you provide perhaps some academic or theoretical example that we can understand? The other question that I have is that you will roll out a $250 million expansion in the Salar. My question is, when would that facility go merchant? Also, SQM filed in late December a $1 billion program for total Chilean lithium production of 270,000 tons per year. Is yesterday's announcement part of this program, or would this be a separate expansion? If so, are there any regulatory hurdles that you may have to clear to conduct the upgrade? Those would be my questions. Thank you very much.
Good morning, César. Thank you for your questions. You make a lot of them. I will try to answer all your questions. First of all, according to our contract, our prices, we follow. We're closely contract linked to the well-recognized price indices, which we think represent well the actual market prices. Obviously there is a natural lag due to different reasons, administrative or operational reasons. We try to follow the market and we are very close with that with the product that we're selling in the end, variability in the market. Regarding the, when you asked for the expansion in Salar, I think it's following. We're expanding our lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide capacity.
We expect that at the middle of this year, we expand our lithium carbonate capacity to 180. We expect to complete that in the middle of this year. At the same time, we are already working to expand our capacity to 210,000, and we expect that it will be completed in early next year.
Okay. Thank you. Is this incremental 40,000 metric tons, 30,000 for carbonate, 10,000 for hydroxide, part of the filed lithium production that you made in December for a total of 270? Are you gonna work that in stages or are you gonna do this as a separate expansion?
Okay. All our expansion are part of the environmental permit that we're asking.
Okay. All right. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
Our next call comes from Joel Jackson with BMO. Please go ahead. As the caller disconnected, the next question comes from Corinne Blanchard with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Congratulations on a good quarter. Just if we can come back on the lithium pricing. Can you provide any color or any maybe like a year-over-year increase or range that we could expect for 2022?
Hello, Corinne. Since 50% is under variable price control and 30% is still open, we cannot know or forecast the final price for this year. However, we can say that during the first half, price will be significantly higher compared with the fourth quarter of last year.
Okay. Okay, that's fair. One follow-up question on the pricing actually. With the 30%, still remaining or like being up for negotiation, like, what do you intend to do? Do you intend to do more export prices or would you be doing index on benchmark as well?
We're still reviewing that, and we're always trying to maximize our margin on that, and we're gonna say later on if this is gonna be a fixed or a formula according to the market indices.
Great. Thank you. Maybe if I can, just a last question on cost. Last quarter, you had mentioned seeing some inflation coming through for most of the costs, like, you know, similar to most industries. Can you comment on maybe how it did impact, like, the CapEx? Or what do you expect to see throughout 2022? Thank you.
Hi, Corinne. This is Gerardo Illanes. Of course, there are some inflation happening all over the world, because of the increased cost of raw materials and labor. Of course, we are also affected sometimes positively by the exchange rate and how it moves, but we don't see that there will be any significant change for our cost structure.
All right. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ben Isaacson with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Buddy, congrats again on the great quarter. I'm gonna ask you a pricing question again, try and approach it from a different way. 20% fixed or variable with a ceiling, 50% variable and 30% not contracted yet. If prices didn't change from where they are today for the whole year, and just excluding that 30%, so if we know what pricing is right now, what would your average selling price be?
Ben, it's a very good question that probably I don't want to answer. Gerardo speaking. Yes, the reason why I prefer not to answer that question is that of course I don't want to disclose some agreements with fixed price that we have with some clients that are confidential. If I said that, you will know the prices. But in today's price environment, there's nothing very fixed about the price of lithium. The price probably is gonna be different than today's price. You see the trend in the last 30 days. But even if we continue with the price as it is today, all our contracts, it means that close to 80% would be at today's price.
Because even though we're gonna use these indicators and indices, these indices will reflect the price, and the sales will reflect the price. Of course, today price is very high. It means that our realized price for the year 2022 would be significantly higher than the year before.
