Cementos Pacasmayo S.A.A.

good morning ladies and gentlemen welcome to pacas mayo's first quarter 24 earnings conference call at this time all participants are in a listen only mode and please note that this call is being recorded at the conclusion of our prepared remarks we will conduct a question and answer session i would now like to introduce your host for today's call mrs claudia bustamante investor relations manager mrs bustamante you may begin thank you tim

Good morning, everyone. Joining me on the call today is Mr. Humberto Nadal, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Manuel Ferreiro, our Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Nadal will begin our call with an overview of the quarter, focusing primarily on our strategic outlook for the short and medium term. Mr. Ferreiro will then follow with additional commentary on our financial results. We'll then turn the call over to your questions. Please note that this call will include certain forward-looking statements. These statements are related to expectations, beliefs, projections, trends, and other matters that are not historical facts and are therefore subject to risks and uncertainties that might affect future events or results. Descriptions of these risks are set forth in the company's regulatory findings. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Humberto.

Thank you, Claudia. Welcome, everyone, to today's conference call, and thank you for joining us today. This quarter, we delivered very solid results in terms of margins, EBITDA, and profitability. Although sales volumes continue to lag behind because of the mindset challenges, we were able to achieve a consolidated EBITDA of $132.8 million, a 10% solid increase year-over-year, as well as a 13.8% increase in net income. By focusing on operational efficiencies related to clinical production and our most efficient skills, Northern Peru was impacted by climatic effects such as higher temperatures and increased water temperatures, which in turn affected agriculture and fishing. For example, mangoes, one of the main crops in Northern Peru, experienced a drastic decrease in production in the 2023-2024 agricultural campaign. This was linked into decreased disposable income, which in turn affects self-construction. There is a general lack of safety in the country, specifically in the northern part of Peru, mainly in the form of extortions that are affecting overall economic activity, including, and I would say especially, self-construction. We hope that these demand-side challenges can be reverted, and we are confident that when they do, we're in the best possible position to tackle the result of increasing demand. In our journey to continue developing our building solutions, we recently embarked on the reconstruction of the two runways and the perimeter fence of the Pura Airport, not only as a concrete and pavement provider, but for the first time directly involved in the construction as part of a consortium. The way in which we approach this project is different from other improvement projects we have provided concrete for in the past, since we are in this case actively participating in every step, beginning with prospection and ending with the actual delivery of the finished infrastructure project. We firmly believe that our involvement in every path in every part of the process brings invaluable insights and creates significant opportunities to promote, improve, and market our business solutions looking towards the future. I would like now to focus on something that is absolutely crucial for the future of all businesses and organizations, including our own, artificial intelligence and machine learning. New technologies will bring a wide variety of opportunities, and there is no doubt that early adapters will be the biggest beneficiaries, and we intend to be one. As a company, we're focusing on both developing and adapting digital tools and reinforcing the culture to adapt it. As I mentioned earlier, one of the ways in which we look to gain traction on the building solutions market is by doing prospection work. This is mostly focused on looking for infrastructure opportunities in the initial phase so that we can get involved in the definition of the materials required, hence creating and capturing more value for our building solutions. We have recently developed a model that uses AI to identify all of the pilot infrastructure projects in our area of influence. The robot developed in this project can capture the information and feed it into a large database, allowing the team to focus on actual development of the solution instead of spending valuable time scouting for projects. Moreover, this tool generates valuable information to guide our data-driven analysis and enhance our portfolio of products at a service center and tailored to the needs of our customer. I will now turn the call over to Manuel to go into more detail. Manuel.