AMAG Austria Metall AG (AMAG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the AMAG Austria Metall AG Full Year Results 2023 Results Presentation. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The forecasts, budget and forward-looking assessments and statements contained in this presentation were compiled on the basis of all information available to AMAG as of January 31, 2024. In the event that this -- that assumption underlying this forecast proves to be incorrect, targets are missed or risk materializes, actual results may depart from those currently anticipated. We are not obligated to revise these forecasts in the light of new information or further events. This presentation was prepared on the data contained in it verified with the greatest possible care. Nevertheless, misprints as well as rounding and transmission errors cannot be entirely ruled out. In particular, AGAM and its representative does not assume any responsibility for completeness and correctness of information included in this presentation. This presentation is also available in German. In case of doubt, the German-language version shall be authoritative. This presentation does not comprise either a recommendation or a solicitation to either purchase or sell securities of AMAG. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our conference call for the full year results of 2023. I'm together with all Board Members of AMAG, CEO and COO, Helmut Kaufmann; CFO, Claudia Trampitsch; as well as CSO, Victor Breguncci. Helmut, Claudia and Victor will guide you through the presentation. As usual, we will enter into the Q&A session directly after the presentation, where the Management Board is happy to answer your questions. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that the press release, the presentation and our annual reports were published on our website at 7:30 a.m. Now, I would like to hand over to our COO, Helmut Kaufmann, who will start with the presentation. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. On behalf of the whole AMAG Management Board, I would like to welcome you to this year's presentation of '23 results of AMAG. When Gerald Mayer left the company at the end of this year, there was a significant change, but a change in management team in this case can also be a signal of stability and continuity. And I think that this is a given in our case. Let me briefly introduce to you the new colleague in the Board. Claudia Trampitsch is new CFO since January 1, but she has been with the company already close to 9 years now. She was Head of Accounting and Managing Director of AMAG Metall, in this case with the responsibility for Alouette, for our smelter in Canada. Victor Breguncci, very close to finishing his fifth year as CSO in our company, is already familiar to you. And myself, I have been for more than 16 years in the Board as COO. And in addition to the COO function, I now take over -- or took over also the CEO function from Gerald Mayer. And as I already said, this is a signal of stability. Our Head of the Supervisory Board mentioned when the nomination was published that this also confirms AMAG's strategy with a strong focus on innovation and sustainability. And this leads us now to the presentation, and I continue on Page #4 with the highlights. So as all of you know, it is a volatile environment, economic environment. But because of the setup that AMAG has, we were able to give a stable operating performance and we were able, in a flexible manner, to adjust to the requirements of the market as there were many changes throughout the year. Looking at the turnover, we could achieve EUR 1.46 million, and this was less than in the year before, where we had EUR 1.726 million. EBITDA ended up at EUR 188.4 million. And despite this difficult environment, this was actually the second highest level in the company's history. Cash flow also increased significantly. So a very good result. And my colleague, Claudia, will then give you details later on. With these results, we propose a dividend of EUR 1.5 per share to the general assembly. The outlook, of course, for 2024 at the moment is difficult. We are very early in the year. It's a volatile environment. And therefore, it would be too early to say something about an EBITDA range. But this will follow later. I mentioned stability, and therefore, I would like to once again repeat our current setup. Our process chain, as you know, starts with the primary metal production in Canada, where we hold a 20% share in Alouette. For more than 30 years, this was a very positive operation there. At the site in Ranshofen, we run recycling facility, cast house and rolling mill. And a couple of years ago, we extended this value chain by purchasing a small company in Germany with 2 locations in Ubersee am chiemsee and Karlsruhe, which produces aircraft components by machining. And we can say that we still have an experienced, stable team of experts who really built the foundation for sustainable success. In these days, it is very important, sustainability is gaining more and more interest globally, that we point out that our recycling expertise is AMAG's real USP. For more than 40 years, we have been turning aluminum scrap into high-quality products at our site in Ranshofen. Still, we can say that the combination of equipment and expertise to produce foundry alloys as well as rolled alloys for the rolling mill is unique, to our knowledge globally unique. We have state-of-the-art equipment and we have the expertise in-house, so we can react very flexibly to changes and new requests from our customers. The chart on this slide on Page #7 shows that, as we always say, we are aiming at about 75% to 80% of recycled content in our products on average. I have to point this out. It is on average for all the products that are produced at the site in Ranshofen. Slide #8 gives you an indication about the positioning of aluminum in the way of recyclability in terms of energy savings through recycling compared to primary metal production as well as the amount of aluminum of the already utilized aluminum in the market that is recycled. And as we can see here, as you may have heard before, when we recycle compared to the primary production, we can save up to 95% of energy input. And roughly 30%, 35% of the aluminum that is on the -- in the annual demand is provided by scrap. 2/3, in other words, comes from primary metal. One of the success factors for the future we are convinced is that AMAG will be able to provide low-carbon rolled or cast material. And we started early with R&D in improving the recycled content of our alloys and introduced a brand, Aluminum4ever, as a special brand indicating low-carbon emissions connected to the production of the specific product. And we have to look in detail with every customer and the volume that is required, which levels of recycled content or carbon emissions we can achieve. But there is one highlight in our R&D activity at the moment. These are the so-called AMAG CrossAlloys, where we actually cross -- we call it crossing of different types of aluminum families as they are called in technical language. And for example, we crossed the so-called 5,000 series with a 7,000 series -- 7,000 series is, for example, high-strength materials for the aircraft industry -- and tried to gain 2 things: new interesting properties, but also lower carbon emissions. And what I can tell you is that we made progress in trials with customers. So it's still, so to say, in development, R&D, but getting closer to the introduction to the global market. And this -- I mentioned strategy before. It certainly is our strategy to grow further specialties in our portfolio. And we have a given definition of what we call specialty. And we were able last year to grow the percentage of specialties from 43% in 2019 to already 57% in 2023. But also, the definition of specialty might change. So this year, we will again redefine what we consider a specialty, and this might lead to a change next year. We continuously put quite a significant amount of money into R&D, as is indicated here. It was more than EUR 22 million last year. And we still have roughly 160 people working in this area. Among the specialties -- and I am now on Page #11. Among the specialties in the AMAG portfolio, we always have surface critical products. And by the end of last year, we finished the installation of a very new surface treatment center, can also be called a picking line, where we treat the surfaces of, for example, bright sheet, but it can also be brazing sheet or automotive sheet, depending on the customer requirement. And again, we invested into a plant that is very flexible compared to the previous plant that will go out of business by the end of this year. But we are very flexible to adjust to customer requirements, expecting that different customers from different branches will have different requirements. And finally, on Slide #12, I proudly present that we had quite some success in -- we received some awards, international awards, for example, important for us and our strategy. We got 2 very big awards from Airbus or the Airbus group. For the second time in a row, we got the so-called Accredited award, and this is the highest rank in supply for Airbus. No other aluminum company got this. We also got for our AMAG components business the so-called D2P, so it's the so-called Detail Partnership (sic) [ Detail Part Partners ] award with a Challenger status, which is -- was for the first time provided to our AMAG components already in 2016, to my knowledge, when it still belonged to the previous owner. Very important for the future, and we already see very important for our customers today some sustainability ratings. And in this respect, I ask you to focus on the ESG industry rating of Sustainalytics and of EcoVadis. In EcoVadis, we got the so-called platinum level. This is the highest level that can be achieved. And we are among the top 1% of companies rated there. And by Sustainalytics, we actually -- among the 39 aluminum companies that were rated, we were considered #1. And for this, of course, we are very proud. And I can add that among more than 200 metal companies, we were #2, so including also other materials than aluminum. So -- and with this information, I hand over to my colleague, Victor, who will proceed with market and shipment information.

