Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sherritt International third quarter 2021 results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded today, Thursday, November 4, 2021 at 10 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. I will now turn the presentation over to Joe Racanelli, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I'd like to make mention of a couple of items. As you know, we released our Q3 results and announced preliminary details of our Moa JV expansion strategy last night. All of our disclosure materials are available from our website as well as been filed on SEDAR. We will be using a presentation today, and the copy is available on our website within the IR section of sherritt.com. We will be making forward-looking statements today, and those statements are available for review on page three of our presentation. Now, with me today are Leon Binedell, Sherritt's CEO, Steve Wood, our Chief Operating Officer, and Yasmin Gabriel, our Chief Financial Officer, who was appointed in August following 12 years with the company in a variety of financial and accounting roles. I'll now turn the call over to Leon for his introductory remarks.
Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. In our Q2 call, which was my first since becoming CEO of Sherritt on June 1st, I made mention of our intention to grow the business via a two-pronged strategy. This strategy centers on commercializing solutions developed by our technologies group and taking advantage of embedded brownfield growth opportunities. We have made considerable progress advancing the strategy during Q3. In mid-October, we met with our Cuban partners and had positive discussions about how we can grow production to take advantage of the improving market fundamentals. I will expand on the results of these discussions and on the roadmap we have developed in my closing remarks.
While we still have more work to do to finalize our plans, I believe our strategy has the potential to deliver significant rates of return with low capital intensity. Another measure of our progress in Q3 was in the area of ESG. We released our sustainability report and upgraded a number of targets, including our goal of net zero emissions by 2050, and Steve will touch more on this. This progress should not be lost when we review our Q3 operating results, nor should the considerable success that we experienced in mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on our production throughout most of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the rapid spread of the Delta variant in both Alberta and Cuba, combined with unplanned maintenance, contributed to a disappointing production result in Q3.
Nevertheless, we were able to grow adjusted EBITDA by 14% to CAD 17.6 million and receive $10 million of distributions from our Moa joint venture during the quarter, both of which were possible because of strong prevailing nickel and cobalt prices. Current market conditions are favorable, and we are encouraged by the long-term outlook for both nickel and cobalt. I will now turn over the call to Steve for a more detailed discussion on our operating results for the quarter.
Okay. Thank you, Leon, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start my discussion as we normally do with a comment on our commitment to safety. We've devoted considerable effort over the recent years to fostering an environment where best practices for employee health and safety are in place, and this has resulted in Sherritt continuing to rank in the lowest quartile for incident rates in its peer group. I'll turn now to slide six. In the third quarter, we released our 2020 sustainability report that detailed the progress of our ESG commitments, and that included achieving zero fatalities at our operations and implementing additional health and safety measures to protect employees at our operations from COVID-19. The sustainability report includes a number of upgraded ESG targets in the near and longer terms.
As you can see from slide six, some of these targets include achieving net zero greenhouse emissions by 2050, obtaining 15% of overall energy from renewable sources by 2030, reducing nitrogen oxide emission intensity by 10% by 2024, and increasing the number of women in our workplace to 36% by 2030. Achieving net zero greenhouse emissions will require some capital investments and some considerable effort, and we've already identified opportunities to reduce carbon emissions by 60%. These efforts will include taking advantage of new technologies, making use of solar power and electric vehicles, and we will provide updates on our plans on a regular basis going forward. Now turning to slide seven, I'd like to discuss an example of an initiative that we've recently launched relating to reducing carbon emissions.
In 2020, we identified a number of opportunities to use electric vehicles at both Moa and Fort Saskatchewan. To date, we've integrated eight EV vans into our fleet at Moa and received our first EV at the refinery. We're also looking to replace diesel-powered Land Cruisers with similar EV light trucks. The electrification of our equipment is still at an early stage but is indicative of our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint. Turning now to our production results for the quarter, I'll start with the Moa JV on slide eight. On a 50% basis, the Moa JV produced 2,908 tons of finished nickel and 334 tons of finished cobalt in the third quarter of 2021.
These totals represent decreases of about 22% and 18% respectively from the comparable periods in 2020. The lower production versus last year is attributable to the full plant shutdown, the full impact of COVID-19 in the quarter, as well as some unscheduled maintenance due to found work. More specifically, in July a shipment of mixed sulfides was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19 on the ship. In response, the refinery in Fort Saskatchewan slowed down its production rates during the month, and as well, the plant shutdown that had been rescheduled from May to August due to high COVID case numbers coincided with the fourth wave of COVID in Alberta, and that resulted in reduced contractor availabilities.
