Stelco Holdings Inc.

Hello, good morning, and welcome to Stelco Holdings Inc. first quarter 2023 earnings call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity to questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Trevor Harris, to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Stelco's quarterly earnings conference call. Speaking on the call today to discuss our 2023 first quarter results will be Alan Kestenbaum, our Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Paul Scherzer, our Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued a press release overviewing Stelco's financial results for the first quarter of 2023. This press release, along with the company's financial statements and management's discussion and analysis, have been posted on CDAR and on our investor relations website at investors.stelco.com. We have provided a link to the presentation referenced on today's call on our website as well. I would like to inform everyone that comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions which have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the statements made today, so do not place undue reliance on them. STELCO management disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by law. With that in mind, I would ask everyone on today's call to read the legal disclaimers on page two of the accompanying earnings presentation and also to refer to the risks and assumptions outlined in Stelco's public disclosures. In particular, the first quarter 2023 management's discussion and analysis sections relating to forward-looking information and risks and uncertainties, as well as our filings with securities commissions in Canada. The appendix of our presentation and the non-IFRS performance measures and review of non-IFRS measures of our MD&A provide definitions and reconciliations of the non-IFRS measures that we use today. Please also note that all dollar figures referred to on today's call will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. Following today's prepared remarks, Alan and Paul will be taking questions. To maximize efficiency, we would ask that all participants who would like to ask a question please limit themselves to one question and one follow-up before re-queuing. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Alan.

Thank you, Trevor, and good morning, everyone. The first quarter of 2023 was shaped by macroeconomic and market challenges that negatively impacted our financial performance, as well as lower sales prices and higher input costs due to inflationary pressures. Despite that, we increased our shipments by 4% over the previous quarter. The even better news is We emerged from Q1 optimistic about the path forward as prices being realized now in the second quarter have improved to far more favorable levels. Lead times have normalized and costs are dropping. Despite broad macroeconomic headwinds, we continue to see and hear from our customers solid business conditions in all of the end markets we service. As a result, we anticipate a significantly more robust level of earnings in the second quarter and a continued buildup in cash so that we can continue to effectively deploy our industry-leading capital allocation strategy. On that note, we are once again announcing a quarterly dividend of 42 cents per share. That will add to the more than $1.8 billion we have returned to our shareholders since our IPO in 2017. We are extremely proud of our track record on return of capital to our shareholders and are pleased to be able to continue this trend of positive returns. Thank you for your time this morning. I will now ask Paul Scherzer to detail some of our financial results.