Aqua Metals, Inc., which is reinventing metals recycling with its AquaRefining™ technology, announced financial results and provided a business update for the fourth quarter and full-year period ended December 31, 2022.
Recent Highlights:
- Aqua Metals ended the year with $7.1 million in cash and $10.9 million in working capital. Management expects to receive an additional $12 million by the end of March 2023 related to the sale of its former Tahoe-Reno facility.
- Aqua Metals commissioned its recycling pilot operation at its Innovation Center in Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center during the fourth quarter of 2022, and in early 2023, the company produced high-purity copper and lithium hydroxide. The company has and expects to host additional potential strategic partner visits in 2023.
- The company acquired a five acre parcel of land inclusive of an approximately 21,000 sq.ft. existing building and announced plans to immediately improve the building during 2023. Phase 1 of the campus environment and the first Li AquaRefining commercial scale recycling plant will have an expected capacity to process 3,000 metric tons of spent LiB input material into saleable materials (~$60,000,000 in revenue based on current metals values). The company also shared its vision for an integrated clean metals campus on the site, with additional buildings and space for 10,000 metric tons of total processing capacity.
- The company’s Pb AquaRefining partner in Taiwan (ACME Metal) continued its progress. ACME Metal is producing ultra-pure lead in Taiwan and will continue to operate the Phase I system as a showcase for potential industry partners and future customers to witness first-hand.
“We have recently realized several key milestones to position us for acceleration, transformation and success in 2023,” commented Steve Cotton, president and chief executive officer. “We opened our pilot operation in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center in December, and we are now beginning to produce high-purity metals like copper and premium products like lithium hydroxide at industrial scale. We also secured the campus for our proposed high-volume commercial operation, and we are hard at work to transform this new facility and then develop our expansion plan to meet our growing needs. We have our primary intake partner, and are moving quickly with our plans to secure long-term offtake partners, completing the buildout of our business model. Our goal this year will be one of commercialization from our vision and proof-of-concept to meaningful scale production, while advancing our efforts to establish what we believe will be the world’s first commercial-scale sustainable Li recycling operation with a sufficient supply of black mass input and partners to purchase our recycled output.”
2022 Full-Year Financial Results
The company was not in commercial production during 2022 and, as a result, generated no significant revenue during the quarter.
Research and development costs included expenditures related to progressing the Lithium-ion battery AquaRefining technology. Research and development increased approximately 94 percent during 2022 compared to 2021.
General and administrative expenses increased approximately one percent for 2022, compared to 2021.
For 2022, the company had an operating loss of $15.6 million, compared to an operating loss of $17.5 million last year. The net loss for 2022 was $15.4 million, or $(0.20) per basic and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $18.2 million, or $(0.26) per basic and diluted share, for 2021.
As of December 31, 2022, the company had $7.1 million in cash and cash equivalents. Total cash used in operations for 2022 was $11.1 million.
Published in the April 2023 Edition