Welcome everyone to Sigma's 2023 Geology Update Call. The content in this call corresponds to the press release we put out yesterday, detailing the results of our updated 43-101 mineral resource estimate. On the call with me today are company CEO and co-chairperson, Ana Cabral, and our co-lead of geology, Iran Zan. We will have a Q&A at the end of the call, but we ask that you please keep questions to the topics that is discussed here today. With that, I will pass it over to Ana.
Thank you, Matt. Well, we're delighted to have this call with you today, and we're here to present the world's fourth largest operating industrial pre-chemical lithium beneficiation and mining complex that Grota do Cirilo became. The numbers will speak for themselves, and I'm joined by my two partners here, Matt and Iran. So the purpose of the call is to walk you through the resilience of our business, why Sigma becomes one of the most resilient lithium companies globally. Scale, low cost, and we are attuned to the 21st century demands of a new generation of electric vehicles built in line with the ethos of the car. So we believe no one's prepared to put in brown and dirty materials in green cars. Here is the complex. The bar chart's pretty straightforward. In brown, you have producers.
In dark green, you got Sigma, the only quintuple zero lithium producer, and in brown you have our other producers. We're now the fourth largest integrated industrial lithium beneficiation mining complex, and in fact, we are the only single-owned company, not owned by any strategic investor, or we have a financial investors. We announced audited mineral resources that back up a very long life of our operations, for our operations, subsidizing our expansion plans, 109 million tons, mostly measured and indicated, so we drill to mine. And we're gonna show you how we're very quickly gonna get to 150 million tons. The chart, the chart also shows that in green we have the non-operating companies. So what matters here is who's operating, who is integrated, which are the industrial mining beneficiation complexes out there?
As you can see with this announcement, we jumped quite a number of places in the ranking. We're now ranking fourth, very proudly, the one Brazilian behind three Australians. So it's with great humility and honor that we're now joining the Australian Club of Super Mines. Another interesting point on the chart is the average grade. The line there, the dotted line, shows you the average grade, so the dots show the grade. We also demonstrate that we are above average, well above average. So what does it mean with precision, with geoscientific precision, is going to be explained by Iran and Matt. So my role here is to show you the bigger picture, and what is the bigger picture?
It's that our expansion plans are now supported by significant mineral resources, which means we have enormous strategic flexibility. In other words, we are gonna do Plant 2, Plant 3. We can potentially integrate it a little bit further downstream into intermediate chemicals, lithium sulfate, but more importantly, we're gonna be competitive, globally competitive. In other words, we could probably be the most competitive intermediate chemical in the world, competing with the best in class, who are also our customers. Remember, half the world's consumers, half the world's EVs are produced in China, and the other half is produced elsewhere in the world, so competitiveness is key. Cost competitiveness, scale competitiveness. So, I think to close the slide, the winners in this industry play the long game, and more importantly, by playing the long game, you gotta invest in the downturn.
So essentially, that's what we've been doing, because of the resilience of the business. So these decisions are made exactly during the downturn. So here, what we need to do is to demonstrate how do we create value to our downstream clients, and value that could potentially be captured by Sigma itself in the future. But more importantly, how do we today have a value proposition to our clients? Take, you know, an average price today of $1,000 per ton of this pre-chemical lithium concentrate. One needs seven tons of dots to produce one ton of chemical, of our Sigma's lithium concentrate, because it's coarse and it's high purity, and it behaves better at the calcinator, meaning it's more efficient. Then-...
Next step, if you compare with one of our peers, sometimes you need nine, sometimes you need 10 tons of that material. So that's a cost competitive advantage right there, and then you move on. When you look at costs to produce this material, what we've got is $3,000. The best-in-class players in China do it at $3,000. This is where gas, sulfuric acid, all the consumables and materials into chemical conversion go. So fine, the profit is around $1,000 today. So you have about $14,000 today of a backward cost base of this on a non-integrated basis. Well, we will talk about in our fourth quarter earnings call, but we can give you a preview, and Matt can talk about it. Let's hypothetically assume that our C1 Cash Costs at the mine are around $400 a ton.
