Eramet Sa Unsp/Adr (ERMAY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

everyone here in the room and for the ones who are listening to us elsewhere. It's a pleasure for me to be here today to present Eramet's annual results. It will be my last presentation of annual results as the CEO of this company. And while it has been a very difficult year in terms of macroeconomic environment, I think that we can see that these results show how much Eramet has changed over the past years and how much we are more capable of coping with the downturn of the cycle. So I want to begin acknowledging the challenges that have shaped this past year. We have faced a very difficult macroeconomic environment marked by a lot of volatility in the manganese markets, much lower nickel prices, and also permitting constraints in Indonesia. And these headwinds have put pressure on our financial performance, as they have for many of our competitors in this industry. Yet, despite these external challenges, Eramet has once again demonstrated its resilience. Thanks to the solid foundation that we have built over the past years, the portfolio repositioning, the financial discipline, the operational excellence, and our long-term strategic view, we have been able to navigate the downturn while continuing to deliver on our key priorities. Our intrinsic performance remained strong with higher productivity, optimized product mix, and improved efficiency, helping to offset part of the external pressure that we have faced. We have also made decisive progress on our strategic roadmap. And in lithium, we have regained the full ownership of our centenario deposit in Argentina. And it's a major step. And we have also successfully started our new plant. securing then our position as the first European company to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate at industrial scale. We have al...