Good day, and thank you for joining SQM's earning conference call for the second quarter of 2026. This call is being recorded and webcast live.

Our earnings press release and the accompanying results presentation are available on our website where you can also find a link to the webcast. Today's participants include: Mr.

Ricardo Ramos, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Gerardo Illanes, Chief Financial Officer; Mr.

Carlos Díaz, CEO of Nova Andino; Mr. Pablo Altimiras, CEO of the Iodine and Plant Nutrition Division; and Mr.

Mark Fones, CEO of the International Lithium Division. Also joining us today are members of our Commercial and Business Intelligence teams: Mr.

Felipe Smith, Commercial Vice President of Nova Andino; Mr. Pablo Hernández, Vice President of Strategy and Development of Nova Andino; Mr.

Juan Pablo Bellolio, Commercial Vice President for Plant Nutrition and Specialty Products; Mr. Álvaro Araya, CFO of the International Lithium Division; Mr.

Andrés Fontannaz, Commercial Vice President of the International Lithium Division; and Mr. Max Vial, Head of Studies of the International Lithium Division.

Before we begin, please note that statements made during this call regarding our business outlook, future economic performance, anticipated profitability, revenues, expenses, and other financial items along with expected cost synergies and product or service line growth are considered forward-looking statements under US federal securities laws. These statements are not historical facts and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

We assume no obligation to update these statements except as required by law. For a full discussion of forward-looking statements, please refer to our earnings press release and presentation.

With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ricardo Ramos.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us today.

I'm pleased to report SQM's second quarter results, which reflect a strong performance across our main business lines. I would like to start by highlighting an important milestone for our lithium operations in Chile.

In July, Nova Andino Litio, our association with Codelco, submitted the environmental and technical documentation for the Salar Futuro project to the authorities. Salar Futuro represents the next stage in the transformation of our operations in the Salar de Atacama, subject to the required approvals.

The project contemplates approximately $3 billion of investment over seven years and is designed to increase production while significantly reducing the environmental footprint of our operations. I will also like to highlight the contribution that our operations make to Chile.

During the first half of this year, SQM and its subsidiaries accrued more than $1.6 billion in payments to the Chilean government, including taxes, contribution to local governments, and payments to Corfo. Moving to the lithium market, we achieved record quarterly sales volumes of more than 84,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent from our operations in Chile through Nova Andino Litio and in Australia through Covalent Lithium.

As anticipated in our previous earnings report, lithium prices increased during the second quarter, supported by a stronger than expected market demand. We now expect global lithium demand to exceed 2.1 million metric tons in 2026.

We continue to expand our production capabilities in both Chile and Australia. In Chile, we expect Nova Andino Litio to produce between 280 and 290,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent this year and to have approximately 300,000 metric tons of production capacity by next year.

In Australia, together with our partner Wesfarmers, we recently announced the expansion of the Mt Holland mine and concentrator, which is expected to double spodumene concentrate production capacity to approximately 350,000 metric tons per year corresponding to SQM's shares of the project, with first production expected in 2030. These investments reflect our long-term view of the lithium market and our confidence in the fundamentals of the energy transition.

Moving to iodine, we once again delivered good results, supported by robust market demand and favorable pricing. We expect demand to remain robust.

Our seawater pipeline is currently in its commissioning phase and will provide additional flexibility to optimize our production and respond to market conditions. We are now producing iodine from our four different operations, and we expect total iodine production to reach approximately 15.5 thousand metric tons this year.

Turning to specialty plant nutrition, we delivered another strong quarter, supported by higher sales prices and volumes. We continue to expect full-year sales volumes to increase by approximately 10% compared to 2025.

Market conditions have benefited from supply constraint in certain markets, and we expect this condition to gradually normalize towards the end of the year. Finally, we have updated our capital expenditure outlook.

We now included 2028, and we expect approximately total capital expenditures of approximately $3 billion over the three-years 2026-2028 period. This investment is mainly focused on supporting future growth and enhancing the competitiveness of our operations through lower production costs.

Overall, we are encouraged by the performance delivered during the first half of the year, and remain focused on executing our growth plans and creating long-term value for our shareholders. With that, I will turn the call and we can go, operator, to the Q&A.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you. I'm going to ask a couple questions one by one.

Can you talk about Q3 for a second? If I look at Q3 for the lithium segment, you're guiding to prices about flat, volumes seems like about flat, and then costs I had a question about because costs stepped down a lot in Q2.

Should we expect Q3 lithium earnings, gross margin to be about the same as Q2?

Hello, Joel. This is Felipe.

I will comment about the Nova Andino part, of course, huh? Indeed, we had a very good second quarter.

