Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Century Aluminum Company first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again.

I will now hand the conference over to chad rigg vice president finance and treasurer please go ahead thank you operator good afternoon everyone and welcome to the first quarter conference call i'm joined here today by jesse gary century's president and chief executive officer and peter trypkovsky executive vice president and chief financial officer after our prepared comments we will take your questions As a reminder, today's presentation is available on our website at www.CenturyAluminum.com. We use our website as a means of disclosing material information about the company and for complying with Regulation FD. Turning to slide two, please take a moment to review the cautionary statements with respect to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in today's discussion. And with that, I'll hand the call to Jesse.

Thanks, Chad, and thanks to everyone for joining. I'll start today with a discussion of the dynamic global aluminum market and the opportunities that we see for Century going forward to provide secure supply chains into the U.S. and European markets. I'll then review our first quarter operational performance, including the excellent progress we made on our Mount Holly expansion project and the restart of Hotline 2 at Grunder Tangy. Pete will then walk you through our Q1 results and Q2 outlook before I conclude the call with the latest on our new Oklahoma smelter project with EGA. Just before we get started, I'd like to thank the Century team across our sites for a strong quarter of safety performance, especially while executing major capital projects at each of Grundertongi, Jamalco, and Malholly. You should each be proud. At Century, ensuring that each of our employees returns home safely at the end of their shift is our first priority turning to the market on page five it is certainly obvious to all of those on the call that we find ourselves today in one of the most dynamic markets for aluminum in recent memory strong global aluminum demand driven by macro trends and light weighting and electrification have persisted into 2026 and accelerated into other sectors as demand firm power and data infrastructure build out commercial aviation and defense and rearmament manufacturing has increased In the U.S. specifically, we are already beginning to see increased value-added product demand following President Trump's April 2nd executive order that closed valuation loopholes that importers have been using to cheat the Section 232 system, especially in downstream extruded products. We are grateful to President Trump for taking this additional action to ensure that the entire U.S. aluminum supply chain is able to grow and expand to meet our domestic national security needs with American metal. As the largest U.S. producer, Century will continue to do its part to invest in expanding and building the U.S. aluminum base, starting with our Mount Holly expansion and continuing with our Oklahoma smelter project. Back to each of those in a bit. Turning to the supply side, the importance of ensuring secure U.S. supply chains has never been so evident as today following disruptions in production in the Middle East. We estimate that approximately 2.5 million tons of production in the Gulf countries has been disrupted by either production curtailments due to raw material shortages arising from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, or direct Iranian drone and missile attacks. We stand by our industry colleagues who have been so unfairly affected by such attacks. note that while the large majority of middle eastern metal goes to the european and asian markets century has been supporting our existing u.s customers that have been impacted by the middle east disruption through the placement of our expansion tons from mount holly to repair these strained supply lines and ensure our u.s customers have access to the metal that they need the timing of our mount holly restart could not be better in this regard providing additional American metal units to the domestic market. As you can see on slide six, the Middle Eastern disruption has expanded our expected 2026 global deficit to 1.4 million tons. Over the course of 2026, this supply deficit should lead to further de-stocking from global inventories, creating a healthy, go-forward environment for century in both the U.S. and Europe. Turning to page four in operations, our smelters had an excellent first quarter, with strong operating performance across Grundertongue, Mount Holly, and Seabree. We are now moving into a very busy second quarter for the operations team. The strong operating performance and stability throughout our smelters enabled the timely startup of our expansion project in Mount Holly and the restart of Potline 2 in Grundertongue last month. Both projects are off to an excellent start. At Mount Holly, the team started the first pots three weeks ago, and the startup is progressing on schedule to bring the full expansion project online by the end of June. As a reminder, this project will increase Mount Holly's total production to approximately 230,000 metric tons and add over 125 full-time U.S. manufacturing jobs as a plant, increasing total U.S. primary aluminum production by nearly 10%. As we've discussed in the past, the project should increase Mount Holly's profitability significantly and fully repay its capital cost by the end of 2026. Please keep in mind that due to the incremental nature of the restart process, we will not see the full impact of our expanded Mount Holly production run rate until Q3. We've included the incremental plans that will be produced in Q2 in our Q2 outlook that Pete will cover with you in a bit. At Grundertongi, we restarted the first pots on Line 2 on April 23, just one week after commencement of new pots at Mount Holly. The restart has gone well, and we remain on schedule to restore all pots on line two by the end of July. As we discussed last quarter, following the return of all pots to service, the plant will return to nearly full production, but will run on a slightly reduced amperage until our new replacement transformers have arrived and are installed in the fourth quarter. Our anticipated production for both projects is included in our Q2 outlook and our full year volume guidance shown on page 16. Pete will give you some additional detail on spending on both projects as well as associated insurance recovery for Brundertongi in a minute. At Jamalco, the refinery continued its recovery from Hurricane Melissa and associated power instability in Q1 and progressed with the commissioning of its new steam generation turbine, which we expect to be completed later this quarter. The global alumina market has been impacted by the conflict in the Middle East, where smelter closures have temporarily decreased global demand for alumina and weighed on global alumina prices. At the same time, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has impacted Cossack Soda and heavy fuel oil prices, although our HFO hedge book has offset some of this impact. The plant has been experiencing some lower quality bauxite than expected from certain of its mining areas and is in the process of adjusting its mining plan accordingly. Finally, Seabree had another excellent quarter performance in q1 overcoming higher energy prices arising from winter storm fern to deliver another strong set of results cbree is off to another great start in q2 i'd like to extend a special thank you to the entire century operations and technical teams for their tremendous performance over the last six months to enable these two major projects at mount holly and grunertongi to proceed successfully at the same time their skill and hard work has delivered these projects on or ahead of schedule bringing significant production back into a market facing significant disruption from elsewhere in the world. This is not easy, and our team has knocked it out of the park. Pete will now take you through our first quarter financial performance and Q2 outlook.

