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

Operator: Our next question is from Myles Allsop, UBS London.

Myles Allsop: Great. So two questions. First of all, on CapEx. Could you give us obviously a bit more sense around how CapEx is going to trend this year and over the next few years. Obviously, this year, you’re tracking well below the $6 billion. As we look forward, with all kind of Mega Hubs and the investments in Indonesia, how should we think about CapEx moving forward? Or having how capital intensive from a Vale perspective will these Mega Hubs be and when will we start seeing spend on those? And then the second question is just around Samarco. Could you just give us a quick update? Obviously, there’s the headlines earlier in the week. Could you give us a sense how negotiations are progressing or not and what we should be thinking about in terms of liabilities?

Gustavo Pimenta: Myles, Gustavo Pimenta here. So maybe starting with the second question. So look, we continue to work on trying to find a resolution that works for everybody, right? So that’s, I think, our belief that this is the ideal outcome here. So we continue to be hopeful that, if not this year, in the first half of next year, we’ll be able to find a resolution. And that should resolve some of the open disputes that we continue to see coming through, right? That is, from our perspective, the best outcome for Samarco and we’ll continue to look and work very hard for that. Regardless, we continue to perform super well on the obligations that we have under the [indiscernible]. So with 80% of the housing solutions have been resolved.

We have indemnified more than 430,000 people, spent to date BRL 33 billion. So things are moving, and we’ll continue to do so. On CapEx, yes, we are tracking well around the $6 billion. We’ll provide more color in Vale Day in terms of what is our long-term expectation there, but you shouldn’t expect us to deviate much from it because especially you’ve mentioned the Mega Hubs, some of that investment will be done in partnership with our clients. So we will do part of it, our clients will do part of it. So we should be able to accommodate this substantially within the existing figures that we’ve been working on. So we’ll provide that more color in Vale Day, but that’s the direction you should expect from us.

Operator: Next question is from Tyler Broda, RBC.

Tyler Broda: Great. I have two questions. The first one is on iron ore. Eduardo had made the comment that the production to sales gap would tighten a bit in the fourth quarter for iron ore. I was wondering if you can give a bit of color on that, just we’ve seen a reversal of that? Do you see a destocking normally in the fourth quarter? Is that — just to clarify, should we expect a destocking in Q4, especially after the sort of the inventory build over the last 12 months? And then my second question is about nickel and it’s good to see the operations moving in the right direction. I guess, Deshnee, I don’t know if you could share, your outlook on the nickel price, you’ve been negative free cash flow now for the last 4 quarters, I mean how is that influencing your plans for investment? And I guess just what your thoughts are at the moment with prices where they are?

Marcello Spinelli: Tyler, thanks for the question. So yes, you may expect a higher sales than production in the fourth quarter as we have normally in our seasonality, okay? Slightly higher. The sales will be slightly higher than Q3 and same pattern we have. So — but it’s important to reinforce one point here. Our inventories is healthy. We are not hearing or rebuilding any inventory rather than our operational inventory. I’ve been hearing some noise about that. We have flexibility in our supply chain. So — and we have the value over volume. So we can — we are now focusing on blending. Sometimes we need to hold the project to blend. So that’s exactly what we are doing now. So we are drying Carajas and blending for Q1. And we are anticipating high silica, some high silica product to reduce the concentration in China and anticipating this sales to Q4 this year.