ArcelorMittal S.A. (NYSE:MT) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Genuino Christino: Yeah. Thank you, Mark. I think that’s a very good question. And I think the first message is that we are not changing or slowing down any of our strategic CapEx. Given the — in my opening remarks, I was making the comments on strength of the balance sheet. So the change to our CapEx forecast or guidance, it’s really linked to mostly timing, really. I mean you talked about the FX. There is an FX component here, and that’s about €200 million that we have identified. And as we know, we have seen significant FX streams during the quarter. So it’s more timing. It’s really about ability to mobilize contractors. But I think we are gaining speed, and that’s why you see our guidance for quarter four. There is an acceleration.

We are guiding for about €1.5 billion to be spent in Q4. And then when you look at the second half of 2022, we are giving us an indication that it’s probably a good number for 2023. Of course, we are in early stage of our budget cycle, and we will provide more clarity and guidance on 2023 CapEx as we report results — Q4 results, but I think that is a good reference at the moment. So some of the reduction in strategic CapEx, it’s really spread out in some projects. In Brazil, we faced some delays in Monlevade and Serra Azul. Again, as I’ve said, mobilization of contractors primarily and also in our project in India. But we don’t believe that it should cause delays at this point in time. We are assessing that, but we believe that we should be able to catch up.

Maxime Kogge: Okay. That’s great. Thank you.

Operator: Thanks, Max. So we’ll move to our last question, actually which is from Moses at JPMorgan. Go ahead, Moses.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. So a few from me. I wanted to start with the energy hedges which you’ve touched on. So you mentioned you reduced gas consumption 30% year-on-year. But could you give us some color on, I guess, the absolute impact of your energy hedges sequentially? And what are your plans on energy consumption into Q4 and 2023? And to help with that, could you just provide how much of your energy is purchased on spot?

Genuino Christino: Yeah. Moses, that’s a good question. And I think we were, to some extent, lucky we were, of course, in this rising market in terms of energy prices. I think we acted fast. We locked a good part of our consumption for quarter one, quarter two to some extent, also quarter three. And if you see our debt, you can see that in H1, we basically managed to keep our costs, and we have been talking about it. Our cost is relatively stable compared to quarter four of 2021. Of course, we could not keep up as prices continue to rise. And you see the $300 million impact in quarter three. But the cost prices were rising, our ability to continue to hedge as much as we would like for quarter four. They were not there and was — and at some point, it became risky because prices were very high So we have not hedged much quarter four, some but not much.

As a result, we are benefiting from the very low spot prices that we are seeing. So my expectation is that the average spot prices that you can see on your screen should basically reflect what we have for quarter four. And then quarter one, I would expect the same. The environment is such today that it’s hard because you have the commission in the United States in Europe discussing caps. So it’s unclear really what kind of measures will be in place. And it just makes it harder for you to go out and lock in prices, knowing also that the forward prices, they remain higher than spot prices today.