We are very enthusiastic about how the market is doing. Regarding Q3, first of all, in terms of sales volume, we expect Q3 2026 to remain strong, in line with Q2, okay?

In terms of the price, I would say that the average price based on the indexes, because you know that our contracts are all based on indices, and indices are well known, based on that, we believe that the price of Q3 should be more or less in line with what we saw as the average of the first semester. Again, nobody can predict where the indexes are going.

It's a very volatile market today. Still, difficult to predict prices too long.

Hi, Joel. This is Carlos Díaz.

Regarding to you asked about the cost, no? Mainly we have been working hard the last year in continuous efficiency and improvement process.

That is together with the economic of scale as we have been increasing the production level, we have been constantly been able to make a cost improvement. In the Q3, we expect similar cost that we already got in Q2.

This year, early 2026, it should be lower compared with the last year.

Okay. Thank you for that.

I want to ask about price realizations between Nova Andino and international Australia. I understand some of the math that works with tolling, things like that.

The Nova Andino average selling price is really expanding. The premium's really widening versus international.

Should we expect a catch-up in Q3, even if Nova Andino average selling price is about the same in Q3, should we not expect international selling price to catch up, go up, and the gap to reduce?

Hey, Joel. This is Andrés Fontannaz from SQM International.

Most of our sales are based on spodumene concentrate, in order to compare, you need to add some conversion costs and also to take into consideration the conversion yield. That's where the main difference is.

At the end, what matters the most that we are also following the market. This shipments that are discrete because not every month we have sales, all these shipments are following market conditions at the moment of shipment.

That's the point of my question, though. The spodumene average selling price, by your own numbers, increased by $600 from Q1 to 21 Q1 to Q2.

Spodumene went up $600 a ton price, Q1 to Q2, but your LCE-equivalent international selling price barely went up. That's what I'm confused about.

Yeah. As we commented before, our prices are affected by the timing of the shipments.

Again, not every month we are having shipments. As I said, in the coming quarters, you will see this better reflected in our price reporting.

I'll just ask one more question to be greedy. You've raised your lithium demand expectations for the full year by 200,000 tons.

I imagine you're going to tell me, oh, on the demand side, it's all from energy storage. Where is the extra 200,000 tons of supply coming from?

Is that restarts in Australia? Is that Africa?

Is that lepidolite in China? Where is the extra 200,000 tons of supply coming this year to meet the growing demand?

Hey, Joel. This is Pablo Hernández speaking.

Of course, these are just our estimation, we cannot predict what's actually happening fully in the market. We believe there's some increase of supply mainly coming from China, both from spodumene and brine, but also some ramp-up projects in Africa and Argentina.

Of course, as you've heard, because of the current price scenario, there are some restarts in Australia also as well coming into the market.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

Do you hear me?

Thank you. Hi, everyone.

Thank you. I have two questions.

First, still on the lithium market, right? I believe you guys are ramping up production in Nova Andino faster, right, than initially expected when the deal was signed.

I wonder if you could update us, and you mentioned about 300,000 tons next year, but beyond that, and when the new concession starts in place, what could be a feasible production level, especially when Salar Futuro is in place, in terms of annual production? That would be my first question.

My second question on the iodine market, right? It was a pretty good quarter in terms of volumes as well as prices, and you mentioned some sort of slowdown in sales, I think, as more supply is coming.

Can you elaborate a little bit on where this supply from third party is coming to the market and what that could mean in terms of prices for the second half? Thank you.

Hi, Isabella? Sorry.

This is Carlos Díaz again. This year, as our CEO say before, we expect to produce around 280 to 290,000 metric tons.

Looking ahead, growth will initially be more moderated as we continue reducing the brine extraction. Specifically for next year, we expect a production close to 300,000.

For the coming year, we're still studying different initiatives in order to keep and to increase a little bit the production, but having in account that we have been reducing the brine extraction. This is an exercise we are not ready yet.

In the coming probably call conference that we can share with you.

Hello, Isabella. Pablo Altimiras speaking.

Regarding to your question about the iodine and the new supply, again, this is our estimations, but we believe that the main supply could arise from projects here in Chile. We see a new project that is coming, it's a project of Calicheor.

Respecting to the amount of product that will come into the market, we actually don't know, but we expect that they will provide more product. That's the reason why we believe that our sales volume this year will be similar to what we see last years.

Of course, that if something different happens with the supply, well, we could potentially see more sales in our case, but everything will depend of the supply and demand. Just

thank you very much. Just a final comment on the iodine.

Can you quantify a little bit what this new project in Chile means in terms of volumes? Again, any significant disruption in terms of supply-demand and ultimately to prices?