Think about this Sigma cost advantage today that goes to clients. Imagine if somebody... if we do lithium sulfate right here. So this cost advantage, which today is transferred free to clients or becomes a bit of a premium, is fully grabbed by ourselves. Hence, we can be the most competitive intermediate chemical globally, and that can only happen in a country such as ours, because we have this low-cost raw material, we have low-cost clean renewables, and more importantly, we have a very large population with an industrialized base that can absorb the residues that this operation generates. Very toxic residues that are absorbed by the construction industry as concrete binding, and by the cleaning products industry as maker of detergents. With that, I'll pass the word on to Matt to show that non-integrated conversion is actually a bad business.
So, Matt?
Yeah. I think the position of the company over time as a low-cost, you know, spodumene concentrate producer, is such that having the competitive advantage lies with concentration and ownership of the material. You know, this is just a chart of where downstream margins have been and can be, and oftentimes, the proposition is break even, and that becomes a difficult backdrop to gain a necessary return on investment, particularly in higher-cost jurisdictions, which is where a lot of the CapEx is going. This all supports generally our longer-term view of a more supportive lithium backdrop, but all the same, we think, also highlights the benefits to being integrated upstream into the hard rock side, into the mining side, which builds upon, you know, what we're about to talk about.
I don't know if the next slide works.
Mute my audio, and I will mute video. I see if I can put my video... Hold on a second. Trying to put my video back on. The next slide. Here we go.
This generally just highlights to... Well, it's in Portuguese, which is a little bit difficult, but Anna, if you wanna take this one. It kind of talks about the integration position and the value chain in general, and the opportunity set that Sigma as a Brazilian entity can offer, and offers the lithium supply chain.
Exactly. More importantly, what we're trying to demonstrate is why is it that one creates a resilient business such as this one in Brazil? Because you are in the middle of a very highly coveted supply chain. So building an industrial mining complex is key, because this integration of lithium concentrate beneficiation with mining production in a low-cost jurisdiction is actually what creates this competitive advantage for to go downstream, essentially. So, when you think about the building blocks of the downstream, the downstream business, this is why we do believe that Brazil occupies, and Sigma, and that occupies the leading position in the global lithium supply chain industrialization. Because we have the three conditions.
In other words, we have low cost, we have a green product, and we have now this monumental scale comparable to Australia. So we're very honored to be now in the Australian monumental category of natural resources, mineral resources, that allows us to do what we've always been doing, beneficiating lithium in a green manner. So we gather the three attributes of a resilient business. We're low cost, we have scale, and we are completely in line with the 21st century call, which is we're delivering green lithium for green cause. And this is only possible to get to zero carbon, to be quintuple zero, because we are in Brazil, meaning we can acquire green energy, clean energy at $0.02 per kWh. It's that cheap.
So all we had done was to take care of our Scope 1 operations, so that, you know, we could create this incredible competitive advantage, which does not get priced, is a free premium, a free green premium. So without further ado, I'm moving on to geology to show the geology, the geological breakthrough that we achieved with this year-long drilling campaign. Matt, on to you.
Thank you, Ana. So look, the reason why the company is excited about the geology update is this slide here. So the company has, you know, long believed in the presence of a structural lithium corridor that runs the length of the property, and we're pretty comfortable that we're proving that out. This starts with the north-south band that you see on the left side, but it's also kind of building density within the core Grota do Cirilo property. On the right side, you see this J-curve, where we're focusing on the expansion of NDC and Mourão, and now with Barreiro. This all goes to building resource density, which allows for scaled mining and mine development, and enables shared infrastructure and mining development, and the end of that, a better NPV on the mining side.
