Century Aluminum Company

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's Century Aluminum Company fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Megan, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Peter Cherkowski, with Century Aluminum. Peter, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call. I'm joined here today by Jesse Gary, Sentry's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jerry Bialik, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Shelly Harrison, Senior Vice President of Finance and our Treasurer. After our prepared comments, we'll take your questions. As a reminder, today's presentation is available on our website at www.sentryaluminum.com. We use our website as a means of disclosing material information about the company and for complying with Regulation FD. Turning to slide one, please take a moment to review the cautionary statement shown here with respect to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures contained in today's discussion. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Jesse.

Thanks, Pete, and thanks to everyone for joining. I'll start today by quickly reviewing our 2022 performance before discussing the improving market conditions we have seen so far in 2023. Jerry will then take you through the details of the fourth quarter and full year results, and then I'll finish with an update on our Grinder-Tonge cast house project. Turning to slide three, 2022 was a very volatile year in the commodity markets. Aluminum prices reached 30-year highs in the spring, driving strong financial performance across centuries businesses in Q1 and Q2. However, market conditions deteriorated over the back half of the year as high global inflation was met with rising interest rates, resulting in a significant strengthening in the U.S. dollar and pressuring aluminum prices downward. At the same time, the war in Ukraine and resulting energy crisis drove power prices to unsustainable levels across the world. All told, Century produced adjusted EBITDA of $144 million last year. In Q4, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $12 million, which was an improvement of approximately $24 million over Q3, as the benefits of improving energy markets and cost-cutting measures across our business improved results. We finished the year with strong liquidity of $245 million. Our team completed several long-term projects last year. including the restart program at Mount Holly, which returned the smelter to 75% of capacity. We also completed the first phases of our U.S. casthouse debottlenecking programs, which increased our capacity to produce value-added products by 20,000 tons. To mitigate record high energy prices, we made the difficult decision in June to curtail our Hawesville smelter. Since the curtailment, the team at Hawesville has done a good job reducing holding costs while maintaining the assets in a condition that would allow for restart in the future. In assessing whether the conditions for restart have been met, we intend to be disciplined in our approach and will wait to see energy costs and LME prices reach and sustain levels that will enable the profitable operation of the smelter for the long term. Finally, we continue to focus on our most important priority, to return our employees home safely at the end of each and every day. While we will never be satisfied until we achieve zero workplace injuries, our team should be proud to have reduced injuries by 10% over 2021 levels. We hope to significantly improve on this trend in the coming year. Market conditions for Century's businesses have improved significantly so far in Q1 and continue to trend in a positive direction as we emerge from winter. If you turn to slide 4, you can see that global supply and demand balances remained in deficit last year. This was driven most significantly by another year of energy-driven production curtailments in China, where low hydro reservoirs drove curtailments in several provinces. Global aluminum balances have now been in deficit for the last five years, with the COVID-impacted year in 2020 the only exception. We currently estimate that approximately 2.5 million tons of Chinese capacity is offline due to energy curtailments in Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou with an additional 500,000 to 1 million tons of capacity at risk in the near term due to continued water shortages. This is now the third year in a row of significant winter energy shortages in China, suggesting that Chinese production may be subject to increasing seasonality going forward, as the country seems to be consistently short energy across the winter months. Given these continued Chinese production headwinds, we expect global markets to remain in deficit this year. with risk leaning towards larger deficits should further remove capacity cuts and union materialize, or restarts in Sichuan and Guizhou continue to be delayed. With global inventories averaging below 50 days, LME prices should respond favorably if additional supply curtailment is confirmed. In our markets in the U.S. and EU, supply deficits widened last year, as high energy prices drove smelter curtailments, especially in Europe, where 50% of remaining capacity has been curtailed due to high energy costs. Fortunately, a relatively warm European winter has allowed EU energy prices to moderate somewhat. But while