ArcelorMittal S.A. (NYSE:MT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Today, the operating levels are roughly 15% to 20% for steel and 20% to 25% for iron ore mines. And as you know that the facility in Ukraine has vertically integrated. It has its iron ore mines connected to our steel making and makes long products. So clearly can participate in the reconstruction, redevelopment of Ukraine when there is peace.

Tristan Gresser: Okay, that’s very helpful. And maybe just a quick follow up on the volume guidance. In Europe, you have a couple of blast furnaces that have been idle at the moment, and I think only one has been restarted so far. Does your volume guidance include some additional restructure in the region. And is there some possibility, when you look at certain blast furnace being idle that some are now called idol or some close to the end of life. And this is context of the decarburization, maybe some of those blast furnaces will not restart. Is that a fair possibility? Thank you.

Genuino Christino: Yeah, let me report on that Tri. Yeah, so I think we are bringing production back as we see improvement to our order book, right? So and that’s where we have been also very consistent on that. So we will always match supply to the demand that we see. So we are not bringing capacity back. Anticipation of an improvement is really responding to the dynamics, the order books that we have in front of us. So at this point in time we have some of the finance debt we brought down during Q4. As you know they were for maintenance, we are up and running. We have made all the announcement, so some older furnaces are up today. So we only have one furnace in that is a small furnace that is down, that is close to end of life, that we may or may not bring back, but that remains available to the group. So all of our capacity remains available for the group.

Tristan Gresser: Okay. Thank you very much.

Daniel Fairclough : Thanks Tristan. So we’ll move now to the question from Patrick at Bank of America. Go ahead, Patrick.

Patrick Mann : Good day, and thank you for the opportunity. I wanted to ask just how you’re thinking about the other 50% of free cash flow, which for the strategic acquisitions. So I mean, when you look at your current footprint, you know with the big acquisitions that are being replaced with HBI, CSP and the recycling businesses. Is that how we should think about going forward that you’ll look for bolt-on, and I suppose low carbon feedstock or basically how are you thinking about it, going forward?

Aditya Mittal: Yes, thank you, that’s a great question. Yeah, I think you’re right from an industry. I’ll just add a little bit more color to your question. So we continue to be focused on how we can effectively deploy our strategic capital. We are looking at opportunities which help us decarbonize, that they will be further or create advantages for us as we decarbonize. We’re looking for low cost, higher margin assets and clearly, the real fundamental decision making is how much value do we create, right. What are the trends in these projects and then include it, and how do we continue to grow and develop the business keeping all of these factors in mind. So I think in 2022 we did a great job, right. We deployed our strategic capital appropriately, Texas, Brazil, scrap processors, renewable investment in India, XCarb fund deployment in different and new technologies, and we managed to return a lot of cash to shareholders, buying back 11% of the company, and as you saw this morning we also increased our base dividend.

So I think you should expect more of the same, i.e., a balanced approach in terms of growing and developing the business, but also returning cash and value to shareholders.

Patrick Mann : Thank you.