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spk03: 2021 relative to normalized levels, particularly during the period between Thanksgiving and the end of the year when the COVID Omicron variant began to spread around the world. Additionally, service centers and distributors pulled even less tons than usual during this already typically weak period in late November and December. Remaining steadfast in our disciplined supply strategy and based on this rebound we expected and are already seeing from our automotive clients this year, we elected to move up several operational maintenance outages originally planned for 2022 into the fourth quarter of 2021. These actions reduced our sequential quarter-over-quarter steel production by 675,000 crude tons in Q4, ultimately also impacting our unit costs. Partially offsetting the volume and cost impacts were higher selling prices in Q4, which rose by approximately $90 per ton from 1334 to our highest level of the year of $1423 per net ton. This is also only an early indication of the success we have achieved in renewing our fixed price sales contracts, as only a portion of our contract renewals were already in place during Q4 of 2021. Remember, the majority of our renewals were not in place until January 1st of 2022. As this year progresses, the selling prices we report every quarter going forward will continue to demonstrate the successful renewal of these fixed price contracts, and that will be even more evident if the index HRC price continues to drop. For context, if we applied the contracts we have in place now in 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2021, holding all else constant, our Q4 2021 adjusted EBITDA would have been nearly $500 million higher. This level of fixed contracts is the key differentiator in favor of Cleveland Cliffs relative to all other steel makers in the United States and gives us significant visibility into our cash flows for 2022. Despite the lower shipments and additional inventory build, we generated $900 million of free cash flow in Q4 of 2021. Of this $900 million, we used $761 million to acquire FPT and used the remaining $150 million or so to pay down debt. So in other words, with only one quarter's worth of free cash flow, we were able to pay for a meaningful acquisition and still had enough cash flow left over in the quarter to pay down some debt. Now, speaking of our debt, we have already accomplished a lot more than we originally expected in terms of improving our leverage. We keep a close eye on our overall debt levels on a dollar basis. but we also look at our overall leverage on a total debt to last 12 months adjusted EBITDA basis. With total debt and LTM adjusted EBITDA at essentially the same level, at the end of 2021, we are at a total leverage of only one time. By next quarter, our LTM adjusted EBITDA will likely be even higher, which will continue to further reduce our overall leverage metrics. As a reminder, our leverage was over four times in 2019. pre-COVID and before our transformation. While overall leverage is in great shape, we will continue to simplify our capital structure by paying down debt, replacing existing bonds with cheaper ones, and extending debt maturities. The significant free cash flow we anticipate in 2022 should allow us to pursue the dual goals of repurchasing shares and reducing debt. We have already redeemed our convertible notes in 2022, and several other tranches of our bonds become callable this year at pre-negotiated prices, including the two tranches of secured notes we issued in 2020. We fully intend to redeem or refinance these notes at some point in 2022. As expected, last year we built a substantial amount of working capital, which should be worked down throughout this year. Given this increased collateral base, we were able to take advantage of these asset levels and upsized our ABL facility last quarter, increasing our available liquidity by $1 billion to our current level of $2.6 billion. On another very important note on the balance sheet, our net pension and OPEB liabilities saw a $1 billion reduction during Q4, primarily due to actuarial gains and strong asset performance leading to a $1.3 billion or nearly 30% net reduction during 2021. Also importantly, in the rising rate environment that we are in today, we have meaningful potential for further pension and OPEB liability reductions. Just for reference going forward, for every 50 basis point increase in our discount rate, our expected liabilities would decline by about $500 million, all things equal. Looking ahead, Even under today's pessimistic HRC futures curve, we would expect higher overall average selling prices in 2022 than we saw in 2021, when HRC averaged $1,600 per ton. On the cost side, we expect to see increases related to energy and materials, with the largest annual change in coal and coke. Countering this, we have been offsetting our coke usage by increasing the usage of HBI in our blast furnaces and increasing the percentage of scrap in the charge of our BOFs. Our CapEx budget for this year is $800 to $900 million, an increase from the previous year primarily due to an additional reliability in environmental projects, inflation, and the realign of one of our Cleveland blast furnaces, which will be out for over 100 days during Q1 and Q2. The full year of DDNA should be about $900 million. Exclusive of one-time items, our 2022 SG&A expense should be around $520 million, which includes higher wages and also $40 million of FPT overhead. Now that we have effectively exhausted our tax NOLs, our cash tax rate should be in the 15% to 20% range, with our book tax rate at 21%. With that, I will turn it over to our CEO, Lorenzo Goncalves.