lower prices have helped sustain downstream aluminum demand, both spot and forward EU energy prices remain well above levels needed to drive widespread smelter restarts. As you can see from the graph on slide five, EU energy prices remain in contango above $150 per megawatt hour, with significantly higher prices expected to return later in the year. While one of our Icelandic energy contracts does have some exposure to EU energy prices through Nordpool, we have hedged 95% of the remaining exposure at €30. From 2024 onward, we do not have any Nordpool or other EU energy market exposure. Iceland energy markets remain well-supplied in 2023, with hydro reservoirs near average levels across the Icelandic system. U.S. energy prices moderated in Q4, with IndyHub averaging around $60, a 30% reduction over Q3. Price declines have accelerated significantly so far this year, as record U.S. natural gas production, paired with increasing renewable generation and recovering coal production, have combined with a warmer-than-average winter to drive energy prices significantly lower. IndieHub prices are now back below pre-crisis levels, with January averaging $37 per megawatt hour and February averaging $29 a month to date. While spot prices have declined significantly, IndieHub forward prices remain in contango, with the forward strip approximating $41 for the balance of 2023. Significantly improved supply and demand fundamentals have recently driven forward prices lower, with U.S. natural gas reserves and utility coal stockpiles now respectively sitting 17% and 40% above year-ago levels. Increasing natural gas reserves and continued record production could continue to pressure forwards down towards spot levels and begin to make power price hedging more attractive as we move into spring. Turning to regional premiums, strong aluminum demand in both the EU and US have driven premiums higher so far this quarter. With the spot Midwest premium above 29 cents per pound, 40% increase over Q4 levels and EU duty paid premium returning to levels above $300 per ton. This trend is continued affirmation of our long-term strategy to focus our production in these two short markets, which allow us to better serve our customers and benefit from these strong premiums. As a reminder, all of our remaining Midwest premium hedges matured in Q4. So we will realize the full cash benefit of increasing premiums in both the U.S. and Europe this quarter and going forward. One area of relative weakness in the market has been in spot billet demand. While annual contract prices have remained well above historic levels, we did experience a measurable decline in spot billet orders in November and December as our customers looked to destock their inventories. This has been buffered somewhat by relative strength in our HVAC markets and continued resilience in automotive demand. This destocking process appears to have bottomed in January, as we have seen increasing month-over-month orders in both February and March. We anticipate further improvement in April orders. The expected impact of this destocking process is included in our Q1 outlook on slide 9, and Jerry will walk you through the impact on our Q4 results in a minute. Despite these near-term headwinds, we continue to anticipate very constructive long-term billet demand trends in both the U.S. and Europe, as electric vehicle substitution drives increasing aluminum consumption. As we've discussed in the past, electric vehicles use 200 pounds more aluminum on average than an internal combustion vehicle, with an even larger increase in primary aluminum consumption as the secondary-based internal combustion engine block is replaced by value-added primary aluminum-intensive components like battery trays, HVAC, and crash systems. We expect this trend to support significant long-term demand expansion for primary aluminum billet and slab in the EU and U.S. During the operations, we saw strong and stable performance across our smelters in Q4, while also exceeding expectations on our cost and headcount reduction programs. This strong operating performance, combined with production creep programs at Seabree and Grundertangi, and completion of the Mount Holly expansion project, allowed us to offset a significant amount of the production loss from the Haasville curtailment, with total shipments last year down just 15,000 tons from 2021 levels. In the U.S., we finished our first stages of our cast-house debottlenecking projects, increasing our billet and flat capacity by approximately 10,000 tons each. We will start the next phase of these programs in 2023, which we expect will expand our total billet and flat capacity by an additional 10,000 tons each by the end of 2024. Paired with the expected completion of the Grundertage billet casthouse by the end of this year, we should enter 2024 with the ability to sell approximately 80% of Century's total production as value-added product in the form of billet, slab, foundry alloys, or natural low-carbon aluminum. On the raw material side, we continue to see slow decreases in Coke prices in Q4, while pitch prices remain stubbornly elevated in both the US and Europe. We do expect Coke prices to slowly moderate over the course of this year, as Chinese supply is expected to increase following relaxation of COVID protocols. Jerry will now walk you through the quarter and our Q1 outlook.

