Please stand by. Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Largo's fourth quarter and full year 2022 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please limit it to two questions. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Alex Guthrie, Senior Manager of External Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our fourth quarter and annual 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. On the call today is Daniel Tellechea, Largo's Interim CEO and Director, Ernest Cleave, Largo's Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Vollant, Largo's VP of Commercial. To accompany the call today, we've uploaded a supplemental webcast presentation, which is available on our website at largoinc.com. Our annual 2022 financial statements related MD&A and most recent AIF are also available on the website as well as on SEDAR and EDGAR. Before continuing the call, I would like to remind you all that some of the information you will hear during today's discussion will consist of forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding future business outlook. Please refer to slide two for a full description of the company's cautionary notes.
The agenda for our call today is as follows: Daniel will provide an update on the company's Q4 and year-end progress with an outlook for the year ahead, followed by Ernest, who will provide an overview of our fourth quarter and annual financial results, and Paul will close the call with an update on the company's sales and trading progress, the vanadium market, and an update on Largo Physical Vanadium. Following these updates, we will then open the call for questions. We ask that participants restrict their questions to two and then re-queue if there are additional questions to allow others the opportunity to participate. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Daniel.
Thank you, Alex, good morning and good afternoon for those here in Toronto and elsewhere across the globe. As you know, we're going to be discussing our fourth quarter and year 2022 results today. Let me start with slide number five. 2022 was a challenging 12 months for us, it led to an underperformance on both production and cost metrics. In Q4, we produced just over 2,000 metric tons of V2O5 at a cash cost excluding royalties of $5.15 per pound. As we noted previously in our pre-reporter operational update in January, Q4 production was heavily affected by abnormally high rainfall in December, which flooded the pit and made it difficult to access for ore. We typically have sufficient stockpiles to have assist with unexpected impacts to the various checkpoints along our operational route.
Our mining contractor transition in September resulted in a lack of stockpiles to help mitigate the impact of heavy rains. These impacts, when combined with preventive and corrective maintenance on the plant facility in Q1 2022 and the plant kiln and cooler refractory enforcement in Q3 2022, made for a less than favorable annual production of just over 10,400 tons of V2O5 at an annual cash operating cost excluding royalties of $5.57 per pound. Production came in 6% below our revised production guidance and cash costs were 2% above our revised cash cost guidance for 2022. Unfortunately, downspills effect from the rainfall in December continued to impact production in January and February.
Despite these impacts, we expect to remain in line with the quarterly production guidance for Q1 2023, likely landing closer to the midpoint of 2,050 tons or just under. Since I start assuming the role of Interim CEO by mid last month, I have spent a fair bit of time with our operations team in Maracás, and I am very optimistic about the expected improvements in production levels for the remaining of the year. We expect a 10% increase in production in 2023 over 2022, which includes an aggressive high-purity vanadium production plan to meet the increased demand and expect to sell over 25% of our production into this sector in 2023. To support this production growth, management changes have been implemented in Maracás, including the promotion of Mr.
Alvaro Resende from Operation Director to COO of our Brazilian operations and projects. Alvaro has spent the last seven years at our operations in Maracás, and he has the full support of our operations team to get the job done. Cost management is a top priority for Largo, and we expect cash costs, including royalties, to decrease as the year progresses. With half of the year in 2023, cost being closer to the lower end of our reported guidance range of $4.85-$5.25 per pound of V2O5 sold. Due to elevated operating costs and working capital requirements as well as growth capital related to our ilmenite plant, we secured additional working capital facilities in December and January to effectively manage our cash needs during the first half of the year.
We are in the process of implementing cost control procedures, including an analysis of productivity to identify areas of business where we can reduce costs and improve performance. To date, we're already seeing distribution costs ease and expect to recognize some additional cost savings on some of our key consumables this year. I will let Ernest discuss these matters in detail later on the call. This is a good moment also to discuss some of our expected catalysts in our key priorities for the remainder of the year. In addition to growing production level this year and increasing our vanadium sales in the high purity sector, Largo ilmenite plant remains on track for completion and is expected to generate a new revenue source for the company.
