Algoma Steel Group Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Algoma Steel Fiscal First Quarter 2023 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should you require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero to signal an operator. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Michael Marocca, Treasurer and Investor Relations Officer for Algoma Steel. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Algoma Steel Group Inc.' 's first quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. Leading today's call are Michael Garcia, our Chief Executive Officer, and Rajat Marwa, our Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be made available for replay later today in the Investors section of Algoma Steel's corporate website at www.algoma.com. I would like to remind you that comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which involve assumptions and inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from statements made today. In addition, our financial statements are prepared in accordance with IFRS, which differs from US GAAP, and our discussion today includes references to certain non-IFRS financial measures. Last evening, we posted an earnings presentation to accompany today's prepared remarks. The slides for today's call can be found in the investor section of our corporate website. With that in mind, I would ask everyone on today's call to read the legal disclaimers on slide one of the accompanying earnings presentation and to also refer to the risks and assumptions outlined in Algoma Steel's financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the full year ended March 31st, 2022. Please note that our financial statements are prepared using the U.S. dollar as our functional currency and the Canadian dollar as our presentation currency. Our fiscal year runs from April 1st to March 31st, and our financial statements have been prepared for the three months ended June 30th, 2022. Please note all amounts referred to on today's call are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Following our prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Michael Garcia. Mike?

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, and thank you for joining Algoma Steel's earnings call for our first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2022. I will start my comments, as we always do, by addressing what truly matters most to us, the safety of our employees. At Algoma, we believe in safety without compromise. and our continued focus has resulted in substantial improvement over the last decade in our lost time injury frequency rate. I commend our entire team for their collective success and continued diligence as we relentlessly pursue our goal of achieving zero workplace injuries. Now before we get into the results for the quarter, I want to update you on where we are with our union negotiations given the announcements over the past week. To start, all of our plants are fully operational at this time. There are two local chapters of the United Steelworkers that represent our unionized employees. The most recent multi-year labor agreements with those two unions were set to expire on July 31st. We believe we have made fair and attractive offers to both unions. Offers which ask for no concessions and provide our employees with a highly competitive compensation package that compares favorably to our North American peers. Last week, members of United Steelworkers Local 2724, which represents our technical, professional, and frontline supervisory employees, accepted our offer and ratified a new labor agreement with Algoma. Negotiations with USW Local 2251, which represents hourly workers, continue. Last Friday, we announced that we had submitted our best and final offer to that union's negotiation team, who declined to submit the proposal to its membership for a vote. Therefore, in anticipation of a strike this past weekend, we began taking steps to take our facilities offline safely ahead of the original deadline. On Saturday night, we announced the company and the union's negotiating team had reached an agreement to continue discussions without any workforce action for an additional 15 days, allowing us to continue operating our facilities normally in the interim. This extension demonstrates the willingness and desire on both sides to reach a fair and equitable agreement for operations of the facilities today and throughout the transition to electric arc steelmaking. At this time, we have no further update on the progress of those talks. Due to the sensitivity of these discussions, we will be limited in what we can share regarding these active negotiations during our Q&A session on this call. Now turning to our results. On today's call, I'll cover my observations for my first 60 days as CEO, as well as key events and milestones during the quarter and subsequent to its end. I will then turn over the call to Rajat for a deeper dive into the numbers before closing with thoughts on the current state of steel markets and our capital return policy. To say that my first two months on the job have been busy would be a major understatement, as we have advanced a number of strategic initiatives during that time. One of my first priorities was to roll up my sleeves and get out on the site, meeting our exceptional team, familiarizing myself with the specifics of our operations, processes, and approach. and seeing up close and personal the impressive facilities we operate in Sault Ste. Marie. Having spent time with many of our team members, I come away even more excited about our operations and our future. We have a dedicated group of operators focused on executing the pathway to Algoma's future as a leading North American producer of green steel. Relentless execution by the team drove strong results we achieved in our first fiscal quarter. Those results, which Rajat will discuss in more detail momentarily, included shipments of 538,000 tons, revenue of $934 million, adjusted EBITDA of $358 million, and cash generated by operating activities of $277 million. During the quarter, we continue to advance construction of our transformative electric arc furnace project, which I am pleased to report remains on budget and on time for our planned 2024 startup. We completed the first phase of our two-phase plate mill modernization project in June 2022, with expected quality being achieved. The second phase, initially expected to be completed in November, has been extended to June 2023 to support our customers impacted by a longer than anticipated startup due to automation issues during the first phase. Further, by extending the timeline, we are better positioned to apply learning from the first phase to the second phase outage to ensure seamless execution. We launched the next phase of our capital allocation program with a 400 million U.S. substantial issuer bid. We distributed over 150 million in our employee profit sharing program, a corporate record that reflects our outstanding results in fiscal 2022. And prior to launching our SIB, we repurchased 1.6 million shares through our normal course issuer bid, or NCIB, at an average price of U.S. $9.11 per share. Like I said, a busy quarter. Just last week, we successfully completed the oversubscribed SIB process, which resulted in the repurchase of approximately 41 million shares, or approximately 27.9% of our issued and outstanding shares at the time of the program announcement, at a price of $9.75 US. Algoma now has 105,403,930 issued and outstanding common shares. It's a testament to the execution by our team during these times of challenging market conditions like these that we are able to operate our existing portfolio of assets normally without being operationally impacted by the construction of our transformational EAF project, all while being able to return meaningful capital to shareholders. Now I will pass the call over to Rajat to go over the strong financial results for the quarter. before closing with some thoughts on the markets and our capital allocation program. Rajat.