Algoma Steel Group Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Algoma Steel Group Incorporated fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Laura Devoney, Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Algoma Steel Group Inc.' 's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Laura Davoni, Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Affairs, and I will be moderating today's call. Leading the prepared remarks are Rajat Marwa, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Marocca, 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 inherit 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 U.S. 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 two of the accompanying earnings presentation and to also refer to the risks and assumptions outlined in Algoma Steel's fourth quarter 2025 management's discussion and analysis. 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. As a reminder, the company changed its fiscal year end from March 31st to December 31st, resulting in a nine-month fiscal reporting period ending December 31st, 2024. For ease of comparison, we will focus our comments today on the three and 12-month periods ending December 31st, 2025 and 2024. Please also note that 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. Rajat.

Thank you, Laura, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2025 performance. Before I get into our results, I want to acknowledge that this is Mike's and my first earnings call as CFO and CEO respectively, roles we formally assumed on January 1st. I also want to recognize Michael Garcia, who led this company through one of its most consequential transformations and who left Algoma in a fundamentally strong position. Employee safety remains a top priority and a core value. The scale of activity on our site today with the end of blast furnace operations and our EF running around the clock demands an unwavering focus on safe execution. And I'm proud of the discipline our teams have demonstrated throughout this transition. Every milestone we achieved in our transformation must be earned with the same commitment to sending every employee home safely every day. Before I get into the details of the quarter, I want to highlight three key themes. The 50% U.S. Section 232 tariff has permanently altered the landscape for Canadian steel producers. With the American market effectively close to us, we have responded accordingly, exiting our primary blast furnace and coke oven operations, pivoting our entire commercial strategy towards the Canadian market, restructuring our cost base, and accelerating our transformation that positions Algoma for the realities of this new trade environment. Second, we have the financial foundation to execute. The Canadian $500 million in government-backed liquidity support combined with our ABL facility provides the runway we need to advance our transformation, reduce cash burn, and pursue new opportunities to diversify the business. Third, our operational pivot is not a plan. It is underway. Our blast furnace and coke oven operations have been wound down. Our first EF unit is running on a full 24-hour schedule, and our second unit remains on schedule. Our strategic focus is now squarely on delivering high-value products for the Canadian market. Let me expand on each of these. The extreme tariff environment on steel imports and derivative products from Canada remains the defining challenge for our industry. The unprecedented 50% tariff implemented in June fundamentally broke the cost broader business model that Canadian producers, including Algoma, had built over decades. The consequences extended well beyond the U.S. border, creating an oversupply of coil in Canada and driving domestic transactional price as much as 40% below comparable U.S. levels across many categories. For the full year, besides the impact of lower pricing, we absorbed $225 million in direct tariff costs. These are not cyclical headwinds. They represent an unprecedented structural shift that required a structural response. Our fourth quarter financial results reflect that reality. Lower shipments, elevated costs, and continued pressure on realized pricing as the Canadian market absorbed excess supply. Shipments to the US were approximately 30% lower than the average US sales over the previous three quarters as we begun our exit from the US market. Against that backdrop, our plate mill stands out as a genuine competitive advantage. As Canada's only producer of discrete plate, we are not subject to the same oversupply dynamics that are compressing coil pricing. Demand for plate products across infrastructure, construction, and defense remains healthy, and we expect plate production to increase sequentially as our EF ramps through 2026. This is exactly the market position we are leaning into. Next, let me talk about our EF, the heart of our transformation and the foundation of Algoma's future. Ramp-up activities are progressing in line with expectations. The furnace and melt shop assets are performing as designed, with stable metallurgical quality and process control demonstrated across a broad range of plate and hot-tool coil grades. The Q1 power system and other critical process components are operating reliably on a full 24-hour-per-day schedule. a significant milestone from where we were just one quarter ago. As of December 31, 2025, cumulative investment in the project stood at $920 million, and we continue to expect a final aggregate cost of approximately $987 million. Alongside this operational progress, we have taken a deliberate step to strengthen our strategic and financial position. Mike will walk you through the details of our liquidity actions later in the call, but I do want to highlight one development that speaks directly to where this company is headed. In January 2026, we announced a binding MOU with Hanwha Ocean Company Limited, a long-term strategic arrangement with an aggregate potential value of $250 million U.S., including a $200 million contribution towards the potential development of a structural steel beam mill and up to $50 million in anticipated product purchases connected to the Canadian Petrol Submarine Program. This is a meaningful signal of Algoma's emerging role as a critical partner in Canada's defense and industrial supply chain. Taken together, these actions reflect a deliberate strategic repositioning. We are moving away from our historical model as a cross-border commodity producer and towards something more focused, more resilient, and more aligned with Canada's long-term industrial priorities. By concentrating on as-rolled and heat-treated plate products along with selected coil products for the domestic market, we are optimizing for margin quality rather than volume, deepening customer partnerships, and reducing our exposure to tariff-distorted global markets. This repositioning achieves three things. We supply Canadian industry with the high-quality plate products needed for infrastructure, manufacturing, and defense. We create operational stability that supports continued investment in our transformation. And we reinforce Algoma's role as a critical supplier in Canada's industrial future. In short, we are evolving from a cross-border commodity producer to a Canadian-focused steel supplier, with lower cost, lower emissions, and greater long-term resilience. The work is not finished, but the direction is clear, and the foundation is in place. Thank you, and I'll now turn the call over to Mike for a deeper dive into our financials. Mike?