We anticipate providing guidance on ilmenite production for the year closer to the completion of the plant, starting in the second half of the year. We also remain on track with the completion of our inaugural VRFB deployment for Enel Green Power in Spain and ship the remaining 612 electrolyte storage container in early 2023. Provisional acceptance, which include the completion of our operational testing by Enel, is expected to be completed by the end of May 2023. As Largo Clean Energy and Ansaldo GreenTech continues to focus on the formation of a joint venture for the manufacturing and commercial deployment of VRFBs in the European, Africa, and Middle East power generation market.
As noted in an operational update in January, the company previously announced MoU has been extended to March 31st, 2023, to allow for the negotiation and enter into a joint venture and other ancillary agreements. I think it's safe to say that the manufacture and installation of our first battery project was a significant learning curve for the team at LCE. As you are aware, we have encountered some delays with this deployment, but we're confident that with this battery, first battery project will be a crucial step forward for our clean energy business. We anticipate that the completion of this project will present additional deployment opportunities in the future. With one of our most advanced VRFB technologies and a technical team that is among the most knowledgeable in the industry, we are confident that we have one of the best long-duration solutions in the world.
I think it is important to note that we continue to receive and address various inquiries of our product from significant players in the sector, both in the U.S. and in Europe. As our negotiation with Ansaldo progress and we finalize the installation of our battery in Spain, I hope to share more with you regarding developments of LCE very soon. Lastly, I want to touch on Largo continuous focus on ESG principles at the company. We continue to improve our overall ESG performance and public disclosure in 2022, this is reflected in additional improved ratings and scores. This is most evident in our Standard & Poor's Global CSA rating having improved approximately by 38%, placing the company in the top quartile of its mining peer group for 2022.
We look forward to issuing our fifth consecutive sustainability report at the start of the second half of this year. I would like to reiterate our focus to returning to steady state operations and cost management as we experienced in previous banner years. This year, I believe Largo is an inflection point as our production begin strengthening and more of our units are placed in the premium markets. Our Clean Energy Division continue its focus on delivering our first VRFB in Spain, which we believe will unlock additional potential for additional deployments in the future. This came as at an opportune time as vanadium demand remains quite strong. The long-term market fundamentals for the commodity looks extremely attractive, driven by the resurgence in demand from the aerospace sector and from new deployments and capacity addition for new deployment of VRFBs.
As we embark on the next chapter at Largo, I am confident we have the right team in place, and I look forward to assisting the company in advancing our strategy while the board continues its search for a permanent CEO. Underpinned by significant growth in vanadium demand, as we continue the execution on our two-pillar strategy as a tier-one vanadium supplier with an emerging clean energy business, I sincerely believe that we will close the valuation gap for Largo and offer considerable upside opportunity for new and existing shareholders of the company. With that, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Ernest Cleave, to review our financial performance for the quarter and the year. Ernest?
Thank you, Daniel. Good afternoon to those on the call today. Presented on Slide 10 is a brief overview of the company's financial performance in the fourth quarter and year-end 2022. I'll begin with a review of our consolidated financial results before touching on our 2023 guidance and the balance sheet. The year was marked by favorable increases in vanadium prices, which led to top-line growth of 16% in 2022 over 2021, particularly driven by revenues recognized in Q2 of last year. In 2022, revenues per pound sold were $9.38, and that represents a 19% increase over 2021. In Q4 of 2022, we generated $47.5 million in revenues from the sale of 2,772 tons of V2O5 equivalent, or $7.77 per pound sold.
Revenues decreased around 6% when compared with Q4 2021, while revenues per pound sold were largely in line with the same comparative period last year. I think last year can really be defined by costs, both from an inflationary perspective, but also from increases in operational impacts and writedowns throughout the year. For 2022, operating costs increased 28% to approximately $170 million. This was largely driven by a 26% increase in direct mine and production costs and a 73% increase in distribution costs. The increase in direct mine and production costs were largely driven by increases in our critical consumables, including HFO, ammonium sulfate, and sodium carbonate, which was further compounded by the increased consumption of these critical consumables due to operational impacts throughout the year.