Thank you, Jesse. Let's turn to slide six, and I'll walk you through the results for the fourth quarter. On a consolidated basis, Q4 global shipments were down about 2% quarter over quarter, driven by the Hawesville curtailment and partially offset by the completed Mount Holly restart project. Realized prices decreased substantially versus prior quarter, due primarily to significantly lower lagged LME prices and delivery premiums, resulting in a 16% decrease in sequential net sales. Looking at Q4 operating results, Adjusted EBITDA was a $12 million loss, an improvement of $24 million compared with the third quarter. Adjusted net loss was $31.3 million, or 31 cents per share. In Q4, the major adjusting items were $82.9 million for the unrealized impacts of forward contracts, $5.4 million related to excess power capacity charges associated with the Hawesville smelter, and $2.2 million for share-based compensation. We had strong liquidity of $245 million at the end of the quarter, consisting of $54 million in cash and $191 million available on our credit facilities. Now turning to slide seven to explain the $24 million fourth quarter sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA. Realized lagged LME prices were slightly better than anticipated in our outlook provided during our last call. Fourth quarter relight LME of $2,308 per ton was down $330 versus prior quarter, while realized U.S. Midwest premiums of $470 per ton were down $168, and European delivery premiums of $499 per ton were down $89. Together, these factors amounted to a $79 million headwind in the quarter. Realized alumina cost was $397 per ton, $99 lower on a sequential basis, contributing $36 million to EBITDA. Moderating power costs added $53 million, in line with expectations. Finally, volume was off a bit, but our global cost savings initiatives, including the Hawesville Pertailment Action and other headcount reductions and efficiencies, contributed $18 million of incremental benefit, as expected. We expect these efficiency programs also to benefit 2023 results and have reflected those assumptions in our Q1 outlook, which I will speak to in a moment. In total, adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was a loss of $12 million, again, a $24 million improvement sequentially. Let's turn to slide eight for a look at cash flow. We started the quarter with $65 million in cash and ended December with $54 million. CapEx spending totaled $17 million, $13 million of which relates to the Grunder-Tange casthouse project. Semi-annual interest payments were $11 million. Hedge settlements, net borrowing, and working capital contributed $13, $12, and $5 million, respectively. Now let's turn to slide nine, and I'll give you some insight into our expectations for the first quarter. For Q1, the lagged LME of $2,350 per ton is expected to be up about $45 versus Q4 realized prices. The Q1 lagged U.S. Midwest premium is forecast to be $560 per ton, up $90, and the European delivery premium is expected at $275 per ton or down about $225 per ton versus the fourth quarter. Lagged realized alumina is expected to be $395 per ton, down slightly. Taken together, the LME, delivery premium pricing, and alumina changes are expected to decrease Q1 EBITDA by approximately $5 million versus Q4 levels. Power prices have decreased substantially from what we experienced during the fourth quarter. In fact, Indiana Hub and Nord Pool markets are down 45%, and 30% respectively in Q1 compared to Q4. We expect this reduction in total energy costs to contribute approximately $32 million of improvement to EBITDA compared with Q4. Coke and pitch prices remain above historical averages, but we expect sequential improvement in realized coke prices to be about $110 better in Q1 at $670 per tonne. Realized pitch prices remain stubbornly high at $1,550 per ton or about $140 higher than Q4. Together, we expect Coke and pitch to contribute about $5 million to EBITDA improvement compared with the fourth quarter. Finally, we expect a headwind for mix and other factors of between $5 to $10 million, mainly driven by the near-term weakness of billet sales that Jesse mentioned earlier. All factors considered, Our outlook for Q1 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in a range of between $10 to $15 million. From a hedge impact standpoint, we expect a realized gain of about $5 million in the first quarter. We expect tax expense of approximately $5 million. And as a reminder, both of these items fall below EBITDA and impact adjusted net income. Now, referring to slide 15 for some full-year 2023 financial assumptions. We expect shipments to decrease by nearly 69,000 tons, down about 9% versus 2022, primarily due to the curtailment of Hawesville, but partially offset by growth at our other three smelters. From a cash standpoint, we expect to invest about $15 to $20 million of sustaining capex in 2023. In addition, we expect to invest approximately $60 to $75 million in our fully financed Iceland casthouse, and $5 to $10 million in other CapEx. The impact of the hedge book will vary with market conditions throughout the year, but to assist with anticipating these impacts on a go-forward basis, we have updated our previously reviewed financial hedge landscape, which can be found on page 17 in the appendix. Note, we have no remaining Midwest premium hedges, and for Nord Pool, we are 95% hedged in 2023. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jesse.