It's important to remain that we have seen a good demand. Our demand forecast for this year is that the growth will be around 3%.

We expect that the new capacity that will come into the market will compensate that growth, but we don't see more than that.

Great. Thank you very much.

Hello, good morning. Thanks for the time.

A couple of questions here. First, can you guys please break down on expected production capacity increase to 300,000 tons in 2027?

How much is coming from Chile given that you are converting the hydroxide plant? How much is coming from tolling contracts?

That's the first question. I have some follow-ups.

Emerson. Carlos Díaz speaking.

All our production is coming from the Salar de Atacama in two different way. One is lithium chloride that is refined in Chile and lithium sulfate that we are refining in China.

This what I said before, this year we expect 280 to 290 and for next year 300,000. Of those, we estimate now it's 80 of those is going to be from lithium sulfate, and the other 220 for lithium chloride for our Antofagasta chemical plant.

All right. Thank you.

I'm sorry. You asked for the hydroxide production?

Carbonate.

What we don't see more than 20 or 30,000 of those of total. That mean 10% of those production will be hydroxide, and the remaining obviously carbonate.

Thank you. Just on Mt Holland, very quickly.

You guys recently approved the expansion, right, on the mining and concentrator. Just wondering about a potential expansion in the refinery.

Are you guys planning maybe to do this just after the expansion is concluded? How are you thinking about the mix between hydroxide and spodumene sales growing in 2027 and later on, please?

Hi, Emerson. This is Mark Fones here.

Thanks for your question. We are very proud on the decision of expanding Mt Holland, first the mine and concentrator.

Regarding the refinery, we still remain open to that decision. We have not yet came to a conclusion or a decision there yet.

This will be continued to be analyzed by Covalent and Wesfarmers, our partner, and it will be depending also on the reaching our ramp-up at full extent by second semester next year, thereon. In regarding the balance for next year in terms of sales and production, we expect next year's to be a higher lithium hydroxide production than this year for sure, based on the same ramp-up curve.

Therefore, sales of the spodumene concentrate sales should be probably lower than this year.

Okay. Thank you.

Very clear.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon.

Thanks for the time. My first question is a follow-up on the sulfate production, especially in regards to the tolling processing in China.

This production surprised me a lot. I never thought you guys could ramp up this tolling and find too much capacity in a sort of a short period of time.

My question is regarding these tolling contracts. I just wanted to understand how long they are and if you guys see any risk of over the next few years you have to give some away or find new partners for this tolling, and maybe different costs if these fees they are sort of fixed and predictables.

Just to understand sort of the operational risk of running, if not mistaken, something around 50,000 tons, right, of sulfate tolling with these third parties. Then my second question is regarding a follow-up on Mt Holland.

Since the expectation is for a first production 2030, this seems to me sort of extended period of time considering this is a brownfield. Just wondering what are the next sort of big milestones there that you think you should deliver to expand the production capacity, or the main challenges to bring this capacity online?

Thank you very much.

Hello. This is Carlos Díaz speaking again.

Regarding to the lithium sulfate production, yes, we have been increasing the production very strongly in the last three or four years. What we say before, this year we expect to produce or next year in a range of 80 to 90,000 as a LCE equivalent.

We have to remind that we have our own plant in China, the Daching plant that we produce close to 24, 25. We are expanding, we expect to reach 30,000 around that level.

The difference, we do the tolling with the different suppliers that we don't disclose that contract, but we feel very happy with the contract that we have and we expect to continue working with those in the coming years.

Lucas, hi. This is Mark Fones.

Regarding the Mt Holland timeline, and you're right, the first product is expected by first half 2030. The schedule reflects the normal sequencing for a project of this scale, and we have been building the schedule to achieve a derisked rather than rushed project.

You need to consider also that this is a relevant, not a marginal, brownfield increase. We are doubling the capacity where our operation already exists.

Giving some milestones, which you asked for, I would say the next relevant milestone has to do with the start of the construction of the facility itself, which should happen in mid next year. A construction of a facility of this nature takes between 18 and 24 months in duration.

Ahead of that, we need to, of course, purchase long-lead items, prepare earthworks and earth bulk movements. After the construction of this 18 to 24 months, there's a period there of commissioning, which will follow in 2029, to reach a first product by the beginnings of 2030.

That's the overall scheme of things and the relevant milestones in there. In terms of if there are any opportunities to compress this schedule, yes, there are opportunities.

Covalent and our technical teams are actively advising, analyzing those, and we will continue to push it forward. Please take in consideration that this brownfield, of course, has relevant opportunities, since we're working on a pre existing operation, but also it increases levels of challenges, and we need to be always minded in safety.

Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you very much, guys.

Hi. Good afternoon, team.