The increase in product acquisition costs reflects the company realizing costs from the sale of purchased vanadium material during the year, which was required to effectively manage customer contract commitments. As Daniel mentioned earlier, as we move through the year our unit cost should begin to decrease, ending closer to the lower range of our guidance by year-end. We're already seeing some transportation costs easing this year and are expecting additional savings on sodium carbonate as the year progresses. 2022, I think what's important to note is that the company's core mining business was profitable, with net income of $23.5 million. The company incurred various non-recurring expenditures of around $15 million, including approximately $5.1 million in legal provisions and approximately $6.4 million, which related to an inventory writedown at LCE.
The increase in legal provisions relates to a supply agreement for the Maracás Menchen Mine, which was filed with the courts way back in October 2014. The ruling requires the company to pay amounts due plus interest and legal fees. Additionally, the company wrote down battery component inventory to the expected net realizable value, which relates to our first VRFB project at our Clean Energy Division. As Daniel mentioned, this is the case for most first-time endeavors and is not uncommon in this particular sector, as these type of demonstration projects generally exhibit learning opportunities and development growth. Moving to slide 11. We plan to invest approximately $50 million on capital expenditures in 2023, including $13 million-$14 million on sustaining CapEx, $12 million-$13 million on capitalized stripping, and $17.5 million-$18.5 million on completing the ilmenite plant.
The increase in sustaining CapEx is largely driven by maintenance required at the crushing and V2O3 circuits, with increases for cap stripping being driven by the movement of waste in the pit in accordance with the mine plan. We've also allocated a few million dollars to purchase an additional dry magnetic separator, which will provide greater throughput and flexibility in the processing of ores. Moving on to the statement of financial position, cash at year-end was approximately $54 million, with debt of $40 million and a net working capital surplus of $116 million. Subsequent to year-end, we acquired additional debt of $25 million, as is described in the annual financial statements. I'll close out by mentioning that management has made the decision to postpone the company's existing plans to develop its titanium plant until additional funds are made available, either internally or externally.
At this time, we continue to explore alternative debt financing or strategic association options with advisors, and we will provide an update as things progress. Let me now turn the call over to Paul.
Thanks, Ernest. Thanks everyone for joining today. Moving on to slide 13, I'd like to briefly discuss our sales results for last year and move on to some very exciting developments in the vanadium sector. Annual sales were within our revised guidance range. We sold 11,091 tons of V2O5 equivalent in 2022, which included 1,057 tons of purchased material. Sales for the year are down slightly compared to 2021, largely due to production impacts throughout the year. As Ernest mentioned, our purchased product sales increased this year quite significantly in order to meet contractual obligations. However, as we begin to normalize production levels, I expect purchased product sales to be lower in 2023. Improved logistical situation post-COVID should also help to increase sales throughout a gradual reduction of our stock levels.
Moving on to exciting developments in the vanadium market, we're pleased with the recent strengthening of vanadium prices. As of today, the benchmark price for V2O5 in Europe is trading just below $11 per pound. This compares to about $9.50 at the end of the previous year and a 44% increase from the lows of 2022. This increase is due to healthy consumption from all key markets and especially in the high purity sectors. Aerospace demand came back faster and stronger than anyone expected after the lows of 2020 to 2021, and are now back to pre-COVID levels. We're in an advantageous position as a key supplier of both high-grade V2O5 and V2O3 and are able to place more units in this sector so as to benefit from the associated price premiums.
We intend to capitalize on this demand growth for many years to come. However, the most significant change in consumption and future expectations is coming from the energy storage industry, especially in China, where new VRFB deployments could total around 2 GWh or approximately 10% of global vanadium output in 2023. Additionally, recent announcements from China also indicate the potential for new VRFB manufacturing capacity of around 20 GWh over the coming years. As Daniel mentioned, Largo itself is at an inflection point, but I have to add that the vanadium industry is also at one as well. To supply this energy storage capacity and maintain the current level of consumption in our traditional markets, the vanadium industry would have to grow by over 100% over that period.
