Vale S.A. (NYSE:VALE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And at Coleman, as we mentioned, we’re not able to go after some of those more riskier so pillars that we have in the mine. But what I can tell you is that because of the ground support initiatives that we had and the milestone achieved we are set up to have a better quarter 4. So when I look at maintenance, what we’ve said up until the end of last year on backlog, the majority of that we are beyond. What we are now looking at, which is very seasonal, and I think and this is something we must understand on the nickel business, we will take our smelters down in the middle of the year for a month to 2 months. There are assets that will go through 2 months of maintenance, as I’m seeing on the surface plants for next year. So we need to perhaps guide better in terms of what to expect because nickel by design will be a little patchy per quarter over the year.

Now with the asset reviews, what we are seeing, as I mentioned, is things like cut-off grades, optimization. I think in terms of milestones to look for, Mark and I are working on a roadmap for the asset reviews that demonstrates how the value can be unlocked. And as Mark has already mentioned, in fact, Caio, the discussion with you and Liam a couple of months ago that this will take a while to put in place and that from his experience, these kinds of deep transformation programs will take almost 2 to 3 years to deliver. So we will come back to you at Vale Day and explain how the roadmap will come together. But I want everyone on the call to be very clear that the initiatives that we set out to do in terms of catching up on backlog maintenance is there, and that is translating into improved progressive production increases quarter-on-quarter.

Operator: Our next question is from Daniel Sasson, Itaú BBA.

Daniel Sasson: My first question is related to cost because you did have an improvement in your C1 and yet you are delivered in China breakeven increased versus the second quarter, and part of that can be explained by higher expenses and royalties, at least as per what we can see from the table that you published. Was there — just curious if there was any sort of one-off items on that line or extraordinary items that could revert ahead? Or if you could give us more color on your expectations for these — the remaining part in addition to the C1 that composes your breakeven delivered in China. I think that would help us to forecast that going ahead? And my second question is more on the — if you could share with us an overall view on the premiums for higher quality products in China.

We saw in recent months, the Chinese steelmakers margins not being that great so they favor to some extent the lower quality products, which hurt premiums for better quality products, right? So if you could walk us through your thoughts on how this could evolve going forward, that would be great?

Gustavo Pimenta: Thanks, Daniel. This is Gustavo. So I’ll do the first one, and then I’ll ask Spinelli to talk about the second one. So yes, C1 performance came better. I think we were expecting the performance to improve since Q1, and we’ve said that. So it’s good to see C1 coming down, especially versus Q2. And we should continue to see that performance improving in Q4. On the all-in, it’s mostly driven by external factors, frankly, because what you’re referring to in terms of royalties, it was up actually more a one-off in Q2 than Q3. So there is no impact in Q3 associated with any potential one-off on royalties. In fact, what we had, if you look at big picture here, it’s more the external factors, which have impacted us in the quarter, especially bunker, which is almost $8 per tonne increase versus what we had in Q2 and also premiums, especially market premiums, which came down in the quarter, which is about $0.7 per tonne.

So that is primarily what has driven the all-in to come up. But again, we should continue to see improvements as we continue to bring volumes plus our efficiency initiatives continue to deliver. So with that, I’ll ask Spinelli to talk about premiums in China.