spk07: Lorenzo Goncalves Thank you, Celso, and good morning, everyone. Our first full calendar year as the new Cleveland Cliffs was an absolute success, and we could not have accomplished all the great results we were able to accomplish without the hard work and commitment of our 26,000 employees, approximately 20,000 represented by the USW, the UAW, the machinists, and other unions. We believe in manufacturing in the United States and in good paying middle class jobs. We really appreciate the work of each one of our employees and the unions representing them. We could not have done all that without you. As great as 2021 was for Cleveland Cliffs, we would have done even better. if the automotive industry had resolved their supply chain problems. The shortage of microchips cut their opportunity to build 18 million cars or more in 2021, and the automotive sector ended the year with a much smaller 13 million units. When we at Cleveland Cliffs realized in the third quarter of 2021 that our automotive clients were still not performing up to the level that they were guiding us to build inventories for them, we then made the decision to move up to Q4 some important maintenance jobs originally scheduled for the first four months of 2022. That decision albeit correct, has clearly impacted our Q4 results. Now, with the first month of 2022 behind us, we are starting to see improved delivers to our automotive clients. While it is just a one-month data point, delivers to automotive clients in January were stronger than each of the previous three months, October, November, and December. And our adjusted VITA in January was a solid $588 million. Furthermore, as the microchip shortage improves during 2022, the automotive companies will need a lot more steel this year than in 2021. This steel comes primarily from Cleveland Cliffs. We are, by a huge margin, the largest supplier of steel to the automotive industry in the United States. Let's make this abundantly clear to our investors. There is no other steel company, integrated or mini-mill, in the U.S. or more broadly in North America capable of supplying all the specs and all the tonnage we supply the American automotive industry. Cleveland Cliffs already has all the equipment and technological capabilities that other companies are only now spending several billions of dollars to try to replicate by building new melt shops and new galvanizing lines. We typically sell 5 million tons of steel directly to automotive manufacturers and also sell another 2 to 3 million tons through intermediaries. Put another way, almost half of our steel sales ends up in automotive functions. Another interesting fact, Even though we have not deliberately tried to grow our automotive market share in 2021, we have actually increased our market share through tons resourced by our clients. While the clients do not tell us why they are taking the order away from another steel company and reassigning the specific item to Cleveland Cliffs, we can only assume that these other steel companies are not meeting the automotive industry's high standards. That's probably why these competitors have to invest several billions of dollars to play catch up. Cleveland Cliffs does not have to spend this type of money and will not. With our CapEx needs in 2022 relatively low, and strong confidence in our cash flows, we are very comfortable putting in place the $1 billion share buyback program just announced. Another differentiating feature of our way of doing business is the predictable pricing model that we have in place with automotive and team plates. and some select clients in other sectors as well. This feature eliminates the worst cancer in our industry, which is self-inflicted volatility. Going forward, we will work with more clients to move sales under this model. Real clients don't need indexes. They need reliable suppliers and fair prices. We currently sell about 45% of our volumes under annual fixed price contracts, by far the highest in our industry, and we want this number to continue to grow. The harm caused by the volatility of steel pricing is most damaging for smaller service centers who live out of their inventory values. Ironically, These same folks are the ones who create volatility in the first place, panic buying, double and triple ordering when supply is tight, and then halting purchases altogether when inventories are temporarily adequate, perpetuating a never-ending cyclicality. We are convinced that it is in everyone's best interest to limit volatility in our industry, And that's not only desirable, but also feasible. That's why we are moving away from sales to smaller players, further concentrating on the larger clients, which already make up the vast majority of our sales. At this point, all important clients of Cleveland Clips are being offered index-free deals to continue to do business with us. Marrying stable costs with stable prices up and down the supply chain can create a much healthier business environment for steel in the United States. Another ongoing important matter for the future of Cleveland Cleves is our commitment to ESG. That was evident with our purchase of FPT, the national leader in prime scrap, which was completed in the fourth quarter. The integration of FPT has gone remarkably well, and we're grateful for the buy-in of the 600 employees of FPT that are now employees of Cleveland Cliffs. Since closing the deal on November 18, we have made substantial moves securing a number of additional sources of prime scrap uptake, most notably the largest automotive stamping plant in the country. This particular stamping plant alone generates more than 150,000 tons of prime scrap per year. Our agreement replaced an incumbent scrap company who had been servicing this stamping plant for decades, even before this scrap company was acquired by a mini mill several years ago. Our deal was made possible with a compelling proposition. This automotive manufacturer buys the steel primarily from Cleveland Cliffs. And now we can feed their scrap directly back to our steelmaking shops. This is not just recycling steel. It's a real closed loop. A closed loop is a key