Stelco Holdings Inc.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Stelco Holdings Inc. fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. My name is Nadia and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Trevor Harris, Vice President, Corporate Affairs to begin. Trevor, please go ahead.

Good morning everyone and welcome to Stelco's quarterly earnings conference call. Speaking on the call today to discuss our 2023 fourth quarter and full year results will be Alan Kastenbaum, 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 fourth quarter and full year of 2023. This press release, along with the company's financial statements and management's discussion and analysis, have been posted on CDAR Plus 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 statements made today, so do not place undue reliance upon 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 refer to the risks and assumptions outlined in SELCO's public disclosures. In particular, the 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. Alan?

Thank you, Trevor, and good morning, everyone. 2023 proved to be another year where Silco once again demonstrated its ability to due to its lowest cost position on the cost curve, to operate successfully, even in the presence of challenging market conditions. Accordingly, our business continued to excel, and we were able to deliver upon our longstanding commitment to our shareholders. You will recall that with the payment of the special dividend that we announced following the third quarter of 2023, we surpassed $2 billion of capital returns. to our shareholders since 2017, consisting of approximately $1.2 billion in share repurchases and $900 million in dividends, both of which lead the industry as a percentage of market capitalization. We are extremely proud of this track record of generating cash and returning capital to our valued shareholders and remain dedicated stewards of shareholders' capital. Today, we are building further on that track record with the announcement of a normal course issuer bid that will allow the company to purchase up to 3.3 million common shares representing more than 6% of the shares outstanding and an almost 20% increase to our ordinary dividend to $0.50 per share per quarter. This is our first increase of our ordinary dividend since bumping to $0.42 per share following Q3 2022 and comes on the heels of us having paid two special dividends in the interim. As I have said many times, we are a company led by shareholders, and we will continue to make decisions regarding the deployment of capital in the best interest of the company and its shareholders, while at the same time ensuring the fundamentals of our business remain strong and we remain poised for growth. While our fourth quarter results were down over the previous quarter, we do expect to see improved margins in Q1 and Q2 as we begin to realize the higher market pricing that was contracted starting in the fourth quarter of 2023. This, combined with the anticipated stronger market demand, will give Stelco the opportunity to capitalize on the fundamental strength we have built into our business and provides us with optimism that we will be in position to continue generate cash and deliver strong results as well as capital returns to our shareholders. In addition, we have been actively evaluating opportunities to grow our company, all while staying highly disciplined on value and knowing when to say no. We will remain active, but only where valuations are attractive and synergies are significant. Overall, I am excited about our accomplishments and the opportunities that lie ahead for our business. We are entering 2024 on a foundation of strong fundamentals and have every reason to be optimistic about the future of our business and what that will mean for all of our valued partners, from our employees to our customers and our shareholders. Thank you for your time this morning. I will now ask Paul Scherzer to detail some of our financial results.