Thank you, Jesse. I'll begin with a review of our Q1 financials and then cover the restart of operations in Manhali and Grunertangi, along with an update on business interruption insurance in Iceland. I'll conclude with our Q2 Outlook. Turning to slide 8, Q1 shipments totaled approximately 123,000 tons, down sequentially due to Line 2 in Iceland being offline for the full quarter following its idling in late October 2025. Net sales reached $649 million, an increase of $15 million primarily driven by higher LME prices and regional premiums despite lower shipment volumes net income was 338 million or three dollars and 23 cents per share while adjusted net income excluding exceptional items was 171 million or one dollar and 63 cents per share exceptional items included the unrealized derivative losses, restart expenses at Mahali, a gain on the Haasville transaction, and business interruption in Iceland. Adjusted EBITDA was $231 million for the quarter, driven by higher LME and regional premiums, improved operating expenses, and favorable sales mix. These gains were partially offset by higher energy prices and raw material costs. Our cash balance stood at $332 million, including the cash proceeds from the Hawesville sale. We continue to prioritize debt reduction, and to this end, $8 million of industrial revenue bonds were paid down using the Hawesville proceeds. As a result, net debt declined to $220 million, below our target of less than $300 million. This positions us well as we move into a period of strong, organic growth and capital-intensive spending to add production volume at Makali and Grundotonghi. Turning to page 9, adjusted EBITDA rose by $60 million in Q1 to $231 million. Realized LME was $2,900 per ton, up approximately $285 from last quarter. The U.S. Midwest premium increased to $2,200 per tonne, up approximately $420, and the European premium climbed $80 to approximately $310 per tonne. Combined, these prices added $85 million versus the prior quarter. As anticipated, energy and raw materials were a headwind this quarter. We experience higher than normal winter power prices for Seabree following winter storm fern, and we have begun to see input cost pressure across the other raw materials, including heavy fuel oil and caustic for the alumina refinery, as well as coke and pitch for the smelters. Operating expenses were favorable over prior quarter as spend related to the restart and expansion projects will now mainly hit in Q2 along with the metal units. Volume and sales mix were favorable as our annual sales contracts went into effect reflecting an uplift in billet sales as anticipated. Now let's turn to slide 10 and look at cash flow. We began the quarter with $134 million in cash. We generated $231 million in adjusted EBITDA from operations and closed on the sale of Hawesville, receiving $200 million in proceeds before fees. We continue to accrue 45 tax credits with $198 million receivable as of March 31st for full year 2023 and 2025 U.S. production, as well as now the first three months of 2026. We expect to receive our full-year 2025 amount of approximately $94 million in the next few months as we just filed our full-year 2025 tax return with the IRS last week. Quarterly CapEx totaled $76 million, of which $71 million is related to investment for Mount Holly Expansion and Grundertunghi Restart of Line 2, plus our new power generation unit, TG4, at Jamalto. We expect a similar amount of CAPEX in Q2 to finish these projects and then should return to more normalized levels. insurance recoveries in q1 trail claims by 38 million dollars which reduced cash flow from adjusted EBITDA this is primarily timing and in early April we did receive an additional 46 million dollar advance from our insurers which is not reflected here in our q1 results we have received a total of $83 million in insurance recoveries to date. We continue to expect payments to lag one to two quarters behind our submitted insurance claims. Semi-annual interest payments were made in Q1 related to our senior secure notes and hedge settlements for $14 million. We remain focused on debt reduction, having repaid our industrial revenue bonds following the Hossville transaction. Lastly, on cash flow, working capital increased due to higher pricing and timing of payments on our major raw materials and customer receipts. We ended Q1 with $332 million in cash, reaching our net debt goal of under $300 million with strong liquidity in place. We have reached this position despite cash timing mismatch in insurance reimbursements in Iceland and 45x tax credits in the U.S., which should further improve our cash position from here over the next two quarters. This strong cash and liquidity position supports our continued short-term focus in Q1 and Q2 on our expansion project at Maapalli, as well as restarting Line 2 in Iceland and investing in the new steam generation turbine at Jamalpa. Now, let's turn to slide 11, and I'll look ahead to the next 90 days. For Q2, our lagged LME and regional premiums are expected to be up across all three components. We expect a realized LME of $3,175 per ton, a lagged U.S. Midwest premium of $2,450 per ton, and the European duty paid premium of $485 per ton in Q2. Taken together, the lagged LME and delivery premium changes are expected to have an $85 to $95 million increase to Q2-adjusted EBITDA when compared with Q1 levels. Note that due to our contractual lags, realized LME and premiums will be below spot levels in Q2. Current spot prices should then provide a further tailwind when they roll through our Q3 results. We expect U.S. energy prices to improve by 15 million dollars from prior quarter as power prices moderated after the effects of winter storm fern. This benefit is partially offset by heavy fuel oil prices that have risen with the broader oil price increase since the Middle East conflict started. Looking at our other raw materials, we expect increases in our coke, pitch, and caustic prices. As Jesse mentioned, we also expect to see some Jamalco costs and volume headwinds from lower box side quality impacting our overall alumina input costs. Taken together, we see a headwind of $10 million sequentially. We expect operating expenses to increase $15 to $20 million into Q2, in part to match increased production at Mount Auli and Grundertunke. In addition, as normal around this time of year, we also have some additional seasonal costs as we hire summer help across all of our assets. Volume and sales mix is expected to improve by $15 to $20 million as we begin to see the incremental benefit of the additional Mount Holly volume ramping up. We will not reach our full run rate volume impact from the Mount Holly expansion and Gurinder Thangi restart until Q3. The volume from these projects, especially these additional Mount Holly tons, will be an additional tailwind to the third quarter results. All told, at expected realized prices, we expect Q2 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $315 to $335 million. And with that, I'll hand the call back to Jesse. Thanks, Pete.