I just have three very quick questions left. Number one is on what's happening with Russia and Ukraine and maybe just in Europe overall. I believe you have no assets there, and so you don't have any risk to different feedstocks, of course, but you do make sales in Europe. Can you talk about where those sales are in Europe and what are you actually selling and do you sell to Ukraine? Maybe just talk about your exposure to Europe.
Ben, first, let me say something. We deeply regret the current situation in Ukraine. That's for the first point. The company, we have our support for the people who are suffering. We hope that the current tragic situation can begin to be solved in the short term. Moving to your question, as you mentioned, Ukraine and Russia are not relevant markets in our business. We sell very small amount of fertilizers in Ukraine, very small amount of fertilizers in Russia. It means it will not be an issue for us in terms of Ukraine and Russia or Belarus. Of course, Europe is a very important market for us. It's key market. So far, I'm talking about today, our sales in Europe are going up, are very strong. The price is very strong.
The fertilizer market and the agricultural market in Europe is moving very strong in the right direction. I know I don't know the future. It means if you have a recession in Europe or you have a war that is expanded, it's difficult to have an outlook about. What is going on today, if you maintain this situation only focused on Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, without affecting the rest of Europe, of course, for our business it will have almost no impact.
Perfect. Just two more quick ones. Number one, I think you said iodine prices were about $39, if I'm not mistaken. Can you talk about how tight supply is? Can we see new supply coming on at $39 or not? Maybe I'll just leave that question there in terms of what $39 actually means in terms of the potential and the timing of new supply.
Ben, good morning. Pablo Altimiras speaking. Well, regarding the iodine, as you saw last year, we saw a great recovery in demand. The situation that explains the high price level is that we have not seen more supply. Actually, according to the information that we have today, we are not seeing, you know, a lot of activity in supply. Despite the price remaining for a while at that level, the project cannot enter so quickly to the market. At the end, we depend, you know, on the capability of the different suppliers to put more product. We don't see that that will happen in the short term. The current situation is something that we expect. That's why we expect that the prices, you know, will continue growing during the year.
Thank you. Just my last question, and I'm not trying to sneak out the lithium price again from you, but in a spot, if we say a spot where in potash, iodine, lithium, whatever it is, you're gonna generate, I mean, immense amount of free cash flow this year. Can you talk about how you would allocate that free cash flow? I mean, you've got a sizable CapEx program this year, but then after that, how does free cash flow get allocated? Thank you.
That's the last problem, huh? Definitely. It's very good to have cash flow in order to finance our CapEx. We are working very hard because our CapEx, I think, is gonna be very good for the future of the company. We are doing great in the CapEx in the past three or four years, and we will continue to do great. I hope we will do our best about that. Of course, the company, we have shareholders and we work for our shareholders. We pay dividends. A portion of the cash flow will be used for the dividends that usually we pay important amount of dividends. Finally, we will reduce our debt. That's very good.
We will finance some working capital because we are significantly increasing our sales this year because prices are better, volumes are better. Considering both, the accounts receivable will be higher, and we will finance with some of the cash flow, these additional accounts receivable.
Great. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from PJ Juvekar with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Patrick Cunningham on for PJ. Good afternoon, everyone. My first question is kind of on lithium expansion, you know, more broadly. I mean, you're starting to see aggressive forecasts for, you know, demand, you know, over 1 million tons by 2025. Could you just give us your outlook on, you know, if you think, you know, supply from competitors and yourself can keep up? You know, is there a serious risk where, you know, prices go high enough, you could start to see demand delay and demand destruction? Then sort of on the flip side of that, would you see this as an opportunity to, you know, grow faster than the underlying market and gain market share? Thank you.
Wow. There's a lot of speculation in your question. It means we don't know really what's gonna happen next year or next two years. Of course, we're doing our best to increase our capacity, not only in Chile. Remember that two or three years ago, we were close to 60,000. We are now moving in the next few months to the 180,000. We will move during next year to the 210,000. That means we're doing a great job increasing capacity. That's the first answer for this increase in demand. Second, we are working very hard with our partners in Australia. We have a very interesting project in Australia. We expect to be producing 50,000 metric tons in the first stage. Probably we'll go to the next stage.
