Tata Steel Ltd 144A

Good day and welcome to the Tata Steel analyst call. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. All the attendees' audio and video has been disabled from the backend and will be enabled subsequently. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Samita Shah. Thank you and over to you, ma'am.

Yeah, thank you, Gunchuk. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon and good evening to others as well. On behalf of Tire Steel, I'm delighted to invite you all to this call today to discuss our results for the first quarter of FY25. I am joined by our CEO and MD, Mr. T.B. Narendran, and our ED and CFO, Mr. Kaushik Chatterjee. We declared our results yesterday. There is a presentation as well on our website, which shares some more details about the financial and operating performance. I hope you had a chance to go through both. Before I hand it over to them, I would just like to draw your attention to the fact that the entire discussions today will be covered by the safe harbor clause on page two of the presentation. Thank you, and may I now request you, Naren, to make a few opening comments, please.

Thanks, Samita. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll make a few comments and then pass on to Kaushik before we open it up for questions. During the quarter, the global steel demand across most regions was impacted by subdued economic activity and the tight monetary policy conditions. And in China, the moderation in demand outpaced the production cuts, which led to steel exports of around 8 to 9 million tons a month to the rest of the world. And in India, the steel demand was broadly stable despite some impact of the elections and the heat waves and the seasonal weakness that we experience, particularly once the monsoon sets in. As a result, across geographies, steel prices have been a bit soft. In the U.S. and EU, steel prices were down 8 to 15 percent, and domestic steel prices were reasonably stable but went down during the quarter. So the increases that we had in the early part of the quarter got offset by the reductions toward the later part of the quarter. This group series production in India was 5.27 million tons and was up 5% year-on-year. And this works out on quarter-on-quarter, it was a 2% decline, primarily due to planned maintenance shutdowns. Our deliveries at 4.94 million tons were the best ever quarter-one sales that we've had, which was aided by a 4% year-on-year growth in domestic deliveries. Amongst the various segments that we cater to, the automotive and special products volumes grew by 9% on a year-on-year basis, with higher-than-market growth in select subsegments. And our well-established retail brand, Tata Discon, witnessed a 15% year-on-year growth aided by enhanced reach and a focus on consumer-connected programs. We now have more than 10,000 dealers, over 24,000 influencers, and a growing share of customers via our e-commerce portal, Asiana. We are looking to shape construction market practices through our ready-to-use solutions and now have over 30 construction centers across India to improve the customer experience and our ready-to-use solutions sales has actually gone up over 30% year-on-year. These are basically ready-to-use solutions and construction sites. We registered a 19% year-on-year growth in engineering goods, driven by the best of our quarterly supplies for railways, and an 8% year-on-year growth to the consumer durables industry, driven by product and market development with major OEMs. We continue to be bullish on India as a growth market and are scaling up to leverage this opportunity via capacity expansion, as well as downstream capabilities. At Kalinga Nagar, heating of the stove and the co-current batteries has already commenced as per plan. And we are looking forward to the blast furnace startup towards the end of September. And we're looking forward to producing about 1.7 million tons from this new facility after the startup in September. But as mentioned in the last quarter's earnings call, the G-blast furnace in Jhamsipur will come in three lining in the fourth quarter of this financial year. And as a result, the overall increase in volume will be lower, and that's why we've guided for the full year at 1.4 million tons per year. The continuous annealing line of the 2.2 million ton cold rolling mill complex is planned to be commissioned in August, and the strip threading for the cold run is in progress. Separately, the rolling mill which is being set up in Jamshedpur to leverage the upstream opportunity that we have in the steel assets of Usha Martin that we acquired, the downstream, the combi mill, as we call it, it's a half a million tonne combi mill at Jamshedpur will come up in the second half of the year, and that will help us leverage the volumes available out of the Tata Steel, what we call Tata Steel Kamaria, which is the Usha Martin steel plant site, and also cater to the growing requirements of high quality long products for the auto industry. In the UK, we have safely ceased operations at one of the blast furnaces, which is the blast furnace number five at Port Talbot on the 4th of July. We are on track to close the remaining blast furnace, which is blast number four by September 24. And this marks an important milestone in our endeavor to transition the operations to a sustainable business model. As we navigate the transition, we are committed to supporting affected employees and are providing multiple training and community support schemes. In Netherlands, we ramped up the production at blast furnace 6 after the relining, and we had quarterly steel production of 1.69 million tons, which was half quarter on quarter and year on year. The stabilization of operations has positively impacted the cost profile. Kaushik will talk about it further in his comments. And the deliveries for the quarter at 1.47 million tons were higher by 3% quarter on quarter and 8% year on year. Sustainable operations are integral to our strategy goals and we've adopted a multi-pronged approach to progress on this journey. In India, we're focused on process improvement, carbon direct avoidance, and carbon capture and utilization. We recently launched a carbon bank initiative to further carbon abatement and are undertaking relevant pilot projects in partnership with technology providers, academia, and startups. We are the first company in India to use LNG-powered cape-sized bulk carrier for transporting raw materials. I've already mentioned a transition plan for the UK. Upon transition to scrap-based electric arc furnace operation, the direct CO2 emissions will reduce by 50 million tons over a decade. And similarly, in Netherlands, we are working on the transition to green steel, subject, of course, to the government support and necessary approvals. And currently, the discussions are going on with the government. Thank you, and over to you, Kaushik.