Hello everyone and welcome to the FREYR second quarter earnings conference call. My name is Harry and I’ll be your operator today. If you’d like to ask a question after the presentation, you may do so by pressing star, one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand over to your host, Jeff Spittel, Vice President of Investor Relations to begin. Jeff, please go ahead.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to FREYR Battery’s second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me today on the call from Oslo are Tom Einar Jensen, our Chief Executive Officer and income Executive Chair; Jan Arve Haugan, our Chief Operating Officer; Oscar Brown, our Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Bezdek, President of FREYR Battery U.S. and EVP of Global Corporate Development; and Birgir Steen, our incoming CEO and Board member. During today’s call, management may make forward-looking statements about our business. These forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Most of these factors are outside FREYR’s control and are difficult to predict. Additional information about risk factors that could materially affect our business are available on FREYR’s S-1 and annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you Jeff, and good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone joining today’s call for our second quarter results presentation 2023, and our ninth overall quarterly presentation since we went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2021. It is a privilege for us to provide an update on results for the second quarter along with our outlook for the business. Following our recent capital markets day in late June, our teams have continued to work tirelessly to advance several important initiatives. But before we get down to the business at hand, I am extremely delighted to announce that we have strengthened our organization materially with the addition our new Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Birgir Steen, who is with us today here in Oslo on the call. Birgir brings more than 30 years of leadership experience at some of the world’s most admired companies, including Microsoft and McKinsey & Company. He also has deep expertise in the technology sector and we’ll elaborate on how that dovetails so well with FREYR’s strategy in a moment. In conjunction with Birgir’s appointment, I will be assuming a new role as Executive Chair of FREYR’s Board of Directors. With the day-to-day management of the business in such capable hands, these changes free up much of my time to focus on key initiatives that are critical to our long term success and the creation of shareholder value. Going forward, I will be concentrating on three key areas: global corporate development with our customers and strategic partners, large scale capital formation, and engagement with the investment community and our other capital providers. Our ability to attract a talented and highly respected executive such as Birgir to strengthen our team is a testament to the progress FREYR has made as an organization, and…

First of all, thank you for the opportunity to join this fantastic mission that you and the FREYR team started in 2018. FREYR is participating building a new global industry based on knowledge and resources which have been developed in Norway for more than a century, and you’re advancing the state-of-the-art battery production to help make efficient and affordable electricity storage ubiquitous, ultimately enabling us to eliminate unsustainable legacy energy systems. Moreover, something I find really inspiring is that we’re building this in Europe and the Americas to ensure access to both key technologies and end products in required volumes in all geographies for the foreseeable future. I’m super-excited to get going at the end of August to meet the 400-plus FREYR team members, our customers, our partners and investors, and so hoping to meet many of those of you on this call in a more interactive setting in the next few weeks. With that, I’m super excited about this opportunity, Tom, and I look forward to partnering with you to develop FREYR going forward.

Thank you very much, Birgir. It’s a pleasure to have you here. We are delighted to welcome you to FREYR’s team and I’m already looking forward to working together and already seeing benefits of this relationship. With Birgir’s appointment, I will furthermore be stepping up to a new role as Chair of FREYR’s Board. As many of you know, I am passionate about building FREYR’s business and I’m very excited to be able to devote more of my time to capital formation, strategic corporate development efforts, while engaging frequently with our investors and the broader investment community, so although I’ll be taking on a new role, I look forward to continuing to interact with you all. The ramp-up at the CQP continues to progress according to plan. Having announced that we have assembled and successfully charged our first battery cells before the capital markets day in late June, our progress in the ensuing weeks has included the completion of additional production line equipment, commissioning packages, testing of our automated mechanical processes using solvent slurry, and the commencement of testing program for Nidec. As we look ahead to the second half of 2023 and beyond, we remain on track to achieve key milestones that include the start-up of fully automated production and we expect to gradually improve yields, up time and cell performance characteristics along the way. In a moment, Jan Arve will detail all the good work his teams at the CQP have been doing. We continue to be encouraged by building governmental support for Giga Arctic. On July 17, we announced the €100 million grant for Giga Arctic from the EU’s Innovation Fund. The grant will be funded over time in concert with our capital expenditures on the project. We are greatly appreciative and encouraged that the EU Innovation…