This development extended the shutdown by two days, but I'd also like to point out that, because additional measures were taken at the refinery, we managed to keep workplace transmissions to a minimum. At Moa, the increase in COVID-19 cases locally within the Holguín province of Cuba also impacted production of mixed sulfides. During the quarter, vaccination of personnel in Moa was rolled out, and by the end of the quarter, the majority of employees had been vaccinated. This year's full facility shutdown at the refinery lasted 13 days, and that's compared to the typical five-day annual partial shutdown. These full facility shutdowns, I'll remind you, occur once every six years. With the repairs now completed in the third quarter, production has resumed to normal rates.
With the full facility shutdown now behind us, production rates at the Fort and in Moa back to normal rates, high COVID-19 vaccination rates, continued COVID protocols, and significant inventory levels throughout the operation, we expect good performance for the foreseeable future. I will expand on the impact the third quarter's developments had on our guidance in a later slide. Now I'll turn to our unit costs at the Moa JV on slide nine. MPR or mining, processing, and refining costs increased by 31% in the quarter relative to the same period last year. The increase was attributable to a number of factors, including higher input costs, higher maintenance costs, and lower production volumes. As you can see from slide nine, input costs rose dramatically in the quarter compared to last year.
In particular, sulfur prices were up 126%, fuel oil prices rose by 69%, and natural gas prices climbed 59%. These increases were partially offset by lower labor costs due to the impact of Cuba's unification of its currencies. Now turning to the net direct cash cost, NDCC was $453 per pound of nickel sold, and that's up 12% from $404 in the third quarter of last year. The increase was driven by higher input costs and lower sales volumes. These impacts were partially offset by the 52% rise in the cobalt byproduct credits. Looking ahead, although we continue to anticipate inflationary pressure on input costs through the rest of the year, our NDCC forecast for 2021 remains unchanged, given the offsetting rise in cobalt prices over the past several months.
Now turning to the power division on slide 10. We produced 110 GW of electricity in the third quarter, and that's down 28% from last year when we produced 152 GW in the third quarter. The decrease relative to last year was driven by the scheduling of maintenance activities that had been previously deferred on account of limited liquidity that was available and reduced availability of spare parts. Unit operating costs in the quarter were CAD 2,314, and that's up 58% from the CAD 1,463 for the same period last year. The increase was due to a lower production and higher maintenance costs, but offset partially by lower labor and third-party costs due to the effects of Cuba's currency unification.
I'd like to wrap up my discussion on the power business by pointing out that we continue to be in discussions with our Cuban partners to extend the power generation agreement with Energas. I note that this agreement is currently slated to expire in March 2023, and we're confident that it will be renewed. Before I turn the call over to Yasmin, I'll, I'd like to make some remarks on our updated guidance for 2021 on slide 11. Given the developments in the quarter and anticipated production through to the end of the year, we've adjusted our finished nickel production guidance for 2021, and we now anticipate producing between 31,000 tons and 32,000 tons of finished nickel.
In effect, we've reduced the lower end of our initial target for the year by 1,000 tons or approximately 3%. As I mentioned previously, we have a high degree of confidence in these numbers given inventories at the Fort and throughout the flow sheet.
Our targets for cobalt production and NDCC remain unchanged given our performance on a year-to-date basis, and we remain on track to reach that guidance for the year. Our share of capital spend at the Moa JV has been reduced to CAD 35 million from CAD 44 million. The reduction reflects the operational challenges that we experienced in the third quarter, including the freight and order delays caused by COVID-19. That concludes my remarks on operational performance, and I'll now pass it over to Yasmin.
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today. As Joe mentioned, I became CFO for Sherritt at the beginning of August after spending almost 12 years with the company in a variety of roles within finance, including VP of Finance. In the coming months, I look forward to meeting and having discussions with many of you about our growth initiatives and continued efforts to strengthen our balance sheet. I'd like to begin my remarks today with a discussion of our adjusted EBITDA performance in Q3. Although this is a non-GAAP measure, adjusted EBITDA provides a strong indicator of our performance, and in Q3, our adjusted EBITDA grew by 14% to CAD 17.6 million compared to the same period in the prior year.