We expect to go to the next stage, close to 100,000 metric tons. Australia is a very important potential project for us. It means we are doing a lot to increase our total capacity. That is the best way to get benefits of this positive trend of the demand. Far, even considering. Of course, if the price of lithium is as it is today, the cost of production of electric cars, not only because lithium, because all the raw materials are more expensive, not a lot, but more expensive. But considering the strong demand, we don't foresee that this trend, positive trend of the demand, will be affected in the near term. It means that our main focus now is to produce the best lithium. To provide the best lithium quality and quantity and logistics to our customers.
The example is clear. From 60,000 or less than 50, 60,000 three years ago, moving to 210 plus 50 means we're gonna be to 60,000 metric tons in 2024. Yeah, of course, the 50,000 is a joint venture in Australia, but, s trategy moving forward means we're doing our best in order to provide more lithium to the market and getting the benefits of that.
That's great. Thanks. On that, on those joint venture volumes, you know, you mentioned there's an opportunity to go to 100,000 tons potentially. You know, what would be the timeline to that? How long would that take to get to production?
Hi. To deal with that is Mark Fones. He was living in Australia for three or four years, I don't know, working in the project. From SQM point of view, he's here in our meeting room. I will ask Mark to give us just a summary what you think about the project, what is gonna be the next step. What's your overview what we're gonna do in Australia in the near future. Mark, please.
Thanks, Ricardo. First I'd like to mention that this project is not only important for SQM itself, it's also very important for our partners, great partners, Wesfarmers. It's also relevant for the Western Australian future battery industry. This is a project affecting many stakeholders in Australia, very important. It's very fine to see where the project is today. The project today is advancing very well. Today, we have already received approval for the aerodrome, pipeline, and non-processing infrastructure in the Mount Holland mine. The project has already started construction of both the concentrator and the refinery plant. Refinery in Kwinana, the concentrator near the mine. We continue with our first estimation of having product from the second half of 2024. That's first product of lithium hydroxide.
We continue with the same expectation of a capital expenditure of $1.4 billion split between the two partners. However, we are not, of course, we cannot avoid the inflationary pressure that every capital expenditure project is subject to today in the world. Even with that, we continue with the same expectations. We want our current estimation, and we're already working on the expansions, as you mentioned. Expansions we will take as any plans to build today in the world, between two and three years upon when the decision is made. We have not made the decisions yet, and we're preparing the documentation for presenting to the boards to present that expansion when time comes.
Great. Thank you. Maybe one last question, another one on pricing, but a little less specific, this one's for SPN. So, you know, how should we think about pricing in Specialty Plant Nutrition? Obviously, we saw, you know, pretty tremendous prices in this quarter. You know, if fertilizer prices, you know, swing either direction maybe on, you know, extended supply risk or perhaps, you know, tensions ease in Russia and Ukraine and prices start to come off a bit, you know, help me think about, you know, what's the lag time for that to kinda show up in your overall Specialty Plant Nutrition prices, you know? As underlying spot fertilizer markets move, you know, how will that affect your SPN price?
Well, you know that right now the situation is really good. We already disclosed the price increase regarding to 2020. We believe that the trend will continue. The situation today is good. The prices of potash, you know, that is good. That also influence the price of the SPN products. Actually also it is important the situation that is happening in Ukraine and Russia because that situation could potentially, we don't know what will happen, but we are following up because could also affect the supply of potash. This hasn't happened and put some pressure, well, we will see, you know, much pressure and prices. Our expectation is that the price trend will continue in a positive way.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lucas Ferreira with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is kind of a follow-up of your capital increase in the second quarter of last year. I think one of the reasons for the capital increase was to be ready for potential M&A, and we've been seeing the market quite active in M&A recently. My question to you is if you're seeing any interesting opportunity or if just because of prices, probably asset prices also went up, should we expect you guys to still investing more in the organic growth as opposed to M&A? If there's any interesting project to develop anywhere in the world. Apart from Mount Holland and Chile, what else could be in your plate for the future? That's my first question.
