Constellium SE

thank you for standing by welcome to the custodian first quarter 2024 results call all lines have been placed on mute during a presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for question and answer at the end if you'd like to ask a question please press start followed by one on your telephone keypad i would now like to turn this conference call over to our host jason persizer director of investor relations please go ahead thank you candace

I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call today, we have our Chief Executive Officer, John Mark Germain, and our Chief Financial Officer, Jack Guo. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. A copy of the slide presentation for today's call is available on our website at Constellium.com. Today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to encourage everyone to visit the company's website and take a look at our recent filings. Today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include statements regarding the company's anticipated financial and operating performance, future events and expectations, and may involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. For a summary of specific risk factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the factors presented under the heading risk factors in our annual report on Form 20-S. All information in this presentation is as of the date of the presentation. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. In addition, today's presentation includes information regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the reconciliation non-GAAP financial measures attached to today's slide presentation which supplement our IFRS disclosures. Before turning the call over to John Mark, I wanted to remind everyone that beginning this quarter, we have revised the definition of adjusted EBITDA at the consolidated level based on discussions with the SEC. The new definition will no longer exclude the non-cash impact of metal price lag. We will continue to provide investors and other stakeholders with the non-cash metal price lag impact as it is necessary to get a true assessment of the economic performance of the business. Our segment adjusted EBITDA will continue to exclude the impact, and we will continue to provide guidance for adjusted EBITDA that excludes the impact. And with that, I would now like to hand the call over to John Murray.

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Costellium. Let's begin on slide five and discuss the highlights from our first quarter results. I would like to start with safety, our number one priority. While we delivered strong safety performance in the first quarter, our recordable case rate of 2.2 per million hours worked is higher than our target performance. This is a humbling reminder that while we always strive to deliver best-in-class safety performance, we all need to constantly maintain our focus on safety to achieve the ambitious targets we have set. It is a never-ending task for our company and one we take very seriously. Turning to our financial results, shipments were 380,000 tons, down 2% compared to the first quarter of 2023, mainly due to lower shipments in AS&I, partially offset by higher shipments in PARP. The lower shipments in AS&I were largely a result of the German extrusion business we sold last year. Revenue of 1.7 billion euros decreased 12% compared to last year, primarily due to lower metal prices and lower shipments. Remember, while our revenues are affected by changes in metal prices, we operate a pass-through business model, which minimizes our exposure to metal price risk. Our net income of 17 million euros in the quarter compares to net income of 22 million euros in the first quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was 137 million euros in the quarter, though this includes a negative non-cash impact from metal price lag of 13 million euros. If you exclude this impact of metal price lag, as Jason mentioned earlier, which you must if you want to have the real economic performance of the business, the adjusted EBITDA reflects 150 million euros in the quarter compared to 166 million euros last year. Looking at segment-adjusted EBITDA, ANT delivered record first quarter performance and was up 7 million euros compared to last year. PARP decreased 12 million euros in the quarter, and SNI was down 10 million euros. As we mentioned on our earnings call back in February, the PARP segment was impacted in the quarter as a result of the extreme snow and cold weather event at our Muscle Shoals facility in January. The weather event caused a full week of closure at the facility and then a difficult ramp back up once employees were able to return to work. Looking across our end markets, aerospace demand continued to grow in the quarter. Packaging shipments were also up in the quarter, including cam stock. Automotive demand remained healthy in North America, while softer demand continued in Europe. Demand in most industrial and other specialty markets remained weak in both regions during the quarter. Moving now to free cash flow. Our free cash flow in the quarter was negative 8 million euros. We continue to expect to generate positive free cash flow this year of greater than 130 million euros. I am pleased to report that we launched our share repurchase program in March and repurchased 330,000 shares for around $7 billion. Our leverage at the end of the quarter was 2.5, 2.4 times, and remains within our target leverage range. Overall, I am quite happy with our first quarter performance. With that, I will now hand the call over to Jack for further details on our financial performance. Jack?