Acerinox Sa

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Atherinox fourth quarter and full year results presentation. My name is Carlos Lora Tamayo, and I am the chief investor relations and communication officer at Atherinox. The year 2023 was a very difficult year. with a strong de-stocking process that has resulted in a decline in apparent consumption in our main stainless steel market, the United States and Europe. Nonetheless, we have shown that the strategy that we set years ago is bearing fruit, and we have achieved solid results and a strong cash generation. Acerinos has managed to reach a new level of profitability. As Miguel said in last year's Capital Markets Day, the group's EBITDA in the previous cycle was around 380 million euros. But this year, even with the difficulties we have experienced, we achieved an EBITDA of 703 million euros. But this does not end here. Our strategy continues. We are building our new future, rebalancing the product mix to more added value products. In this sense, we announced organic investments in NAS and BDM. And last month, as you all know, we reached an agreement to acquire Heinz International, a US-based producer in high-performance alloys. To discuss these topics in depth and many more, we have here today our CEO, Bernardo Velazquez, our COO, Hans Hendricks, and our CFO, Miguel Fernandez. Before getting started, let me remind you that this conference call is being broadcast on our website, atherinsource.com, in which you can find also the audited integrated annual report that includes the annual accounts management report and the statement of non-financial information. Without further ado, I give the floor to the CEO. Please, Bernardo, go ahead.

Thank you very much, Carlos, and thanks all of you for attending to this conference. result presentation. We are very happy to be here and very proud to present a very strong set of results. We call it, we say here, 2023, another milestone. Why a milestone? Because we think that it's a very interesting year that we will remember because we are validating our strategy. You know that we like to say that we want to be reliable and we want to be predictable. And now we are validating what we are First of all, because we have reached a new level of profitability, and this is due mainly to the improvements that we have made during the last years, but also thanks to our growing strategy, growth strategy, with the acquisition of BDM and our development of the HPA materials. So this is very important because, as Carlos mentioned, We have a new level of profitability. In the lowest part of the cycle, we will speak later about this, but in a tremendous low cycle, we got an EBITDA of $703 million with a very solid financial situation, with a very solid cash generation, with a very reasonable debt, and with an adjusted ROKI of almost 18%. We have been growing in our strategy. VDM, in the fourth year of incorporation to our group, more than doubled the ABDA that they had when we bought the company, $175 million. We're speaking about repeating this experience in the United States, creating a platform there with our offer for Heinz. We are still having ideas how to grow with our traditional organic growth. with the CAPEX that we announced in NAS and in VDM. And we are releasing a new excellent plan. We are fulfilling what we offer to the financial community. And everything, all these activities always SURROUNDED OR EMBATHED WITH OUR TOTAL COMMITMENT WITH ESG VALUES, AS YOU CAN SEE HERE. WE'VE GOT, AGAIN, THE PLATINUM AWARD WITH ECOBUDDIES. WE GOT A FANTASTIC 24% REDUCTION IN THE ACCIDENT RATE IN OUR FACTORIES, AND WE ARE REDUCING OUR SCOPE 1 PLUS SCOPE 2 CARBON EMISSIONS IN 3%. WITH MORE DETAIL, HANS WILL EXPLAIN YOU OUR ESG COMMITMENT.

Thank you, Bernardo. Good morning, everyone. So we continue to be really a great contributor to the circular economy and sustainable development. We remain committed to our 2030 goals and our 360 positive impact plan. Let me take you through some of the most important improvements in 2023 towards those 2030 goals. We continue to support the fight against climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gases. We have achieved an 11% reduction of CO2 emissions in scope one and two, versus our baseline of 2015. In 2023, we reduce our water withdrawal by 18% as well versus that 2015 baseline. One of the areas I'm personally most proud of, evidently, is the reduction of our incidence rate, with a 24% year-over-year reduction in lost-time incidents in our factories across the world. We have also received several recognitions through the year that confirmed that focus that we have on safety. In women diversity, we achieved more than 13% in our company, well above most of our peers in the steel industry. On our 360 positive impact plan, I would like to mention three elements. We have increased by 50% the supply of renewable energy in our factories. We have received the CE marks for our slack for different commercial applications that will provide a good solution for one of the most important elements that we have in our factories today, as it is the slack. And finally, we have implemented through all our locations our health and safety and environmental cardinal rules.