piece of our automotive clients' environmental strategy, as well as a key piece of our own environmental strategy at Cleveland Clips. On the carbon emission side, we continue to lower our usage of coal and coke by increasing the utilization of HBI as a significant part of the burden in our blast furnaces. While our flagship direct reduction plant in Toledo was originally built to supply third parties EAFs with HBI, This HBI is now being exclusively used in-house within Cleveland Cliffs. The vast majority in our blast furnaces play a central role in lowering both our coke rate and our CO2 emissions. Furthermore, we are currently working with Linde, our largest supplier of industrial gases, to implement the utilization of hydrogen in Toledo. As you may know, our state-of-the-art direct reduction plant was originally designed and built with the possibility of using up to 70% of hydrogen in the mix as reduction gas. we expect to report on the usage of hydrogen and the production of the first hydrogen-reduced HPI still in 2022. The same goes for our iron ore pellets, another key competitive advantage we have and a driver of lower emissions relatively to foreign competition that uses primarily sinter feed ore. in their blast furnaces. Going forth, we will be limiting the tonnage of iron ore pellets we sell to third parties. Iron ore is a finite resource, and the time and cost it takes to get permits and extend life of mine is incredibly cumbersome. In addition, iron ore pellets are scope one emissions for Cleveland Cliffs. but they are Scope 3 emissions for the clients who sell them to. Unfortunately, Scope 3 emissions are not accounted for, not counted in anyone's reduction targets. And surprisingly, at least for now, no one really seems to care about Scope 3 emissions. Therefore, producing fewer tons of pellets automatically reduces our Scope 1 emissions And that's good enough for us, at least until Scope 3 becomes a topic of concern. Also, with the use of additional scrap in our BOFs, our iron ore needs are not as high as before, and we no longer need to run our mines full out. When determining where to adjust production, our first look is at our cost structure. Because we are now able to produce diagrate pellets at Menorca, and mainly due to the ridiculous royalty structure we have in place with the Mesabi Trust, we will be idling all production at our North Shore mine starting in the spring, carrying through at least to the fall period, and maybe beyond. At North Shore, no production, low shipments, low royalty payments. We also acknowledge that our strategy to stretch hot metal by adding increased amounts of scrap to the BOFs is working extremely well. With more scrap in the BOFs, we need fewer tons of hot metal to produce the same tonnage of liquid steel. As a consequence, the North Shore Isle could go longer than currently planned. As another consequence of our strategy of hot metal stretching, we have dramatically lowered our needs for coke and coal. We already announced last quarter that we idled our coke belly at Middletown. Now that our coke needs have been reduced even more, in the second quarter of 2022, will also permanently close our Mountain State carbon coal plant. This action will not only further improve our carbon footprint, but will also save us approximately $400 million in capex originally planned for this facility over the next few years. Even though jobs are going to be eliminated at Mountain State Carbon, We have enough job openings at other nearby Cleveland police facilities, and we can ensure all good employees will have other employment opportunities within our company. On that note, the last piece of our environmental strategy relates to how we operate our eight blast furnaces. Our have presence in highly specified automotive-grade materials, particularly exposed parts, necessitates the use of blast furnaces. EAFs continue to be unable to demonstrate that they can compete and produce the entire spectrum of specs demanded by the car manufacturers. Numbers don't lie. That's the main reason why All the major steel suppliers located in countries with a strong presence of automotive manufacturing, like in Japan, in South Korea, in Europe, and here in the United States, are not mini mills operating EIFs. They are all integrated steel mills with blast furnaces and VOFs. Cleveland Cliffs is the one here in the United States. And we do not use a sinker. We use only pellets and HBI in our blast furnaces, enabling us to establish the new world benchmark in low coke rate and low emissions. This is particularly relevant when our automotive clients with a worldwide presence compare Cleveland Cliffs against their other well-known automotive steel suppliers from countries like Japan, South Korea, Germany, Austria, Belgium, or France, among others. Our full control over the entire supply chain from pellets to HBI to prime scrap creates a huge differentiation in favor of Cleveland Clips. one that is impossible to replicate in Asia or in Europe. That said, we also produce a lot of steel that goes to less quality intensive end uses. A blast furnace reline is a capex heavy undertaking, albeit totally expected in our multi-year projections. Under this evaluation process, We also take into consideration other upgrades to the upstream hotend, as well as the capital related to extending the life of mine of our iron ore mines. With all that, in some cases, the capital requirements of a new EAF compared to the avoidance of reinvesting in a blast furnace reline and its associated supply chain could come out close to a wash. particularly because we at Cleveland Cliffs already have the rolling and coating capabilities in place. If and when that happens, the wash or better, we might consider an EAF as a replacement to a blast furnace relay in the future. One final piece on the environmental to note. Of all CO2 emissions generated in the United States, The emissions related to the production of steel represent just 1% of the total. One more time, just 1%. This number is 15% in China and 7% worldwide. But here in the United States, it is just 1%. The steel industry in the United States is the