Thank you very much, Helmut. My intent here in the next slides is to cover how we translated our strategy into our execution in the market. So going on to Page #14, you can see we decided to put 2 very important milestones we achieved last year, which confirms the strategy on specialties and using all the levers that we have in our company. So we have 2 major contracts, 2 long-term contracts in the transport segment: one with Airbus, where we are in the long-term capturing greater market share in the aerospace segment. And also, with Audi in the VW group, we also signed a very important contract for the long-term. These are 2 flagships of our -- execution of our strategy that confirms what Helmut Kaufmann just mentioned the position in specialties and the positioning in premium customers in our aluminum industry. So when we move to Page 15, here, the point is really to highlight the use of aluminum as a lightweight sustainable application in many areas remains stable and growing in the future. We have been CAGR of 5%, up to 23%, and we expect further growth of primary aluminum, which is the base of our market development in the next 5 years. So fundamentals remain stable. When you go to Page 16, how do we translate the primary aluminum into flat rolled products? And the demand is even steeper, the growth is even steeper in the long-term, in the next 5 years. Last year, it's important to mention -- and we see this in our numbers -- there was retraction in the industry in some segments, in special machinery and industrial applications. We're going to see how it impacted our shipments. But fundamentally, we look at the future with a very positive outlook for the demand of flat-rolled products. That's the message that we want to bring. When I go into more details, we can see that the outlook remains stable, as I said before, in all segments. You can see that in construction and mechanical engineering, we have fundamental growth expectation. But last year was a challenging year for the whole industry. This is something that we have to highlight, and we saw this in our shipments, in our mix of products. Nevertheless, we see a stable and fundamental steady growth into the transport segment and packaging. But most important here on the transport, where we have the right level of specialties, we have a unique setup, we have the right team in the field to support the growth with our key customers. So -- and we're going to see this going further in the presentation. So to bring a little bit more of numbers, we saw that in comparison to '22, we reduced output by 3.7%, especially driven by the rolling business, which was in the magnitude of 19,000 tons, which is not only related to industrial applications, but we had some specialty markets that are still lagging behind the expectations of the market. In sports, it's very much a big factor of high level of stocks in the whole value chain of the segment. In architecture, it is the slow approval of projects that we didn't see materializing into new demand for aluminum. But our portfolio is one of our key strengths. If you look at it, you can see that in the next slide, I'm going to bring it very soon, we grew our position in the most relevant specialty segment for us. So aerospace is going steady upwards. Automotive remains stable, even though the mix is something that we have to look in the future, and we're going to talk about this, but it remains strong for this year. And brazing -- in the brazing segment also related to industrial, but also related to automotive, the growth was there. So we are confident that the right lanes of growth are being executed at the right level, but we had some issues in industrial part that impacted our numbers in the end. And a little bit of a picture to confirm what I was just saying and confirm what Helmut Kaufmann also mentioned about our strategy. On Page 19, you see our traditional pie chart, where we present a little bit of the share of how the segments play in our commercial strategy. You see on the right the automotive, aerospace -- aircraft and packaging business have been growing, each with their growth in percentages. And we also see in the last that heat exchanger market also grew to the level of 13% of our mix. Important to [Technical Difficulty] architecture, as I mentioned before, with a 6%. And the biggest impact, as you can see on the bottom of the pie chart, you see the industrial application side, where after having 2 great years in '22 and mid of '23, we saw a complete level of stagnation in the demand in the second half of last year, which is going to impact the numbers, as you're going to see very soon presented by Claudia Trampitsch. Nevertheless, we remain very positive with our strategy of specialties in the automotive, aircraft, heat exchangers, and sports and special products, let's put it that way, not only in Europe, but in other regions like in North America and in Asia. So the outlook will remain steady for these segments. I will stop here on the side of the market. I give it to Claudia now to present the business performance in last year. Thank you very much.