As we discussed last quarter, Century is ready to capitalize on the significant opportunities in front of us to add production in a market that is becoming increasingly short due to rising demand. This need for additional production has now significantly increased with the smelter disruptions in the Middle East. In Europe, the restored tons we are bringing on in Iceland will supply additional metal units and especially value-added products into a rising European duty paid premium environment that has now been exacerbated by the significant reduction in imports from the Middle East and Africa. In the U.S., the Mount Holly expansion is already stepping in to fill disrupted offshore supply chains for our key domestic customers. By the end of July, for the first time in over a decade, all century assets should be operating at full production capacity. The need for secure supply chains has never been more clear. Disruptions in the Middle East to both production capacity, but also to free transit itself, are leaving supply chains across a multitude of commodities strained and unable to deliver to intended markets. In an increasingly complex world, it is imperative that we are able to meet our domestic needs for critical minerals with domestic production. To this end, Century and our joint venture partner, Emirates Global Aluminum, continued to advance our Oklahoma smelter project in Q1, retaining Bechtel to complete the next stage of engineering work, advancing power discussions in Oklahoma, and making significant progress on financing discussions, which we expect will result in a final investment decision and groundbreaking by the end of the year. The Oklahoma smelter is being designed with EGA's state-of-the-art EX smelting technology and will be the first smelter in the world to use this technology. At 750,000 metric tons, the new smelter will more than double total U.S. aluminum production and will restore domestic production of military-grade high-purity aluminum. The restoration of domestic military-grade production is of ever-increasing importance as we emphasize rearmament following the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Truly, once built, the Oklahoma smelter will be amongst the most efficient and advanced in the world and a crown jewel of the U.S. industrial base. No company is investing more to restore U.S. aluminum production than Century. Century is already the largest producer of aluminum in the United States, employing more American primary aluminum workers than any other company, And thanks to President Trump's leadership and the Section 232 program, we plan to invest billions more in new and expanded production at Mount Holly in our Oklahoma smelter project. Thanks for joining the call today, and we look forward to taking your questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your question from the line of Nick Giles with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you, operator. Good evening, guys. thanks for the update here. Obviously, you know, a lot of volatility right now in the Middle East and some severe disruptions. I was just wondering if you could touch on if you've had any opportunities to take market share while some of these tons have been out of the market. And then my follow-up question was really just what your dialogue with EGA has looked like, if there's been any – if could be any change in scope of the project just on the back of all of these disruptions. Thanks.