Already, according to Vanitec, a global vanadium organization, the VRFB sector was the second-largest source of vanadium demand just after steel in Q3 2022. Government support is also growing as long-duration energy storage is becoming a key priority towards decarbonization. Let's pause here and put this into perspective in terms of market overview. As most of you are aware, the VRFB technology was invented in the 1970s by a professor in Australia. From that point until the end of 2021, there have been approximately 400 MWh of VRFB installed across the globe. In 2022 alone, there was another 400 MWh of VRFB deployment, essentially doubling deployments in one year than all other deployments over the last 40-50 years.
This is quite remarkable. More importantly, it is estimated that another 2 GWh of VRFB will be installed in 2023, representing another 2.5 x increase from the previous installation amount. Historically, VRFB have accounted for approximately 1%-2% of global vanadium consumption. In 2022, that number is estimated to be around 6%. In 2023, it could represent more than 10% of global consumption. I think it's safe to say that this is the definition of exponential growth. At Largo, we're extremely excited about it, and it gives strong credence to the VRFB commercialization story, but also supports our vanadium supplier pillar with additional sources of demand. Historically, supply has been slow to respond to dramatic demand shocks, and it's important to position ourselves with these structural changes.
Let's move on to another potential source of increased demand for vanadium sector, Largo Physical Vanadium or LPV. An entity we are very proud of having created. As we see it's a truly innovative tool for investors seeking exposure to a key metal and will be a cornerstone to assist Largo in advancing its clean energy strategy. LPV's net assets are now over 90% held in Physical Vanadium products and near-term delivery commitments. The launch of LPV in September 2022 coincided with lower vanadium price, which allowed us to purchase vanadium units at favorable market prices. As of March 8, LPV's NAV is now CAD 2.56 per share. It's 35% above the closing share price of CAD 1.9 on the same day.
Keeping the LPV add-on, we believe our extreme NAV to share price discount offers current and new investors an attractive investment case. Closing this disconnect is now LPV's key focus. We're now working on a broad marketing and communication campaign to raise awareness and its investment proposal going forward. I'll stop there and turn it back to Daniel.
Thank you, Paul. Before moving into Q&A, I want to highlight this, slide 14 that summarizes our key priorities for 2023. As I mentioned at the beginning of this call, the return of normalized production level, cost control, and Clean Energy Division remains front and center in the ensuing year. This comes on the back of increased demand in the vanadium sector and a very healthy demand outlook for the future for both the commodity and the new global VRFB deployments. By successfully achieving all these priorities, we hope to reach the end of 2023 with a solid foundation to maximize shareholder value of the company. With that, let's go ahead and open it up for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please limit to two questions. If you would like to ask more questions, please press star one again. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Wong with RBC Capital Markets.
Hi. Good afternoon. I just wanted to ask about Ansaldo and the potential partnership there a little bit more. To the degree that you can talk about it before an actual agreement is concluded, can you maybe just provide a little bit more details on how a potential partnership might work? What does Ansaldo bring? What does Largo bring? Like, what's the plan for kind of growing that business in Europe?
Sure. Thank you, Andrew. I think I can start by saying that we believe that, you know, any potential deal with Ansaldo would be a very significant milestone and catalyst for the organization. Ansaldo brings a number of things to the table, but not least of which is their industrial capacity, their technical nous, their know-how in the energy industry. We look forward to hopefully concluding a successful joint venture arrangement with them. It would be a traditional JV type structure, basically 50/50, where Ansaldo would fund some of the early development costs and start-up costs to some degree, and after that point, share equally in the operations of the business and its outcomes.
We think that the ability of Ansaldo to engender and enable our European business is very significant. We're extremely excited about it. The deal is not done yet. There's certainly no guarantees, but our negotiations have been very strong. We have a great relationship with Ansaldo, we look forward to hopefully having a very positive outcome there.
That's great. Maybe just for Paul here, you talked a little bit about vanadium prices and strengths. Maybe just discuss a little bit more about what, you know, the recent strength is attributed to things like China reopening, or the battery project that's being built there, and how sustainable are current prices right now?