Thanks, Jerry. If you turn to slide 10, I'd like to give a quick update on our Grunertangi Caste House project, which when finished will produce 150,000 tons of low carbon NaturAll billet. The project will also increase our total foundry alloy capacity by 60,000 tons to a total capacity of 120,000 tons. All of this production will have the capability to be cast as NaturAll, our low carbon aluminum brand, which has total scope one, two, and three emissions of less than four tons of CO2 per ton of aluminum, amongst the lowest carbon footprints in the world, and less than 25% of industry average. We expect to complete the casthouse by year end, with its first commercial sales expected in January 2024. Our team has done an excellent job keeping this project on budget and on track through the difficult inflationary environment over the past 15 months. Europe today is over 1 million tons short of domestic billet production. with over 300,000 tons of European billet capacity curtailed in the last two years. Given this shortage, the Grunertangi Cast House will be well-timed to supply European customers that would otherwise be left to import higher carbon billet products from the Middle East or India. We have already seen strong interest from our existing customer base to purchase billet from Grunertangi and expect to host customers in Iceland in the back half of the year to finalize sales and qualification of our products. We believe that we will have no issue placing this billet to high quality customers in the European market and that natural billet will receive an additional green premium in the marketplace. We look forward to your questions today and we'll turn the call over now to the operator.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star 1. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question comes from the line of David Gagliano with BMO. Your line is now open.

Hello. Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate the guidance as always, and I'm going to ask the usual questions about, you know, sort of annualized run rate, EBITDA generation. If I do the math on slide nine, 10 to 15 million is the outlook for the first quarter. And then, you know, I compare to, you know, the spot prices, and I use the sensitivities, I think, on slide 16, I think it is. You know, the conclusion, you know, we're coming to is, If you use spot pricing, you know, quarterly EBITDA generation goes to maybe 20, 25 to 30 million or 100 to 120 million annualized based on, you know, adjusting for spot for what's available. 100 to 120 million annualized, is that a reasonable run rate in the world that we're in now? And what are, you know, aside from restarting Hawesville, what are some of the additional, you know, EBITDA boosters that we should expect as the year progresses?

Yeah, hey, David, thanks for the question. As we've said in the past, we're going to provide expectations for one quarter out in general. For modeling purposes, we've provided you with the sensitivities as you referenced. Obviously, we'll be back in just about a month, only a month from now to talk about Q2. But if we continue some of the trends we've discussed already, you can start to see some improvement. on a number of fronts. First, we're already starting to see our sales mix improve from the customer destocking of inventories we mentioned earlier. We expect that to ramp up and should hit our full run rate sometime in late Q2, early Q3. Second, you mentioned the pricing convention with respect to revenue as it lags spot prices. So you can use sensitivities to update that. And we've seen regional premiums come up in both the US and EU. So that's yet to flow through the results. We also expect further cost pressure moderation. So energy prices continue to price below what we had in Q1. There's signs that other raw materials like coke should start to alleviate now as well. And then if you just look at EBITDA, it obviously still reflects the market price for our remaining North Pole exposure. So once you factor in the 30 euro per megawatt hour hedge, you should see further improvement to hedging from our guide as those prices continue to show contango. And then if we start to see some China curtailments, as I discussed in my prepared remarks, you could see a response on the LME side, which will start to drive results. Then going forward from there, because I think you're asking a little bit broader question, obviously the Grinder-Tongue Cast House is going to have a material impact to the positive on the business. We'll think we'll be amongst the lowest cost billet producers in the world with that new casthouse. And when you pair it with being amongst the lowest CO2 footprints in the world as well, we think that will have a very nice impact on margins at Grundertagni. And we think all that billet will be in very high demand, especially in the European market. So maybe there's some thoughts you can redirect me further, but as we look forward, we see a very nice future. and some really nice opportunities in these two U.S. and EU markets as we move forward.