So if we go to the next slide, we can show the same kind of view, but underground. This is the resource package as it looks from a, from a pegmatite structure perspective. You can see as we go from west to east, the assets run parallel, and the density is quite significant. On the left is the Barreiro Extension pegmatite discovery that we've announced as part of today's or yesterday's resource package, and 2024 drill campaigns will highlight and work to extend the connectivity between Barreiro, the blue ore body, and Barreiro Extension. The goal here, again, is to build density. We suspect the extension to Barreiro could add 15-20 million tons to an already 30 million ton resource body at Barreiro specifically. Ana, if you want to progress to the next slide, we can kind of talk about what this looks like.
And look, the NDC Mourão strike is a great example of how this resource density has played out. What was five individual mines have moved now down to two, and increasingly, we have the view that NDC and Mourão are actually one principal pegmatite. So our plan is to spend some capital, further test the resource density here, and bridge on the two ore bodies. But as it stands on this 3.5—3.2 kilometer strike alone, we have 60 million tons of resource. Again, density and synergies in production, and synergies in mining, ultimately will drive lower costs and a more efficient operation as we work to expand the downstream. From there, I'm going to pass it to Iran, who's going to kind of go through the highlights of the 2023 drill campaign.
So-
Iran?
So-
Hello.
So let me-
Hello, everyone
... let me introduce you, Iran. Iran is a co-head of geology and together with Dyonne Hage, who's also on the call without Zoom, 'cause he's, as always, on the field. So Iran, without further ado... Iran, there's an important thing I want to say about Iran. I've been in this company since 2012, first as an investor, and then I took a very senior management role when we went public in 2018. So I've been here for quite some time and running the business as Co-CEO since 2021, so we've been here for years.
Iran was employee number three, so he knows this area for quite some time now, and he grew up with the company, just like all of us, just like all of us in the lithium industry, which is in 2020-2012 was a baby industry. Iran is now co-head of geology. Without further ado, here's Iran.
Thanks, Ana. Hello, everyone. So on this slide, we want to highlight our resource package from the consolidated field. So as you see on the block model at the bottom, each of our resources are concentrated in that yellow and red color. It is 1.5, average 1-2.5% lithium oxide. That it's very consistent across of the, our five ore bodies resource. What that drive is our resource resilience and consistent in terms of grade, tons, volume. As you move through the cut-off grade scenarios at the top, the estimation tons stay quite constant, too. So like our resource, are resilient and consistent. We only lose 15% of our resource at 1% concentration, we lose minimal between 0%-0.5%, cut-off grades.
This is important when you come to the mine, because a consistent resource allow for a consistent feed at the plant DMS. Our grade doesn't vary, so our quality into the plant doesn't vary much either. So that, that, that grade are very, again, resilient and consistent. All our five bars resource that is shown in the bottom of the slide. So when you comes through the next slide, Matthew.
Yeah, and I think the point is, there are no tricks. So no matter what the cut-off grade, you know, we've got the tonnage. So that's the point. This is why we wanted to be transparent and show you there are no tricks here. This is it. Measured and Indicated, 0.25 cut-off, and this is the tonnage. So it's drill to mine, as always. That's what we always do.
Yes. So in 2023 campaign, we are focused to building density along to the NDC real strike, like you saw in the slide. So as you can see by the light in green graph, so we drilled a lot again, and get volume and in ton consistent along the drill campaign. The total estimated resource across this corridor increases 60%, so we increase very much resource inside this corridor, inside the G structure. So, and almost all of this, all of this resources, it's measured, indicated, like Ana said to us, which means we have a lot of confidence on this resource, and that we should move reserve quickly and along up the time.
So all this strike, it means 3.2 kilometers long, and we are only looking 330 meters between the two resources, or the difference between NDC and Mourão. So this structure, it's a quite long structure, 3.2 kilometers, it's quite significant in terms of a new discovery between NDC and other small bodies into the same structure. So Mourão and NDC, it's a huge strike and in dikes in terms of a new discovery pegmatites, very, very, very pegmatites. So our focus for the next campaign is still going through that structural to the east side.