Sure. Thanks, Andrew. you know, it's always very hard to predict where prices are going, but being in the vanadium market every day, I'm very confident looking at the number. Demand in our traditional markets, essentially, you know, steel and chemicals is strong. there is a lot of reasons to be happy about these numbers. the outliers there are two. One is the aerospace industry. We have to think back about two, three quarters ago. The aerospace industry was still, you know, suffering from the effect of COVID. it was the general industry expectation that there will be a gradual recovery to pre-COVID level and will be there by 2025 to 2026.
Six months later, I think everyone in the industry is convinced that we'll be back to pre-COVID level this year, right? We really accelerated that recovery by two to three years, which is a, you know, extremely good news for us. A challenge to adapt, but definitely a great opportunity in front of us. The other outlier, as I mentioned during my part of the call is VRFB. The growth in deployment of vanadium redox flow battery and the growth in capacity to build this battery has just been, you know, nothing short of amazing. They are planning over 2 GWh to be deployed in 2023. At 2 GWh will represent roughly 20,000 ton of V2O5 equivalent.
That's about 10% of the world's production. That's truly amazing, right? We're coming from 1%-2% of the vanadium industry just a few years ago to about 10%. It's truly, you know, amazing growth. The amount of capacity that is being built is also mind-blowing. There's about 20 GWh of new capacity announced just in the month of February. Yeah, you know, I think the current prices level are justified, that there is nothing in the market that is telling us that things will be slowing down. As I said, it's hard to predict where it's gonna go, but we feel very comfortable with the state of demand at this stage.
Okay. Let me just one quick follow-up on the China, VRFB. Like, do we know if they have the vanadium already secured, or is that something that they might be purchasing in the market? Like, how does that impact today?
Yeah, it's a very good question. Just as a, you know, background, China produces and consume about 55% of the vanadium units globally, right? It's really by far the largest market globally. They have the units, right? They have enough units to cater to the VRFB. Unless there's a significant change in supply structure, which, you know, no one think can happen in the short term, you know, there's gonna be extra demand that will have to be met by extra supply. If China becomes a net importer in the quarters to come, it's a possibility. China for the past few years has been either a marginal exporter or marginal importer. Very, you know, balanced market.
It could be that, yeah, that China becomes a net importer. You know, we'll see what happens in the coming quarters. There are some good official statistics about that we follow very closely. Yeah, China has a lot of vanadium resources, but if they need an extra, you know, more than 10% units, you know, the structure of the market will have to change.
We'll go next to Heiko Ihle with H.C. Wainwright.
Hey there. Thanks for taking my selections. Can you hear me all right?
Yes, great. Thank you.
Perfect. Hey, thanks, Ernest. In 2022, the company's net loss included about, you know, $15 million of non-recurring stuff. Q4 was $6.3 million of that. We're two weeks away from the end of Q1. I mean, given the, you know, fairly large and consistent numbers, is there any non-recurring but cash expenses that we should expect to see in Q1?
No, Heiko. You know, at every reporting period, end of period, we would do a NRV analysis on inventories, et cetera. There's nothing that, you know, we're anticipating at this stage. That's certainly not something that we should plan for.
Got it. Okay. Since I got you anyways, when you gave a little bit of color on the ilmenite project earlier on this call, everything's on track, everything's fine. I know you'll be giving guidance after commissioning of the plant, but can you just maybe give a bit of color on what's been spent year to date? And then also maybe just go through the requirements of, you know, cash spend by quarter, if you could.
Yeah. I'm not gonna be able to do cash spend by quarter, but last year on the ilmenite side, we spent just shy of $19 million. Our guidance was $19 million-$21 million. Remaining to be spent this year, we're looking at another $17.5 million-$18.5 million to be spent this year. Relatively even, I guess, ultimately between Q1 and Q2, because we're supposed to be up and running and selling ilmenite by Q3 of this year. I hope that gives some color.
We'll go next to Gordon Lawson with Paradigm Capital.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call. Pretty simple question for you here. The lower recoveries at the mill, was that simply a reflection of processing the stockpiled material?