Okay, that's a helpful qualitative list. And a number of those have actually been quantified in, you know, the math that I just went through. But some of them weren't. So I'll just maybe ask it again. You know, of the ones that you mentioned on that list that are not quantified, It seems like volume mix and other maybe, you know, that line and maybe coke and pitch have more upside potential in the near term. Can you quantify potential order of magnitude on EBITDA uplift for those two things as we get beyond the first quarter?

I don't really want to speculate as to where pricing will go on some of those. We do think coke prices have been relaxed, but it's been much more stubborn than maybe what we thought for the past 12 months. Obviously, you know where cook prices have been historically, and there's no real reason, no fundamental change in reason why we can't start to approach those long-term historical levels. So you can start to model that in a bit. I think you can model out the run rates there. On the mixed side, as we said, the pricing on the annual contracts for this year on the billet side were not so different than last year. mainly been a volume destocking impact over the quarter. So if you start to look towards the volume levels we saw last year, that will give you a little bit of a sense of where the upside could be there. And then, again, on the long term, we'll come back and talk more about the Grinder Talking Cash South as we get closer to next year in terms of its impact on the business and the profitability of the business. But as I said, I think that's a material upside for us and one that we're really excited about.

All right, thanks. I'll turn it over to somebody else. Thanks.

Thank you, David. Our next question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with B Reilly. Your line is now open.

Thank you very much, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. I think you mentioned the potential for energy hedging in the prepared remarks, and I just wanted to make sure I understand Is that related in any way to Hawesville, or is it more opportunistic for locking in what you might deem to be attractive energy prices now that power prices have corrected? Thank you very much for your perspective on this.

Sure, Lucas. Thanks. Well, it's relevant most immediately for Seabreeze because that's where our largest market exposure lies at this point. And as I mentioned, you know, we have seen those Indy Hub prices come down quite significantly. The Fords are just a little bit more stubborn as they come down. So when we look at that, you see a fairly expensive risk premium built into the Fords right now. But, you know, we continue to believe as you look at natural gas storage in this country, natural gas production in this country, and Henry Hub has obviously come off significantly. And pair that with increasing renewable generation especially as some of these new projects start to hit and stronger coal production on the back end and utilities. If you remember this past year, we're a little bit short going into winter. This year they look much better situated and coal piles are quite high. So we continue to think that Ford may collapse or that that risk premium may collapse a little bit and come closer to spot, which could provide some opportunities for us. Most relevant for Seabree, as we look to Hawesville going forward, that is also something that we can look at there. So on the Hawesville side, as I said, you know, the market conditions are definitely better than when we made the decision to curtail. But we would like to see both energy and metal prices reach and then sustain levels that enable the profitable operation for the long term.

Okay, that's helpful. I appreciate that. I may come back to HOSWA later. In the presentation, you highlight opportunistic M&A, or you note it, rather. And I wondered if you could maybe comment on what sort of opportunities you've been looking at. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to share specifics, but it would be helpful to get a sense for the type of transactions that could make sense. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I think you're referencing the comment on the capital allocation page in the appendix. And obviously, as we look at capital allocation, and we've talked about this at some length in the past, we've got some targets that we'd like to hit before we look at how we use that cash flow going forward. I think our immediate focus is going to be as the cash flow improves as we go into this year to put that on the balance sheet and start to improve and improve the balance sheet from here. But as a next step, once we hit those targets and as we approach those, we'll definitely come back and talk to you more. We've laid out sort of our view on how we'd use that capital going forward. To your specific question on M&A, I think we've said in the past, and I stand by it, is if we are looking at opportunistic M&A, we'll overlook what you've seen from us in the past. These are usually probably going to be smaller bolt-on transactions as we see assets become available that have attractive long-term returns and fit within our general footprint and strategies that we've laid out. So nothing really more exciting than that. But when the opportunity is there, I think you've seen it from us in the past, we're ready to act and complete transactions if they offer those long-term returns.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. And I'll ask a final one on slide 20. You lay out the volumes for value-add products. With the increase in 24s, is there kind of a good approach to quantifying how this would translate into revenue? Would appreciate your color on value-add product to link to revenue. Thank you.