Thanks a lot Tom, and hello again to all of you listening on this earnings call. I am now going to share with you some of the latest updates from our operations. As a regular and recurring topic, safety first. I am glad that I can say that we have had a quarter without any reported serious safety incidents. The high potential incidents that we had in previous quarter have been analyzed and corrective measures have been implemented. During the summer period, we have gotten improved reporting of unwanted incidents and we used these data in order to implement precautions and focus on high risk operations, both in the CQP and the Giga Arctic site. We are currently close to 140 people working at our two sites in Mo i Rana during the last quarter, approximately 60 at the customer qualification plant and an average of 80 at the construction site at Giga Arctic over the summer. As the outfitting on Giga Arctic buildings are now ramping up, we are expecting the construction manning to increase to approximately 100 persons. The workforce at the CQP is going to be the same while increasingly being spread into a two-shift pattern and even night shift on critical activities. FREYR’s operational group comprises today nearly 50 individuals in Mo i Rana, representing 16 nationalities. I want to follow up on previous earnings call and be open and transparent on what issues we are working on and repeat that we are not immune to problems when we connect the bits and pieces of the machines that are delivered by the suppliers. Let me remind you that we have had deliveries of 16 different global suppliers. During the quarter, we have performed site acceptance tests for most of the deliveries and we now fine tune…

Thanks Jan Arve. We are excited about the accelerating development of the project and our teams’ continued efforts towards making the business plan a reality. We are actively involved in project design, front end engineering, site preparation, plot planning, permitting, and utility contracts, as well as other additional project-related activities. We’re also working with our production line equipment vendor on planning and timing for the two-line fast track equipment, which remains the long lead item to the start of production. Each of these work streams, of course, will benefit from the closing of the current fundraising process in which we are engaged. As we have previously discussed, we kicked off the process with strategic partners in the spring and with financial sponsors over the summer. Over the last several weeks, we have been conducting investor presentations, engaging in due diligence calls and Q&A, with a significant number of counterparties. We have strong support from our strategic partners as not only part of the potential investor group but also via commercial agreements for the Giga America business. Both of those areas of participation by our strategic partners are not only valuable to FREYR but accretive to the desires of the financial sponsors as well. The feedback we have received from potential investors has been constructive and leads us to believe that the closing of the transaction in the early part of the fourth quarter is realistic. That timing will allow us to provide key demonstration metrics from the customer qualification plant, appropriate time for investors to complete due diligence, negotiate definitive agreements, and finalize the commercial agreements related to the business. We remain confident that the project-level equity funding can occur for the U.S. fast-track project and we will continue to provide updates on the fundraising process as we move forward and we build the book. It is exciting to know that we’re building the pure play energy storage-focused battery cell production facility in the United States based on U.S. technology and that the project will provide significant returns for our investors. Over to you, Oscar.

Thank you Jeremy. Building on Jeremy’s Giga America update, I would like to remind everyone of FREYR’s meaningful exposure to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which is detailed on Slide 11. The most impactful section of this act for FREYR is 45X. It is quite simple and straightforward - raw material can come from anywhere, batteries and modules must be produced in the U.S., products can be sold anywhere, and [indiscernible] production tax credits. Based on Giga America’s planned nameplate capacity and operating plan after full ramp-up, FREYR will generate more $1.4 billion per year of incremental cash flow than it would without these tax credits. This is an important feature of Giga America that is attracting capital to the project as well as over $400 million of state and local support for the project in the form of tax abatements and grants in Georgia. We’ve received already $20 million of these grants in the first half of 2023. We provide more details around our announcement to re-domicile from Luxembourg to the United States. This move dramatically expands our opportunity for equity index inclusion. Today, only an estimated 3% of our shares are held by index funds compared with a peer group average of well over 20%. Re-domiciling has the potential to drive incremental volumes of up to 45% of our current market capitalization if we were held by all the index funds we would then qualify for, as well as associated actively managed funds who benchmark against those indices. Moving our domicile to the U.S. has also the added benefit of aligning FREYR with the country that has offered highest incentives for battery manufacturing in the world, as well as the world’s largest market for our products. The U.S. has well understood corporate governance and disclosure requirements and we…

Thank you Oscar. I’m sure that many of you have read the recent prognosis by certain institutions about a potential over-supply of Chinese LFD capacity spilling over from the EV markets into the ESS space in Europe. A cell is not as fungible as you might have been led to believe. EV capacity, which is still dominated by NMC chemistries, is evolving into fit-for-purpose products and form factors, most of which are cost prohibitive for storage customers and unsuitable for their longer duration use cases in ESS markets. ESS markets have shown the LFP as the preferred solution, and many customers are increasingly interested in packaged product solutions with which EV offerings are not competitive. To fully grasp the dynamics in the ESS space, it is important to begin with the understanding that the battery market is becoming increasingly specialized and populated with product offerings that are tailor-made for specific applications. Our sales organization, led by our EVP Gery Bonduelle, who many of you met at our capital markets day in New York in June, includes a dedicated ESS team that we have hired away from Tesla, and they are the best at what they do and they have their fingers on the pulse of the market, and they are simply seeing evidence of a building over-supply coming to the markets in which we focus. On the contrary, the evidence that we are seeing in the real world is that the deep market short in the ESS space is likely to persist and maybe even widen. Our view of the market is informed by our ongoing dialogues with our customers, intensive market research from our in-house team, and our external research partners at Rystad Energy. In short, we are firm believers in a deep market short on the horizon. Remember…

Thanks Tom. Operator, we’re ready to take questions.

Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question today is from the line of Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Adam, your line is now open.

Hey, thanks everybody. I’ve got a question for Oscar and then one for Jeremy. Oscar, the cash usage, it’s tricky because there seems to be some corridors of your cash consumption based on Norway’s response to the IRA and other milestones. It makes it very, very tricky for analysts and investors to kind of think about the consumption of cash. I understand it’s hard to be precise, but if I could begin with 2Q as just a base of the $90 million or so, or high 80s million cash run rate, can I just ask you to just give us even some corridors of how to think about the next three months or second half of the year? I realize the outcomes are variable, but I’m just going to give you another shot to just help give us some guideposts, and then I’ve got a follow-up. Thanks.

Thanks Adam, good morning. Here’s how I’d guide you. Our spending, our total cash spending for the company should be similar in the second half as the first half - let’s star there, and so that will leave us with cash balances to cover our overhead for the next couple of years, so we’ll have a long runway in that case. Any significant new capex, for example on accelerating Giga Arctic, Giga America and so forth, will be funding dependent, so we have processes ongoing there, as you know, for that. Then when you think about second half cash spending, the mix will be a little bit different, so capital expenditures on Giga Arctic will be a little bit lower than the first half. Spending at Giga America will be higher. Not all of that will be capitalized yet - we may start capitalizing some of that late in the third quarter or so, and then you have a little more spending to don on the CQP and some working capital related to the operations of the CQP, so the mix will be a little bit--so that will be similar, but the point being from what’s authorized already, so in that sort of second half spending, anything incremental will be tied to Giga America project-level equity raise or some additional clarity on the capital plan related to Norway [indiscernible] response. Does that help?

It does help, Oscar, and it sets me up for a question for Jeremy. What are those most important demonstration milestones for CQP that will trigger Giga Arctic project finance consideration and funding, and also for America? I think both are relevant, but just to remind us among the many milestones, which are the ones that are most deterministic and consequential? Thanks.

You bet, Adam. Thanks and good morning. Oscar, why you don’t address Giga Arctic first, and then I’ll address Giga America? How about that?

Sure, so our most challenging [indiscernible] effort and milestone is project financing, as you know, and what we have begun to work with the DOE on, as well as [indiscernible], is going to be very similar, so the milestones are going to be very similar for some of the debt side related, and those are producing--first of all, production of batteries, which we are doing now, then it’s production of testable batteries, which indeed we’re working through now and is happening, then it’s the successful test and acceptance of the batteries by customers is really, really important, and then over time it’s the operational performance and the technical performance of the CQP to validate the design plan and the operations that we’ll have, in this case in Giga Arctic. It’s very similar for Giga America, but what we’re seeing is those milestones should be achieved through the end of the year.

Yes, and I would add on that, Adam, that we’ve been--Oscar and I have been tag-teaming investor presentations now the last several weeks related to the Giga America process, and specific feedback from investors has been very similar to what Oscar just said, which was make batteries, get them tested, get them validated, prove the 24m technology can work at scale, and you’re de-risked the investment opportunity for Giga America. Investors are sharp - they understand that and they are wanting to see that demonstration to really unlock the investment opportunity for the Georgia site.

Appreciate that, Jeremy, and just to slip one last one in on that second, how many cells have been delivered to Nidec, if you’re willing to share that, to date?

Adam, good morning, this is Tom. When we entered into the long term sales agreement with Nidec last year, this was based on low double-digit number of cells that were tested at an external facility. We are now in the process of, first, producing a similar number of cells, unit cells I should say, at the CQP, which will be tested at the CQP, and then we will produce more cells than that and send to the same external testing lab that was used when they tested the 20 gram produced cells in Cambridge. We’re talking about multiple double-digit cells that will be tested, which is well within the production plan that we have in front of us in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks Tom, and congrats.

Thanks AJ.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you’d like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your cell phone keypad now. That’s star, one for any further questions. It appears we have no further questions in the queue for today, so it’d be my pleasure to hand back to Jeff Spittel for any closing remarks.

Thanks Harry. Appreciate everybody devoting some time - I know it’s a very busy morning with a number of our peers out with prints as well as us this morning, so thanks for your participation, and please don’t hesitate to follow up with calls today and tomorrow. We look forward to seeing you all on the road - we’ve got a very busy marketing calendar as we enter August and into September. Thanks again. That will conclude the call.