This growth is indicative of stronger realized nickel and cobalt prices, and as you can see on the waterfall chart on slide 13, the positive effects of higher nickel and cobalt prices were partly offset by increased input commodity prices and the impact of lower sales volumes, which were driven primarily by the effects of COVID-19 and the full facility shutdown Steve mentioned earlier. As most of you are aware, we've made significant effort to reduce our administrative expenses over the past several years. As Sherritt's new CFO, I want to assure you that our commitment to lowering administrative costs remain a priority, and we'll continue to act on every opportunity to reduce costs. While these cost containment measures continue, they will be balanced against the need to support growth initiatives over the coming years.
With that in mind, I want to put developments impacting administrative expenses in Q3 as presented on slide 14 into perspective. In Q3 of this year, we incurred costs totaling CAD 3.4 million in contractual benefit expenses related to the departure of two senior executives. Excluding the impact of these expenses and CAD 2.7 million of balance sheet initiative related costs that were reclassified to discontinued operations in the prior year, our administrative expenses were flat year-over-year. Now looking ahead, I'd like to remind everyone that the 10% corporate office workforce reductions that we made earlier in the year will result in CAD 1.3 million in cost savings annually. Moving on to slide 15. The sensitivity analysis in our MD&A release yesterday provides an approximate impact on net earnings for the quarter based on a change in selected key drivers.
The analysis was based on the Q3 production results, which were negatively impacted by COVID-19, the full facility shutdown, and unplanned maintenance. As such, this skews projections on how price fluctuations would impact our financial results on a go-forward basis. As an alternative, the table presented on the slide is based on the midpoint of production guidance for 2021, providing a better indication of how changes in commodity prices and foreign exchange rates could impact our results on a go-forward basis. As you can see from this table, we remain exposed to changes in commodity prices, with a $1 increase to nickel reference price resulting in an increase of approximately CAD 35 million in net earnings per year. Turning now to slide 18, where I'd like to highlight our improved liquidity position.
At the end of Q3, our cash and short-term investments totaled CAD 163.4 million, and that was up from CAD 153.8 million at the end of Q2. Our cash position was positively impacted by a number of developments this quarter. Chief among them was the receipt of CAD 12.7 million of distributions from the Moa Joint Venture and strong fertilizer pre-buys of almost CAD 14 million. Our total available liquidity at the end of the quarter was CAD 218 million, with available credit reflecting CAD 8 million in cash previously borrowed and CAD 8 million in letters of credit drawn against our CAD 70 million credit facility.
To further strengthen our available liquidity and fund our growth strategy that Leon will outline next, we aggressively pursued and successfully completed an early renewal and expansion of our credit facility at the end of October. The amendment increases the amount of available credit by CAD 30 million from CAD 70 million to CAD 100 million. It allows us to utilize the facility to fund capital expenditures and extends the maturity out two and a half years to April 2024. The increase in our credit facility is indicative of our strength and financial position and favorable nickel and cobalt outlook. That concludes my review of financial highlights for Q3, and I'll now turn it over to Leon.
Thank you, Yasmin. With the Q3 operational challenges caused by COVID-19 and some unplanned maintenance now behind us, I wanna focus the balance of the discussion today on our growth opportunities, particularly our plans to grow production and take advantage of our embedded brownfield opportunities. I'd like to start with a brief overview of the backdrop of our expansion strategy. There are a number of conditions in our favor supporting the decision to move ahead. Most notably, demand for nickel is slated to grow by 3.5% on a compound annual basis over the next 20 years. This strong demand, which is being driven by the accelerated adoption of electric vehicles, is slated to create a critical supply deficit around 2025.
While nickel prices are strong, they are still below incentive levels for new mine development projects, creating a distinct advantage for those with brownfield or low capital intensity opportunities. These macro conditions form the basis for much of the discussions I had during my first visit to Cuba in mid-October to meet our partners in person. The meetings were particularly productive and provided an opportunity for us to reiterate our commitment to the island and our joint ventures. The President confirmed Cuba's alignment for our growth objectives and support to Sherritt to pursue growth on an accelerated timeframe. Just as important, the discussions also included our Cuban partners reconfirming their commitment to repay their debts. On slide 19, looking at some of the macro and market conditions a little closer.
Nickel prices at the start of the third quarter have been strong and reached a high of $9.31 per pound on October 21. Cobalt prices have also been on the ascent, climbing to above $28 a pound. Higher prices for both commodities were driven by strong demand and reports of consumer stockpiling. Conditions supporting these price levels are expected to remain in place through the balance of the year. The impact of growing demand and consumer stockpiling is apparent when we look at nickel inventory levels in warehouses. As you can see from slide 20, combined inventory levels on the LME and Shanghai Futures Exchange have dropped more than 40% over the past year to below 150,000 tons, which is the lowest level since December 2019.
