Salzgitter AG (SZGPF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-03-21 14:33:03 ET

Salzgitter AG (SZGPF)

Q4 2024 Results Conference Call

March 21, 2025 06:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Markus Heidler - Head of Investor Relations

Gunnar Groebler - Chief Executive Officer

Birgit Potrafki - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Krishan Agarwal - Citi

Bastian Synagowitz - Deutsche Bank

Cole Hathorn - Jefferies

Boris Bourdet - Kepler Cheuvreux

Andrew Jones - UBS

Maxime Kogge - ODDO

Christian Obst - Baader Bank

Presentation

Markus Heidler

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our annual analyst conference. My name is Markus Heidler. I'm the Head of Salzgitte AG's Investor Relations department. I'm here today with Gunnar Groebler, our CEO; and Birgit Potrafki, our CFO. They will give you insights into the economic and political environment we are facing, as well as in the business development of the group industry and strategy.

And finally, we will dive into finance. After that, we will have the usual Q&A session. Just for [transparent reason] and as a last remark, the whole web conference will be shown on our website. So there is -- so just that you know what question to ask and not to ask.

And with that, I'd like to hand over to you, Gunnar.

Gunnar Groebler

Thank you very much, Markus. Warm welcome from our side to the Annual Analyst Conference with the full year numbers of 2024. Prior to diving into the details, which Birgit will do. Let me perhaps kick it off with some remarks on the overall environment and how we have performed through the year.

Let me start with something that is very close to our heart as members of the Board, but also to everybody in the company, which is occupational safety. As you can see, the long-term trend since 2018 is intact. We're reducing our LTIF, we're reducing our -- or improving our operational and occupational safety. And we have, again, improved in '24 vis-a-vis '23. So that is a good sign.

Our target, of course, remains 0 accident. This is something we stand for. This is something that we also asked the team, the entire team to stand for and support both our colleagues, but also third parties working on site to really get to that target. So that remains an ambition that we have, that remains a clear focus on our day-to-day work.

So from there to the political and economic environment that we have, we have seen quite some political development over the last couple of weeks, I should say, which I would like to highlight in short. So on the upper part, you see the European development on the lower part, the U.S. development. Let me start with the U.S. We have seen quite a number of discussions on tariffs in the U.S., there's still a bit of an unclear picture.

What I clearly support is that EU keeps the door open for further negotiations for further discussions to really get back to a stable system that we all can work with because this lack of stability, the unclarity is certainly not good for business.

For us, at Salzgitte, the exposure -- direct exposure is relatively limited. We are not exporting a lot of material into the U.S. We're rather looking at material that will be diverted from formally moving into the U.S. now moving into other geographical regions, 1 of that being Europe. Hence, we are very happy with the political discussion and measures taken by EU on safeguards and on antidumping measures.

So safeguards the review is completed and will be put in force as of April 1. This will cover roughly 4 million tons of steel that is flowing into Europe today. This is approximately 20% of all the imports and approximately 6% of the overall market in Europe. So a substantial number -- a substantial tonnage that is covered -- newly covered with the safeguards....

Read the full article on Seeking Alpha

For further details see: