Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode and later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Mr. Peter Trpkovski. Please go ahead sir.

Thank you very much, Gary. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today’s conference call. Today’s presentation is available on our Web site at www.centuryaluminum.com. We use our Web site as a means of disclosing material information about the company and for complying with Regulation FD. I would also like to remind you that today’s discussion will contain forward-looking statements related to future events and expectations, including our expected future financial performance, results of operations, and financial condition. These forward-looking statements involve important known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements. Please review the forward-looking statements disclosure in today’s slides and press release for a full discussion of these risks and uncertainties. In addition, we have included some non-GAAP financial measures in our discussion. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the appendix to today’s presentation and on our Web site. And now, I’d like to introduce Mike Bless, Century’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

Pete thanks very much. And thanks everybody for joining us this afternoon. If we could turn to Slide 4, we can get going. It goes by saying that we’re going through a very difficult period in the sector at this point and I’ll address that just a moment, but first I’d like to talk about a few key areas of focus that have occupied us over the last couple of months. First as you are well aware we settled our Hawesville labor contract in mid June. The disruption was regrettable but necessary for the long period health of the plant. With the difficult process but to produce the contract at the end of day with which we and the union can both obviously live. During the several transition after the contract was ratified we ran into some operational difficult at the plant. We take the very difficult situation during the transition and not with the 3 days between the contract ratification and our employees returning to work and then the several days after that. During this period we experienced a significant deficiency to the personnel required to run that plant, and the result of this by the end of June was about 25% of plant’s capacity was outlined. We have the plan in place to get back the full capacity over the next couple of months and frankly we’re proceeding on pace or even a little bit better and we’re now down to only 20% of the sales offline. However given the industry environment we've come to a different decision on this, and I'll detail that in just couple of minutes. Moving on at Mount Holly, as you know the current power contract expires at the end of this year. As a reminder, we've been bringing in 75% to the…

Thanks Mike. We can move on Slide 7, please. I’ll provide some comments here on the industry environment. The cash LME price averaged 1765 per ton in Q2. That’s a net of $35 decline from Q1 prices. Regional premiums continue to fall throughout the quarter but it appears to have found some stability around $0.08 per pound or $175 on a per ton basis. These have been trading around these levels since early to mid-June. Just to give you a sense of how massive the decline in prices have been. In February of this year the Midwest transaction which includes both the LME price and the premium for delivery into the U.S. Midwest was around $2,400 per ton. Today that price is roughly $1750 per ton, it's a $650 decline in six months. Despite improved demand growth in the U.S. and improving texture in Western Europe several factors had weight on aluminum prices and premiums these include a strong dollar and macroeconomic concerns such as the great default. But we believe the largest factor driving down the aluminum prices is China. At the same time the Chinese economic growth in aluminum consumptions are slowing. Producers in China are continuing to invest in aluminum projects. This over investment has put China well into surplus position for 2015. Excess metals being exported to the West and more than wiping out the aluminum deficit in the world ex China. We continue to hear fake semi circumventing Chinese taxes and finding their way into region such as Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia and also the oversupplying North American and European markets. Overall the European -- that aluminum market is expected to generate surplus of approximately 1 million tons this year which is entirely attributable to excess capacity from China. While we expect the challenging near-term market…

Thank you, Shell. And if we could turn it to Slide 8, please. I'll give you quick rundown on the operations before I hand it over to Rick. The highlight as you can see of course this quarter was a difficult time at Hawesville as we prepare for and then went through the labor disruption. I would note that those safety data are misleading and remember here we compare Q2 with the quarter that just ended to the prior quarters sequentially. And in Q1 the safety performance at Hawesville was excellent, truly at world class levels. On an absolute basis Q2 was better than average, our folks at Hawesville did a fantastic job in keeping people safe during a very difficult period and we're proud of them and thanks folks for doing that. As you can see the safety performance at the other plants was good. You see the production decline in Hawesville, so the other results of production and efficiencies during and after the labor disruption. As I said, we've now made the decision to maintain the plants at about 80% of capacity until conditions change. You see the production in Sebree and Grundartangi were flat to Q1 and that slight decline you see is on Mt. Holly production was totally as a result of our decision to crank down the line current just a little bit here to maintain stability in the reduction room during the summer season. As you can see the production metrics were good at the plants other than Hawesville, that increase in the conversion cost you see at Hawesville is completely the product of events during the labor disruption, the majority of that is the result of heightened need for security at the plant and in the community during that period and Rick will give you some further detail. As you can see the performance of that other plants was roughly flat, that improvement in Sebree that you're seeing was all due to commodities coming down a little bit. So, controllable expenses were flat quarter-to-quarter. The opposite is true at Grundartangi controllable expenses were still flat at Grundartangi and that slight increase you see there was solely due to the small inventory draw down. And with that I'll hand it over to Rick.

Thanks, Mike. Let me start by providing a few details on the Ravenswood impairment charge. As Mike discussed we made the decision to permanently close our Ravenswood facility. During the quarter we recorded impairment charges of approximately $31 million, the breakdown of these charges are as follows. Approximately $22 million to write down the plant and equipment to its estimated salvage value. Approximately 8 million to write down the inventory to its estimated net realizable value and approximately 2 million for employee severance and other cash exit costs which we expect to pay out for the back half 2015. The entire chart was included as one of the adjustments for non-recurring items and arriving at our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share which will discuss further in a few minutes. Now let's turn to Slide 9 at the presentation, I'll provide some additional details on our financial performance for the second quarter. Our net sales were down 11% for the quarter, reflecting unfavorable market conditions and lower sales volume at our North American operations. On a market perspective and as a reminder our fiscal 2015 pricing is on a two-month lag basis. The average cash LME price was down 6% and the Midwest transaction price was down 8% sequentially. Realized prices in the U.S. were down 5% in the second quarter reflecting the two-month lag for pricing. It is important to note here again that the Midwest transaction price actually declined approximately 12% since the end of the first quarter and the balance of this decline will show up and realized prices in our third quarter results. Our Iceland direct sales are also on a two-month lag basis as they have been historically. The all in two-month lag LME and European duty paid premium decreased approximately 10% in the…

Thanks very much Rick. If we could just turn to Slide 11 please to give the quick rundown of the items on which we’ll be focusing over the next couple of months and then we get right to your questions. As we said before the most urgent task now before us is to reach a conclusion on the post 2015 power contract for Mt. Holly. As I said we got an agreement on all principal terms with an excellent third-party power supplier. Fully detailed documentation remains with this company and this will be ready to go well before the January 1st. The issue now we are at squarely with the power company in South Carolina and with the state itself, and we need to see some real progress here during the next month. So we will be working hard on that. We’ll continue our discussions with the national power company in Iceland regarding the extension of the original Grundartangi power contract. That contract is for 30% of the plants’ power requirement as a reminder the remainder of the power contracts for the other 70% expire between 2026 and 2036. This particular agreement expires in late 2019 but the contract term say that the parties are supposed to agree on the terms of an expansion in 2015. We’ll obviously spend significant effort on the cost reduction activities that I've described spend time implementing the actions that have already been decided and as I said analyzing additional actions. The environment really does call for swift and decisive decision making and then action. And we intend to stay ahead of the curve here. Lastly we’ll begin work on disposition of Ravenswood. We’re starting reasonably at the beginning of this process. As I said until very recently we’re focusing slowly on trying to solve the last gap on the power. This process will most likely take some time to result fully could be well over a year until we're through. And with that I think we can move to questions. Thanks Mike. And Carry if you could go ahead and kick-off the Q&A session please?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Tim Tanners from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Thanks for that great detail and the cost reduction help here is great. I wanted to just follow up I know on the first quarter you said that there was delay in your plans to add more value add capacity, that we had started to model in, so I just want to get an update on your shift there?

No change at all. So, we've done nothing further to what we -- the status that we described in the first quarter call hasn't changed and so as you remember the additional actions at which we were looking was there major investments at Grundartangi for built capacity that that investment in our opinion still looks good long-term, but as I said that's a reasonably major one and in this environment we just can't responsibly -- as regrettable as it is and it might be termed short-term thinking but just with the mind towards liquidity we just can't take on responsibly something like that, now and the other one would be some additional investments at the U.S. plants for additional built and another capacity both at Hawesville and at Mt. Holly and again those are analyzed, ready to go, even begun to be engineered but on the whole pending an assessments that things are going to be changing here.

Can you talk about a lot of things that are on hold for better market conditions? How do we assess what those better market conditions would equate to because I know in the past you hadn't been giving credit to the premium going up and so that wouldn't be as much of a hit coming down, that's the broader LME may I imagine. But should we go back to what you've told us in the past about kind of your breakeven numbers and seem return on that or how should we be thinking about the market conditions that would allow you to perceive on some of these projects?