Currently, the market is slated for a supply deficit of approximately 100,000 tons by the end of the year, according to some industry analysts. While a modest supply deficit is anticipated for 2021, the impact of growing nickel demand for EV battery segment will continue to grow and will become apparent in less than five years, as you can see from the chart on slide 21. Many industry observers, such as Wood Mackenzie, are anticipating a prolonged and significant supply deficit starting in 2025, as no new nickel mines are slated to come on stream anytime soon, and the incentive price for significant new builds have not yet been achieved. This encouraging backdrop helps put some context to our brownfield expansion strategy and why we are so excited about both our near and longer-term prospects.
Accelerated expansion at the Moa JV will entail a multi-phased approach that, upon completion, will grow our nickel and cobalt production by up to 20% to above 40,000 tons on a 100% basis. Key to this expansion will be the completion of a new slurry preparation plant that will reduce ore haulage distances and improve ore sorting. Other components of our strategy include completion of expansion circuits at Moa, as well as installation and upgrading of equipment at the refinery in Fort Saskatchewan. These efforts center around the completion of a prior expansion that was put on hold, combined with debottlenecking type work at the refinery, making this a lower risk expansion and lower cost. In tandem with growing production, we also plan to extend the life of Moa to beyond 2040.
Our plans consist of converting some of the more than 158 million tons of measured and indicated resources into reserves by upgrading our NI 43-101 technical report by making use of an economic instead of a fixed cut-off grade in reserve estimation and mine planning. This new focus on growth marks a change for Sherritt and is one that we are truly excited about. We believe the project economics are compelling and will require a low capital intensity. There are further opportunities beyond this more immediate expansion, which we will share at a future date once additional work to firm those up has been completed.
In summary, I wanted to thank you for your time today, but as you have heard, we believe that the worst of COVID-19's impact on our operations is behind us, given the increase in local vaccination rates and decline in number of cases, as well as the result of our improved inventory levels at the refinery. Just as important, nickel market conditions are favorable, and the outlook for demand and prices remain strong. This encouraging outlook is why we are working closely with our Cuban partners to finalize plans to grow finished nickel and cobalt production by up to 20% and to grow the life of mine at Moa by taking advantage of our brownfield embedded opportunities. In the coming months, we will provide more details on the timelines and the exact capital spending required. With that, I will hand it back to the operator for some questions.
Operator?
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Don DeMarco from National Bank. Your line is now open.
Good morning, Leon and team. Okay, regarding this expansion and extension at Moa, I understand that most of the details will be coming toward the end of Q1. Stop me if you wanna defer till then, but just a couple questions to get a little bit more color. Regarding the Cuban partners, they're supportive. Would they contribute CapEx to the project, or would there be a different arrangement whereby you know, they kind of you recoup whatever their investment might be by you know, retaining their share of profits over a period of time, something like that?
The Moa joint venture is configured in such a way that the joint venture in and of itself is able to fund and support funding for its growth objectives. That's why we're working closely with our Cuban partners to align on the exact quantum of growth capital and the funding mechanisms associated with that.
What we're hearing is a low CapEx intensity project, which is great. Does it have any implications on the operating costs? You know, the current NDCCs that we see at Moa, would we expect those to increase or remain the same? Is that something we should just wait for until the end of Q1?
We'll provide further details on that, but I think directionally, it's helpful to say that as production increases, there's a fixed cost dilution impact, and also increase in, byproduct credits from additional cobalt volumes as well.
Okay. Thanks, Leon. Just turning attention to Q3, what were the unplanned maintenance activities in the quarter?
I'll let Steve answer that one.
Thanks, Leon. There were some vessels that we found had some cracking in them, and so they were inspected and needed repairs before failure. The positive coming out of what we found during the shutdown is we prevented an in-operation set of failures on several pieces of equipment. One example is one of the autoclaves in the cobalt circuit. A couple of obsolete valves had some cracks in them, and they needed to be repaired. As you can imagine, being a high pressure vessel, they require special skills to be repaired and take some time. That's an example of the kind of work that we found during that shutdown.
Okay. Okay, that's helpful. Steve, when is the next planned shutdown?
There is one on mid-next year, and it's a five-day shutdown. It's not the 11 or 13-day shutdown that we have every six years.
