Vale S.A. (NYSE:VALE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Vanessa Quiroga: Thank you, and congrats on the transaction. I have a couple of questions. One of them is regarding the agreement with the partners. Is there any optionality for off-take for the partners as part of the agreement? And will they have any dividend — I mean, any rights to receive dividends from Vale in the future? And the second question is related to — the second question is related to — I would like you to review basically your corporate governance protection to be able to avoid any student change in leadership at the company, Vale. Thank you.

Gustavo Pimenta: All right. So Gustavo here. The first — on the first one, yes. So on the — there is no special dividend anything like that on the agreement. I think the agreement is very proportional to the final stake of each one of the partners. There is some commercial discussions that we’ve had, an agreement that we’ve had with our partners, and it’s all based on market conditions. And that’s pretty much it. So it’s very attractive from a governance standpoint for us. If anything, it just opens up new markets for Vale, right, including the opportunity for us to deploy our products in the Middle Eastern

Operator: Our next question…

Eduardo De Salles Bartolomeo: No, no. Wait a minute we have to answer the second question still. On the corporate governance I think it’s a very important question from Vanessa is that we’ve been — since I think 2017, I mistaken when we entered Novo Mercado, we’ve been improving the governance. So I think Vale’s governance is fit for purpose for a world-class organization like ours. So I believe that — we are in good shape. We have independents. We have representation. We have lead independent director. So I think the corporate governance is the right-sized to avoid any problems that we would eventually have.

Operator: Our next question is from Carlos De Alba, Morgan Stanley.

Carlos De Alba: Yes. Good morning. Thank you very much and congratulations on finally executing the transaction. I wanted to maybe step back and think about — how do you see the path forward now for VBM, given whether you accomplished, I guess, where presumably is the first step or the first two steps in that – in what you want to do with this company in the future. Do you want now to concentrate on improving operations, and then potentially do an IPO, or see what opportunities are there to buy or merge with another entity and you further increase the already attractive pipeline of rate that you have. If you could comment and provide any color that will be really useful? I have another question, but maybe I can ask it after the first one.

Eduardo De Salles Bartolomeo: Okay, Carlos thanks. Your question is extremely important, because as I mentioned before, it’s a path. First of all, it’s execute. That’s why the partners are relevant in that sense because they are not — how can I say that short-term investors or short-term viewers on this matter. That fit-for-purpose organization that we mentioned that is designed already, its ring-fenced, as I mentioned, is the first step. The acquisition of talents like Jerome and Mark will go under the first hurdle that is execute on existing assets. Of course, we still have gaps to fulfill. There’s two projects that are ramping up. So we believe that’s the first and most important challenge that we have to keep on doing as we’ve been doing.

The difference, I believe, with this new design or this new arrangement is speed. The second one is growth. With a more dedicated organization, we believe that the projects, the attention, the drives will help us on accelerate that growth. When those two things merge and will take a while, is not something you need to take two, three years, I don’t know. We will see what kind of demand we will have? What kind of opportunities we will have? I don’t know if Gustavo wants to complement. But fundamentally, it’s a path to execution, a path to growth and eventually opportunities that will arise later, right? Of course, there’s capital allocation opportunity as well.