most environmentally friendly in the entire world. Meanwhile, transportation, particularly affected by automotive tailpipe emissions, is responsible for 29%, while energy is responsible for another 25%. This is where the importance of steel made in USA is most significant as our very small emissions footprint again, just one percent, will play a critical role in improving the emissions of these two sectors, which combined are responsible for more than 50 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States. For one, Cleveland Cliffs has been preparing for the transition from ICE to electric vehicles long before EVs rapid adoption. And we have the right skills necessary to meet the automotive industry target of 50% EV adoption by 2030. On the energy side, we need more renewables like solar and wind. and both are still intensive. Cliffs is the only producer in the United States of the electrical steels needed for the modernization of the electrical grid, which received $65 billion in funding under the recently passed infrastructure bill. Our non-oriented electrical steels, we call it NOS, is used for motors in both hybrids and BEVs. The infrastructure bill also includes another $7.5 billion in a market for charging stations for electric vehicles. Each charger uses approximately 50 pounds of GOS, grain-oriented electrical steel, and we are talking about half a million of charging stations, plus the equivalent amount of transformers to tie down these charging stations into the grid. With all that, and no other producer of goods or news in North America other than Cleveland Cliffs, in 2022, we have a more than full order book for electrical steels. And that's just the beginning of the EV revolution, which will certainly progress between now and 2030. With all we at Cleveland Cliffs are doing related to carbon emissions, I can't believe so many companies are being given a free pass by the investment community despite not doing much more than just saying they will be carbon neutral by 2050. What I have just laid out here are real, concrete, undeniable measures to reduce emissions. And we are implementing them all company-wide at Cleveland Cliffs. We will continue to be able to track our progress in 2022, 2023, 2030, and beyond. And we will watch how much others will actually do here in the United States and abroad. The future, and specifically 2022, is clearly bright for Cleveland Cliffs. Underlying demand remains strong. Infrastructure-related spending has started, particularly regarding electrical steels. And the cheap shortage affecting the automotive has begun to ease, leading to meaningful pent-up demand for cars and trucks. That should benefit Cleveland Cliffs a lot more than any other steel company in the United States. In the meantime, we will take full advantage of the market's lack of appreciation or lack of understanding of our business by buying back our stock, all to the benefit of our lawyer shareholders. I will now turn it over to the operator for Q&A.
spk01: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. And for a participant using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question is from Lukias Pipes with B Riley Securities. Please proceed.
spk05: Hey, good morning, everyone, and congratulations on a really terrific 2021. Thanks, Lucas.
spk07: Appreciate it.
spk05: Lorenzo and Celso, I wanted to ask you a bit about the capital structure going forward. When I go back to second quarter 2021 conference call, you mentioned a net debt zero sometime next year. So this year, I interpret it as an absolute target on the leverage side. Today's prepared remarks sounded more that you're aiming for relative leverage targets, EBITDA versus net debt and the like. How should investors think about this going forward?
spk07: Lucas, first of all, net debt zero can't be a target for any company because you are inserted in an environment that with things that are way beyond our control, like interest rates, like the ability to refi. So, you know, net debt zero or debt zero or whatever, the only way to really be 100% sure that you're going to start with no debt is when you file for bankruptcy because then it's fresh start accounting. So that's a way to... to get there. So, and you know well that that's not something that here at Cleveland Police we considered back in 2014, and we proved ourselves right. So, this being said, in 2022, I spent $1.3 billion to buy out ArcelorMittal with the preferred. that I could easily have given them stock. I used cash. And I also bought FPT for $775 million that ended up being $761 million. So we are talking more than $2 billion in cash usage that was absolutely necessary for our future. I hope you understood what I said about the use of scrap as we work to reduce emissions. You reduce emissions not building EAFs. You reduce emissions melting scrap instead of melting big iron with 4% carbon content. And that's what we're doing in our still making shops. FPT is key for that. We also finished out the construction of our HBI plant. So we have been using the cash in the business, and we have been paying down debt. Even in Q4, we'll still pay down debt. So we'll continue to pay down debt. And the use of cash might have delayed achieving that zero. But we'll get there. But there's no targets for 2021 or 2022. We'll get there when we get there. And a company that has leverage of one dime is a very healthy company. Even for the ones... that don't believe that we are going to generate the revenues and the cash flow that we are going to generate in 2022, if they believe that our EBITDA will be, let's put a number, $2.5 billion, $3 billion, then we end up with two times leverage. It's still very healthy. So even the naysayers have to admit that a company leverage two times is good. But guess what, Lucas? Based on the refinancing, based on the renegotiation of our sales contracts, our cash flow generation should keep us within this one-time leverage or less. So that's what we're working on here at the company with the backdrop of reality. I would like to also complement my answer with a few other things.
spk03: Go ahead, Celso.
spk05: Thank you.