Thank you. So when we go on to Slide #21, I want to start with some information on the aluminum price and its evolution during the year 2023. As you know, the aluminum price has a big impact on AMAG'S revenues, costs and working capital. And as you can see in this slide, we had a decrease around $430 per ton in the year 2023 compared to the year 2022. When we move on to the next slide, we also show you the evolution of the alumina price, which is the biggest impact raw material as our electrolysis is alloyed. And there, you can see an increase in this raw material price, which will be reflected in the cost of material further on. So now when we go to the revenues on the Slide 23, you see that we made this year, as Helmut mentioned before, revenues of EUR 1.5 billion during the year 2023. And it seems it's less than the year before, and that mainly has resulted in what I told you before that the aluminum price declined in the year 2023. And we also had, as it was mentioned before by Victor, a change in our mix and our volume. And therefore, there was also a decrease in the revenues. But what I wanted to point out is it is still a very high level of revenues also compared to previous years before 2022. So when we move on to AMAG group EBITDA, which you see on the Slide 24, you can see that we had an EBITDA in euro-million in the year 2023 of EUR 188.4 million. This is, as we are quite proud of, the second highest operating results in our company's history. And that was despite the things that was mentioned which happened in the market during the year. What happened -- or what is the reconciliation or what happened to come from last year's EBITDA to this year's EBITDA? Just in a big point of view, we also can see that we had the reductions in the aluminum price and the changes in volumes, but also some supporting effects due to lower energy costs this year. These lower energy costs also results in some re-evaluation of our risk provisions. And therefore, we have, as you can see at other, also some effects out of lower risk provisions. I want to move on to show you the EBITDA divided by our divisions. As you know, we have mainly 3 operating divisions, the Metal Division, which mainly is the production site in Canada, our -- the results of our electrolysis, which was a continued stable production there. And the only effect which leads to the lower results there is, as I told you before, the effects of the lower aluminum price and the lower alumina price. But what I want to point out is that if you look at the average results we had in this division over the last years, we are quite still above average. So just to put that into perspective. For our Casting Division, I can tell you that we had EUR 2.5 million less than last year, which is mainly due to structural costs. But the demand there is still stable, and it's a positive thing there as well. And for the Rolling Division, we heard it before, we had a good demand trend in transport sector and some reductions, as mentioned by Victor. And in total, that comes out to a change in EBITDA for minus EUR 21 million. On the next slide, we can show you the fourth quarter. And for the reconciliation of the fourth quarter, I want to point out that it's compared to last year's fourth quarter. So it's not what happened in the last 3 months, but it is compared to the last quarter last year. And we had in -- well, the main things I mentioned before, but perhaps I want to point out that there were some evaluation effects in 2022, mainly driven by foreign currency exchange that now reversed in this fourth quarter. I can now move on to AMAG group net income after taxes. And there is nothing particular to mention or to add on. The increase -- a decrease in the income after taxes is just a result of the lower operating results, and therefore, lower taxes. And I also want to add that there are mainly 2 countries where we pay our taxes, that is really also consistent where we do -- or where we make our main revenue, so that's Austria and Canada. If we go on to AMAG group cash flow. Our cash flows are mainly influenced by the aluminum price as we have a high amount in our working capital influenced by aluminum price. And therefore, we have this year a quite positive effect on our operating activities due to lower aluminum price. Further on, we always try -- or work hard to optimize our working capital and have successfully implemented measures there as well. And therefore, we also have a reduction of -- or effect of positive working capital developments of around EUR 49 million in these operating activities. For the investing activities, we heard before that we had a big investment in the new picking line. And further on, we had in Canada a huge investment in refurbishment of an anode baking furnace. So yes, we had some -- and therefore, you can see some increase in the investment cash flows. And that also shows that we steadily are investing and developing our plans and try to be their state-of-the-art as mentioned before. If we move on to some balance sheet figures, we can point out that despite you might get the impression that the results were not as good as last year, which is true. But what I want to say here is that our equity in gearing still is very, very solid. We have equity of EUR 746.3 million, which is more or less -- which is higher, much higher than last year. And we also have and that is really great for us, the gearing ratio is at 48.8%. This is a result of higher equity and lower financing. So, I just can -- I think I can skip Page #30. I've mentioned all the key figures before. And perhaps just want to add the equity ratio we now have for 46%, which is great. And for the ESG figures, on Page 31, I want to mention that we now since this year are showing you every quarter our ESG key figures to show you how important it is for us to also show our emphasis and our impact on how we try to work on these figures as well. And you have already heard about our scrap conversion rate. And I also want to point out that we had a decrease in our specific CO2 emissions, which is also quite great to talk about. On the following slides, you can see some details on the different divisions. I already pointed out the main information which is there. So, I now can hand over to Helmut to go for the dividend and the outlook.

