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

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Unidentified Analyst: Yes. Thank you. And then also, so given your curtailments, what’s been the impact on your fixed and variable costs? And how do you expect that to evolve into Q4? Basically, how much of your fixed costs could become variable into Q4 2023?

Genuino Christino: Yes. I think that’s one of the key aspects of idling some of the capacity you match production to demand. And then you can also focus on variabilizing our fixed costs as much as possible. We discussed, we don’t have the same schemes that we had back in 2020 at the time of COVID, but we do have schemes still available to us in most countries where we operate. So the focus is on working with the unions, work with our employees to have as much of the fixed cost removed for as long as our finances are down. It’s a significant percentage. I’m not going to be specific, but we believe that we can remove a good part of the fixed cost. But on our fixed cost per ton, as we bring down capacity will be impacted. So fixed cost per ton will increase as we reduce capacity, but it’s still economically is the right decision.

Unidentified Analyst: Thanks. And just as you touched on it just then how some of your labor agreements progressing in Europe and also in Brazil into 2023.

Genuino Christino: Well, I think, this is a challenge that everybody will face. This is — as inflation has been high, I think, this is going to be a hot topic not only for us, but for everybody in 2023. And it’s going to be a discussion with the unions, with our employees to find what is the right balance where we — we attend the needs, but we also make sure that the company remains competitive, remains viable. So it’s going to be fine-tuned and trying to find that balance. And on top of that, as we have discussed at the beginning of the year, our management gain plans that we launched, we continue to track and follow that very closely. We continue to work on productivity. I think the company historically has always been — has always done well in working on improving productivity, and I expect us to continue to do that to mitigate some of the cost inflation that is happening, and everybody we need to face.

Unidentified Analyst: And are those expectations included in future CapEx assumptions as well?

Genuino Christino: Well, yes. Yes. I mean, at this point, because we are working on this strategic CapEx now for some time, right? So we have a good idea of costs associated with these projects. We also saw FX bringing down some of this CapEx. So there are some offsetting aspects as well. It’s not only everything is negative. So there are also some positive effects as well.

Unidentified Analyst: Brilliant. Thank you, very much.

Operator: Great. Thanks. That was our last question. I will hand the call back to you.

Genuino Christino: Thank you, Daniel, and thank you to everyone for joining our call today. I think we had a good discussion around how we are responding to the market challenge. But I hope that you take away one message, and this one message is consistency. Consistency in our focus on safety and industry leadership, consisting our free cash flow generation and consistency between how we allocate our capital to growing and developing ArcelorMittal, while continuously returning capital to our shareholders. Thank you very much.

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