spk03: Yeah, hey, thanks, Lucas. Yeah, just to put it another way, right, if you look at our EBITDA in 2020, It was like $350 million. And then today we just reported 2021 adjusted EBITDA of $5.3 billion. So when we saw that we were accomplishing a lot of deleveraging just by that significant increase in EBITDA, it allowed us to be aggressive with the redemption of the preferreds and the acquisition of FBT. So that net debt zero target became less relevant. So I think that's a way to look at it. And as I mentioned, on a total debt to LTM EBITDA basis, we're at one times. As I stated, our January EBITDA alone in 2022 is going to be higher than our Q1 of 21. So if you roll forward that LTM EBITDA, our leverage metric is only going to get better on that basis. But going forward, we're still going to be proactive in terms of cleaning up the capital structure. As you know, we have those two bonds, two tranches of secured notes. Both of those are callable this year. There's another tranche that's callable. One of the unsecured is also callable this year. We've already redeemed the converts. So there's going to be continual fine-tuning of the capital structure, but we are looking at it more on a leverage metric basis as opposed to a total net debt target.
spk07: Yeah, not to beat the dead horse until hell freezes over, but just to make sure that we are on the same page. We started talking after the acquisition about synergies, and there were targets of synergies, the number for synergies, and things like that. I haven't received a question about synergies in a long time. Do you know why? Because more than the numbers of the synergies, more than the, excuse me, 150 or 310, after we acquired ArcelorMittal, target numbers for synergies, we changed the industry completely, 100%. We created the basis for everybody here in the United States to make a lot of money. Even the enemies recognize that. Without our... actions on consolidating this industry, no steel mill, no service center, and several others throughout the entire supply chain would have made money, as we all made money in 2021. So for you guys that are listening to this call with these guys' names, you are welcome. I got you there. So that was the biggest synergy. that we implemented, not just for ourselves, but for the entire steel industry. So, we are going to get to continue to manage this company, that life, better than anybody else in this business. Period. Full stop. No more questions about net debt zero and things like that. I'm not bound for this BS. We are real. We are the ones that deliver the results. The shareholders love it, the bondholders love it, and the shorts hate. We'll continue to do that. What else, Lucas?
spk05: Thank you very much, Lorenzo. That was clear. I wanted to ask a bit on the cost side. So you maintained a disciplined approach here in Q4, and there was some fixed cost absorption on the back of that. So I'd assume that will get better in Q1 and throughout the year 2022, but then there are some inflationary pressures, of course. So I wondered if you could put some color around that and how you take these various drivers into account when you think about costs in 2022 versus 2021.
spk07: Yeah, sure. Let me give you the macro, and then if Celso wants to complement on that. Details are more than happy to do that way. In the macro, the biggest thing was in Q4, the automotive industry clients started to put more orders in front of us and informing us that the microchip shortage was being resolved and we were producing based on their inputs. And that thing did not really materialize. We saw that We were skeptical through the end of Q3, and then we saw that happen at the beginning of Q4. I could have done two things. One, started going like the ones, particularly the Canadians, that came to our market as if it was their market because they were yelling fire in the middle of the theater. And I was trying to sell everything for any price and destroy the market as if it was their market price-wise. or anticipating maintenance because one day these automotive folks will resolve their microchip shortages. So we anticipated maintenance. We knew that we would be punished by moving fewer volumes. This is called production discipline, which is praised a lot in theory, but nobody does. We do. And we'll continue to do it because it's the right thing to do. And then the cost per ton goes up, yeah, it goes up. If you produce less, it goes up. As far as the items that are really hurting us, specifically one that's clearly going up a lot in an individual base, that's coke and cold, it's not affecting us that much, because if you notice, we are reducing coke rate a lot. by using HVI. By the way, I think that only Cleveland Cliffs can use because we're the only ones that have it to use in blast furnaces. So it's not hurting us as much because we're using, it's higher per ton, but we are using a lot less in terms of tons. So that's a good thing. Celso, is there a complement with any specific recovery?
spk03: No, I mean, I think maybe just to put some numbers to it, Lucas, you know, the coal and coke increase is probably even less than you're expecting. It's high, but it's only about 40% year over year going into 2022. But on an overall cost basis, even with that 40% baked into it, we're only seeing a total overall average increase of call it 10% on our costs. So I think that's a good way to look at it. And as Lorenzo mentioned, we're decreasing that coke rate, which is helping offset some of this large increase.
spk05: Terrific. Terrific. Great. Well, really appreciate all the color today, gentlemen, and continue best of luck. Thank you. Thanks, Lucas.
spk01: Our next question is from Michael Glick with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed.
spk04: Hey, good morning. Your contract mix comments were pretty interesting. You talked about moving beyond that 45% level. How high of a level do you want to get to?