Sure. I think generally, if you look at this, obviously the big gain is coming as the Grundertag and Cass House comes online. I think you can sort of count on most of that billet going into the European market. And so you can take a look at the premiums that we've seen in the European markets on billet over the past couple of years. Notably, that market has become much shorter. It's about a million tons short today with 300,000 tons of billet capacity coming offline over the past 18 months. So since we started that project, the market opportunities for it with our customers has actually gotten more attractive. So, you know, when looking at revenue, you can count on that additional 150,000 metric tons at Grundertagni, and the other big increment being the 60,000 tons of additional foundry alloy capacity coming out of Grundertagni as well. So, again, you should be able to look at European market prices. Obviously, they fluctuate, so I'm not going to speculate where they'll be in 2024, but that should give you a good sense on the additional revenue opportunities. And from a margin perspective, I think, as I said earlier, I think you can sort of count on this asset being a brand-new modern casthouse built in a low-cost locale being amongst the lowest-cost producers. So you can use that to think about how the margin might look.

I will sharpen my pencil on that. I appreciate the call. I'll turn it over for now, and best of luck.

Thanks, Lucas.

Thank you, Lucas. Our next question comes from the line of John Tumazos with Very Independent Research, LLC. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Just looking at your cost of goods sold per pound shipped excluding depreciation, it calculates to a 27.6 cent improvement or cost decline. from the September quarter. Is there any mix effects that might have been influencing that less alloy, less value added product? And is it a reasonable expectation that power and other costs would improve in the March quarter, maybe not 27.6 cents, but at least half that much?

Yeah, John, thanks. It's a good question. I think you're right to point to energy. The majority of that impact is going to be on the energy side. As Jerry went through, we also saw much better aluminum costs running through the results and marginally lower coke prices. Of that mix, as you mentioned, we expect to have continued improvements really not far off the magnitude that you mentioned. We should see incremental coke improvements, ALA probably roughly flat. And then a little bit, of course, we are natural gas consumers, and so Henry Hub reducing.

So maybe not 27 cents, but at least half that much is a good guess for the March quarter. Sometimes in the investment business, we don't know whether to buy or sell. Maybe we sell half a position or a quarter of a position incrementally a little bit at a time. It would seem like with gas falling almost to $2 a million, it's probably pretty close to the bottom. It could go negative like crude oil did three years ago because there's no storage capacity, but that's a pretty decent price. Why hasn't Henry Hub power fallen below 3.5 cents a kilowatt hour? It had been roughly... proportional to the fall in the gas price and other rises and falls and fluctuations?

Yeah, we agree with you, John, on this. So it does appear that there's a higher risk premium embedded in the forward Indy hub prices than we've seen in years past. As you mentioned, if you just mark the gas price, and you can also look to falling coal prices as well, and I mentioned references to the coal stockpiles in utilities, um you can start to see that the marginal cost of energy production in actuality has gone down quite significantly and of course with a product like energy which can't be stored you see that reflected in spot prices and so you know the sub 30 energy that we that we told you about at indie hub for february starts to reflect and look like those lower henry hub and lower thermal coal prices as you discussed so on balance We think that's mostly risk premium and probably a lot due to the volatility we've seen in the past year. But we think that probably continues to collapse as we move forward into the year and storage continues to increase and we start to have a little more certainty about what 2023 looks like. So I think on balance, we're in agreement probably with your statement.

So is this a good enough price to maybe hedge a quarter of the power you'd use at Sebring?

Yeah, I think I mentioned in my prepared remarks, that's definitely something we're going to look at as we go into summer and we watch these forward prices and hopefully they start to collapse and a little bit of that risk premium starts to exit as we move a little bit further out into winter.

Now, power is only one part of the equation, but power is pretty low. And it would certainly seem like it's possible that Hawesville comes back as long as autos are selling and houses are getting built.

Yeah, on Hawesville, like I said earlier, I think we're going to be disciplined here and make sure that we've exited what's been an extremely volatile environmental for the past 18 months. So we'll just see that energy and metal prices both reach the same levels that work and that we can be sure that if we take the effort and cost to restart Hawesville that we'll see the returns and it'll be profitable over the long run for us. But certainly the trends are favorable, as you mentioned, as energy prices have started to return towards normal. And relatively, LME remains at relatively constructive levels.