So in the next slide, you can saw the pegmatites still going open to the same structure. So we believe that we can intercept the interconnectivity between those pegmatites in that structure.
That is the key thing here. This geological breakthrough is this structure of approximately 60 million tons that connects phases three and four, and makes this one very large open pit, low cost mine, which can feed our industrial expansions into the future at a very low cost. In other words, we demonstrated the theory that first of all, these mineral resources can be very seamlessly converted into mineral reserves, because they're gonna be incorporated into feasible mining pits validated by feasibility. It's just basically a matter of producing the mine sequencing and the pit shells encompassing these areas, and the same goes for the phase 4 Mourão to the north. So this becomes this one structure, which you typically see in the very large
Yeah
... operating complexes in Australia. This is a 60 million ton structure that you have in front of you.
Next slide.
There you go.
Yeah, yeah. Next slide, we just have the same, the same view, but in 3D, view strike, but we are looking at the wireframe model of the ore bodies. So it's the same, it's the same, it's the same, ore bodies shown in a 3D model that you can see pegmatites in parallel in the same structure. This shows the resource remains open to the east, are very consistent again, the pegmatites are still open in this direction, and as we have said, our future drill campaign can progress along the strike, the pegmatites, that we can improve it in the future for the length of this year, the interconnectivity between Mourão and the north of NDC. And, we expect to discover more pegmatites and parallel structures like we discovered in 2023.
So, that is important because we confirm that the pegmatites is still there in the same structural like we discovered in a few campaigns along the Sigma's life here. So that's important because when you go through the pit, we can talk about a big pit that you can putting together all these pegmatites, and they reduce the cost, goes to the low cost mining when you has these pegmatites in parallel.
Agreed. So now we're moving forward on how do we go from here to 150, which is further delivery on the connectivity of this structure, which is the super pit, that's today is 60 million tons, which is the integration of phase three and four, and then the connectivity of the western body out of Barreiro, that's on this picture. So Dyonne, I'm introducing Dyonne Hage, who, again, a veteran geoscientist of the company. He's been with us for quite some time now, it's three, four years. And Dyonne is... Yeah, he lives in Araçuaí. And so Dyonne, Co-Head of Geology with Iran.
All right, so good afternoon, everybody. Sorry, I think I have problems with my video feed, but, nonetheless. So let's go through this, 2024 target zone, the Barreiro Extension. Look, this pegmatite, it's part of a swarm, that we, we have established up on the western side of our properties. And it was originally mined, artisanally in the upper weathered zone, in the 1950s, just for tin and tantalite. It's only subsequent to our exploration, our surface exploration works, that we established that it was spodumene bearing. And since then, it's been, we have done some reconnaissance drilling on it, and we have started resource drilling. Thus far, we've done four diamond holes into it, and we are busy with the fifth and sixth as we speak.
So this pegmatite unit, we actually call it the Paduca Pegmatite. It's part of the Barreiro Western Extension. It's about 500 meters west of the Barreiro outcrop and located some 200 meters stratigraphically below Barreiro. We are busy drilling it down dip and getting it closer and closer to Barreiro. So currently, that's our plan. We are investigating this extension of the Barreiro pit, and to build confidence that they will be interconnected. So to date, our pegmatite, the pegmatite that we have drilled has varied from 10-20 meters thick, and it's dipping eastwards towards Barreiro at a shallow angle of about 35 degrees. The highlights, it's very well mineralized, I'll say that much.
For example, the first hole that we drilled gave us 1.8 meters lithium oxide over 14.5 meters, and the second hole was 1.86% lithium oxide over 11 meters. As I said, the width varies from 10-20 meters so far, so it's quite a significant volume of pegmatite. What is remarkable about this pegmatite that we're investigating is the very high spodumene content. It's running at about 90% spodumene. So much of these lithium oxide results that we're reporting can be attributed to spodumene, with only a 10% contribution by other lithium phases, excluding petalite, and mostly amblygonite and zinnwaldite, lepidolite. There's obviously also all minerals present, tin, tantalite.
