Tenaris S.A. (NYSE:TS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alessandro Pozzi: Hi, there. Thank you. I have just a follow-up on CapEx. If you can give us maybe the breakdown of where you’re spending CapEx and also if you can talk about your ESG initiatives because as you probably are aware, I mean, especially on this side of the pond, the ESG angle is very felt and strong. So — but at the same time, I guess, you are increasing sales and therefore, CO2 emissions would probably go up, but I was wondering in terms of carbon intensity, what is the trend and maybe this year, over the next few years, how much you can — how fast you can decarbonize your industrial footprint?

Paolo Rocca: Thank you, for this thank you, Alessandro. If I should say where our CapEx is going, I will stress. First of all, this year, we will — in 2023, we will complete our wind farm in Argentina and some other project for decarbonization. This will require investment in the range of $200-plus million. Then we will invest in our facility to also reduce carbon by improving the process, new heat treatment in our facility in Italy is the case, investment in the steel shop in Italy — in Argentina. Investment also, the management of scrap to support the decarbonization in the different mill. This will represent also another important part of our investment and then strengthening with that operation in the U.S. because in the U.S., we need, as I was saying, to debottleneck some of the value-add process in which we will need additional capacity to expand through organic growth, our ability to serve our clients in this.

This will be basically the structure of it. The decarbonization will take 35%, 40% of our investment will have, let’s say, at least contributing to our decarbonization. In the trend of decarbonization, we started with 1.43 tons (ph) per tons of steel of pipes produced. In 2018, this is accounted with greenhouse gas methodology. In scope 1, 2 and 3 on the 3 scope. Today, we are in the range of 1.17. So we did a very good advance in our decarbonization. In 2023, we will feel the increase in welded product. It implies that we are acquiring steel from third party. And this steel, in some cases, has let’s say, higher content CO2 emission. So the scope 3 will reflect this, but we plan to compensate with a reduction in scope 1 and in scope 2 of our methods.

So we are advancing, as you know, our target is 0.98 tons per ton of pipe in 2030. We have done a very big advance. One of the investment that will not be strictly related to the carbonization, but very much related with NG is the investment in the exhausting fumes of our copper steel shop is a major investment that will transform the steel shop and reduce emission particular dimension in this — we will also increase capacity of steel. At the same time, today, we are limited exactly by the capacity of managing the fumes from the steel.

Alessandro Pozzi: Okay. That was very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Luigi De Bellis from Equita.

Luigi De Bellis: Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have one on the pricing trend. So that is two prices in U.S. are down now close to 5% from the peak level. You are seeing a solid outlook for demand supply, but how much do you expect prices to evolve in the coming months or quarters for the market? And what do you expect for Tenaris average prices consider it’s also the mix effect and how the duty supplied now on Maersk Argentina are affecting this dynamic and if it could change during the year. Thank you.