Vale S.A.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Vale's first quarter 2025 earnings call. This conference is being recorded and the replay will be available on our website at vale.com. The presentation is also available for download in English and Portuguese from our website. To listen to the call in Portuguese, please press the globe icon on the lower right side of your Zoom screen and then choose to enter the Portuguese room. Then select Mute Original Audio so that you won't hear the English version in the background. We would like to inform that all participants are currently in a listen-only mode for the presentations. Further instructions will be provided before we begin the question and answer section of our call. We would like to advise that forward-looking statements may be provided in this presentation, including VALY's expectations about future events or results, encompassing those matters listed in the respective presentation. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. To obtain information on factors that may lead to results different from those forecast by Vale, please consult the report's Vale files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Brazilian Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, and in particular the factors discussed under forward-looking statements and risk factors in Vale's annual report on Form 20-F. With us today are Mr. Gustavo Pimenta, CEO, Mr. Marcelo Batti, Executive Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Mr. Rogério Nogueira, Executive Vice President, Commercial and Development, Mr. Carlos Medeiros, Executive Vice President of Operations, and Mr. Shawn Asmar, CEO of Vale Base Metals. Now, I will turn the conference over to Mr. Gustavo Pimenta. Sir, you may now begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Vale's first quarter 2025 conference call. First, I'd like to take a moment to remind you of our strategic direction as defined by Vale 2030 vision. We are building a leading mining platform with a flexible portfolio of assets exposed to the right long-term fundamentals and based on a unique mineral endowment. All of that supported by a highly innovative and purpose-driven organization. We are confident the actions we are taking today will create substantial value to all of our stakeholders and will lead to a more resilient enterprise. The current trade war only reinforces the importance of building a competitive business that can thrive under different market conditions. And that is exactly what we are doing at Vale. Despite the short-term volatility and uncertainty, we remain highly optimistic about the future and our role in driving sustainable mining to support the global economic development. Now let's take a look into our Q1 performance in the next slide. Driven by our integrated supply chain and as anticipated, iron ore sales increased by 4% year-on-year, reaching 66 million tons, while our production was 4% lower, mostly within our mine plan for the quarter, but also impacted by the higher rainfall in the northern system. Our operational excellence initiatives continue to bear fruit, S11D, for example, achieved its higher production for first quarter, thanks to the several assets reliability programs we have implemented. In Q1, we continue to prioritize the supply of medium-grade products like BRBF and PF-C1, which is the pellet feed produced in China. This approach maximizes the value generated across our business, particularly in a time of challenging margins in the steel industry. This is only possible thanks to our flexible portfolio and integrated supply chain. On increased flexibility, I'm happy to report that our three main growth projects in Ionor are progressing as planned. Vargem Grande and Capanema, which started operations at the end of 2024, will produce a combined 14 million tons of iron ore in 2025, securing adherence to our production guidance as well as greater portfolio flexibility. Both projects are expected to reach full capacity in the first half of 2026. Furthermore, the expansion of our PLUS20 project at S11D is advancing well. having achieved 73% of its physical progress by March. We are confident that this key project will begin operations in the second half of 2026, delivering high-quality volumes at remarkably low production costs, with an expected C1 in dollars per ton at meetings. We are advancing in the mining of the future agenda, investing in cutting-edge technology and fostering innovation to enhance the safety and efficiency of our operations. We are currently operating three mines with autonomous equipment. including heavy haul trucks and drilling rigs, and recently we extended this technology to the loading yard at the Guaíba port in the southern system. This technology has led to a 12% increase in recovery rates at the port, allowing us to relocate personnel from higher-risk activities to a safer work environment. We will gradually increase our autonomous program, expanding from 14 to 70 autonomous trucks at Serra Norte over the next three years, delivering substantial productivity improvement on the site. In our energy transition metals business, we continue to see solid and consistent progress across all operations. Corporate production increased 11% year-on-year, achieving the highest output for first quarter since 2020. The strong performance came from Salubo and Susego operations, as well as from the ramp-up of the Voices Bay project in Canada. In ECO, Voices Bay and Ansapuma have contributed to an 11% increase in production year-on-year. We are glad to see that strong operational performance together with the positive impact of by-product prices, have contributed to more than doubling the EBITDA of the base metals organization compared