David Burritt: Well, thanks for that question. And I’m sure it’s no surprise to you or any others, especially not our customers, but we’re focused on creating win-win opportunities with our customers. We’ve earned additional market share with auto OEMs by having a value-added mindset. Our customers see themselves in our strategy. They’re right there with us. They want us to grow our capabilities with them. The customers, they see we’re not standing still while others are. Others may not be investing in the future like we are to meet the specific needs of our customers. And when we invest in the future, it’s a signal to those customers that we want them to be successful. So we’ve got our balance sheet cleaned up. We’ve got a fully-funded strategic CapEx program, and our approach to the auto market is working very well. They’re approaching us. They want us to do more. I’d just say that the loudest voices don’t earn market share, but value-focused partners do.
Carlos de Alba: Fair enough. The second, sorry, well, my second question is on the NGO line. Great to hear that is on-time and on-budget. How should we think about the ramp up, the pace of the ramp-up after it starts off later this quarter?
David Burritt: Yes. Thanks for that question. Achieving the right product mix, as you know, is integral to realizing the true value of the NGO line. As I said before, we’re listening to the customers. They wanted thin or higher silicon content. The demand is going to drive higher price premiums and things like this. This is reflective in our ramp-up, which we’ve said, is like $140 million of EBITDA by 2026. So Rich I know you’ve got some comments you’d like to make on this.
Richard Fruehauf: Yes. No, I think that’s right, Dave. So first of all, we’re in a good spot ahead of the start-up in the coming weeks. As you said and Jess talked about in the opening remarks. That project is on-time, on-budget. It was one of the first things we did when we closed on the acquisition of Big River. The second part was approve the NGO project, and so now we’re in a great position. So on commissioning and ramp-up, we’ve already cold commissioned critical components, the reversing cold mill, the hydraulics, the cleaning section. We’ve been working closely with our customer base for some time to accelerate trial and qualification time lines. The volume ramp-up schedule, the overall volume alignment is really great.
We’ve actually, in fact, sold the first volumes just last week to industrial and auto customers because of all the prequalification work the team had done. The NGO and our transition teams have been working on this for months, obviously, to get these steel grades qualified for customers based on the end market. And remember, this facility will supply both industrial and the higher quality, higher specification EV grades. We — and I think it’s overlooked a lot, but we already make electrical steels in Europe. Our Kosice facility has been making electrical steels for over 20 years. So we’ve leveraged that expertise and partnership in Europe so that we can be out of the gate fast once the new NGO line in Osceola comes online. So we didn’t provide guidance.
Dave talked about it for 2023, the contribution from the NGO line, but we’re confident we can get some EBITDA off the line this year. We’re on our way to probably $60 million or so in 2024, and then we’ll get up to around run rate by 2026 of about $140 million.