The second question is to understand a little bit those improving yields in your brines that is allowing you to increase production in Chile. Just wondering if there is more potential with technologies improving enough for you to even go beyond 210 capacity in the future, respecting your limits, right? Extraction limits you have with Corfo. Thank you.
Ricardo Ramos speaking. Yeah, we're always exploring new alternatives or businesses that generate value for the company and our shareholders. We're quite conservative about M&A or buying companies. We are gonna be very active doing M&A if we can find an alternative that is good and create value. If not, keep in mind that our priority today is not to lose focus in our current projects. We have a very important projects, are complex like our past projects were very complex, and we will keep focused on it. We think that our projects today are essential for the future of SQM. That's why we keep our efforts mainly in order to again keep ahead of the schedule delivering product to the market.
About the second question, Carlos can explain what we are doing because we are doing a lot of things and invest and R&D in order to do it again.
Good morning, Lucas. Yes, what I wanna say, regardless, we are doing a lot of research and R&D in how to improve our yield in brine. What we have in Salar de Atacama and our lithium carbonate and hydroxide plant in Antofagasta. We have been working on that in the last three or four years, and we continue working, improving our yields. We have been successful now, but we still have a lot of projects to develop because we have our huge challenge that is for one thing to reduce our brine extraction and for the opposite side to increase our production of lithium. That is our huge challenge, but we have been successful until now, and we expect to continue increasing our yield.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from BMO. Please go ahead.
Hi. Do you hear me?
Loud and clear.
Oh, good. Hi. It's Joel Jackson, BMO. Sorry, I had a problem earlier. I have a few questions. I'm gonna ask them one by one. Can you talk about what if you wanted to and you could produce at maximum capacity, what LCE, what lithium carbonate production can you achieve in 2022 and 2023, if you wanna go full out? Thank you.
As we explained in the press release, we expect to be at 180,000 metric tons during the next few months. It means that we will start operating the new increased capacity. So far, we're very successful in the startup of new facilities. I want to be just a little bit conservative that we are not gonna be producing from day one 180,000 metric tons. Probably with the surprises we had in the last three years, probably we will be producing 180,000 metric tons from day one. I hope Carlos will deliver again this kind of success story. Anyway, as we mentioned previously, we expect to sell this year close to 140,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate.
That's a very important increase. Keep in mind that last year we sold 100,000 and moving from 100,000- 140,000 high quality lithium products this year. If things are much better than expected in production, we can increase just a little bit more than 140,000. We will see. So far our target is to have production. To have more production, of course, we need some inventories in order to increase 40% our sales. We think everything is going in the right direction to deliver high quality products to the customer, final customer during this year. I mean, a 40% increase, that means that we will be able to increase our working capital, increase our volumes, our inventories and so on. This is this year.
Next year, I'm completely sure that the 180,000 metric tons will be more than ready. It means that we will be in a position to sell at least 180,000 metric tons, plus some additional production coming from this additional increased capacity that I already mentioned to you. The final decision about the sales in 2023, something probably that we will review during the third and fourth quarter this year because it will depend on market conditions, depend on the demands, the supply, everything. We are gonna be ready to supply the market if the market requests probably close to 190,000, if it is possible, 200,000 metric tons next year. Yes, it would be possible. We will try to do our best.
At the end, it will depend on the market conditions that we will review during the end of this year. It's a very, fluid market, the lithium market, as you can see in the last 12 months. We need to review our strategy every quarter. One thing that is for us extremely clear is that we will increase capacity and we will improve quality. Our quality is the best, we will continue to be even better. Our quantity where we have been the best one in terms of increasing capacity, we will continue to be the best one. Our business strategy during next year will be according to the market conditions. We will see.
