Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Ferroglobe's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Alex Rotonen, Ferroglobe's Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Ferroglobe's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Joining me today are Marco Levi, our Chief Executive Officer; and Beatriz Garcia-Cos, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started with some prepared remarks, I'm going to read a brief statement. Please turn to Slide 2 at this time. Statements made by management during this conference call that are forward-looking are based on current expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found on Ferroglobe's most recent SEC filings and the exhibits to those filings, which are available on our website at ferroglob.com. . In addition, this discussion includes references to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted gross debt, adjusted net debt and adjusted diluted earnings per share, among other non-IFRS measures. Reconciliations of those non-IFRS measures may be found in our most recent SEC filings. We'll be participating in the BMO Metals, Mining and Critical Materials Conference in Hollywood, Florida, on February '23 and '24. We hope to see you there. With that, I'll turn the call over to Marco.

Thank you, Alex, and thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in Ferroglobe. While 2025 presented significant external challenges, including muted demand, tariff uncertainty, delayed trade measures and elevated levels of predatory imports. It was a year in which Ferroglobe made important strategic progress and substantially strengthen its position for future growth. . Most importantly, we achieved significant and impactful trade measures in both the European Union and the United States. In Europe, the European Commission voted to protect the Ferroglobe industry by implementing safeguards targeting a 25% reduction in imports relative to the baseline of average imports by country and product from 2022 through 2024. During those years, on imports of ferrosilicon averaged approximately 450,000 tons and manganese [indiscernible] averaged approximately 900,000 tons. These [indiscernible] create substantial opportunity for domestic producers, including Ferroglobe to gain market share under a more balanced competitive framework while ensuring security of EU supply chains for critical and strategic materials. We are encouraged by the European Commission's advocacy to support and strengthen the long-term sustainability of local industry. To further enhance the new manufacturing base and drive economic growth, the main Europe pledge was signed by more than 1,000 business leaders. This is similar to the Bay American plunge, encouraging increased use of products with domestic content. In the United States, the International Trade Commission rolled in favor of imposing antidumping and countervailing duties on federal silicon imports from Brazil, Kazakhstan and Malaysia after having rolled similarly against Russia in 2024. These decisions meaningfully improve the long-term outlook for the U.S. ferrosilicon market. To capitalize on improving pheroceuticaleconomics, we have converted 3 furnaces from silicon metal to ferrosilicon. one in the U.S. and two in Europe. This highlights the benefits of our diversified global footprint, which enables us to…

Thank you, Beatriz. Before opening the call to Q&A, I'd like to provide key takeaways from today's presentation on Slide 15. 2025 was a year of important progress for Ferroglobe. The trade measures secured in Europe and in the United States represent a clear positive shift in our markets, particularly in Ferroglobe. Europe safeguards and U.S. antidumping and counter-billing duty rulings significantly improved competitive conditions. Support pricing and give us increased confidence in a much stronger market environment in 2026. At the same time, we continue to execute a disciplined shareholder-friendly capital allocation strategy. Despite the challenging macro backdrop, we increased our dividend during 2025, completed selected share repurchases and have announced another dividend increase beginning in the first quarter of 2026. These actions underscore our confidence in the business and our focus on delivering consistent shareholder returns. We have also taken important steps to enhance the economics and flexibility of our operations. The new long-term energy agreement in France, combined with our ability to ship production from silicon metal to ferrosilicon allow us to optimize volumes, better leverage fixed costs and respond efficiently to changing market conditions across our global footprint. At the same time, we managed through a difficult demand and pricing environment in 2025 with discipline and focus. Proactive cost control, strong execution and a solid balance sheet allowed us to navigate near-term headwinds while strengthening the foundation for future growth. Overall, we believe Ferroglobe is exceptionally well positioned for 2026 and beyond. With improving market fundamentals, increased confidence driven by trade actions and more flexible, efficient operating platform, we see a clear path to stronger performance and long-term value creation for our shareholders. Operator, we are ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question and the question comes from the line of Martin Englert from Seaport Research Partners.

Hello. Good day, everyone. Wanted to touch on volume expectations across the 3 businesses for 2026. And -- and then also the plan for the EU silicon assets. I know you provided some detail about furnaces converting over to ferrosilicon but what remains vital there? And is it to remain idle for the foreseeable future, but any type of goalpost for volumes on silicon metal in 2026. Silicon-based alloys and manganese-based alloys would be helpful.

