Vale S.A.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vale's conference call to discuss the first quarter of 2022 results. 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 the time. This call is being simultaneously translated to Portuguese. If you should require assistance during the call, please press the star followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and the recording will be available on the company's website at vali.com at investors link. This conference call is accompanied by slide presentation also available at investors link at the company's website and is transmitted via internet as well. The broadcasting via internet, both the audio and the slides chains, has a few seconds delay in relation to the audio transmitted via phone. Before proceeding, let me mention the forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Security Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Actual performance could differ materially from that anticipated in any forward-looking comments as a result of macroeconomic conditions, market risks and other factors. With us today are Mr. Eduardo de Sales Bartolomeu, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gustavo Pimenta, Executive Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations, Mr. Marcelo Spinelli, Executive Vice-President, IOR and Mrs. Destiny Naidu, Executive Vice-President, BASE Metals. First, Mr. Eduardo Bartolomeu will proceed to the presentation on Vale's first quarter of 2022 performance and after that, he'll be available for questions and answers. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Eduardo Bartolomeu. Sir, you may now begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I hope you are all well. Let me start our conversation with a familiar slide to you and reinforce that we remain focused on re-rating value by de-risking and reshaping our company. On the reparation front, actions provided in the Brumadinho Reparation Agreement are progressing well. Payment obligations are in full swing, and we are now detailing social economic projects in Brumadinho and other 25 municipalities in the Paraupeba Basin. These projects were selected based on popular consultation and they cover health, social development, infrastructure and agriculture within a fast responsive package. In dam safety, we began the de-characterization of Dicauxiliar, one of the five upstream structures to be eliminated in 2022. which will total 12 by the end of this year. The de-characterization program has its schedule agreed with the Brazilian authorities in February this year through a term of commitment. This brings more legal and technical certainty to the elimination of our 23 remaining upstream dams in Brazil. On production resumption, despite a few challenges, we are on plan to deliver the two most important milestones for this year, Torre do Drem and Itaipira do Sul de Henrique. As we have been saying, we are building a better Vale with capital discipline and creating value for all of our stakeholders. This first quarter is seasonally the lowest in production. In addition, we had further operational challenges. Despite that, We managed to reach some important milestones towards increased production stability and value creation. In iron ore, we achieved a solid premium of $9 per ton, the highest since the second quarter of 19. That's evidence of our high-quality portfolio in a tight market for high-quality products. On the other hand, production was down year on year. A result of operational constraints, which will be covered in detail by Spinetti later. But we are overcoming those obstacles. In the Southern Eastern System, performance increased by 11% year on year, despite the strong rainfall in January. With that, I'm confident that production levels will increase as planned in the coming quarters to meet our annual production guidance. In base metals, we gave another important step, reinforcing Vale's position as a supplier of choice by the EV market, a multi-year agreement with Northvolt to supply low-carbon nickel products for batteries. On production stability, the Sotheby's mines achieved three strike run rates, supportive of a recovery in production for the upcoming quarters. Tashny will provide more details later. Finally, In capital allocation, we paid $3.5 billion in dividends and advanced very well with the execution of our buyback program. Talking now about the integration between business and ESG strategy, as you know, our product portfolio is shaped to foster the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies by our clients. One example of that is the start The technology is innovative, enabling the production of green pig iron from the substitution of metallurgical coal by biomass. This means up to 100% reduction in CO2 emission and 10 to 15% lower operating cost and capex intensity. This is in line with our strategy to provide steelmakers with viable solutions for their decarbonization investments, also contributing to Vale's net scope 3 emissions reduction target of 15% by 2035. This is one of the initiatives that differentiates Vale's portfolio and strategically positions the company to face the climate challenge. On our roadmap to build a better Vale, reshaping means optimizing portfolio, Solving cash drains and focusing on our core businesses. In this sense, we have made substantial progress this quarter by completing the divestment from our core business and also closing the sale of our stake at CSI. Finally, we reached a binding agreement for the sale of our Midwestern system for $150 million In addition to transferring take-or-pay obligations, which priced the transaction at $1.2 billion in enterprise value. Those were major steps that create value for the company and drive us towards a much more focused and leaner portfolio of assets. Speaking of creating and sharing value, based on the successful progress of our two share-buy-back programs, We announced the launching of a third one for up to 500 million shares to be repurchased within 18 months. Combined, the two first programs comprised almost 10% of Alice's outstanding shares. After the completion of the third buyback program, we will have repurchased almost 20% of the company's outstanding shares. This means that For shareholders with positions, since before our first program, without expanding any additional dollar, their participation in future earnings would have increased by almost 25% when we have completed this program. This is one of the results of our commitment to create value and share it with our shareholders. I now turn the floor over to Daphne for her remarks on the core results for base metals. Thank you.