You're quite right on the premium and so if you just -- I mean now I'll roll in the premium if you look at for example what CRU now has, they've just adjusted all their forecasts in their most recent report they came out and I think just recently in the last couple of days Pete and I think they'd actually done in July as well. So, if you look at what they're calling for now for the final selling price i.e. the Midwest transaction price and in the USA and the European duty paid price, they're looking for something in '16, '17 and '18 going kind of from the high teens total price selling price before product premiums to the low 2000s and that's the kind of environment still where given the cost structure that we have even before these cost reduction actions and certainly after the company in our opinion if you've modeled it out would be -- would make nice cash flow, nice returns and we'd be able to take on something like that. So, if you're looking at an environment like that if we became confident that we've an industry and we as company that we're heading towards the environment like that, you'd see us moved out.

Thank you. And now to the line of David Gagliano from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Just a couple of questions, first of all I was wondering if your commentary on the cost reduction if that factored in the impact of the decline as we've seen in alumina prices lately. I mean if not can you quantify what that impact would be and how we should expect that to flow through the result in terms of time?

The answer is now. We don't want to take credit for something that we had nothing to do, these are only actions that we're creating here but in fact our alumina prices -- costs are coming well there, so let's just -- we can do till that for you quickly, so just at on a broad -- really broad brush here is a one way to think about it, we've got about a million tons as you know final capacity and so we need just shy of 2 million tons of alumina and as we've said in before we buy a portion of that on an LME reference basis and that portion is about a quarter or little bit under that -- so about 20%, shall we Shelly said direct, and so that's come down -- that'll come down directly with the LME. The rest we buy on the index and you can track the Atlantic price it was really sticky, we buy it on the Atlantic price, so it discounts from the co called API. As you know it was really-really sticky and we were scratching our heads and another market participants I think were doing the same for a period of months and you've now just finally seen it, I shouldn't say finally. But over the last I'd say six weeks or so begun to come down with some conviction. And so that's a dollar to dollar as that API minus Atlantic comes down -- that other as Shelly correctly says, 1.6 million of annualized alumina comes down dollar-to-dollar.

And there's no lags or anything like that associated with the timing there?

No, those are a month, right Pete, one month we buy on alumina and so no much.

And then my second question just regarding the decline in production at Hawesville, is it reasonable to assume that the second quarter production is more decent run rate moving forward now for everything, with slight uptake given a bit up of improvement that's all at Hawesville or is there anything else going on which we thinking about in that direction?

No, so the other plans, the answer is easy, you, at Hawesville remember we were pretty good, we were good up into until -- in fact we went into the labor dispute with only four or five sales, so less than sort of a normal number of sales that, if sales failing to them get them back online, you have the normal lag there and so we built to the worse obviously, as we went through the quarter and so the impact that you saw Q1 to Q2, it will be the percentage comparison Q3 over…

Annual CapEx run rate now, is that sustainable in the 2016?

Not a run rate, so, that's a good question, thank you for asking. Rick, who is just summarizing what the 2015 number will be going into '16 we told you before and this hasn't changed. The maintenance CapEx for the whole company is roughly 25 million bucks and even that in times of severe industry conditions can be squeezed, we did it before and so if going into the end of this year as we're putting together our capital budgets for next year we're going to be starting it here over the next month or so, if you see the similar industry conditions it will come to way down, it will be half or less than that of that 55 million to 60 million.

Thank you. [Operator instructions]. And now to line over John Tumazos from Very Independent Research. Please go ahead.

There were reports and Trade Press this week of -- question of solvency of a Chinese entity that supposedly holds over $1 million tons of inventory, Mexico and of course there is the discrepancy between reported 18.1% gain in Chinese smelter output this year and 2% gains in auto sales, declines in construction activity. Do you have any guesses or theories as to where three or five more million tons of extra Chinese inventory might be sitting how much is in the Pacific, are there signs of Pacific versus closer to where you competed et cetera.

I mean the company that to which you are referring is called [Jinlang] and their shares were suspended as of late last week, I haven't even checked in the last couple of days to see if they're trading again, but the answer to the question is the industry has -- well a couple of comments, first. The industry from the Extruders Association in the U.S. to other groups both in formal like that and informal have known about this for some time, that's number one. Number two, you ask about locations, I think the consensus of people who follow these markets and who participate in these markets, as that report that you're siting, I believe said is the three principal locations are Mexico as you site then Vietnam and Malaysia, I don't know with those last two are in strictly descending order. And John, I wouldn't even begin to a portion or guess as to how many tons or I need to those locations but the industry it clearly believes that the stock is there and it's been building there for not even quarters and quarters and quarters, years. So, this is not a new phenomena and it's just -- now I think being talk about in the public a little bit more.

Alright, thank you. We have no more questioners in queue. Please continue.

We thank you very much for your attention this afternoon and for your time and we look forward to speaking with you in October. Thanks very much.