Yes. Thank you, Martin. Let me try to address your first question on volumes and then I move to the asset. Starting from Europe, the safeguard, basically on [indiscernible] silicon and paraceutical kind of products free up 25% of imports that were 450,000 tons in 2025. So 25%, about 100,000, 110,000 tons of these products are mainly available for EU '27 producers. Well, [indiscernible], the imports were under [indiscernible] ton. So when you calculate 25% of you end up to 250,000 tons available for EU 27 producers. And of course, all these pie to be shared among the local producers. . Assuming that safeguards are controlled and put in place in a proper way. When you go to the U.S., I think that we are at the end of the period where inventories mainly of Russian products, but also other products have been waiting on volumes and also price recovery. So we expect some gains in Ferro silicon, and we see that already from our customer portfolio in U.S. in the first quarter 2026. On top, talking about trends, still will improve -- is expected to improve in Europe by about 3% across the year, mainly in the second part of the year when the new safeguard measures imposed by would be applied with a further reduction of imports of 50%, an increase of tariffs to 50% for excess of products. Aluminum is expected to grow in Europe by a solid 3% next year. In U.S., aluminum is expected to grow between 8% and 9%. And while steel is expected to start recovering. And actually, we have seen asset utilization in U.S. recovering already in quarter 4 2025. These are the major indicators for volumes in ferroalloys, [indiscernible] in Europe. Going to your second question, yes, we have converted 1 furnace in Beverly to federal silicon or [indiscernible] 2025. We converted as of January 2 furnaces in Europe, 1 in Salon and 1 in Loudon from silicon metal to ferrosilicon. And concerning the utilization of the other silicon metal furnaces in U.S. and Canada were fully utilized well in Europe, we are selectively restarting furnaces based on contracted demand. So some furnaces will stay idle in the first quarter, while some others have been really started to supply on track at volumes already in January. [indiscernible] .

Thank you. I appreciate all the detail and context there. I wanted to inquire about the component of minimum prices with EU safeguards for ferroalloys, do you ultimately expect that domestic prices will gravitate to these levels? Or is there a dynamic within the EU footprint where there's sufficient capacity out there and that there isn't necessarily maybe the case that we see clarity with the minimum price levels embedded in the safeguards.

Yes. Well, the key question is the month which is not until now has not been great or [indiscernible] in Europe and in U.S. So the key question is how much demand is going to ramp up. or the different products. There is definitely enough capacity in the U to cover the safeguards for all products. If you look at what happened until now in Europe in ferrosilicon prices have jumped up by 22% on ferrosilicon immediately after safeguards have been announced. But then due to stocks at traders and others and the price index price has been going back and today is only 10% higher than previous safeguard announcement. Different trend for manganese Manganese, products have jumped up around 20% on average in terms of index price. The price is holding is not improving, but is holding this level. This is why I say that demand is critical. And again, I expect a major improvement of steel demand in Europe in the second half of 2026.

Do you know if you cranes manganese alloys facilities are still producing and supplying just the coming to the region overall?

Yes. they are, but a very small at a very small rate. For reasons that are related to supply chain, but also conditions of the assets. Of course, I do not have too many the insights about the status of the assets, but considering a number of years of work, the location of the assets, I think that even when we signed the favor gets signed, it will take a while before they ramp up to the previous rate.

Understand. Are you able to explain a little bit and provide some context about how the EU carbon credits function, what's covered with your allocated carbon credits for 2026 volumes. And maybe discuss if you have to go back to the carbon credit market. for incremental volume output that you may gain from market shares due to safeguards?

So this is a question that requires about 1 day of explanations, but let me try to be sure. First of all, at the moment, on C-band, we are impacted only for Carbon ferromanganese, not for the other products. And the way that the [indiscernible] works basically looks at the imported products looked at the content of actually the emissions of CO2 per ton required to produce these products, and they apply to this amount, the cost of CO2 in Europe per ton, deducting whatever the supplier has paid in his own country for its CO2 emissions. So the overall game is to tax CO2 exporters to Europe to favor RPL producers who are at lower producing with lower CO2 emissions. Now all of this will be beautiful -- was beautiful. If 1, there was a proper calculation of the CO2 emissions for every kind of producer in the sporting countries. All of these will be beautiful if Yes. If Europe was not anxious to reduce our CO2 credit because trying to implement these measures when you don't have all the data, you end up potentially penalizing more European producers than the exporters. So the -- of course, the commission is aware of that. They are doing their best. So steel is early involved in that. we will see how the situation develops. But again, we are -- our impact at the moment is minor due to the fact that [indiscernible] is applied on this Ticarbonfero manganese.

Okay. I appreciate all the color and detail and good job on the cost performance, given the fundamental volume headwinds. .

Thank you, Martin.

The question comes from Nicholas Giles from B. Riley Securities.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, guys. -- my first question was maybe just back to silicon metals exclusion from EU safeguards and -- just wanted to get your perspective on what the use appetite might be to revisit an inclusion of silicon metal in those safeguards -- and maybe any background you can provide on kind of what prevented them from being included in the first place.