Thank you, Eduardo. Good morning, everyone. I would like to start by talking about the progress we have made towards our strategic agenda. During this quarter, we signed a multi-year agreement to supply our low carbon nickel to Northvolt, a partner who values producing batteries from low carbon sources. We have also successfully added further carbon certification for some of our other nickel This is an addition to the certification we have previously received for our Long Harbor Nickel Rounds. This is an important achievement that reinforces our position to supply low-carbon products to support the energy transition, especially for the growing EV market. Secondly, we have just announced locally in Indonesia the signing of a framework agreement with YU Cobalt to jointly develop our Pomela HPAL project to produce up to 120,000 tons of nickel in MHP. YU's technical experience, expertise, and track record is a perfect complement to our world-class Pomela deposit and our multi-decade This is a significant milestone that reflects our longstanding commitment to developing this world-class resource in Indonesia to further deliver into a growing nickel demand. In nickel, the year-on-year lower volumes were largely explained by the pace of the ramp-up of Sudbury Mines and the ramp-up of the VBME project. However, our Sudbury mines by the end of quarter one achieved pre-labor disruption mining rates and Onsopuma operation had a stable production performance. In copper, we had planned for a lower production quarter as a result of a scheduled sosego sagmul maintenance and the lower mine grades from Solobo in H1. We were impacted by the decision we took to extend the sosego We were also impacted by the increased seismicity at our Coleman mine in Sudbury, which impacted mining a high-grade copper section in the quarter. This can still be accessed. There are several initiatives underway that will continue to de-risk our copper production going forward. Sosego mining performance for the quarter is slightly ahead of plan, which enables the plant to run at maximum capacity after the restart. We achieved 25,000 tons run rate in quarter three and quarter four last year, and I am certain That we can achieve similar if not slightly higher run rates once the maintenance is completed. So Lobo Mining is on plan as we are seeing the benefit of the mine maintenance work from last year and are on track to deliver 30% more mine movement this year. The So Lobo plant has just completed a planned maintenance too and will assist with improved reliability. The Salobo plant has previously achieved the required 48 to 50,000 tonne quarterly run rates. Finally, in North Atlantic, with the increasing production rates and the additional opportunities being worked on, we are confident that we can offset some of the losses from quarter one. The next slide. Finally, moving to the nickel prices, which has attracted a lot of attention recently. Our nickel price realization was up 16% in the quarter. This price realization can be split into three main factors. First, the aggregate premium and discount for nickel that is taking into account our entire product portfolio. In this quarter, we've achieved strong price realization from our class one products. However, The product mix was impacted by the higher sales of the intermediates, mostly nickel mat, which is typically sold at a 20 to 25% discount to LME. The second factor is the market pricing, that is, how sales are distributed along the quarter and the quotational price for the contracts. So despite the high LME price in March and in the quarter, The lower previous period prices affected the quarter's price. Our typical monthly QP is split about half in the current month and half in the past month. This explains the $2,000 difference between LME and the realized price. And lastly, we have some fixed pricing. We typically hedge a smaller portion of our sales. Our hedge contracts are not subject to margin calls. As we apply hedge accounting to those contracts, the only effect we see is the equivalent to a fixed price sale at about $20,000 with no issues on liquidity or mark-to-market for those contracts. Given the soaring prices in the quarter, we have had a negative impact on our hedge results. I now hand over to Marcelo to take us through the I&O performance.