Vale S.A.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Vale's conference call to discuss third quarter 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 that time. This call is being simultaneously translated to Portuguese. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star followed by zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, and the recording will be available on the company's website at valley.com at the investor's link. This conference call is accompanied by a slide presentation, also available at the investor's link at the company's website, and is transmitted via internet as well. The broadcasting via internet, both the audio and the slide changes, has a few seconds delay in relation to the audio transmitted via phone. Before proceeding Let me mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the Safe Harbor of Security Litigation Reform Act of 1996. Actual performance could differ materially from that anticipated in any forward-looking statements comment as a result of macroeconomic conditions, market risks, and other factors. With us today are Mr. Eduardo Salles Bartolomeu, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gustavo Pimenta, Executive Vice President Finance and Investors Relations, Mr. Marcelo Spinelli, Executive Vice President ION-OR, and Ms. Dashni Naidoo. Executive Vice President, Bass Medals. First, Mr. Eduardo Bartolomeu will proceed the presentation on VILE's third quarter 2022 performance. And after that, he will be available for questions and answers. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Eduardo Bartolomeu. Sir, you may now begin.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I hope you are fine. I'd like to start guiding you through our main accomplishments in the quarter. We have made significant progress with regards to operational stability. In Arnor, our production was close to 90 million tons, an increase of 21% quarter over quarter. While the world is facing growing inflationary pressures, we remain focused on cost discipline. Our C1 cost decreased $1.5 per ton. In our base metals business, performance improved significantly after extended assets maintenance. In nickel, production increased 51%, but sales lagged production, impacting our EBITDA. Dashny will give you more details on that later. Moving to our strategic agenda, we are delivering on our commitments to lead the low-carbon mining. Our solar project, Sol do Cerrado, is coming online to further reduce our carbon footprint. We continue to strengthen our business to deliver the products essential to a more sustainable future. In this sense, we are making progress in growing our supply of low-carbon nickel and other critical minerals for the energy transition. In Canada, We have successfully concluded the first phase of CCM1 in Sudbury. The project will nearly double our production at Coppercliffe Mine. In Brazil, the reconstruction of the Onça Puma second furnace was approved recently by our border directors. On capital location, we stay committed to returning cash to our shareholders and to our share-buy-back program. We are shaping the value of the future. To lead the mining transition we are promoting solutions to expand the use of electricity to substitute diesel in our operations. We just received two electric mining trucks with 72 tons of capacity. We are not only cutting emissions But also reducing noise, minimizing the impact to our communities. Our strategy to electrify assets already includes 49 electric vehicles in our Canadian mines and the operation of two battery-powered locomotives in the yards of the ports of Vitória and São Luís. To further move our electricity consumption towards clean energy, Sol do Cerrado solar project is coming online this month, as I mentioned, and will ramp up until July 2023. The project has a capacity of 766 megawatt peak and will supply 16% of Vale's electricity needs in Brazil. This energy would be enough to power a city of 100,000 houses. We are delivering on our climate agenda. We are doing that because we are vigilant to the needs of society, but also because sustainability is crucial for the future of mining. Our society expects the mining industry to leave a positive legacy. Mining companies play a key role in addressing global warming by supporting the global energy transition. The transition to a net-zero economy will be metal-intensive. Significant expansion of low-carbon technologies such as wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles will boost demand for the metals needed for these technologies. For instance, producing battery EVs It requires 30 to 40 times more nickel than the traditional ones. So, the carbon footprint of these batteries is very critical, and we have a distinct portfolio for that. Our high-quality Class I nickel in Canada is the lowest CO2 footprint, and we have third-party certification validating it. Now, moving to iron ore, as I mentioned before, we are committed to provide decarbonization solutions for our clients. What do we have different from others? Assets and technologies. We operate the largest high-grade deposit in the world, Carajás, with 66% FE content reserves. We are developing products to help decarbonize, such as green briquettes, which can reduce over 10% of the emissions in the BF-BOF route. Our plants are under construction in Brazil with capacity of 6 million tons per year, and the startup is expected for the first half of 2023. With those differentiators, we are a partner of choice for our clients. We are establishing partnership with Stills Mills to jointly find new solutions that help to decarbonize the industry. We have signed with clients represented almost 50% of our scope E3 emissions. Finally, shifting gears to dam safety, I'm very proud to announce that we have completed the works in more three upstream structures that were eliminated in September. As promised, in 2022, we have eliminated five structures, and so far, we have completed 40% of our program to eliminate upstream dams in Brazil. On top of that, we have removed the emergency levels of five dams in Minas Gerais. The structures also received declaration of stability, DCEs, which attested their safety conditions. Since of the beginning of this year, seven dams had their emergency levels removed. As part of our strategy, we have materially de-risked Vale. As well, in Brumadinho, we are fulfilling our mission to the integral reparation in a quick and a fair way. So, we are delivering on our commitments to a safer and more reliable company. We are building a better valley. With that, I now turn the floor over to our Vice President of Base Metals, Dijan Naidoo, for her remarks. And I'll be back soon to our Q&A session. Thank you. The floor is yours, Dajani.

