Eregli Demir Celik Un/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Popi, your course call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Erdemir conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the full year 2023 financial results. 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. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. Please note Ergli Demir Celik Fabrik Alari, Tash Erdemir, may when necessary make written or verbal announcements about forward-looking information, expectations, estimates, targets, assessments, and opinions. Erdemir has made the necessary arrangements about the amounts and results of such information through its disclosure policy that has shared such policy with the public through the Erdemir website in accordance with the Capital Markets Board regulations. As stated in related policy, information contained in forward-looking statements, whether verbal or written, should not include unrealistic assumptions or forecasts. It should be noted that actual results could materially differ from estimates Taking into account the fact that they are not based on historical facts but are driven from expectations, beliefs, plans, targets, and other factors which are beyond the control of our company. As a result, forward-looking statements should not be fully trusted or taken as granted. Forward-looking statements should be considered valid only considering the conditions prevailing at the time of the announcement. In cases where it is understood that forward-looking statements are no longer achievable, such matter will be announced to the public and the statement will be revised. However, the decision to make a revision is a result of a subjective evaluation. Therefore, it should be noted that when a party is coming to a judgment based on estimates and forward-looking statements, our company may have not made a revision at that particular time. Our company makes no commitment to make regular revisions Ms. Ergin you may now proceed

Thank you very much, Poppy. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our conference call and webcast of Erdemir for the last quarter of 2023. Today, our CFO, Mr. Serdar Başoğlu, and our Financial Control and Reporting Director, Mr. Ulaşım Rebek, are also joining the webcast. First of all, I will go through our master presentation, which you can find on our website, and you can also follow it through the webcast. Then at the end of this presentation, there is going to be a Q&A session, as usual. Before starting the presentation, I will hand over to our CFO, Mr. Serdar Başoldo. The line is yours.

Thank you, Idil. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our 2023 Results Conference Call, and thank you for joining us today. As usual, our IR Director, Idil, will take you through the details of But before starting our presentation, I would like to highlight some of the important developments in 2023 and the market expectations for 2024. Actually, 2023 was a year in which both sad and happy events occurred together. The earthquake disaster caused a lot of damage in our country and our company. Despite the magnitude of the earthquake, we recovered very quickly after the production was suspended for approximately three months at our Istanbul facility, which is located in the earthquake zone. With the extraordinary efforts of our colleagues in the region, we returned to pre-earthquake levels as of third quarter. So, as you all know, we reached an agreement on a İstemir insurance claim advance payment of $100 million. This amount was reflected as an income in our third quarter financial statement and paid in the last quarter. The total payment amount has not been clarified yet, but necessary efforts are being made to collect the total claim payment in the first half of this year. We were proud to announce the commissioning of the new second blast furnace in Ereğli. Our company aims to increase efficiency by reducing costs and contribute to sustainable production with the new second blast furnace. When we look at the Turkish steel market, the extraordinary increases in imports continue from South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and especially from China. which focused on our exports due to economic stagnation in its domestic market. Turkish flat steel sector has also struggled with sharply competitive pricing by Aegean suppliers, which has caused a decrease in the export share of Turkish producers. Consequently, the steel exports import coverage ratio of the Turkish steel industry fell to 57 from 90. as import volumes increased by 16 despite the sharp decline in export volumes in 2023. Despite all the difficult conditions in the market, we achieved to generate 643 million USD EBITDA and 170 million USD net profit in 2023. In 2024, we aim to continue our production at full capacity. After commissioning of the new second blast furnace in Erdemir, the new first blast furnace in İstemir will also be launched in the second half of this year. We focus on cost-cutting, self-sufficient investments aimed at increasing our internal efficiency. We expect the steel industry to have a more stable year depending on the developments in China. We aim to achieve over 8.2 million ton sales in 2024. So, I will be with you at the end of the presentation. So, now I would like to hand over the mic to our investor relations director, Idil. Idil, the line is yours.