Century Aluminum Company (NASDAQ:CENX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jesse Gary: Thanks, John. It’s a good question. Unfortunately, natural gas isn’t quite free yet. Though, I agree that would be a good environment. There’s a few things going on in your question. So on Midwest and U.S. power prices generally, bringing aside the cold snap we had in January, they have been very constructive in both back half of last year and now certainly in the first quarter of this year, putting aside that brief week of very cold weather. So you’ve got the range right. You’ve seen them trading with low gas prices in the high-20s and low-30s over the balance of 2024. And you have seen the near part of the curve come in and reduce back towards sort of pre-pandemic levels in the Midwest. On the renewable side, however, you continue to see renewable supply chains be very stretched and renewable prices remain well above pre-pandemic pricing levels for renewables.

So it’s pretty dynamic out there. There’s a lot of things going on. It’s kind of hard to make broad generalizations of the overall energy environment. But certainly, it is a bit more constructive for Sebree as we continue to operate there.

John Tumazos: If I can ask another with your 5% demand growth estimate for last year from China, does that mean Chinese exports fell last year?

Jesse Gary: Yes. When you look at — and you can sort of take a broader look and look at imports level, we saw about 1 million — 1.3 million tons of aluminum going into China. So the window was certainly open for most of the year. And largely, that was based on very strong demand for EVs and renewable energy applications within China. So then your corresponding question on exports is a bit more complex because you did see a lot of that demand to go into not semis exports, which are easier to track, but more complete downstream demand applications, and it’s a bit harder to say exactly. But what we can see is that the drivers are those long-term demand drivers for aluminum we’ve long talked about, which is increasing aluminum intensity in electric vehicles and increasing aluminum intensity in renewable energy and renewable energy transmission applications.

Operator: There are currently no further questions registered. [Operator Instructions] There are no additional questions waiting at this time. So I’ll pass the call back to the management team for any closing remarks.

Jesse Gary: Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining, and we look forward to talking to you after Q1. Thanks a lot.

Operator: That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.