So thank you, Claudia. Thank you, Victor. I already mentioned in the highlights slide that we propose a dividend of EUR 1.5 per share to the general assembly. And this is in line with the previous 2 years where we paid the same amount. And the general assembly will be held on April 11 in Linz and the dividend will be paid only 1 week later on April 18, 2024. So concerning the outlook, Victor already showed 2 slides that indicated CRU's thinking, market expertise for aluminum, and in particular, the rolling business. So in the long-term trend, it is expected that aluminum will further grow, the demand will grow. Basically, I already mentioned, AMAG sticks to the existing strategy. We want to keep a wide range in our portfolio, keep flexibility and diversity in products and in equipment. And this -- Claudia mentioned that we, so to say, refurbished equipment at Alouette. Alouette is an important part of our value chain. And in this respect, we can say that, as was already mentioned before, that the earnings very strongly depend on the aluminum price, LME. And for example, alumina price is one important input material, a raw material. In the Casting Division, where we produce and sell recycling foundry alloys, we still see a very stable demand from the automotive industry. At the moment, it actually seems to rather grow despite electric vehicles. And the Rolling Division from today's perspective also has a positive trend in the automotive industry or in the transport industry in general. Automotive and Airbus -- aircraft are expected to grow. And we see some slight indications that perhaps the applications might recover. As Victor said, this concerns architectural products. I mean, all of you know that the building and construction market more or less globally is down. So aluminum for facades, aluminum for interior, for lighting and so on, the demand was therefore lower. But we expect that this slowly recovers. But at the moment, and as I mentioned at the very beginning, we are in the beginning of February. The year is young. And many things are currently changing, volatility is high. So, a real EBITDA range at the moment is impossible to provide. So, in this respect, I'd say thank you very much. Thank you very much for following this presentation, and we are prepared for your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group.

