Ferroglobe PLC (NASDAQ:GSM) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Benoist Ollivier: Thank you. So the — our strategy in terms of growth is focused on the development of high-purity silicon for advanced applications, including batteries. And this — when we look at it, the silicon for advanced application and batteries is anticipated to have accumulated annual growth rate of 30% per annum. And this will have an increased and significant step that will take place in 2025 when the gigafactories currently being built in the U.S. and in Europe as well as Canada will be producing at capacity requiring significant quantities of raw materials. Ferro road map, we continue to invest in our technology to ready ourselves for this exponential market ramp-up. One attractive side we have is that we leverage all the technology we have developed for the last 15 years in solar, and we believe that our metallurgical route technology has 3 main advantages against any other silicon alternative for batteries.

It is lower cost, lower CapEx intensity and modularity and a much faster ramp-up dynamics.

Operator: We will take our next question. The question comes from the line of Martin Englert from Seaport Research Partners.

Martin Englert: I wanted to touch on the French power contracts and maybe we can — specifically the sequence here in how to think about volumes moving through next year. So it seems like maybe the ask from the government was don’t produce on the French assets or significantly reduced production during the winter months or 1Q ’23. And then you’re free to ramp based on wherever market demand is in the remaining quarters of 2023. And if you kind of follow that framework, they’ll keep you comparable on your fixed energy price with your go-forward contract in 2023 versus the legacy one. Is that the way to think about it? Or does something differ?

Javier López Madrid: Yes. It is slightly different because it’s a fixed agreement. It’s a fixed agreement that we have reached with EDF, but maybe Benjamin you can add the specifics to Martin.

Benjamin Crespy: Yes. Thank you, Martin. It’s Benjamin speaking. So I think, generally speaking, it looks like — so we entered into a 3-year contract agreement, right, with energy provider, and this is from 2023. For 2023, specifically, I mean, yes, we are taking action during winter in France. And by modulating during winter, we will achieve energy costs in 2023, similar to the one we have in 2022. So this is beneficial to our competitiveness, right? That said, I think when talking about volume, I think it’s too early to talk about 2023 volumes overall, given that we are presently in our contracting period and performing our forecasting and budgeting exercise for 2023. And what we should keep in mind is that we will shift our annual plant maintenance shutdown into Q1, and that’s only one way of mitigating the impact on volume. As we already mentioned that we will use our global platform, in particular, Polokwane and Becancour, to balance production and demand.

Martin Englert: So no sense. I mean, with the South Africa restart and you’re looking, I think, that we’re supposed to add, what, 30,000, 35,000 tons for next year. But no sense on, I guess, if we think about before the restart was announced and after what the net volume gain or constant might be from that, given that there will be some downtime during the winter months.

Javier López Madrid: Maybe, Craig?

Craig Arnold: Yes. Maybe just to support what Benjamin was saying, with the anticipated modulating of the assets and bringing forward some of the maintenance — plant maintenance this quarter 1, well timed with the start-up of the Polokwane in South Africa and how it’s going to service the global franchise. On a net effect, on a year-over-year basis, it will be roughly the same because, as you highlighted a little bit later — earlier in your comments there or your question was as we begin to operate throughout the remainder of the year, the post French winter, we will be able to actually push the entire franchise a little bit harder in France.