Ferroglobe PLC

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Ferroglobe's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Alex Rotterman, Ferroglobe's Vice President of Investor Relations, You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Ferraglobe's fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Joining me today are Marco Levy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Beatriz Garcia-Cost, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started with some prepared remarks, I'm going to read a brief statement. Please turn to slide two at this time. Statements made by management during this conference call that are forward-looking are based on current expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found on Ferroglobe's most recent SEC filings and the exhibits to those filings, which are available on our website at ferroglobe.com. In addition, this discussion includes references to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted gross debt, adjusted net debt, and adjusted diluted earnings per share among other non-IFRS measures. Reconciliations of those non-IFRS measures may be found in our most recent SEC filings. We'll be participating in the BMO Metals, Mining, and Critical Materials Conference in Hollywood, Florida on February 23rd and 24th. We hope to see you there. With that, I'll turn the call over to Marco.

Thank you, Alex, and thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in Ferroglobe. Well, 2025 presented significant external challenges, including muted demand, tariff uncertainty, delayed trade measures, and elevated levels of predatory imports. It was a year in which Ferroglobe made important strategic progress and substantially strengthened its position for future growth. Most importantly, we achieved significant and impactful trade measures in both the European Union and the United States. In Europe, the European Commission voted to protect the federal oil industry by implementing safeguards, targeting a 25% reduction in imports relative to the baseline of average imports by country and product from 2022 through 2024. During those years, annual imports of ferro-silicon averaged approximately 450,000 tons, and manganese base alloys averaged approximately 900,000 tons. These safeguards create a substantial opportunity for domestic producers. including Ferroglobe to regain market share under a more balanced competitive framework while ensuring security of EU supply chains for critical and strategic materials. We are encouraged by the European Commission's advocacy to support and strengthen the long-term sustainability of local industry. To further enhance the EU manufacturing base and drive economic growth, the Made in Europe pledge was signed by more than 1,000 business leaders. This is similar to the Buy American pledge, encouraging increased use of products with domestic content. In the United States, The International Trade Commission ruled in favor of imposing anti-dumping and countervailing duties on ferro-silicon imports from Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia, after having ruled similarly against Russia in 2024. These decisions meaningfully improved the long-term outlook for the U.S. ferro-silicon market. To capitalize on improving ferro-silicon economics, we have converted three furnaces from silicone metal to ferro-silicon, one in the US and two in Europe. This highlights the benefits of our diversified global footprint, which enables us to optimize production in response to market dynamics and geopolitical factors. With respect to silicone metal in the US, the case was delayed due to the government shutdown. Prior to the shutdown, the preliminary decision in September indicated strong measures against Angola, Australia, Laos, Norway, and Thailand. The preliminary combined anti-dumping and countervailing duties range from 21% for Norway to 334% for Laos. We now expect the final decision on Angola, Laos, and Thailand later today, with Australia and Norway anticipated in June. Operationally, we executed with discipline and focus. Through proactive cost-control measures, including a hiring freeze and reduced discretionary and capital spending, we successfully navigated through weaker demand and lower pricing while maintaining a solid balance. After the new safeguard announcement on November 18, CRU index prices for ferro-silicon and manganese alloys in Europe jumped approximately 20%. While ferro-silicon has retreated some in recent weeks, it is still up more than 10% since the safeguard announcement. Our outlook for silicon metal remains more measured, due to its exclusion from EU safeguards and continued aggressive imports from China and increasingly from Angola. In the U.S., the silicon market is expected to grow modestly according to CRU. We are actively studying longer-term opportunities associated with our idled operations in Venezuela. This site includes three large ferro-silicon furnaces and a manganese alloy furnace originally designed to produce silicon metal, which can be converted back to silicon metal. In addition, the facility includes a Soderbergh-based plant that could be used to produce electrodes. While it is too early to determine the timing and condition of the infrastructure and operations, the asset base represents a potential opportunity for the future. Given Venezuela's proximity to the U.S. market, this opportunity could become strategically meaningful over time. We also took important steps to enhance our long-term cost structure and operating flexibility, signing a new competitive 10-year French energy agreement effective January 1st, 2026. In addition to competitive energy prices, this agreement provides greater flexibility, enabling us to produce up to 12 months a year in France. Combined with implementation of safeguards, this flexibility meaningfully improves the earnings potential of our federal lawyers' business by allowing higher volumes to