My first one, you started the presentation with AMAG'S current set-up and the business opportunities out there. So, could you elaborate a bit more on the opportunities you see in the next years, especially on which end markets and do you want to see any strategic changes in the current set-up and in your business units or will it be mostly remain unchanged?

I will start and maybe Victor will add something afterwards. And I start with your question concerning strategy. Each year, we make a strategy check. So, we will do this. Also, this year we do, if necessary, adjustments to our existing strategy. But generally speaking, and I think I mentioned our setup along the aluminum process chain with primary metal casting and rolling in Ranshofen and components, we want to keep in the current market situation as well because we are convinced that all these parts add to stability, and also allow the company flexibility to answer to requirements from the market. And very honestly, we experienced this in every single year that throughout the year, there were changes and AMAG was always able to quickly adjust, on the one hand because of the proper equipment, on the other hand, because of the expertise in our staff. And so this is important. And I repeat what I said in the presentation, the focus on sustainability is an important pillar. We are clear to say that -- and convinced that we can say this that we are the leader when it comes to recycling to the development of CO2 optimized products. The others are following us. And -- but we are working on this with high speed in our R&D department, and we will continue that way. So, more market details might come from Victor now, but the general strategy. And you should not be surprised just because of a CEO change at the moment because I was involved for more than 16 years, every year in looking at the strategy. And with the previous CEO, I was always part of this team. So -- and I fully supported the strategy in the past and I support it now.

Good. Michael, if I could just complement. What Helmut just mentioned is, yes, you will see growth in the next years in the fundamental markets where we operate, where we have the right to win. You're going to see growth in aerospace, you're going to see growth in automotive, you're going to see growth in bracing because we have unique assets. We have the right people, the right qualifications and the right position in the market, not only in Europe but also in North America and Asia. So yes, you will see growth, depending, of course, on how this market develop themselves. But from our side, we have the right lanes for growth there.

Okay. Understood. Then I have 2 more, a second one on your current order intake. Could you provide us please some color what you saw at the beginning of the year in the rolling division? And especially, you already talked about the weak industrial applications segment. Would you say that 23% was some kind of bottoming and we see some kind of stabilization now in your order intake or do you expect further declines?

Yes, first of all, it's important that we understand that we operate in many different segments and markets and applications. So, there are businesses that we are fully booked for the year, and their business there, the bookings come every month. So, if I give you an average, you'd have to take this into consideration that it varies from product line to product line, customer base to customer base. But we have seen that the end of last year was quite challenging in terms of order intake, which impacted us, of course, in potential shipments in Q1 of 2024. Nevertheless, we see, especially industrial applications, we see initiatives that we have implemented now in the beginning of this year are paying off. The United States is showing a little bit of a better recovery, Asia as well, but we still see very strong pressure on pricing and demand in Europe. So, to make the whole story short, we have fundamental demand established with our lanes of growth in aero, in auto and brazing. In industrial applications, we see some signals that could lead to understand that this could be a good year. But today, it's very difficult to see if this is going to materialize. If the destocking phase of last year will come back again in Q2 or Q3. So, I have our personal estimate that the industrial application market will remain stable to be precise, with lower margins or prices that could change, depends on depending on how the economic situation, especially in Europe materializes from Q2 to Q4 this year. So, in the OEM segment, we have the lanes. It depends on how economy will work. But in industrial, we see a little bit of signs of improvement from the outer regions, but it's very difficult to imagine that this is going to be so positive.

And last question on automotive. You said you will see some growth currently. And I think you said the statement despite EVs, I know we've seen currently some slowdown of the EV growth rate. Would you say this is more a short-term issue? Is there a change in trend that the consumer is pushing back against EVs?