I think it's a function of stockpile material, and the actual progression through the pit at the time. Because we couldn't access, you know, higher grade, magnetite at the bottom of the pit due to rains, it had some impact. I wouldn't overstate it, but I'll hand it over to Daniel that might have some additional color on this.
It's a matter of the combination between disseminated material that, as you know, has lower magnetics and massive material who has the highest magnetics. When you mix the blending between the disseminated and the massive material, that's when you have an effect in the recovery of the kiln. That is something that they were working right now in order to keep the right blending. You can keep the right blending when you have the stockpiles from when you can reach that combination of different materials. Sometimes, recoveries are being affected when you don't have the right blending.
Okay, thank you very much. My second, if I may, are we at or around the current run rate for ferrovanadium production, or do you expect that to fluctuate the market?
We had lower production as everyone is aware in Q1 from the leftover impacts of the rainfall. We're back up and running and so, you know, we're not predicting any, you know, variation or deviance from, you know, our ferrovanadium production. We produce V2O5 and send that off for conversion at ferrovanadium converters. The amount of ferro, let's say that we are anticipating selling for the year is still roughly the same. No change.
It's been no change at all. Basically, the affectation of the heavy rain put a lot of stress on the sequence of mining at the open pit. Right now in the month of February, we are almost back to normal. Our intention, as we described it during my presentation, was that our intention is to try to normalize operation as we move along during the year.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
We'll go next to Carlos de Alba with Morgan Stanley. Mr. de Alba, your line is open. You may be on mute.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I was indeed. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I just have one question. Would you mind sharing with us how much of the electrolyte, you know, pure vanadium electrolyte that is gonna go into the Enel Green Power Spain battery, will be produced or has been produced by Largo Clean Energy? Is it 100% of that electrolyte?
It's 100% with one small caveat. When we acquired the assets of VionX back in the day, some of the assets we acquired were some inventories of electrolyte. We've actually used some of it in this particular project, but largely, it's coming from LCE's own production.
So that's coming from the stockpile, if I understood correctly. Are you currently in a position to produce that electrolyte yourselves, or would you have to rely on third-party purchases?
Yeah. We would purify electrolytes. The first stage of electrolyte production, we would send to third parties to produce the electrolyte from vanadium that we provide to them. We have patented purification processes to further refine that electrolyte. Again, it's a mixed bag answer.
Is there a reason why you are not able to produce the, you know, 100% of the process in-house or do 100% of the process in-house?
No, we could certainly choose to do it. It's basically just a very simple chemical process, the first part of the process. We send it to toll converters right now 'cause it's very cheap to do that, and it's not consequential to the overall process. If we wanted to spend a couple of million you know, to buy some tanks and do some mixing ourselves, we could do so. It's not key or critical to the process.
Understood. All right. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
We'll go next to Steve Silver with Argus Research.
Thank you, and thank you for taking the questions. I appreciate all the details in the prepared remarks, and between that and the Q&A so far, most of my questions have already been asked. I was hoping we could just ask broadly, if you could provide any color on quantifying the high demand in the aerospace market, just as it relates to the overall production capacity for the company. Just trying to size up the potential to recognize the premium for the high purity market, in the total product sold.
Paul?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Steve. As I said, the aerospace industry is expected to get back to pre-COVID levels this year. We can expect around 5,000-6,000 mtpa, so about, yeah, about 10,000-12,000 tons of V2O5 equivalent required by this industry this year. Largo's total capacity, nameplate capacity is around 12,000 tons. We have the largest capacity globally for high purity production. Essentially I think, you know, with our entire production, we could cover the whole demand. Obviously we, you know, we won't be able to do that.
We have competition in the market. I'm very confident that this year Largo will be the largest supplier to the aerospace industry. It's our target. We have the capacity in-house to supply close to the entire market and we will do our best to perform in this market.
Great. That's helpful. One last one. Just trying to size up, as you move forward with the Clean Energy business and getting close to servicing one deal, potentially establishing the JV for other opportunities. Given the potential for long contracting, for new opportunities in the space, just trying to get a sense of how you look at the progress in the Clean Energy business in terms of when you might expect recognition from the market, as you continue to execute on that plan.
