Stelco Holdings Inc.

Hello and welcome to the Stelco Holdings Inc third quarter 2023 earnings call. My name is Terry and I'll be the conference operator today. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and you can do this by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypads. I would now like to hand over to 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 third 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 third 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 under reliance upon them. 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 refer to the risks and assumptions outlined in Stelco's public disclosures. In particular, the third 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. We were able to generate strong results and deliver $153 million of adjusted EBITDA, which is approximately 20% margin during the third quarter of 2023, despite a price environment that deteriorated for most of the period. Our industry-leading low-cost structure, which we have worked tirelessly to construct, has enabled Stelco to once again achieve the highest steel EBITDA margin in the entire North American reporting steel industry this quarter, generating significant cash even in a softer environment, and in turn, has provided us the opportunity to provide industry-leading returns to our shareholders. This achievement is quite remarkable in that not only have we achieved this industry-leading EBITDA margin in this quarter, but we have done so in 10 out of the last 12 quarters. That's 10 out of the last 12 quarters, dating back to 2020 when we completed our blast furnace upgrade project. Following on the success of our third quarter, in addition to our ordinary dividend of 42 cents per share, Stelco will be providing our valued shareholders with a special dividend of $3 per share, bringing the total capital return to shareholders to more than $2 billion since our IPO in 2017 while investing over a billion dollars back into the operations of our company. This is a track record that we are exceptionally proud of and one that is unmatched by any of our reporting peers in North America when taken as a percentage of market capitalization. Over the past six years, we have continued to demonstrate that our management team is closely aligned with our shareholders, something that continues to be a unique strength of our company. Our senior management team thinks and acts like shareholders because as a group, we are shareholders. We identify and evaluate opportunities to deploy capital in a manner that maximizes returns through the utilization of our tactical flexibility model and taking the necessary steps to maintain and where possible improve upon our already low cost position. In the past few weeks, we have begun to experience a significant upward trajectory in fuel prices combined with stable market demand, and at the same time have secured inputs at favorable pricing in a timely way, which should reduce our costs from 2023 levels. Over the coming months, we will realize the impact of these positive pricing and demand trends and lower costs to improved results beginning in 2024. In order to ensure we maximize the opportunity that the market offers, we will remain vigilant on costs and work to find further efficiencies in our operations to take full and continue our strong track record of generating cash. Thank you for your time this morning. I will now ask Paul Scherzer to detail some of our financial results. Paul?