Tata Steel Ltd 144A

and gentlemen, 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.

Thank you, Benchuk. Good afternoon, good evening, and good morning to all our participants joining us on this call today. On behalf of Tata Steel, I'm delighted to welcome you to this call where we will discuss our results for the third quarter of FY25. We have with us our CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Tini Narendra, and our Executive Director and CFO, Mr. Kaushik Chatterjee. And we will walk you through our results and answer any questions you may have over the next hour, hour and a half. I hope you had a chance to go through our results, which were declared yesterday. And there's a detailed presentation which has been uploaded on our website. Page two of that presentation has a disclaimer clause, which will cover the entire proceedings today. Thank you again. And I would request Naren to make a few opening comments. Thank you.

Good morning. Good afternoon to everyone. Good evening as well. During October, December quarter, the global steel prices were subdued across key regions. And in China, the steel prices stayed close to around $480 despite the stimulus measures. The construction market in China continued to be soft, leading to an export of more than 100 million tons during the calendar year. In fact, 111 million tons to be precise. And that was amongst the highest that China has ever exported in the past. The Indian steel demand continued to grow, but the momentum has eased and domestic prices remain under pressure due to cheap imports. The DGTR, the Director General of Trade Remedies, has initiated investigation to consider safeguard duty. And in 2024, several nations relied on trade measures such as anti-dumping duty to combat the impact of steel imports, particularly from China. This, along with the new US administration's inclination towards imposing tariffs, has a potential to regionalize steel trade flows with implications on prices. Moving to tariff steel, our performance has been aided by the progress on our strategic initiatives. And in India, we commissioned the 5 million ton blast furnace at Kalinga Nagar, and this has aided the volume growth. In UK, the closure of the heavy end assets has begun to generate improvement in fixed costs and in emissions. India's crude steel production rose 6% year-on-year to 5.69 million tonnes for tarra steel. And the new blast furnace at Kalinga Nagar produced around 0.56 million tonnes during the quarter. And presently, the phase 2, TSK2, the blast furnace, the second blast furnace, is operating at around 8,500 tonnes per day. And the ramp-up to rated capacity is progressing well. India's deliveries increased 8% year-on-year to 5.29 million tons, and amongst the business verticals, the automotive and special products volumes were aided by the growth in high-end products. Our retail brand, Tata Tiscon, achieved their best-ever quarterly sales and grew 20%, over 20% year-on-year, while our cold-rolled brands, or SMEs, Tata Stelium was about 10% higher here on here. Customer centricity and value creation is paramount to us as we progress on achieving market leader leadership across chosen segments. And 75% of our steam sales to automotive is processed or ready to use. We have service centers and stockyards close to most of the major auto hubs, enabling close partnerships with key OEMs that drives technical support and product development. e-commerce platform asiana is designed for individual house builders home builders and we have more than 30 construction service centers across india to offer customized reinforcement products and solutions to the construction industry at kalinga nagar we have also commissioned the continuous annealing line of the controlling mill complex and in ludhiana we've started receiving the equipment delivery for the 0.85 ton electric car furnace based operation and i've also commenced on the civil works Moving on to UK, we reconfigured the supply chain upon closure of the heavy end assets in September, and we are now servicing our customers by processing and purchase substrate. This has led to significant reduction in our Port Talbot emission footprint as well as the overall fixed cost base. Our fixed cost per tonne of deliveries has decreased by around 80 pounds per tonne quarter on quarter, which has helped in improving the performance. In Netherlands, the drop in prices weighed on the performance despite declining costs, and as a result, the overall profitability was affected. Kaushik will elaborate on this. At the same time, in Netherlands, we have produced about 1.75 million tons of hot metal, which means we are running at a 7 million ton hot metal production rate. We are committed to responsible growth and multiple initiatives underway across geographies to reduce emissions. Tata Steel became the first steel maker to introduce biochar in the blast furnace as a partial replacement for carbon intensive fossil fuel like coal. ESG coals underpin broader focus areas and we are committing to foster equality, diversity and an inclusive workplace. We recently operationalized an all women shift in one of our mines in India. And I'm happy to share that we've been recognized as a bold employer by the India World Workplace Equality Index for the fourth consecutive year. With that, I hand over to Kaushik for his comments. Thank you.