to the same period last year. Together with Sean and his leadership team, we remain highly committed to delivering continued improvements to our operational performance, as well as on accelerating our value-accretive growth on copper. Our Novo Carajás initiative was put in place early in the year with a dedicated leadership team and I'm very excited with the initial insights which only reinforced the great opportunity we have ahead of us. Now I'd like to comment on the strategic partnership we announced with GIP at Alianza Energia. As you know, Vale has been dedicated to sourcing all of its energy needs from renewables for many years and reached this milestone in Brazil in 2023, two years ahead of schedule. Having access to clean and competitive power is crucial for us, and by bringing a strategic partner like GIP, we can create an asset-light business that can help us deliver on our long-term decarbonization goals. With the closing expected in the second half of the year, Vale will hold 30% of the new joint venture and will receive $1 billion in cash proceeds. Finally, I would like to highlight that we recently published our 2024 Integrated Report. This disclosure is part of our commitment to transparent and comparable reporting on our ESG progress and challenges. In 2024, Vale invested over $250 million in decarbonization initiatives as part of our journey to net-zero scope 1 and 2 by 2050. In the circular mining front, we recovered almost 13 million tons of iron ore by reusing tailings and other materials from our operations, reducing waste and creating value. The report also touches on our community relationship plans, which are channels designed to share information about our operations and implied risks and impacts. It is also a way for us to listen to the perspectives and concerns of the local communities, incorporating those into our business decisions. I invite you to read the full report to get a better understanding of our sustainability journey and how we are working to build an even better Valley. Now I'll turn to Marcel Lobati to talk about our financial performance. I'll be back for closing remarks before the Q&A session. Thank you.

Thanks, Gustavo, and good morning, everyone. As you can see, our pro forma EBITDA reached 3.2 billion in the quarter, 8% lower in a year, which we see as a solid performance, particularly considering that iron ore prices fell 16% in the same period. The combination of the continued C1 cost reduction and an encouraging performance from valley-based metals, which doubled its EBITDA in the period, were the key factors for the resilience in the quarter. Let's take a closer look at our cost performance on the next slide. our costs continue on a very positive momentum. In Q1, R&R C1 cash costs, excluding third-party purchases, reached $21 per ton, 11% lower year on year, driven by our efficiency initiatives and a favorable exchange rate. With this strong start in 2025, we're even more confident in achieving our C1 cost guidance for the year of $20.5 to $22 per ton. Our all-in cost performance was also solid, with a 7% year-on-year reduction, reaching $54.4 per ton. The improvement was not only driven by a lower C1, but also by lower freight costs and expenses. This was our lowest all-in cost for a first quarter since 2022. Turning to our energy transition metals business, we observed a significant year-on-year improvement in both operational and financial metrics, already reflecting some initiatives from the asset review. In copper, our all-in cost decreased by 63%, reaching $1,200 per ton, substantially below our $2,800 to $3,300 per ton guidance range. This was due to strong performances at Salobo and Sossego and increased by-product revenues, benefiting from higher gold prices. We are highly confident on delivering our copper all-in guidance in 2025. In nickel, the all-in cost decreased by 4% year-on-year, driven by solid operating performance and higher volumes, leading to fixed cost dilution. Nickel costs should decrease in the upcoming quarters, driven by the ramp-up of the Voices Bay underground mine and by our continued efforts towards efficiency gains. Now moving on to cash generation. The current free cash flow reached roughly $500 million in the quarter, lower than the $800 million generated in Q4, mostly driven by seasonally lower EBITDA and lower than usual working capital variation. During Q1, we had a lower than normal cash collection as we opted to ship less in December of 24, given our portfolio optimization strategy. Lastly, total capex was slightly lower year on year, trending in line with our guidance for 2025 of approximately $5.9 billion. Our free cash flow generation and strong cash position were primarily used to return value to our shareholders, with the payment of $2 billion in dividends and interest on capital in March. As you can see on the next slide, this payment led to a seasonally and expectedly higher expanded net debt, which reached $18.2 billion in the quarter. Our expanded net debt range remains between $10 and $20 billion. we will gradually bring it back to the mid-level of this target in the coming quarters supported by higher cash flow generation and along with a 1.1 billion dollar positive impact from the alliance energy deal which includes both cash and deconsolidated debt. To conclude, I would like to reinforce our focus on disciplined capital allocation, maintaining net debt within our targets, utilizing asset-light strategies, and delivering strong shareholder returns through dividends and buybacks. As Gustavo mentioned earlier, we also remain highly committed to improving cost and capex efficiencies, making sure we become an even more competitive company. With that, I now pass the floor back to Gustavo.