Promon will be there. That’s the Brazilian company that’s done a marvelous job, marvelous job in managing over 1,000 people we had on site during construction. So they’re the experts of executing on the ground. And then we’ll pair them up with an engineering company, which will drive equipment procurement. I mean equipment procurement can be basically concentrated in different parts of the world, depending on the strategic potential acquirer, counterparty of Sigma. And we’ll do this together. We’ll be here helping the next guardian of Sigma to succeed. That’s what we want. The success of the next guardian is the success of Brazil.
Joel Jackson: Just following up on that, and then I’ll pass over the baton. But as you talk about the strategic review and you’re talking about words like guardian, counterparty, a lot of broad different terms there, how – maybe you can give us a sense of sort of how has the process gone, the range of bids, the range of kind of plans or proposals? And how are you managing this in an environment of, okay, yes, lower lithium prices, but it’s a commodity, things go up and down, people can now handle that? How do you manage it in a time of clearly lower lithium multiples in the industry across the year?
Ana Cabral Gardner: Look, this screen is not a benchmark for a strategic buyer. I mean it’s sort of they don’t think quarters, you don’t build a resilient business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. I’ll give you an example. When it gets to 2028, it isn’t like someone is going to appear two quarters earlier and say, oh, now I need to figure this out. I mean these discussions are happening now. Battery test for Euro 2026 is a reality, and it affects battery makers all over the world. Batteries made in China – cells made in China, cells made in Japan, cells made in South Korea, cells made everywhere are affected by it. So there’s going to be a lot of lithium needed into the materialization of the plan of some of these giga factories that have been announced and are being built all over or are operating right now.
I mean, so ultimately, it’s 2024, practically speaking. So the plans for the remainder of this decade, which is a decade of lithium, are happening as we speak. And I mean, I’ll give you an example. CATL announced this year in the Shanghai Auto Show that they’re going to deliver the zero-carbon battery. They will be zero carbon in ’25, zero-carbon battery comes in 2035. That just shows that this is a global concern. It isn’t something that just affects the Western because as you all know, CATL supplies the world. So this is a global conversation. And what is Sigma? And just – let’s leave commodity cycle aside for a moment because, again, we demonstrated that we’ll thrive, no matter what, right? Sigma is a company that has a clean shareholder registry.
There’s not a single strategic year. It’s basically financial investors with a financial sponsor, so we can deliver a transaction without the interloping that’s been plaguing recent strategic movement. Two, we have an encumbered, sizable thousands – hundreds of thousands of units, which means we are easily integratable for massive top line M&A synergies. So we are almost like the perfect target. And we are in a country that is extremely welcoming to mining. The population wants it. We actually managed to demonstrate that there’s a new model for the industry of mining processing to be followed in terms of lifting the people and sharing prosperity and not being less profitable. I mean, come on, we posted a profit, right? So I think we represent quite a lot for the industry.
So this is just a long way to say that the process is going incredibly well. And I can’t say much more, given sort of the imminence of it, right? The release is very self-containing.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We have a question over the webcast from [ Marcelo ] at Everest Capital. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations for the results. Does the company expect EBITDA margins and net margin to improve over the next few quarters? Does the company expect net margin to reach 75%, as reported in institutional presentations?
Ana Cabral Gardner: We do. We do. And I think it’s part of the process of leaving this period of commissioning. You can tell by the bridge of EBITDA we posted on the institutional presentation on our website, the further we move, the less clouded by nonrecurring items our financials become. So we will become more streamlined and more clear the ability to deliver superior margins. Obviously, that we need to – we’re now showing simulations against a price backdrop that has gone down, and that obviously affects our margins, right? So when you – we were not running in so many at $1,500 per tonne of Triple Zero lithium concentrate. We are achieving right now 1,800, 1,900, this was the price for shipment calculation using the formula on spot hydroxide of 23,000.
But again, what we are trying to show is that we are profitable – structurally profitable because our cost is so low. We’re well below the marginal cost required for the industry to meet the supply expectations of demand. Even when you look at softer demand backdrop, even when you look at what we call the full bear cave, we’re always going to be here. We’re going to make more profit, less profit, it’s a commodity after all. But we are resilient to cycles, and that’s what makes Sigma very special, a fundamental asset, fundamental company here. We’re here, no matter what. So we are the super major in volume that has managed to keep costs very low. And I think connects to the previous question. Going forward, as we expand, our cost will go down because the G&A is a bit of what happens to Taliesin.
