Syrah Resources Limited (SYR) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Cyber Resources Q4 quarterly report update. All participants are in a listen-only mode. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Sean Verner, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead. Thank you for joining the call. With me this morning are Stephen Wells, our Chief Financial Officer, and Viren Heera, our GM of Business Development and Investor Relations. We'll reference some of the slides released along with the report on today's call. The final quarter of 2024 saw both continuing EV industry growth but significant uncertainties ahead of the global lithium-ion battery, anode material and graphite markets. Chinese dominance of sales growth and EV penetration continues, but policy and commercial uncertainty in the major ex-China markets of the US and Europe is evident, as measures being taken by both manufacturers and governments have major implications for the evolution of the industry. The global markets for EVs and their input cell and processed material components are being buffeted by a series of high-impact policy decisions, and commercial positioning across China, the US and the EU. Syrah's operating position was severely challenged in the final quarter, with Balama impacted by ongoing process disruption and the Mozambique national election impacts, and Vidalia making progress towards qualification but still incurring costs awaiting the completion of qualification processes and commercial sales. Continued negative working capital was therefore evident. At the same time however, major progress on funding support was achieved with the disbursement under the DFC loan and ongoing interaction wit...