leverage our fixed operating costs. Beyond our core operations, we continued to invest in long-term opportunities increasing our total investment in Corshell to $10 million in 2025, reflecting strong technological progress in the development of advanced silicon-rich EV batteries. In addition to ongoing collaboration with automotive OEMs, Corshell is expected to begin initial shipments to defense and robotics customers in the first quarter of this year. Furthermore, We are in the process of finalizing the multi-year supply agreement with Corsair. For those who are new to the Corsair story, silicon-rich anodes offer lower-cost batteries with increased capacity, longer driving range, faster charging, and maybe most importantly, a reduced reliance on graphite, of which more than 90% is produced in China. We believe this technology has the potential to become increasingly strategic over time. Alongside these trade developments and operational enhancements, we continue to execute on shareholder friendly capital allocation. We increased our first quarter 2025 dividend by 8% to 1.4 cents per share. And we are increasing it again by 7% to 1.5 cents per share, starting in the first quarter of 2026. In addition, during the early part of 2025, we selectively executed discretionary share purchases, acquiring 1.3 million shares at an average price of $3.55 per share. Looking forward to 2026, Ferroglobe is well positioned to benefit from the cumulative impact of the trade actions. We expect most of our segments to post considerable growth in 2026, and we anticipate revenues improving to a range of $1.5 to $1.7 billion, an increase of 20% at the midpoint over 2025. This expectation is driven primarily by strong volume growth in the silicon-based and manganese-based alloys segment. The implementation of EU ferroalloy safeguards and the US ferro-silicon anti-dumping and anti-circumvention rulings give us increased confidence in this outlook. Next slide, please. Our shipments increased by 13% to 165,000 tons on the strength of silicon-based and manganese-based alloys, resulting in a 6% increase in quarterly revenue to $329 million. Our adjusted EBITDA declined slightly to $15 million. while our free cash flow was negative $19 million. Beatriz will provide more detailed comments in her section. Next slide, please. I'll update on our segments, starting with silicon metal on slide five. This may sound like a repeat of last quarter, but the situation remains essentially unchanged. The demand is still weak across our regions, and Europe is still plagued by unabated predatory imports from China, which roughly doubled in 2025, as well as by rising imports from Angola up nearly fourfold, driving prices to unsustainable levels. As a critical and strategic material, the European Commission should ensure sufficient EU production to meet basic demand. Overall volumes and revenues declined by approximately 3% due to an 8% decline in U.S. shipments, partially offset by a 5% increase in shipments in the EU. It is important to note that the EU shipments in the fourth quarter were up from a very weak third quarter. We idled our EU silicon metal plants in the fourth quarter to the extremely low unprofitable price. Within the silicon metal segment, the aluminum sector is performing better in relative terms as highlighted by the recent recovery in aluminum prices compared to the weak polysilicon sector. The chemical sector remains weak also due to imported siloxane and silicones from China into Europe and the U.S. The U.S. index prices rose a modest 2% in the fourth quarter over the third quarter. EU prices declined by 7%, primarily due to imports. For the year, European prices are down by a third, while US index is up less than 2%. In the US, we expect the volumes to improve in the second half of 2026, as the anti-dumping and anti-circumvention measures are expected to be finalized in February and June. Next slide, please. The story is quite different in our other product segments. Globally, silicon-based alloys had a very strong fourth quarter. Total volumes increased by 19% to 51,000 tons, with the EU and North America increasing 25% and 14%, respectively. Pricing trends were mixed in the fourth quarter. The EU Ferro-Silicon Index rebounded strongly in the quarter, rising 22% to 1,495 euros from Q3, driven by the implementation of safeguards in November. In the US, the Ferro-Silicon Index retreated by more than 4% during the quarter. For the full year, the European Index gained 12%, the U.S. index is down less than 2% for the year. Overall, we are optimistic that 2026 will be a stronger year for total silicon basal alloy sales for FerroBloc. We have already booked incremental business for 2026 in Europe and in U.S. An additional catalyst for the second half of the year is expected from enhanced EU steel safeguards with a proposal to reduce import quotas by 50% and double tariffs to 50% for exceeding the quota. It is anticipated that domestic EU production will be ramped up as a result. These measures are expected to take place on July 1st, 2026. Next slide, please. Our manganese segment reported another strong quarter with a 16% volume increase to 81,000 tons, up from 70,000 tons in the third quarter. We benefit from a larger customer base as well as safeguards. U sales, which accounts for more than 90% of our manganese volumes grew 18%. Manganese alloy index prices improved substantially in the fourth quarter. with ferromanganese and silicon manganese increasing 16% and 21%, respectively. A combination of solid demand from our European steel customers, whose business is expected to grow by 3% in 2026 in the EU, and safeguards, should propel a robust volume increase in 2026. Accordingly, we are optimistic about the European market opportunity for manganese this year. I would now like to turn the call over to Beatriz Garcia-Cos, our Chief Financial Officer, to review the financial results in more detail. Beatriz?