Ferroglobe PLC (NASDAQ:GSM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Rolfe: So just as a quick follow-up, I mean, does that designation give you increased confidence for instance that the government will continue to keep antidumping tariffs on some of the countries that they currently have the tariffs on that sort of thing?

Marco Levi: Yes, this is part — I mean, this is related to onshoring and defending local production, yes. I mean there is — this is happening also in Europe. Unfortunately, my opinion, Europe is less efficient than U.S., not only in protecting from dumping, but also in terms of walking the talk. So I think I’m very optimistic about the situation in U.S. at the moment.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Morten Normann from Carnegie.

Morten Normann: I have two questions. One is a fairly easy one. What is the sales mix between the U.S. and the Europe in metal and silicon-based alloys? And the second question is regarding the CO2 compensation, how do you book that? You mentioned higher CO2 compensation in the second quarter. And what was the incremental change in the CO2 compensation between first quarter and the second quarter? And is the CO2 compensation in the second quarter also representative for what you will book in Q3 and Q4?

Marco Levi: Okay. As far as I know, usually, we don’t give data about the mix by geography. But let me try to help you a little bit. In Europe, we sell the entire mix. So we sell silicon metal, silicon-based alloys, foundry and manganese alloys. In the Americas, we don’t sell manganese alloys, while we are present with silicon metal, ferrosilicon and foundry products. Outside of these geographies, we have quite important footprint in South Africa that supplies basically for ferrosilicon Europe, while for silicon metal, the asset in Polokwane, South Africa supply is a little bit everywhere in the world. We have a plant which produces electrodes in China. It’s the only plant that we have that produces electrodes and now this production basically go to the U.S. and to Europe. We have a plant in Argentina that supplies calcium-silicon and foundry products to supply Europe. This is — broadly, this is our mix.

Beatriz García-Cos: And Martin, with regarding the CO2 to your question. So to comment, comment number one is that the CO2 is — I’m sure that you know that, but okay, is an allowance that we receive, right, based on the production of the previous years. And then we book it in our P&L base for the production of the quarter. And as you remember, in Q1, we didn’t produce in France, right? And this quarter, we have been resuming the operations in France, so we have been producing. So the amount of CO2 that we book in our P&L is higher than in Q1. So the way to look at CO2 is depending if our plants are operating, you will see a different amount of CO2, if this answers your question.

Operator: And the question comes from the line of Greg Bennett, just the stockholder.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you for the great results. Silicon metal on the United States, you said you’re the largest. At what capacity are you now running? Is there excess capacity? Or do you have the opportunity to expand that capacity?

Marco Levi: Yes. We have 2 plants in joint venture when you talk about North America with the Dow Chemical company, one in Bécancour, Canada, and one in Alloy West Virginia. These plants produce only silicon metal. We have another plant in Selma, Alabama, which is owned by us, which produces only silicon metal. And then we have a plant in Ohio — Beverly, Ohio, which produces ferrosilicon, foundry and silicon metal. So produces all the mix to supply the United States. These plants are back-integrated with mines in Canada and Alabama for coal and we have a mine — coal mine in Kentucky. So this is the footprint. Now the — we believe that the — it — when you keep your plants in a good state, in a good status with the right maintenance CapEx, we have the possibilities, one, to improve the yield of the furnaces with different technologies.