FREYR Battery (NYSE:FREY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tom Einar Jensen: Yes. So, maybe I’m going to hand that over to Jeremy, who is also on the call to talk a little bit in more nuance around the different options that we’re looking into for a fast-track Giga America development. Jeremy?

Jeremy Bezdek: Thanks, Tom, and thanks for the question. Yes, I mean, I will put it this way, the team, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, is really on a sprint pace to figure out over the next four to six weeks the best options that we have in place. Tom mentioned a couple of those in his answer to the last question, which could involve maybe a couple of early initial lines that could move fast. We’ve got a couple of different options around the land that we have acquired that we’re evaluating as well. And so, it’s not overly defined yet, but it will be over the next four to six weeks as we narrow it on, quite frankly, bringing into production — the start of production timeline from 2026, which we had talked about previously into 2025, the team is hard at work, and it’s sort of — this is a bit of we’re announcing an acceleration approach and we’ll be coming back with the actual plan here over the, like I said, in a very short period of time.

So I wish I had more to describe at this point, but it’s quite frankly, it’s something that is evolving very rapidly with the team right now.

Tom Einar Jensen: Let me just complement a bit. As part of that, Alex, we’re also looking into the financing of these different options as well, which, of course, is a function of the partnership based discussions on strategic industrial and financial side up against whatever option we are evaluating. But I think you are sort of directionally quite astute when you’re asking the question. We’re obviously thinking in the same lines how fast can we get real production up and running and what is the kind of path of least resistance in that, it’s clearly something we’re evaluating. So stay tuned for more updates on this. The main message is, we’re moving as fast as we can to capture the IRA benefits as quickly as we can. And now, that we’re starting to produce batteries in the CQP we have a different kind of platform from which to accelerate.

Alex Rabell: Got it. And I appreciate the color here. Just on the Giga Arctic piece, I’m just, like I said a housekeeping point, when we look at the capital spend back out, I guess, the land spend for Georgia, it seems pretty similar to Q3. So, curious if that’s sort of a ratable run rate you to think about here as far as what you’re willing to allocate currently on Giga Arctic? And then, curious if you could expand a little bit of as far as this European IRA piece what do you think that might look like as far as a response and sort of what keeps you confident on the parallel investment method that you’re sort of laying out here? Thanks.

Tom Einar Jensen: So Oscar, I’m going to ask you to answer the first part of the question, and then I’ll weigh in on the IRA or the localized IRA response in Europe.

Oscar Brown: Sure, yes. So it’s not a bad run rate in the third — in the fourth quarter. I think we’ll be a little bit under that. In the first few quarters here, we made a lot of progress on the building and, of course, watching what’s going to happen in response to the back half of this question in terms of Norway on the IRA might change your sort of view on how fast we could move and want to move on CapEx. But our plan is to sort of within any moment of our available cash to make sure we’ve got enough to cover some progress on all these projects. We have to finish out the CQP. Giga America going and then continued progress on Giga Arctic. And then, still have a run rate — a runway of a couple of years of cash as a safety buffer for overall burn rate. So we’re not giving out a specific guidance, but we’re sort of in line with the board approvals that you’ve heard about from previous quarters. Tom?