spk07: Look, we believe that real clients should have contracts to lock tonnage and price. We don't believe that we need any indexes. Indexes are good to protect the job of the purchasing managers because they go back to their bosses and say, well, I can't deal with CRU. Okay, so whatever CRU will go dictate the the destiny of the cash flows of the companies. I don't agree with that. You've got to take ownership of what you do. Do you believe in stability or not? Do you want stability or not? Or do you want just to preserve your job and look good in front of your boss? So I don't believe that we should have index at all, completely. But I am realistic. So I believe that my percentage that's pretty higher than anyone else in the industry is already higher than anyone else in the industry. You know, continue to make it bigger, you know? I want the smaller guys to buy from the big guys instead of trying to buy from the muse because they don't have the where it's all to endure when things are not 100% the way they told their bosses. So I want to go index, to go fix because indexes are a cancer and needs to be eradicated.
spk04: Understood. Just on the buyback, could you walk us through the drivers of that decision, and do you view it as more opportunistic or systematic in nature, which I guess is another way of asking how aggressive will you be with it?
spk07: It depends. Buyback is a medicine against stupidity. You don't buy back stock. because you believe that a company should be buying back stock. A company should be returning money to the shareholders, but buying back stock is a tax-efficient way to reward long-term shareholders instead of allowing them to be at the mercy of the opportunistic, of the mercy of the ones that don't understand Mike, we still are called an iron ore company every now and then. The other day, a guy, I forgot his name, he's like a substitute teacher at CNBC. He comes in when the real guys are not available. Something Sullivan, I forgot his name. Anyway, because he's a substitute teacher. He again called Cleveland Cleaves an iron ore company. How many years they need to learn that we are no longer an iron worker. So, people are making investment decisions based on that. So, buy back time for that. So, if the market decides to give me the gift of free shares, I'll buy it because I don't have the need for CapEx that other companies are just committing right now and put $3 billion here, $3 point something billion over there. I don't have any of that. That's it. We are going to be in this... 800 900 billion dollars for 2022 we got backs and then going forward it will be less than that so we have the cash flows and we're going to have the cash eventually we use this buyback but something aggressive so let's see how stupid the market is that will dictate how aggressive i will be understood and appreciate the candor as always thanks michael
spk01: Our next question is from Carlos Diaba with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed. Carlos, please check and see if your line is muted.
spk00: Yeah. Sorry, it was muted. Good morning, everyone. Just a question on, just following on the last comment you made. So what about dividends? I mean, the cash flow duration should be good based on your comments and expectation for prices and volumes. So share-by-backs are great, obviously, but you probably have a scope to do both. What are your views on dividends? You don't like the tax situation of those, or what would you prefer, or only do share-by-backs? And then I have another question on end markets, if I may.
spk07: Look, the money belongs to the shareholders. Carlos, and our shareholders are by and large institutional shareholders, and institutional shareholders tend to prefer buybacks than dividends. It's more tax efficient, like I said. Retail like dividends better. One day, when everybody understands, who is the supplier of automotive steel in the United States? Oh, it's Cleveland Glyphs. Who is supporting all the electric vehicle revolution that's going on and needs to happen if we're serious about emissions in the United States? Oh, that's Cleveland Clips, because they have all the steels for the cars, all the electric steels for the engines, and all the electric steels for the transformers and charging stations. So we are right there in the basis, in the foundation, of this real change that's happening in the marketplace. So when the retail investors really understand that if you are really serious about ESG, you should, you must buy Cleveland Cliffs stock, that day I might consider a dividend. But not before. Because dividends are good for retail, share buybacks are good for institutional. So far, institutional is the base. Some of them still need to learn that they're no longer an ironware company, but we'll get there.
spk00: Fair enough. And then on air markets, I mean, you clearly made the disciplined decision in the fourth quarter, and that had to do with your expectation that volumes in the auto sector would improve this year. Any comments there? What are you hearing from those customers? And then with about 25% to 30%, say, of your sales going to infrastructure and manufacturing markets, How much would you say you have leveraged to the infrastructure bill? You mentioned the energy sector, obviously, but more broadly, how much do you see the exposure of cleaves to the infrastructure bill? Maybe it's something that is underappreciated by the general market.
