Lucas Pipes: And in terms of — you just mentioned now on the buyback that you would be opportunistic, I appreciate that. In high level — in the high level, what do you think would be the allocation towards buybacks versus a dividend? Is that the way you think about it at this time? Some other companies in the industry, they have a certain percentage that would go towards buybacks. Curious how — that’s how you think about it or if it’s maybe too early to comment on that.
Beatriz García-Cos: Yes. I think, Lucas, this is the first year since 2018 that sort of lobbies paying dividends. So our intention is to return capital to the shareholders through the payment of dividends. When it comes to the share buyback, as I mentioned, we feel that our share is completely undervaluated after the repayment of the senior notes, et cetera. So if the share price continues to be undervaluated, we’re going to be taking the opportunity for sure to do solid share buyback.
Marco Levi: Look, we want to maintain a certain flexibility. Overall, we have started a discussion with our Board, we hope to conclude the discussion in June. But like I said in my pitch, we want to make sure that we keep on also financing our operations and keep our assets running at the proper rate.
Lucas Pipes: That’s all very helpful. And I’ll try to squeeze one quick one in. On the EV battery side, you mentioned a term sheet and another initiative, what is your contribution high level to these ventures?
Marco Levi: Thank you, Lucas. Well, we mentioned these 2 agreements because they are exactly aligned to our strategy of attacking the opportunity in the growth of silicon metal for batteries in 2 ways. The joint venture that I mentioned is about silicon modified products that will partially replace graphite in the anode. We are targeting 30%. Today, it’s around 10%, 12% with other products but this is the market that we are targeting. The second alliance and partnership with an American company is related to our ambition to supply silicon metal for a full silicon made anode. And these — so these 2 kind of alliances really confirm the validity of our strategy.
Lucas Pipes: Marco, thank you very much for all the color and to you and the team, best of luck.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Question comes from the line of Martin Englert from Seaport Research Partners.
Martin Englert: Just to pivot back to the guidance and follow up on some of Lucas’ questions in the context. It seemed like at the time you budgeted for the guide, the market was comparatively worse, namely price demand. Since then there’s been price improvement. And your comment about kind of taking into account market prices today would be — imply something towards the upper end of the EBITDA guidance range. So maybe if I look at spot market prices for silicon metal and alloys today and flatline that for the rest of the year, would you anticipate approximating the $170 million in EBITDA?
Marco Levi: Or even better, Martin, or even better, Martin. I mean, we have — the question and I mentioned it when I answered to Lucas is are the — these increases are related mainly to restocking and some production curtailment and in the case of Europe, the crisis in the Red Sea, we have to see if this level of price will be maintained to be seen. This is my first comment. The other comment that I made is that in parallel to pricing recovery we have made a decision — taken the decision to go very aggressively to further improve the cost of our operations already this year. And so I am — today, I can say I’m rather optimistic that we need to reach or maybe even do better than the top level of the guidance.
Martin Englert: Okay. Would you — last year, I don’t believe there was any revisions to EBITDA guide but the way things played out it was progressively deteriorating from a fundamental perspective and you still exceed the top end of the guidance for the full year. But if we’re — presumably if we would be against a backdrop of fundamental improvement with price and/or demand that could potentially prompt upward revisions as the year progresses, assuming that it’s a spot price where it is today or better?
Marco Levi: Well, to be in line with what I mentioned after third quarter, in 2024, we had a big favorable impact from the energy pricing front. And like I explained, this impact was related mainly to the difference between the energy market price in France and the price that we have negotiated. This year, this difference is much lower, much lower and this is why Beatriz during our pitch has mentioned, the $186 million benefit on our EBITDA of $315 million that basically brings the performance of 2023 to $129 million, as mentioned by Beatriz. So this $129 million of EBITDA really reflects the market net of the favorable energy impact in France in 2023. Now this is — starting from there we have created a guidance of $100 million, $170 million.
Now in 2024, we are not going to have the same impact from energy in France. We are still going to be very competitive with our energy cost in France but a few things have to fall into place, recovery of demand, more sustainable pricing and our aggressive operational cost reduction program.
Martin Englert: Within the — maybe the lower bound and upper bound of the annual EBITDA guidance range for this year, what is the assumption on the contribution from energy credits — I’d like to get a sense of that.
Marco Levi: Yes. I mean when we look at the estimated energy price in France during this year at market and the way we plan to run our assets in France we expect to get a benefit which is going to be lower than $40 million versus the $186 million that we had in 2023.
Martin Englert: What is the spot French electricity price that’s baked into that assumption d9ollars per megawatt hour?
Marco Levi: Sorry, can you repeat your question?