The spodumene is coarse to very coarse, from 5 mm to 40 mm diameters, with the 5 mm- 20-mm diameter dominant. Could we go on to the next slide? Okay, so this is phase five. This is a very exciting recent discovery. It's located some 4 km southeast of the phase two to four core. And so far it's been fabulous. There's a cluster of four known spodumene-bearing pegmatites. And we have only investigated really one of them, and as you can see in this diagram, the second one we just represent as a drill intersection, and one very good intersection. So lots of work is yet to be done in this area.
So, of this first pegmatite that you can see we have modeled, it's about 600 meters long. We have mapped on surface and down depth it still continues and will continue to be drilled. As you can see, they're also subvertical, or they're dipping slightly to the south. Highlights of the, we drilled eight holes in the northern body, that main body we've modeled, and only drilled two holes to the south of what one which did a good intersection. Highlights are 1.8% lithium oxide over 20 meters, 1.5 over 15 meters, 1.4 over 20 meters. So this is well mineralized.
Its mineralogy is more typical of the phase two to phase four deposits, insomuch that the deportment is 75% spodumene, 25% to other lithium phases. Similarly, the crystal sizes are very similar to phase two and four in that they're the 5 mm-20 mm diameter sizes, which is still considered coarse. Potentially, this cluster, this dark swarm that we have, it potentially can contribute 20 million tons to the resource, excluding the extension eastwards across the Piauí River. We have mapped it on surface on the other side of the river, but that's still work to be done in the next field season. Thank you.
So, I think now we can take some of these questions, and, let me go back to a question from Prasad here, and it's a very key question on geology. Hold on a second. Let me go back to... Okay, here we go. So, if we find ore in this—when and if we find ore in this 330-meter area between, phase three and four, whether it doesn't make sense to combine phase three and four, and then develop phase two for now. That's exactly what the plan is. So phase three and four is a combination super pit, which is when you actually deep dive into the Greenbushes and the Pilbaras of the world, that's what these structures are, right?
So we, we have here at Sigma, always focused on getting to revenues and getting to cash flow, and getting to, you know, financial results, and it proved, it's proven to be the perfect strategy. Look, I mean, we just managed to capture the tail end of a super cycle with revenue, so we, we, we, we delivered within the tail end of the super cycle, hence the rush. But then we never stopped working on getting to scale to validate our further plan. So that's exactly the plan. Three and four are actually a super pit. What we're trying to work on is how we're gonna section it into the pit shells that need to be created for that super pit. And so there are a few missing links on geology that we're getting there.
330 meters is nothing, as you all know. For now, this ore body here fits, and it'll become mineral reserve pretty seamlessly, fits into an existing feasible pit of Phase three, called NDC. The question is, can we actually incorporate this northern block, which was Mourão, into this one super pit as well or not? But that's exactly the point. Then Dyonne's point, it's exactly the same. I mean, if you look at the bottom, if you look at underground, it becomes clearer, the same as overground. You know, as we keep on filling in the target zones, I mean, it's one pit. So that's the goal, is the seamless integration of the resource into... These are all open pit reserves, feasible.
So that's the geology goal, is targeted to incorporate as much of this resource into reserve as possible, given the low-cost open pit mining method that we're going to use to feed this current lithium, you know, concentrate beneficiation complex we're building in the region. I think related to geology, and I wanna take a compliment we just got here, that we've been crushing it as a company. Yeah, we've been crushing. We've been crushing literally. ... like we push a lot of material regularly, and, and, and, and again, we never stop working. I think, one point we ought to say, we work hard on what we can control. So almost a year ago, we were put at play, and we were a very different business. We were commissioning a crusher, and so I'm using the analogy.