spk07: Yeah, let's stay with the portion of the infrastructure bill that I mentioned in my prepared remarks. $72.5 billion just related to electric vehicles broken into improving the electrical grid, 65 and 7.5 billion charging stations. That's just for us. Think about it. We are the only ones producing grain-oriented electrical steels that goes into transformers. So that's for us. We are the only ones at this point producing non-oriented electrical steels that go into the engines. So that's for us. We are by far the biggest supplier of, by far, by a lot. We are big at the number two plus number three as a supplier of automotive industry. So we are really big in automotive. So everything that's going on right now, and there's a lot going on in the automotive industry in terms of changing models and redesigning and re-specifying materials for these new EVs that are coming online in 2024, 2025, depending on the OEM, which we all serve, we are the suppliers of all of them, as number one supplier, all of them, We are so very familiar with those changes. It's all within Cleveland Cliffs of Steel. So that's all coming in this infrastructure bill. If you go to other things, like I mentioned also in my prepared remarks in wind and solar, these are big consumers of plates and galvanized. And we do produce a lot of plates. We do produce a lot of galvanized. So we're going to benefit a lot. But you make no mistake, our place, the place where we shine is in automotive. And yeah, they have not been performing. They could have reached something like 19, 18, maybe 19 million cars last year. But they did not manage well their supply chains. So we are carrying a lot of inventory ready for them, which absolutely will be transformed in cash very soon. You don't need to produce because it's already produced. So it's all right. We're good.
spk00: All right. Excellent. Thank you very much. Good luck.
spk07: Thanks, Carlos.
spk01: Our next question is from Emily Chang with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
spk02: Good morning, Lorenzo and Salsa. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is just around your comment earlier around thinking about an EAF as a potential replacement to a blast furnace realign in the future. Perhaps could you give us a sense as to what's the timeline on this analysis and, you know, perhaps timeline to action being taken here?
spk07: Yeah, look, I hope you... Good morning, Anthony, by the way. I hope you understood that our strategy related to the environment is not centered on EAS. My strategy on the environment is to support the ones that really knock down emissions. That's the transportation industry, the cars that put out of the atmosphere 29% of the total CO2 that pollutes the air here in the United States. The steel industry is only 1%. So if you shut down the entire steel industry, integrated and medium use included, you just reduced 1% of the emissions, because that's what we generate. So there's not a lot to be done by the steel industry. That's the very first thing that particularly Goldman Sachs, that is so eager to be making money on ESG, needs to understand that. Even if you shut down the entire steel industry, you just reduced 1%, so you did nothing for the environment. you did not reduce any emissions. On the other hand, if you replace the entire fleet of cars, it's not going to happen overnight, but if you replace the entire fleet of cars, combustion engines with electric vehicles, then you knock it down 29%. So that's a good thing. So that's why we're so eager to support the car manufacturers to go from ICEs to EVs, Because that will be real in terms of emissions. And Goldman Sachs can make a lot of money doing the right thing. So I really would like to cheer Goldman Sachs to work on ESG, but work the right way. Address the problem, not just what's the last shiny thing that you guys see and jump in the bandwagon. My thing with EAS is... When it's time to rely on glass parts, it costs a lot of money. And I'm done with everything automotive that I'm doing. So I don't need to do anything else in terms of galvanizing lines. We have wide galvanizing lines. We have electro-galvanizing lines. We have all kinds of things that take care of automotive. But we also have hot bands. We also have cold walls. We also have galvanized for other uses. And that still doesn't need to come with the same level of specs, control of inclusions and low sulfur and this and that. So we can, instead of relying on the blast furnace, put a DAF to melt scrap. And by the way, we have a lot of scrap because we own a scrap company. So at that time, I'll do it. When that is going to happen? I don't know. In the future. Certainly not in 2022. I don't believe it will be in 2023 either. So that will put us in a completely different position from the ones that are committing to deploy a lot of billions of dollars just to get to the point that we are at. It's a good try. Let's see how it goes. My leverage is going down, and that's a good thing.
spk02: Understood. That makes sense. And my follow-up is just around your 2022 average selling prices. Appreciate the mark-to-market update there. Sounds like you've made some good progress with the re-contracting there. Just curious as to if you can share what percentage of contracts still remain outstanding for renegotiation still. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah, we still have two that we need to finalize, but we are done with nine. So, It's pretty good. So it was more complicated when I started because I had zero done and 11 to go. Now we are nine done and two to go. I can even, you know, if let's assume someone so far so good, the nine that we renegotiate, check the box nine times. So everybody accepted my terms. But let's assume that one of these two do not accept. one of these two decides he doesn't want to accept my renegotiation. We may even help them expedite resolving the chip shortage, depending on the size of that client. Because if they can't get steel from us, they will not be able to get from anyone. And so I see a lot more microchips available in the marketplace for my clients. But at this point, Emily, this is just a theoretical exercise. I believe that they will all come, the two ones that are renegotiated at this point, and they're going to be fine. They're going to be totally okay, and life is good. And the next thing will be just in time. We will be enforced as just in time, not just in case. So we're not going to continue to carry inventory. for them for free. But that's another story. We can discuss that in the next conference call. That will happen in two months, so it's not a lot of time to wait.
