Century Aluminum Company

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's Century Aluminum Company fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Jalynn. I'll be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. And I'll let the time to conference over to our host, Ryan Crawford. Ryan, you may proceed.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call. I'm joined here today by Jesse Geary, Century's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jerry Bialik, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Peter Trypikovsky, Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. After our prepared comments, we will take your questions. As a reminder, today's presentation is available on our website at www.centuryaluminum.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 statements 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 to Jesse.

Thanks, Ryan, and thanks to everyone for joining. I'll start today by quickly reviewing our full-year 2024 performance. before discussing our Q4 performance and the strong market conditions we are experiencing so far in 2025. Jerry will then take you through the details of the results and our first quarter outlook, and then I'll finish with a discussion of the recent U.S. Section 232 tariff announcements before turning the call over for questions. Century produced strong results in 2024, generating adjusted EBITDA of $245 million for the year and $82 million for the fourth quarter. Overall, strong realized aluminum prices, both at the LME and regional premium level, and low energy prices, drove increased profitability in the fourth quarter. Aluminum prices averaged $2,575 for the quarter and rose further in Q1 to date, with spot LME trading above $2,700 and Midwest premium trading near 39 cents today. Turning to slide four, IndyHub power prices continued to be attractive in Q4, as a mild start to winter kept natural gas and power prices low. Coal snaps in January and February have led to higher U.S. and European gas and energy prices so far in 2025, and we have experienced some of this normal seasonality in our power prices at Seabury in the first quarter. Turning to page five, as you can see in the top left graph, strong global demand and continued constraints on new global supply is expected to move the global market into deficit by over 600,000 tons in 2025. Global aluminum supply remains challenged, with China approaching its 45 million ton production cap, and Limited announced new projects outside of China. We believe demand growth will continue to outpace supply in 2025 and for years to come. With inventories again at multi-year lows of 49 days, Western demand growth in 2025 should be supportive of higher aluminum prices as we move forward in the year and inventories continue to deplete. Aluminum supplies also remain tight in Q4, driving API aluminum prices to all-time highs in late November and early December. Illumina prices have retreated somewhat in 2025, with Spot API trading today around $505. Our Jamalco acquisition and LME-linked commercial contracts continue to serve us well during this period of Illumina price volatility. During Q4, one of our major Illumina suppliers declared a force majeure, which reduced deliveries under one of our supply contracts and required us to procure some spot API alumina in Q4. Fortunately, we were able to reach a financial settlement with the supplier that fully offset the additional costs of these spot cargoes. Please just note that the $12 million benefit from the financial settlement was booked in Q4, while the offsetting one-time costs associated with the replacement material will not roll through our results until Q1 due to FIFO accounting. Just to wrap this up, the FM was limited to Q4, and we do not expect any further impact from this beyond Q1. You can continue to use our 50% Gemalco and fixed and 50% LME-linked alumina sensitivity numbers for Q2 and beyond. On page six, you can see our other raw material price inputs continue to be constructive, but we did see some uptick in coke and pitch prices as we enter 2025. Caustic prices and HFO continue to be at levels that are very constructive for Chimalco. Turning to operations, across the company, our assets continue to deliver strong operating results into year-end. Starting with Seabree, 2024 represented one of the smelters' finest operating years ever, delivering strong results across their operating KPIs. We are very proud of the fine asset that the team has created there. Matt Mahaly did suffer some minor operational instability in Q4 as an excursion on the carbon side of the business increased operating costs and drove slightly lower production across the plant. The management team there has this issue well in hand, and we expect the plant to return to normal performance over the course of Q1. At Grundertage and Jamalco, the respective teams delivered excellent operating quarters, and Jamalco notably is off to a very strong start to 2025 with January production at the highest monthly levels since we purchased the plant. The Jamalco team continues to focus on improvement, both through operational optimization and execution of our multi-year CapEx program that will aim to increase production at Jamalco towards 1.4 million tons of capacity. In Q4, the Jamalco team took action to right-size its workforce by implementing a 5% reduction in the plant's headcount. This step was necessary to lower the plant's labor expense and increase productivity and continues our progress towards Jamalco's goal of producing in the second quartile of the cost curve. Our evaluation process at Haasville made good progress with strong interest and lots of due diligence ongoing. We will keep you updated on progress here as we move through the year. Wrapping up with some very good news out of Iceland, recent rainfall and stronger than expected snowmelt has improved reservoir levels in the hydropower schemes on the island. Given these improved reservoir levels, the National Power Company ended the power curtailments to Grundertangi in mid-February. The curtailments had originally been expected to last through May. The plant is now in the process of restoring operations to full production, which will have a partial benefit in Q1 and should result in full production levels for Green Butongi in Q2. The positive financial impact of the additional production is included in our outlook on page 10 in our full year volume guidance that is included later in this presentation. Jerry will now walk you through the details on the quarter and our Q1 outlook.