Yes. Michael, we -- if you look at the capacity that we have and the size of the market for automotive autobody sheet capacity in Europe and globally, we have a strategy that is very much diversified. So, we are present in the traditional OEMs in Europe and the United in Asia, which has a different setup of mix of combustion engine and electric cars. We are present in the -- in both sides. We are very strong in the combustion engine and we're strong in the electric cars. The impact of having the EV market is in fact our cast business, our Casting Division, which is very much related to the combustion engine. But the other side on the rolling business, we have solutions that address the electric vehicles demand like battery platters and as an example, in battery cooling. So, to your point, we try to buffer volatility in both areas by having a diversified portfolio of customers and applications in aluminum, so that we navigate the growth in a more sustainable way, if you will.

May I add something. In the Casting division in the past, the recycling foundry alloys were mostly utilized for power drain applications. But recently, and there we also started early with development of so-called structural applications which need different types of alloys with different properties. And so we have given capacity, we can, again, with a flexible equipment change from the one type of material to the other type of material. And so, in case there is a downturn in powertrain applications, we can grow on the structural and fully utilize the equipment and the staff that we have there.

The next question comes from Remis Markus from RBI.

Markus Remis from RBI. First, a clarification, please. On the comment you just made regarding the potential reemergence of destocking in Q2 and Q3, why would that happen? Is there now kind of rebuilding of stocks that you're observing in Q1? Or maybe you can put that into perspective, please?

Thank you, Markus. Well, the reality is we had a very weak second half of last year, where sales didn't materialize as it was happening in the first half of 2023. So, we see now some, how can I say, tailwinds in industrial application with some initiatives that we took that does not signify that we're going to have a stronger year in the industrial applications. We have a potential level of restocking. We're bringing more stocks back to where it was, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to have the same trend of orders coming in Q2 to Q3 and Q4. So, we're being very cautious based on what we've seen in the conversations with our customers. We still see competition and pricing positioning that makes it difficult to believe that the market is back. We see the price pressure still remains. But we believe a fundamental change is -- Q4 last year was really a weak quarter, and we see in comparison to Q4 a slightly better order intake in Q1, but does not reach end of Q1, beginning of Q2. So, it's difficult to precise if this will remain. And the next time we meet, we can have a better picture of that.

Then one question would relate to your hedging. Can you may be shed some light on the upstream volumes that you've had from your general status quo on the hedging side?

So as you know, so our electrolysis more or less produces 600,000 tons a year. So as we have a 20% share there, we have about 120,000 tons that we sell out on the market. And as the primary aluminum is a commodity more or less, it's related to the aluminum price as I told you before. And what we do is that we sell it on a monthly basis as it is a steadily production there. And we try -- we work on this on a daily basis to look at the market and where the forward curve goes so that we can do strategic hedges there related to where we think or where we see that the aluminum price will go. But what we not -- what we want to do is that we always be also open to the market not to secure everything for hedges. So that was -- I think your question was related to the upstream, to the electrolysis, right?

Yes, correct. But what's like the volume that you -- or the share that you've already [indiscernible]?

So I think we are now -- it's always -- yes, we have strict regulations how much we can hedge so that we do not have more hedges in place than we are selling. So it depends on the year. So we are going -- each year, it's getting more less. So we're around 40%, let's say.

All right. Okay. And then the question related to Ranshofen and the energy purchases there, because we saw companies, I mean, not necessarily in your business, but industrial companies in Austria that have the energy forward contract in place at higher levels than the current spot market is. Can you put your situation into perspective how much of the volume of the requirements has been purchased over there? And maybe also indicate where that stands compared to spot market prices for [indiscernible] notably?

So -- well, I got it right, the question -- the first one was if we have secured more than we use it. Is that right?

No, I just want to get a sense of your forward buying or which part of Ranshofen's gas needs have already been secured at this stage. So I don't know if you can speak to it, 60% to 70% or 80% of the 2024 volume. And if I understand correctly, I mean, this is more of a rolling process. So, I was assuming the number of your forward prices must be above the current spot prices.

Yes. So, we have long-term contracts on the energy side, so with reliable partners for power and for gas. And what we do there is that we have an overall energy strategy, and we do more or less 2 things. One is that we try to fix prices. And if it makes sense, we also do some kind of hedging for power price if needed. And so, if we want to say for the -- where we are at the moment, I would say that we have a secured power price for about 60% to 70% at the moment.

For power you said and how much for gas? Because I think that's more relevant than power.