We're now the world's fourth lithium industrial mining in operation, beneficiation complex in the world. That's what we control. So we haven't stopped delivering in the aspects of our business that we control, which is execution, execution, execution. We've never missed a beat. And given that this is a commodity, and this is cyclical, and lithium is rare, the focus is to do this low cost, competitive, and in our case, green. Even though by being green, we don't get paid, but we build a sizable competitive advantage. So, I think we close the questions on... Oh, okay, there are a few more questions. With sufficient resource for the expansion—That's Joel. Thank you, Joel. For the expansion, with respect to present day's market cap compared to the increased resource in our view of average price. Another tank, an investor.
Well, I mean, we control what we control, right? What we do is deliver on fundamental strategic value, because that becomes NPV, that becomes resilience and value to investors. And when you think about this industry, it's... I mean, I've been here 12 years, right? And it's interesting because in the insights, it's all perfect, but it's very hard to make decisions, such as the decisions we're making now in moments like this, which is, we're continuing to deliver, we're continuing to expand, to execute. So we do one by one with discipline, with financial discipline, but we have to do it one by one with discipline, with financial discipline.
Because in 2020, which is just three years ago, the concentrate prices hit $450 a ton, and we were initiating detailed engineering, and four companies had gone bankrupt, and there was a rescue package put together for a big player in Australia, and we were at a crossroads. Do we go? Do we stop? What do we do? And we accelerated it, and we accelerated putting phases two and three on feasibility, and this is why we are where we are today. So answering part of the market cap answer, if you guys look at our market cap in December 2020 and look at where we are today, I mean, it's taking the long view that you win in this industry, and we've seen it over and over again. 2030 in basic materials and basic industries and mining is today. Nothing new will appear in 2030.
The leaders of 2030 are going to emerge from this crowd, and so what we are working hard to do is to stay in this group of super leaders, now, proudly joining the Australian contingent of super companies. So that is the focus, and it means we can't stop. Now, it's a financially responsible decision because we are low-cost producers. Matt, do you wanna add to that?
I would say, look, the company has made decisions in the past about expanding when it was difficult, and what happens is you're in a better position when the cycle turns. The other side of that is, look, the company is a growth company. To drive value over time, both for ourselves and potential strategic parties, we have to deliver on that. I would say, I mean, the value proposition we bring as a company is that of a bigger co- of a bigger asset base. And then scale also then drives costs down for whoever, you know, ends up owning and developing the mine over time, 'cause you can leverage things like SG&A. The corporate structure does not need to get bigger as the footprint gets bigger, and that's how you ultimately become a more competitively advantaged producer. So yeah-
Exactly, exactly. And more importantly, the infrastructure doesn't have to get bigger as the company gets bigger. This is a big point, meaning our phase one cost $134 million total. We published that in our last quarter. Our phases two and three, these are lines that do not need to rebuild a substation, a water treatment plant. So there's about $34 million of CapEx here that can be saved and shared. So roughly, I'm giving you guys rough numbers, right? So there's scale on fixed costs on infrastructure that had to be put together when we built 1 sq km industrial complex to process one mine only. Now we're going for two, and then as Prasad mentioned, three, four. So we have enormous strategic flexibility, and the reason why I talked about intermediates, because the cost advantage of intermediates is that in, is in integration.
That business is a business unless you're fully integrated into your own mines, and integrated into your own low-cost mines. And if you wanna be in the 21st century and deliver to the leaders of the industry, to the top sellers of electric vehicles, who are delivering to very discerning consumers, especially in the West, they don't want dirty brown lithium into their green cars. It's coherence, it goes into the entire consumer industry. And car is a consumer durable, it goes through the same consumer-driven top process. And it's happened across the board. So what we're doing is delivering without missing a beat. There's not one thing we have promised and not delivered that's within our control, from an execution and management standpoint. So there's another question I'd like to take. Joel, sorry, that's your question.
With sufficient resource for expansions, what's the plan, even at $1,000 spodumene to fund expansions? When should we now expect feasibility for phases two and three?" That's a great question. We passed feasibility a while ago. We've been doing detailed engineering for quite some time. We spent quite a lot on detailed engineering just throughout 2023. What we're going to do is what we always do, and that's the reason why we never fail on timing and CapEx. We're gonna deliver what we call FEL3, fully quoted CapEx, which gives us control of our timetable and control of our costs.
