Arcelormittal SA

Welcome to the ArcelorMittal first quarter 2024 conference call. I'm Moritz, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Daniel Fairclough, Vice President, IR. Please go ahead, sir.

Great. Thank you, Moritz. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Daniel Fairclough from the Arsenal Metal Investor Relations Team. Thank you very much for joining this call to discuss our performance for the first quarter 2024. Leading today's call will be our Group CFO, Mr. Genuino Cristino. Before we begin today's call, I would like to mention a few housekeeping items. As usual, we will not be going through the results presentation, which we published this morning on our website. However, I do want to draw your attention to the disclaimers on slide number two of that presentation. As normal, Germina will make opening remarks before moving directly to the Q&A session. So if you would like to ask a question, then please press star one on your keypad to join that queue. Over to you, Germina.

I will keep my remarks brief and focus on three topics. Safety, our strong financial performance, and the positive outlook for our business. Beginning with safety. Across AceloMittal, our people are galvanized to improve safety and achieve our goals of being a fatality-free organization as quickly as we can. The third-part safety audit, which started at the end of December, is now well underway and on target to be completed in September. We believe and expect this to make valuable recommendations that, combined with the considerable efforts already underway, will enable us to deliver the safety results we are striving for. Moving to our financial performance, as expected, our results in the first quarter improved following the end of the stocking that had impacted on recent quarters. The first quarter saw a 5% improvement in our shipments, and a positive price-cost effect, particularly in North America. I believe our EBITDA of $2 billion for this quarter is the highest in our industry. If I look at the last four quarters, we have generated EBITDA of $8.5 billion and adjusted net income of $4.7 billion. Our performance reflects the positive actions we have taken to optimize our business and high-grade our asset portfolios. Over the past four quarters, we have invested 1.6 billion in our strategic growth capex. We have led the market in offering the widest portfolio of green steel products, and we have returned the equivalent of 8% of our current market cap to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Moving to the positive outlook for our business, we continue to forecast higher steel consumption this year in our core markets. Our envelope of strategic investments are running to plan. We will be commissioning the new high added value capacity in Brazil soon. Likewise, our new one gigawatt renewable energy project in India will begin producing electricity in June. In total, the projects within our strategic envelope are expected to add 1.8 billion to our EBITDA And of course, we'll meaningfully add to our free cash flow capacity also. Our process of portfolio optimization also supports my positive outlook. Having exited Italy and Kazakhstan last quarter, we have now also fully exited our stake in Ademir. At the same time, we have agreed to purchase a significant minority stake in Valorex, increasing our exposure to premium downstream products. With 80% of its EBITDA in the Americas and a focus on support energy transition, Valorec is well aligned with our strategy and it's interesting even in a minority position. To conclude my remarks, our performance continues to provide evidence that ArcelorMittal can deliver value through all aspects of the steel cycle. We are investing in high return projects several of which will be concluded as we move through 2024. We are making clear strategic progress, high grading our asset portfolio and investing for higher future profitability. And our buybacks are compounding the benefits for our shareholders. With that, Daniel and I will be ready to take your questions.