60 to 70 for gas.

And at which levels compared to spot rate at the moment?

Markus, this Christoph speaking, this always depends on the market situation and the market prices. This is always an evaluation we have to do the reporting date, and it can fluctuate, as you know that the prices can be very volatile. So currently, we do not see, let's say, significant positive or negative effects. As you know, as Claudia said, that there is still an exposure out of the market, which means 30% to 40%. So the situation can change immediately.

But we have a strategy there in place.

[indiscernible].

Yes. So it's under steady evaluation, and we -- as we are with all the other risk measures and hedging strategies always just on securing and not trading or selling anything of our power in the market. So it's always just for us in our production and not for being actively selling power or gas on the market.

Okay. This is -- this is clear. Okay. Then a final question, maybe a bit more of a -- given your kind of earnings generation in Austria and the reduction in the corporate tax rates in the [Foreign Language] to 23% as of 2024, is that going to have a visible impact on your tax rate? Or in other words, any guidance you can provide us after this 26 last that we've seen in the last 2 years?

Well, that's difficult to answer because I do not know the results of 2024. Therefore, I can't tell you how the tax reduction of 1% -- we'll figure out in the year-end results. So yes, that's few a calculation. I can't answer that. But for -- yes, it's, of course...

On the [indiscernible]...

It's 1% of less tax. So that's what we say we -- yes, that I have no figure to -- I can tell you what that means. And for the previous year, you -- it's also a simple calculation. If you say we are coming from 25% to 24%, it's also 1% tax less. So yes. But this has no influence for us if we do business. We are not driven by the tax rate where and which business we do in Austria.

The next question comes from Christian Obst from Baader Bank.

I have 2. One is concerning the costs. We have seen a massive fluctuation more or less the raw material prices increase in personnel costs over the last quarters and almost years. So, what do you expect will be the main concern on the cost side going into the next 1 to 2 years? And how do you deal with that? So, what are your measures to keep costs in place, under control?

I take this question, and I would like to answer very generally saying that at AMAG, we have always been taking care very well and watching the development of the various types of costs that we have to bear and put on our products. But of course, the -- by far biggest portion of cost almost 2/3 of the overall cost is material. And as you know, there is LME and so not really cost positions that we can directly influence. But those positions that we can influence, we watch very carefully. And I would like to point out that in the past couple of years or almost always since we watch the general market and have the comparison with our peers' profitability of AMAG is top or maybe second place. So, if we can keep this since we were able to keep this position for quite a long time, we can say this is a proof that we are looking at the cost positions very intensively.

Going a little bit point to the detail of that going to the personnel costs. So, do you still currently have a number of staff you are looking for? And what kind of increase on the personnel side for wage increases you will calculate with?

In terms of if we still prepared to hire people, if I understood the first part of the question properly. When there are like people with very high expertise in the market, we always look at these people. Other than this, we at the moment, watch carefully how the market develops. So as Victor he used the word, we are cautious. And yes, we are cautious also in watching this development. And then, if necessary, we adjust up or down. But at the moment, we have a very good position and feel comfortable with the expertise and the capacity that we have in house.

So you are more or less fine with the current number of personnel, the employees.

At the moment, I would say, yes.

And then when it comes to competition, do you see any kind of change maybe when it comes to scrap availability going forward or to any kind of competition from the new people -- and for new companies going into that market, we would say, no, we have a wide network, we are all new that, we have a broad network of structure suppliers, and we know our competitors and nothing will change almost in the next 2, 3 years?

I can only repeat what you said. We have close to 200 suppliers of scrap, traditional, as I said, 40 years ago, we started. So, we have a traditional network of partners, basically. What is new is -- well, not very new, but over the last couple of years, is developed at close loop contracts with some of the customers are in place because they also realize, in the meantime that there is value in keeping the material clean and sorted and leading it in the circle. And there, AMAG has a proven expertise because also here, we started earlier than others doing this. But on the other hand, you are right. Of course, with the general demand for lower CO2 emissions, also our competitors are aiming at more recycled content in their products. And eventually, there will be more people or more companies interested in the amount of scrap that is available. But so far, I can tell you neither for the road alloys now for the foundry alloys, we had any difficulties in sourcing that scrap. And again, our setup with a larger variety of furnaces in, you also have to realize that our large product portfolio are the consumers of the scrap. And since we are very wide in alloys and in different products, we also can more widely utilize the available scrap on the market.