So there's no surprises, given the feasibility comes out of a data bank of a QP, when FEL3 quoted comes out of quotes or pre-purchased or pre-deposit arrangements made with suppliers, is, is exactly the same, well, successful path we followed, when we built phase one, which is how the majors, the global major companies built it. So now that's the plan. We're going to announce phase two, and the... And again, we wanted to order this cohesively, meaning show the behemoth of a mineral resource we've got to back up these expansions. Because one of the pushbacks we used to get on phases two and three, it was the reduction of project life. "Well, your operations then go from 25, 30 years to 13." Well, no longer, and that's the conversation here.
Now we got this, you know, J-shaped corridor to back up, you know, the expansions that we decide to do, and that's what we wanted to show you. We got this. It's a J, it's all ours, it's there, it's Australian scale, so we can go two and three, and we got that backup. And I think that's another important point as far as funding. There's no shortage of funding for low-cost, resilient, industrial, critical minerals projects in the world. In fact, that's never been an issue, and it's that financing, and is low-cost financing, because it's a resilient business. I mean, it's a very different situation than 2019, 2021, when the very proposition of EV uptake was questioned. And I think all of you veterans will remember when we in 2020, we had to make those decisions.
I mean, the total global amount of EVs in the world was 2.8 million cars, global. Today, China alone is doing 1 million EVs a month. That was just three years ago. So this just shows that cheap debt capital, not an issue. However, a business needs to be low cost and resilient, and that's something that's gotten forgotten during the boom. Nothing grows to the skies. You need to be low cost, you need to be resilient. In our case, we happen to be close to net zero, which nobody is, and it's free. So that's a tremendous competitive advantage on top of being low cost and having scale.
I think from there, we're at the top of the hour. I know there was a lot of questions about the strategic review. Look, from the perspective-
Oh, this Katie, this Katie's question.
Oh.
Katie Russell, Katie's question, the funding strategy. Yeah, funding strategy is development funding. I mean, it's long-term, low-cost development funding, bridged by commercial funding, because these are... This is funding backing up industrial expansion. In fact, today I'm announcing here. I'm having the honor of sitting in the office, in the chair of the president of Brazil's branch of ICMM, because in the last two days, we've visited authorities and the leaders of our country, who are incredibly proud of what we just laid. Because we literally put Brazil on the map, competing with the best and brightest. Like, we're now Australian scale, and we're green, and we're low cost. So we literally inserted Brazil into a global supply chain for the world that we were not on.
Yes, the strategy is low cost sovereign debt. And that's kind of how the industrial park of this country was built.
Okay, so I guess from there, like, the strategic review, I don't know if you want to make any specific comments, but look-
No, we can't.
Yeah.
We can't.
It remains ongoing.
We're going to make comments about what we control. I think what we've shown here is the fundamental importance and the fundamental value of Sigma. If you look at this chart, it's the only large player that's owned by one company, controlled by financial sponsors. Resilient, with a very long operating life, and fit for this new generation of electric vehicles, especially with the discerning Western consumers and consumers in China and all over the world, who now think through what kind of materials go into their vehicles. It's green materials for green vehicles.
All right. With that, we'll bring it to a close. I'm around as well for any questions or any follow-up anybody might have. You know, thank you for joining us today.
Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining, and I apologize for the restrictions, but we really wanted to give you this update call. We're very bound and constrained about what we can say and when we can say, so we hope we've been able to just make you as enthusiastic as we are about this phenomenal, phenomenal demonstration of these that we were able to achieve with the 2023 drilling campaign. This is accountability to you, investors, of how well we used your funding and how well we used our cash flow. We literally placed ourselves as the fourth largest industrial mining complex in the world. This is sustainable, permanent, competitive advantage.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.