spk02: Great. Thanks, Lorenzo.
spk07: Thanks, Emily.
spk01: Our next question is from Seth Rosenfeld with BNP Paribus Exams. Please proceed.
spk06: Good afternoon. Thank you for taking our questions today, and congrats on a good set of results. If I can kick off, please, with a question on volumes. I guess for the full year, typically for Q1, give us a little bit of sense of to what extent we should expect a recovery after what was very good supply discipline back in Q4. I guess I'm trying to understand the balance yet. You're pointing to recovering in auto demand, which I think we haven't heard from all of your peers as of yet. Is that strong enough to offset what appears to be continued weak demand amongst distributors? How do you think about the mix for volumes, I guess, for Q1 and then going ahead to Q2, please? I'll start there.
spk07: Thank you. Good afternoon, Seth. Welcome back. We haven't heard from you in a long time. I hope your fatherhood experience is going well and everything is fine with you. As far as volumes, our service center clients, they – Normally don't buy, you know, I was a service center guy for a long time, for 10 years. So I know more or less how the mindset works. They don't buy much between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. Never do. So this was expected. The difference at this time is that a lot of the buying that was done earlier was done under distress for them. They were double ordering. They got more steel than they like it to have and everything. But demand, underlying demand, continues to be great. So these inventories that they were sitting on is being worked down. And they are coming back. Demand, underlying demand, like I said, is good. And their direct demand to us will come back very soon. So Q2, Q3, Q4 volumes should be just fine. And we're going to end up this year with a volume that's more or less in line with the volumes of 2021, slightly higher, slightly slower, but it's a good reference to start thinking. So don't believe that Q4 is by any stretch a new paradigm, because it's not. I hope I answered your question. If not, please go ahead with a follow-up.
spk06: No, I think that's great. Just to clarify, I guess, it sounds like Q1 perhaps still a bit on the light side, but Q2 to Q4, better confidence on volumes. Am I understanding that correctly?
spk07: Yeah. Yeah. Q1 volumes should be higher than Q4. That's the most probably most relevant takeaway at this point.
spk06: Okay. Thank you. And a separate question, please, with regards to DRI. Your Toledo plant has been a very good success so far, so congrats on that. When we think about the business going forward, obviously your strategy to charge us in your blast furnaces has been very good on the decarbonization side. Given the scale of your blast furnace capacity at present, do you have enough DRI inputs for interest in growing DRI for the blast furnaces? I think longer term, as you've now brought up an EAS expansion several years out, is DRI part of that mix?
spk07: Yeah, at this point, give or take, we are consuming 1.7 billion tons, million tons, 1.7 million tons of HPI in our blast furnace and more or less 300,000 tons in our EAFs. We do have EAFs at this point. You know that. If and when we put more EAFs at that point, we are going to have more scrap because FPT continues to get new sources of scrap, including prime scrap, on these stamping plants that we're doing closed-loop with among our automotive clients. So, because we continue to rely on FPT, we don't believe that we're going to need more HBI. We can be selective, we can keep our HBI for our blast furnaces, continue to use a portion in our EAFs, and even when we have more EAFs, we'll grow these EAFs with scrap, not with HBI. Remember, these EAFs will be for lower specs, so scrap is good. You know, the most environmentally friendly type of operation in distilled business is an EAF to produce rebar. It's very low emissions when you melt scrap for rebar, because it's pretty much it. You melt scrap, you produce rebar. As simple as that. When you start to complicate it, and you start to go up in the food chain, and you get to plateau, then you need pig iron from Russia, from Ukraine, from places that are very peaceful, you know? And it's good to have a strategy to counter Ukraine or Russia at this point. or HBI that they don't have. So it will be fun to watch going forward. This is not a one-quarter business. This is a long-term business, and I strategize multi-year. You, Seth, were very concerned about the long-term contracts for me to sell HBI. You remember that, right? Do you know how much I'm selling of HBI to other people? Zero.
spk06: Zero.
spk07: So your concerns were totally unnecessary. You lost. You lived for no reason.
spk06: I'm very glad that it's being used internally since you're working well. Thank you very much, Fernando.
spk07: All right, Seth. I think we're done. I think we don't have any more questions. So thank you for being with us today. We are going to be back in two months. That's the shortest link between Q1 and Q2. I can't wait to be talking to you about other things. We addressed a lot today. but we are going to be talking a lot more in Q2. ESG is a very important thing we are addressing. Making money is a very important thing we are making. Returning cash to the shareholders is very important. We are doing, we continue to do. Paying down debt, we continue to pay down debt. A one-time leverage company, With this strong position, the marketplace is a gift. If the gift is given to me, we use the buyback. Have a good rest of your day and a great weekend. We'll talk soon. Bye now.
spk01: Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.
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