Michael Garcia: Yes, it is a tough question to ask. Definitely, there is, an aspect of it and probably a significant aspect in the early days the first few weeks, couple of months that is tied more to a recovery from the positions people reach during the strike. Inventories were, I think, at two months, which is quite low.Lead times for the mills were out at eight weeks for the most part. So I think the initial stages of it have been a recovery from the concern and the specific outages tied to the UAW strike.I think going forward is where it’ll really kind of demonstrate whether the rest of it, any further pricing beyond where we’re reaching now will, I think, be more tied to fundamental demand and economic activity.
Ian Gillies: Understood. Thanks very much. That’s helpful.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Lucas Pipes with B. RileySecurities.
Lucas Pipes: Thank you very much for taking my question.The first one is circling back on annual contracts and with the decline in raw material costs in 2024, would you expect the margin on annual contracts to increase or stay the same go down would appreciate your perspective on that?
Rajat Marwah: Sure. So, the contracts that we do are mostly index based and there is a very small amount that’s on fixed price where you see that that happening, but overall, we should see margins improving because costs should get optimized and if the pricing remains at the level it is or lower, we should see higher margins. So relatively margins will be better because the cost comes down, but most of our contracts are index based, so it’s heavily based on the on how the pricing moves throughout the year.
Lucas Pipes: Got it and thank you for that and can you remind us roughly what percentage would be fixed versus loading?
Rajat Marwah: We normally do around 5% or so fixed of our total bookand we normally do contracts around 50% to 60%. So 5% is fixed and the balances all flow based on monthly and quarterly contracts.
Lucas Pipes: Very helpful. Thank you for that and then my second question is on your coke procurement during the transition phase. Can you remind us what the strategy varies, what would you expect the mix to look like? And any possible savings on the on the capital side, as you as you transition. Thank you very much for your color.
Michael Garcia: Yes, Lucas. So we continue to maximize production from ourinternal coke batteries and we continue to spend critically required capital to maintain those batteries in a safe operating condition,but the fact remains, even when they’re running very well, we are still short of coke.So we’ll continue to purchase coke externally as we’ve done in the past. We always try to minimize that number, but we expect that go forward into the future and we’ve gotten a little bit of a benefit here recently because the market price of coke has come down pretty significantly, but our approach remains the same.We will have to maintain the batteries, even though they don’t have a long life or a life for us beyond our final transition to EAF production, but we’re still spending some amount of required sustaining capital to keep them safe and operating profit properly.Does that help?
Lucas Pipes: It does.I do have a follow-up question. There’s talk of some potential idling of blast furnace in 2024. So I would think that overall there’s more coke available from a merchant basis.Is that tempting or when you kind of think about, if you just answered the question before that if you want to kind of maximize your internal needs, but is there a point where that can switch and where it makes more sense to buy more coke on a merchant base?