So one of the earlier questions was about M&A. And I always imagine like centuries selling out, selling the company to another entity with a stronger balance sheet to weather the volatility better and be a better credit for a renewable energy supplier to do a project financing off your purchase contract. You would buy power from them. Is that the way you think of M&A or is your, you actually think about going out and buying things, your balance sheet and earnings have been a little volatile so I hadn't imagined that you'd be shopping for our acquisitions.

Yeah, John, I'm mostly going to punch on this question, but as you might imagine, we think there are very positive long-term opportunities for Century, both in our current setup, and we also think there's a number of opportunities for the business as we go forward. We've already mentioned the Gunter Duncan Cask House, and we've got potential to restart the remaining capacity at Mount Holly. uh hopefully we see market conditions that enable the long-term restart of hosville so we're excited about this business and and we plan to be here for a good long time thank you john there are currently no further questions registered so as a reminder is a star one on your telephone keypad

Okay, well, we thank everyone for the time.

Sorry, go ahead. We'll take it. Go ahead, Lucas.

I apologize. Our next question is from the line of Lucas Pipes with B. Riley. Your line isn't open.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my follow-up question. I appreciate it. I know that was last minute here. On the M&A side, you know, you mentioned bolt-on, and sometimes it It's hard to, you know, that can mean a few things. Would a smelter be considered bolt-on, for example?

Yeah, I think that's the type of transactions you've seen from us before, right? So actually our entire footprint at one point or another was a bolt-on smelter transaction, each and every one of the operating smelters. And then we've added value where we could, so whether that be an expansion at at Grunertangi or a billet cast house at Grunertangi or expanding the billet cast house at Seabury and Mount Holly. That's an area we think we have some expertise in and that we can add value. So I think that's the type of transaction that I mean in a bolt-on transaction if such opportunities were to come up.

I appreciate that. And then Circling back on Haas well, so you noted economics better today than they were when you made the idling decision and you're looking for, looks like a little bit more just clarity on, is it clarity on margins or are you looking really for a wider margin and a greater margin of error to restart the facility? I'm just trying to get a better sense for What could trigger a decision to restart the facility? Thank you very much for the additional, Colin.

Yeah, sure. I think probably the key thing you're looking for there is it's really both reach levels that work from a profitability standpoint, but also we need to see some period of sustainability at those levels. So, you know, really the energy price decline here has been quite significant. It wasn't six months ago, obviously, that we saw high energy prices. And while we are quite confident that when you look at energy storage levels in the US that we do see market conditions that should keep energy prices lower for longer here, that's something you might understand. We'd like to be prudent and make sure that those are going to confirm for some period of time here. So really it's both reach those levels and then importantly sustain those levels for a period of time that we can be confident before we make that decision.

That's helpful. Thank you. And can you remind us what would be a reasonable level of restart costs for hospital to kind of return to a near full capacity utilization?

Yeah, we'll give you some direct guidance on that when we get closer to making that decision. But what I would say is you've recently seen us restart a number of lines at Haasville back in 2018. And just as a reminder, in that instance, we basically had to reline all of the pots in those pot lines as we brought them back up. This time around, we would not have to do that. So, it would be materially cheaper this time around than what you saw from us in 2018. But we'll give more direct guidance as we get closer to making that decision.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then, turning to slide nine and the outlook, you noted the headwind. 10 to 5 million, negative with volume mix, other. Looking out to Q2 and the remainder of the year, order of magnitude, which direction could this turn positively? Would appreciate your color on that.

Yeah, sure. I think as Jerry mentioned, the majority of this is really mixed and really has to do with that ability stocking event we spoke about earlier. And we have already started to see that improve. Month-over-month orders are up both in February and then again in March. And we would expect the same in April. There's actually a number of our customers that have a March 31 calendar year, so we're looking forward to them reentering the market in April. And so that's one that we think could materially improve and have already started to see improve as we head into Q2. But really, it's probably going to see the most improvement as soon as you get into the middle or back half of the year.

Okay. All right. I appreciate the color. And again, best of luck. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucas. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'll pass the conference back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for your questions today, and we'll be talking to you again very soon.

That concludes the Century Aluminum Company fourth quarter 2022 earnings call.

Thank you for your participation. I hope you have a wonderful day.