How much further can margins improve as production scales?

Yeah, we had a really good, a little lucky first half of the year for Iathena, which resulted in adjusted EBITDA more than doubling.

One of the reasons is that it's what you just mentioned.

We really worked on our cost per kilo of our production.

A few factors went into that.

First of all, we had a milder winter.

That's something we don't necessarily can control, but we'll take advantage of it every time.

How important is this plant to the next phase of growth?

Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you very much.

Hope everybody's doing well today.

Happy to present an update on iAthena, especially focusing on the first half year results, which came out earlier this week and really an outlook for the future, which we're very excited about.

go through what um what we're going to be looking at um from the presentation standpoint here as a general agenda just talk about the company in in quick terms i think most of the people that are listening to this call are familiar with iofina but there may be some that are not so we'll give a quick overview of what iofina is and what we do and the market that we're mainly in and that is the iodine market so we're um give a little bit of history of of of the supply and demand and pricing of iodine and also what kind of markets that iodine is going into and how those markets are growing and then we'll get into what we kind of did in the first half of this year both from a business standpoint and a financial standpoint and then we'll get into what I think is you know and then those first half of the year numbers I think We're very excited about and proud of what we're able to accomplish in the first half of the year.

And then we'll get into what I think is even the more exciting aspect of it.

And that's our our pathway to 2000, our growth of our item production that we were planning to roll out.

I'm pleased with that.

How quickly will that additional iodine production come through?

Yeah, Stephen.

So we're, uh, we're processing water today, and this is a, uh, project that's, uh, we've been working on for a while.

But once we got inked, uh, actually things moved pretty rapidly.

So what this is, is we, we brought IO#11 online, um, a- about a little over a year ago.

And, um, it, it was with a partner that we had already had, uh, previous, uh, iodine production with.

Um, this particular project is with a new partner, uh, who has brine water in that area, and we partnered with them to, uh, construct a pipeline to bring brine water to IO#11.

I mean, does the success at IO#11 give you confidence to accelerate the rollouts of further plants?

So IO12 due to start production this quarter, how important is that plant to Iofina's next phase of growth, Tom?

Yeah, so as we've stated, our goals of continuing to expand our production, IO12 is a big factor in that.

It's our first plant in the Permian Basin, which is the largest producing oil field in the world.

This plant we anticipate to be open sometime late in the third quarter.

producing somewhere between 170 and 220 metric tons.

So when we look at the big picture of our operations, this is just the next phase of our growth.

It's a little bit larger plant than what we've seen in Oklahoma.

What needs to happen to reach that target?

But how has the conversation shifted from that period to where we are now?

I think the same dynamics that Helen just mentioned, supply and demand not being in balance, those are still the case today.

If we roll the clock back a little bit to the pandemic and the initial reemergence of inflation, back in 2021, inflation wasn't on anyone's radar.

Oscar, you and I talked about having an inflation piece and you said there's no bid for this.

We're worried about the pandemic.

We're worried about lockdowns.

No one's interested in inflation and it's low.

What does this mean for fixed income and for multi-asset portfolios when you think about the inflation backdrop?

And so people may be wondering how that's going to affect things, but tell me a bit about, about the other one and whether or not this timeline is going to be a, uh, any effect on the other one.

Yeah.

So I'll start with that first is so, um, you know, we're building a larger plant in the Permian basis and our first one in that particular region.

So it will be our third core region of iodine production in the United States.

That plant has been under construction for basically all of 2026.

This particular project that we announced today won't affect the timeline of that.

These are two independent properties.

And just really quickly, as we wrap up here, the supply and the need for it, can you sort of talk to some people understand that, that this is something that that is going to be very beneficial to folks in the US?