Sure. You, you're 100% correct. The negotiation and the commissioning and construction of these projects take a long time. We're very hopeful and anticipatory into, around our ability to enter into contracts at some point this year. You would not see those contracts being delivered until earliest next year, and some of them may be even two years out. During that time, obviously, you would be constructing and involved in any number of those projects. We're working hard on that right now. And we're very optimistic. You know, that could come from a number of sources. You know, we have potential projects in the wing should the joint venture actually see fruition.
We're talking with other parties in the U.S. as well, on potential projects as well, which are all ongoing. We hope to bring some good news to the market in the future.
Okay, fantastic. Thank you again for taking the questions.
Thank you.
We'll go next to Jim Young with Midwest Investments.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Daniel, nice to have you aboard Largo. My first question really is, can you talk about the high purity marketplace? What's your definition of high purity, please? Secondly is, what price premium are you realizing for the high premium, high purity vanadium? Thank you.
Thank you, Jim. Paul, can you take care of it?
Sure. Hi, Jim. There's no clear-cut definition of high purity, but essentially it's a grade that is above what is required by the steel industry to have a broad range in V2O5 equivalent if they are, you know, grades between 99% + and 99.5% +. To your... Well, what is also very important in the high purity product is the low contaminants, so low impurities. To your question on premium, as you can imagine, is extremely confidential and very, key aspect of our negotiation with our customers, so I won't be able to share that.
What I can share, though, is that different customers have different specification in terms of V2O5 purity and also, contaminant allowance. The higher the requirement is, the higher the premium. There is a fairly wide range, depending on specific application in the aerospace, chemical, and vanadium redox flow battery application.
Okay, thank you. The second question pertains to, is back to the electrolyte issue. It seems that the way you described it is that you're not really producing any electrolyte, but you're actually taking your V2O5 that you produce at the Maracás facility in Brazil, and you're sending that to an outside third party, and they're making the electrolyte, and you're kind of cleaning it up. Also, could you just explain how this is going to work going forward?
That's correct, Jim. You know, initially, while let's say volumes are low, you wouldn't expend the capital cost to create your own mixing for the first stage, which is just producing the electrolyte. Again, it's a simple chemical process. You send that off to tall converters, thereafter we put it through our patented purification process. There are two steps to it. If you have sufficient volumes and, you know, a number of different contracts, then we would spend some additional CapEx to actually have the first part of the process in-house as well. I don't think you'd start with it, eventually you'd have it in-house as well.
Okay. Is the vanadium that you're delivering to get this converted to the electrolyte is happening in Europe or in Brazil or where is this taking place? Is this being cleaned up at your facility in Boston or what, can you say that it's getting kind of further refined? Is it happening in Boston?
Yeah. We currently have a facility in Boston to do that's correct. Once you enter into contracts, logistics are very important. You would likely, in the absence of having your own, first stage of the process, probably use tall converters in whichever region your project is in. We have the ability to actually put in place in situ on site our electrolyte purification. You would not send it back to Massachusetts and then back to the project, let's say if it was in Europe. You would actually do the purification close to the project. Logistics super important, but it would not go back and forth to our Wilmington facility. That's just where we have it right now.
You will save a lot of money, Jim, by doing the conversion close to where the site of the project is. Otherwise, you're moving liquid from Boston or from Brazil to the different places where you are building batteries. In order to save cost, it's much better to have all this conversion of the electrolyte where the project is. That is the intention that they were planning into the near future.
We'll go next to Bryan Robson with Breakout Investors.
Good afternoon. The first question is for Paul, and it's kind of a two-part question. The market price for both Q3 2022 and Q4 2022 was relatively consistent, and your realized price was about $1 less quarter-over-quarter. As we look back a couple quarters before that, your realized price was higher than the market price for each of the last two quarters, and then it was lower this quarter. Can you first explain why you had the drop in realized price in Q4, and then how we should be looking at realized price versus market price as we enter into 2023?