Thank you, Eduardo, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by highlighting the progress we continue to make towards achieving our base metals growth goals. I am happy to announce and, as Eduardo mentioned, we have approved our Ansapuma second furnace project this quarter, which will see our nickel production grow by 15,000 tons on average per year in South Atlantic, and are making progress at PT Vale Indonesia on the approval to establish the Pomela 120,000 ton JV with Zhejiang YU Cobalt and Ford Motor Company. Looking at our project's delivery, we officially opened the CCM South Mine refurbishment project earlier this month and are at 98% physical progress at Solobo III. There, we are on track with our commissioning activities. We are also on schedule with our revised BBME project. The next slide, please. Now looking at the performance in the quarter. On the operational side, we recovered production in quarter three for both nickel and copper following the completion of our major planned and some corrective maintenance work in H1, specifically the furnace for rebuild at PT Vale Indonesia and the sagmal maintenance at Sosego. Both safely concluded last quarter. On the nickel sales, we have an 8,000 ton difference to production this quarter. Some tons were retained to meet quarter four commitments given our scheduled current maintenance at Onsopuma, Long Harbour and Matsusaka. And linked to global supply chain constraints, we faced challenges to hire container ships and shipping issues in the UK due to port industrial actions that led to port congestions. These also affected sales. This timing lag will be trued up at the end of course of fall, where we would see higher sales than production volume. In copper, and as previously highlighted when we revised the copper guidance, we have increased our maintenance activities at our Saloba operations in H2. We are already seeing the results of the work to date, translating into improved plant availability and throughput rates. We have improved our throughput by 10% from June to September this year. The next slide, please. Now turning to our financial performance, we had a significant impact from LME prices quarter on quarter. Nickel dropped 24% and copper 19%. Nickel price drop had a significant impact on our quarter on quarter EBITDA. In COPPA, however, the quarter-on-quarter price impact was largely neutral as we had a huge adjustment in PPAs in Q2 given the significant backwardation of forward curves from Q1 to Q2 as explained in our call last quarter. We also had timing impacts on cost this quarter as we had carryover inventory from Q2 priced at a higher cost. Mainly due to major PMPs. In addition, the Q2 fuel cost increases at PT Vale Indonesia are reflected in our consolidated results this quarter. As you could see in our latest reports, we are looking at ways of maximizing our downstream capacity whilst we ramp up our projects. This means some portion of our production originated from processing third-party material. This quarter alone we produced 6,000 tons of nickel from purchase feed, while in quarter two we had produced 3,000 tons. So there are positive takeaways. The improvement in operational performance would have translated into better financials had we translated all production volumes in quarter three to sales and not seen the timing impact of price variations. I now hand over to Marcelo for his comments on our I&O business. Good morning, Marcelo. Over to you.