Maybe can we come back to your commentary about the 3Q sales being in line with 2Q? How do we think about it for 4Q?

Because normally 4Q, I think, on seasonality is your highest quarter. Do you also expect 4Q to be high 70s to maybe 80 kt-ish, or are you expecting a strong 3Q followed maybe by a softer 4Q?

Hello, Corinne. This is Felipe.

4Q is so far away now. I will try to speak about the future, the long future, but I only have hopes that we can at least have a volume of second and third quarter, because as I said before, third quarter we expect to have similar volume as second quarter.

I expect minimum that in the fourth quarter, but hope that could be more. Again, my boss is looking at me like, "What are you doing?"

This is my personal hope, okay? I will try.

That should bring your total lithium volume to 315, 320 kt, which is much much more than what you have guided, right?

The Nova Andino part is hopefully above 280, and then my colleagues in the International could comment, maybe Andrés. Good luck.

Corinne. Andrés speaking here.

We are expecting sales to be around 27 to 30,000 tons LCE for the full year.

Thank you. That is helpful.

Then maybe a bigger picture question because we think to have some investors starting to think a little bit more longer term. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened after 2030, 2031?

We know that Codelco will be probably much more in charge than you guys, but I think if you can just provide high-level view and to frame it for us and how we should think about strategic decision and capex and etc., I think that will be helpful. Thank you.

Corinne, Ricardo Ramos speaking. Yes, as Felipe said, fourth quarter is a really long term.

It's really far far away. 2031 is just a little bit more difficult to have predictions what's going to happen.

Again, I think that we are working very good now in Nova Andino. I think the agreement with Codelco has been even better than expected in terms of coordination, working together, and at the board level having cooperation between both companies.

That's why we are very positive about that. We already comment in the press release that we are starting the submission that we did it in July of the Salar Futuro.

We are working in engineering, in everything, in order to be ready for the investment. That's why I hope in 2031 we will be in the middle of the investment of Salar Futuro.

We think this is going to be a great project. We are really committed with Codelco in order to do so.

I think everything is included in our long-term projections, all the investment of the work we want to do. What Carlos is doing today with their team is trying to have a very good expectation about the sales volumes for the future.

I think we will share with you in the next conference call our first view about what we expect for the next year, and we will continue to have a long-term view. We're working very hard and very good agreement so far, and Codelco is a very good partner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon. Just two questions for me.

Number one is I I think there's a bit of confusion among investors in terms of your recent filing of spending $3 billion at Salar Futuro. Some are drawing the conclusion that it is all going towards increasing capacity by 30,000 tons and, therefore, your capex is $100,000 per ton.

I think that's wrong. Can you just separate the $3 billion spend from the $30,000- sorry, 30,000-ton increase in capacity?

Ben, it's very important to consider that the Salar Futuro project is not only increasing capacity, it's changing technology. It means, as we are offering a very good technology in terms of costs, in terms of production, in terms of environmental footprint.

That's why you have to analyze the Salar Futuro project as a whole in terms of having a new beginning of the Salar de Atacama for the next 60 years operation. That's the 30 years operation that we have.

That's the whole idea. Of course, we expect to have more production.

We are working on it, and it will depend on the deals and depend on the quality of the solutions that we're going to bring to the process, and we will disclosure our best estimate in the next two years. The whole project of Salar Futuro is not just an idea to increase production capacity.

It's much more than that in terms of having a revamping, having a new Salar de Atacama for the future.

That makes sense. Thank you for that.

Then my second question is on the lithium market. I understand that battery storage production has been about 1 TWh or around that area, but installations have only been about half of that.

My question is, are we seeing a big inventory build in battery storage, and we could be going into some temporary oversupply over the next 12 to 18 months, and that could put a cap on lithium demand growth? Or is this just part of the normal cycle and the lag in terms of it'll just take six months to a year to kind of catch up?

Just trying to understand if this is an anomaly or if this growth rate is sustainable.

Hey, Ben. Pablo Hernández speaking.

I agree with your view in the market. Indeed, we have seen much larger shipments of batteries for BESS than actual deployments of those batteries.

There's some gap there that we are monitoring. We believe most of that gap is related to some larger projects being implemented, which larger projects naturally bring some longer terms in terms of implementation and some delays from approvals and everything.

There's a natural delay on that end. Of course, as well, I think there's also some push forward of some sales from 2027 because of tax rebates that have been removed from the export side in China.

Overall, my view for the longer term is that there indeed, for the following years, we might see some slowdown in the pace at which the BESS battery implementation is growing.

Great.

Sorry, Ben, but just to finish that. Of course, still, BESS will remain a very relevant and strong demand factor for the future.

Of course. Thank you very much.