Okay. My second question would be. It's kind of three small questions. My second question would be, what is the capital intensity? How much CapEx do you need to spend to get the next 30,000 tons LCE, to go to 210? Your CapEx seemed to rise this year versus expectations by $400 million. What is the incremental $400 million exactly from $500, $900? You had a $2 billion CapEx plan from 2021- 2024. What would that total CapEx now be, 2021- 2024?
Hi, Joel, this is Gerardo. Last year we announced our CapEx and expansion programs for 2021-2024 that include a total of $2 billion in CapEx. The breakdown was approximately $1.1 billion for lithium expansion, $440 million for nitrates and iodine, and the rest was related to maintenance CapEx. This $250 million that we said is going to be the total CapEx for expansion to reach 210,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate and 40,000 metric tons of lithium hydroxide is on top of the $2 billion that were announced last year. For this year, we are projecting that the total CapEx is going to be around $900 million.
It falls all within this set of projects. Again, expanding capacity in lithium from 120 -1 80, from 180- 210 lithium carbonate. Also expanding in lithium hydroxide, developing the project in Australia that Mark mentioned a few minutes ago. Expanding our nitrate capacity, 1,000 metric tons by the end of this year and 2,500 metric tons by the end of next year. Also expanding our nitrates capacity. All of that is included in the, now we can call it $2.25 billion CapEx from 2021- 2024.
Okay. Just following up on that. Ignoring hydroxide expansion, if I understand what you're saying, the additional 30,000 tons at Atacama LCE is gonna be coming on for less than $8,000 a ton, correct?
That math is right. Yeah, that's correct.
I'm glad I can do math. Okay. My last question is this: if we look at you have big growth plans Atacama, you're executing on them, you've added a bit more. We know what's going on in Australia with Wesfarmers and that JV. If I think about the back half of the decade, 2026, 2027, 2029, you'll be adding a little more capacity in Australia. After that, your volume growth, your potential capacity growth really goes down to very little. Are you prepared to use your balance sheet now to go acquire more resource assets, go acquire other lithium producers or upstart producers? Like, do you have an urgency to keep your capacity growth growing by using your balance sheet to buy new assets? Thanks.
You're right. It means that we are always exploring new alternatives. We are very committed in the lithium business. We think that we are very good in the lithium business. Yes, we have a team looking for alternatives. We'll continue looking for alternatives. Of course, if we are gonna grow lithium, it will be profitable projects that are gonna be good for the company, good for shareholders. It's not just to grow. Growth with creating value for the company, and we're working very hard on it. We have a complete team looking for potential new alternatives. We are conservative in terms that we don't want to buy everything that is on sale, but we are gonna be ready to buy something to get involved in a business if we think it's good for the company and shareholders.
If I could be greedy and ask one more question. When I think of your lithium cost per ton, you know, your lithium price is probably gonna be up, let's just pick a number, $10,000 a ton this year and or more. It's gonna be over the highest marginal bracket. You're gonna pay the 40% royalty rate to Corfo on, you know, that additional price. How are costs for lithium progressing in 2022 if I ignore royalties? The non-royalty part, should we see flattish cost per ton? You're balancing inflation plus, you know, 40% more volume, so is it an offset?
Hey, Joel, this is Gerardo again. Well, first, there is a very important factor that I think is important to consider, as you mentioned, which is these payments that we make to Corfo. These high prices, of course, Corfo is with a very high payments that we are making to them and we will continue to make to them. So that is reflected on our cost line on our P&L. That's the first thing. Second, as we are seeing all over the world, there are inflationary pressures in the different industries. Of course, we buy some raw materials to produce the lithium that we produce. There are additional costs associated with labor and other issues that is putting some pressure on our costs.
On the other hand, the larger capacity of our plants and improvements in our operations are letting us reduce, or let me say offset some of these inflationary pressures. Excluding the royalties or not royalties, the lease payments that relate to Corfo, we expect that the cost should be quite stable in the upcoming quarters.
Okay. Thank you for letting me ask so many questions.
Excellent. Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Kelly O'Brien for any closing remarks.
Thank you for joining the call today. We look forward to you joining next time.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.