Yes. Well, the -- as you know, we asked for safeguards for silica metal in Europe. The reasons why the official reasons why Europe did not support us on this request are related to the fact that silicon metal is -- has a much stronger energy footprint, meaning it requires much more energy to be produced versus the other products. The other key element from a [indiscernible] perspective, is related to the fact that imports did not increase in absolute terms. They have increased in relative terms for the period considered because the imports gain an 85% market share in EU 27 territory. But in absolute terms, they did not. . These were the main 2 reasons. The third reason was about our point is related to all the silicon metal and ferrosilicon are interchangeable, which is or to dispute because we can convert our furnaces to position metal and pheroceuticalvice versa. And our customers in steel can move from ferrosilicon to civic metal. So -- the fact that they called for no changeability was quite a surprise due to the time and the number of meetings that we spent to explain our business. The top reason was a stronger position of the chemical industry to protect silicon metal and a stronger position of Germany to trade measures. And so there is a combination of -- there was a combination of technical, if you want, and political and legal aspects that excluded silicon metal from the safeguards. This situation doesn't make any sense for 2 reasons. One is that without protecting silicon metal, you basically don't protect pheroceuticals and because is quite easy for [indiscernible] users to replace pheroceuticalth silicon metal when the price difference is not there. silicon metal should be much more expensive because of the energy, which…

I really appreciate all that background and your perspective on the situation. I guess my follow-up question to that is ultimately there's plenty of reason for optimism in aero silicon when you look at that segment in a vacuum, but -- do you think that these dynamics within silicon metal could ultimately weigh on pricing volume expectations in Fei?

All depend on -- yes, it all depends on demand and appetite marketing reformulating with critical metals knowing that medium term, it doesn't make sense to have silicon metal at the price of erosion in Europe. At this stage, our order portfolio has started going up already in quarter 4 on peracetic both in U.S. and in Europe. .

Understood. My next question would just be over the past couple of years and especially with the change in the administration in the U.S. I think end market exposure has shifted and then you kind of layer on the conversion of some of your silicon metal capacity to Fez is that kind of rerate things more towards the steel market. So I was just hoping you could kind of zoom out and provide us a high-level breakdown of your ultimate end market exposure. I think about solar as an area that comes to mind that might be less relevant today than it was in the past. So appreciate any color you can provide there.

Well, today, when you look at our total business, I would say that the 70%, 80% of the business is protected and only 20% is not -- which is basically silicone in Europe. So the other high-level thing is not a surprise that the United States, apart from government shutdown are plenty favorable to protect critical and strategy -- critical and strategic minerals and this is why we are going for antidumping done to your convention and things are going fast, but it's also true that things are changing in Europe, maybe not at the speed that we would like. But in terms of political support I have to assure you that our case is at the top of the agenda of all the states that are involving in federal lays and silicon metal. So the drop has decided to protect industry has decided to protect our industry like the chemical industry or other industries. The problem is that Europe is not united like United States. So there is quite a change of continuous exchange of responsibilities between the center, the commission in the single states. The last case was last week, what Bandel basically told the states were complaining about [indiscernible] in deciding basically pushing back the decision to the states. And this dedicated situation in the ones causing [indiscernible] lower. On the other side, when I talk to politicians in Spain, in Norway and in France, they are pretty aware of what we need to do, which is a combination of protection right, energy price for the industry and make sure that when they think about products, they think about supply chains and about single products.

Very good. Maybe just 1 quick one, if I could, for Beatrice. I want to commend you on really managing the cash balance during this -- during the trough here. I mean you still have a pretty healthy net cash position. So can you just touch on -- anything we should be focused on from a working capital perspective, CapEx was down year-on-year, should we kind of expect CapEx to be more flat this year? Anything on miles out just from a cash flow or capital allocation perspective. Beatriz García-Cos Muntañola: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Nick. As you have been seen on the date. So the cash position at the end of the year -- it's -- we've been in the year with a strengthened with a strong cash position. Nevertheless, I have to say that this difficult year, the cash is coming mainly from the release of the working capital. So we have been releasing at the end, 48 million of working capital and therefore, a total positive operating cash flow for the year, right? Looking into 2026, I think 1 of the things that we are working and we have already seen the results is the -- will the additional release of the working capital even if the business we are planning to produce more volumes and sell a higher number of tons that this is typically creates consumption of working capital because we have this [indiscernible] in place. We plan to continue to release additional working capital. And as referred to the targets that we put out there, I think, in 2024 when we said that we want to run the company, we have 20% less of working capital, if you remember, Now we are close to the 400 million, and we expect to continue to go down into the release of working capital. So that's 1 angle. On the other side, we are having a net debt position at the end of the year. And we expect to improve slightly, maybe as well this debt position as we go through the year. and, of course, supported by the lease of the working capital and cost reductions as Marco as you mentioned.

And then just CapEx, you would expect CapEx to be pretty similar to 2025 levels? Beatriz García-Cos Muntañola: Yes. So this year, we went to 6 million for CapEx that is already at 20% less versus 2024. And in 2026, we expect a similar or slightly lower levels of CapEx, of course, This is always talking about maintenance CapEx base of the company or sustaining CapEx Yes, maybe around the same date. .

Got it. Got it. Understood. Well, guys, I appreciate the update as always and continued best of luck.

This concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'll now hand back for closing remarks. .

Thank you, Heidi. We are encouraged by our accomplishments and positioning the company for a more robust market environment and much stronger financial performance in 2026. Thank you again for your participation. We look forward to updating you on the next call in May. Have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.