Okay. Okay, guys. Well, thank you very much. That's all for me. We'll just look forward to more details on this expansion and extension strategy. Congratulations.
Thanks, Don.
Your next question comes from the line of Orest Wowkodaw from Scotiabank. Your line is now open.
Yes, good morning. I also have questions about this potential expansion that you're thinking on the nickel side. Can you give us an idea of the quantum of capital required for this project? Like, I realize you're working on the study results, but are we talking hundreds of millions of dollars or what? You know, I'm just trying to understand how big of an investment this could be relative to your free cash flow and balance sheet strength right now.
Sure. Thanks for the question, Orest. As you pointed out, we will provide much more clarity on that in the coming months. What we wanted to just highlight is that, you know, the size of the expansion is relatively modest and is 15%-20%, and the capital intensity of that is typically what you would see for low-cost brownfield expansion opportunities and probably on the lower end of what we've seen in the past.
Okay. Now, it's been a long time since I've really seen nickel brownfield or greenfield opportunities outside of nickel pig iron. Could you maybe remind us kind of where some benchmarks may be in the industry on those metrics?
The historical benchmark was the median somewhere in the $20,000-$25,000 per ton. We believe we'll be sort of below that historical benchmark.
Okay. That, that's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Gordon Lawson from Paradigm Capital. Your line is now open.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. More on the expansion plans. You touched on this, but how much of the 2011 phase II project infrastructure is remaining that may provide a head start for some aspects of construction?
Uh.
I'm not sure.
2011?
Sorry, could you just rephrase? Phase II of which expansion?
Well, there was a proposed expansion about a decade ago, called the phase II expansion. You were targeting 42,000 tons of nickel per year. Is there any of that infrastructure remaining to provide a head start in the expansion today?
That's exactly what we're seeking to complete is the work that was done back then and halted. We're seeking to complete the majority of what was done back then at Moa, and then couple that with some de-bottlenecking work at the refinery to match Moa capacity with the refinery.
Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. For the shipping delays, you mentioned that the issues with the mixed sulfide transportation have since abated, but can you comment on the overall vessel availability? We've seen a lot of impact with other mining companies, particularly as it relates to sales. What's Sherritt's point of view on that?
The issue that we had in the third quarter that impacted production was really a COVID outbreak on the vessel that created a challenge for us, missing a shipment. That's now since behind us, but we don't foresee any vessel challenges in mixed sulfide shipping at all.
Nothing to do with sales at all either?
Um.
Yeah. We have sufficient stockpiled mixed sulphides at the refinery so that our logistics is back to normal and probably better than normal operations at this point in time.
Okay. Thank you. That's it for me.
Your next question comes from the line of Tony Robson from Global Mining Research. Your line is now open.
Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for taking my question. Sorry, another annoying one on the Moa de-bottleneck, which is clearly good news. Where is the bottleneck? If you look at the Fort Site operations and Moa, where's the bottleneck currently? I would have guessed Moa with over time, lower grades being processed means less nickel. The second question to that would be, given the very good prices we're seeing for mixed nickel cobalt sulfides, oxides, hydroxides, whatever, is there a need, in fact, to further de-bottleneck Fort rather than simply selling the mixed sulfides? Thank you.
First of all, the main bottleneck at Moa currently is really in ore feeding into the plant. That's why the slurry preparation plant is sort of the first off the bat in terms of pursuit. That is probably the furthest advanced, and news around that will be coming out fairly shortly. That will give sufficient ore supply to the plant that the completion of the additional circuits at Moa will be sufficiently fed by that additional capacity in the slurry prep plant and additional mining capacity. The debottlenecking at the Fort Site is relatively modest capital to de-bottleneck that operation and tie the two together nicely in terms of volumes, giving us the incremental margin that we're seeking.
For the additional capital, we believe it still makes sense to pursue the de-bottlenecking at the Fort as well, to tie those two in operation. It also gives us marketing flexibility as to where we place our product, in case there's any premium differentials between electric vehicle market, specialty alloys, and/or stainless steel.
Okay, great. Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Sherritt management. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. I wanna thank everyone for joining us on the call today. We're very pleased to share some good news around our expansion strategy today, and looking forward to sharing much more details around both. Thank you for your continued interest in Sherritt, and thank you for the questions today as well. Talk to you soon.
If you have any other additional questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We'll be available over the next couple of days.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you everyone for participating. You may now disconnect.