And maybe one last one on that one, the closed loop. So you talked -- over the last year, you talked about that type of closed loop concept. Have you seen a significant increase of contracts within this kind of framework over the last 2 to 3 years?

Well, Christian, if I could say, the availability of scrap will remain a tight discussion for the future. Many -- there's a lot of discussions coming from our OEMs, from our customers that would like to have a consolidated CO2 footprint. So that's why one of the reasons that we have our aluminum forever, the Al4ever brand, which we use the capabilities we have to really demonstrate to the market what we can do to support them. So, to your point, closed loop is a very important initiative to support the aluminum forever product positioning. So, in every customer that we have long-term discussions, we exaggerate the value of having the right scrap coming back to our cast house so that we can signify the brand as much as we can. So, to your question, yes, we see a lot of intensity in these questions of having closed loop. We have succeeded in these 2 previous contracts that I showed to you there is closed loop implemented in these contracts. And more and more customers in the radius that is economically viable for us in Europe specifically, we see the trend materializing. There is, of course, a level of readiness that the customers and the market have to have to make that implementation. But as Helmut Kaufmann just said, we are prepared. We have this unique set-up that enables us to really intensify the application in the execution of the aluminum forever brand. So, to your point.

Thank you very much for more details and all the best for the new start into the business year and with the brackets, new management. All the best.

The next question comes from Duarte Murta from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have 2 questions. My first one is in your inventory positions. So inventories are still quite high from a historical perspective. Now at almost 30% of revenues. The 10-year average is a bit lower than 25% of revenues. I want to understand, is this a new dynamic because of some strategy decisions you're going into certain segments? Or can we expect normalization going forward then in this case, destocking is something we should look for in 2024?

So for our inventory position, there are always, let's say, different influence factors. You always have the price and the tons and when I start with pricing, as we have a lot of material as we had before, if it is work in progress or if it's raw material, it's highly influenced by market prices. So that's the part which we can't control. And they will always have an impact. And when you do the evaluation at period end, that's always something we can't control where that value is. What we can do and what we steadily do is that we control the amount of working capital we have at our plants. And there, we always have 2 things. We look that we have the working capital -- the inventory as low as possible, but also to be flexible to react on market situation or customer demand so that we can fulfill our -- the demands there and to react. And that's something we have always in mind that we will have that in mind in future. But I cannot give a prediction on how the amount or the figure will be in the future months, but be assured that we have it in our minds.

Okay. Then perhaps on my second question on the auto sector. We are starting to see some weakness in the order books of some auto. And my question is on both the demand and pricing. So, you mentioned you expect to see, especially mid-long term some growth from the auto sector. But for this year, can we assume that best case scenario on demand on volumes, we are stable, but on a lower margin, i.e., pricing pressures?

Yes. Thank you for the question. The point is you have to look what is the intensity of aluminum in the platforms that you have. So, there is a high level of aluminization, if I may say, going in the very high-end products for which we have good nominations and contracts. So going further, we might see some relaxation in the automotive industry, but it's very much dependent on where this is going to happen. Is it going to be in the AB type of cars or in the C&D where aluminum is more intense. So, we have in our execution of our strategy that we are not very much consolidating one single OEM or one single platform. So, we try to diversify into the German OEMs, the American OEMs, the newcomers in electric platforms so that whatever happens in the future, although complete growth can stagnate, we are betting on the right horses where the aluminum is going to take place. So, that's what makes us confident that the execution of our strategy is in the right direction. Diversification, that's the name.

And regarding pricing, because that's more aligned with market environment and overall demand and they obviously try to fight a factor on that.

Yes, you got a point. I missed that part. Price is a factor of supply demand. If you look at what's happening in the United States in terms of capacity for ABS and the market demand, you see that there is a constrained market. So, you can see pricing there a bit stronger than what you have in Europe, where we have more capacity for ABS. So, we believe that the diversification, as I said, gives us the right way of capturing the best value for our assets in Ranshofen. But looking at capacity ratio with demand, Europe still has room for utilization. U.S. is more tight. So, in the end, you have to play it right so that you can capture the biggest value.

Congratulations on the quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would like to turn the conference back over to Christoph Gabriel. Please go ahead for closing comments.

Thank you very much for joining this conference call. As you know, I'm always happy to assist you with any further questions. So in that case, please just give me a quick call and always there for you. Thank you very much, and have a good day. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing chorus call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.