Sure, Brian. I think there's two main points that I'd like to make on your question. Number one is the timing, right? You're right in saying that sometimes our realized price is not perfectly aligned with the market price. That's because the vast majority of our contracts are based on a quotation of period that trails one to two months the actual market price. I'll give you a simple example. When we deliver a material this month, let's say in March, at the time of delivery, most of our contract will be some sort of a formula based on the February price, so that when we deliver the material, the price is known, right? At the end of the day, over long periods of time, we follow exactly the trend, but we're just trailing.
That's the first thing on timeline. It is sometimes not perfectly adjusted. The second answer that I'd like to make, and you said it, you know, some quarters we make slightly lower and sometimes slightly higher than the published price. It's because I think what most people are looking at is the published vanadium pentoxide price, right? A large portion of our sales are done on our ferrovanadium price, right? Ferrovanadium is the product that goes into the steel industry. These two indexes are very correlated, but depending on supply and demand situation from time to time, they vary. Currently, ferrovanadium on a vanadium unit basis is trading at a deep discount to V2O5, right? For our V2O5 sales, we're getting a better price on a V unit basis compared to ferrovanadium sales.
It was not always the case. Last year, ferrovanadium was trading at a premium to V2O5, but that probably explains the first part of your question. If you're only looking at one index, it's difficult to get the full picture. You need to look at the various indexes. By the way, we sell products in Europe, we sell products in Asia, we sell products in the U.S., and all these regions have different pricings from time to time. Very correlated over long period of time, but at specific point of time, there could be very significant premium or discount. If you're only looking at one index of one product in one region, you don't always get the full picture.
Okay, thanks. This question is for Ernest. The product acquisition cost, it's something that you don't provide guidance on. It was $24 million in 2022, and that's $24 million that you're, you know, not getting margin on. I guess my question has two parts to it again, is what is the amount of purchased inventory that you have on hand at December 31? At this point in time, I think you'd have a good feel as to how much purchased inventory you'd have in Q1. I'm guessing that you perhaps have a bit more just because of the low production of late. If you can comment on that.
Yeah. Let me just quickly deal with the actual acquisition cost. It is not something to be concerned about because think of it as essentially a wash. There is a cost for it, but you're earning the revenue at the same time. The only times that we do that is, for instance, when we've run into issues on logistics where there are delivery timelines that are different from what was anticipated, and this was especially true in 2022. You're sometimes forced to go out into the market and purchase material to make sure that you fulfill your contractual obligations. It's not a method for us to essentially trade in the market. It really just fulfills a practical necessity.
Last year we actually made money on purchased material, but that wasn't our plan. We made in the region of, and Paul can elucidate on it as well, but we probably made $4 million on that material last year. It wasn't our plan to trade. It just, it was pure happenstance at the time that we purchased the product and sold it later, we'd gotten a gain. I would not focus on it, and we certainly don't plan for it or budget for it. At this stage, our objective is to sell what we produce. If there is some unforeseen or untoward event that requires us to go and purchase in the market, we will do so. It's not, it's not something that we forecast or even anticipate.
In terms of what's at hand at year-end, it's about 400, just over 400 tons right now. We've already taken, you know, whatever NRV write-down would've been required at the end of December. In theory, we look forward when we're preparing the year-end financial statements, we already know what we would've made on the material. You don't make additional gains or losses on the material. They're, again, a wash. It's not something that I would have investors focus on. It really does only serve a practical purpose. It's not there as a trading mechanism or a way for us to make additional profits, even though we may have made some profits last year on it.
Also, we didn't have any purchases in the fourth quarter of last year. None has happened during January and February of this year. What is happening is that right now we are just selling and disposing of the inventory we have from last year. Most of that will disappear in the first quarter or first four months of 2023.
This does the Q&A portion of the call. I would like to turn the presentation back over to Alex Guthrie.
Thanks, operator. I just wanna say thanks again for everyone who has joined the call today. That concludes our Q&A session and the quarterly investor call. Have a great day, everyone. Take care.
Thanks.
This does conclude today's call. You may.