Sure, Nick. Thanks a lot. Good question. So, as I said on the call, our focus since the conflict started and since the supply lines have become a bit strained has been to fill in the needs of our existing customer base, where they may be sourcing from other sources outside the U.S. and filling those in mainly with Mount Holly tons, but also some unpriced or unallocated tons that we came into the quarter with. So we've been able to do a good job with that, again, prioritizing our existing customers first, and second, working with new customers where we have excess metal to do that. All in all, I'd say the market's been orderly, but it's really been helped by those additional Mount Holly tons to fill in where needed. Turning to the project, our conversations with EGA around the new Oklahoma smelter, I think it's fair to say are both full go. We both remain very excited about the new project and are working hard to make it happen. So without speaking for EGA, there really has been no change as far as I can tell in our interest in the project and we've had full engagement And I think both parties are very committed to make that project happen.

Your next question from the line of Katja Janczyk with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Maybe first, just on 2Q guide, the OPEC side, I think Peter mentioned that some of that data is seasonal. Does that mean that some of that will reverse in 3Q? can you talk a bit about that, please?

Yeah. Hey, Kathy, SP. That's exactly right. As I was saying, typically around this time of year, when we look across our footprint, we tend to have seasonality in our operating expenses, mainly around getting some summer help in the door and training that goes along with that. So, you see those costs in our Q2 guide and then coming out of the summer, you know, into Q3 and out of the summer months will sort of reverse back to our normalized run rate of operating expenses, and that really applies to the whole And is that, so that means the full $15 to $20 million would reverse? No, no, it's not the full amount. It's probably a portion of that. We didn't break it out exactly, but it's probably half or less than that.

The rest of that, Katya, is just matched with the expanded Mount Holly tons coming online, right? So we're going to get incremental revenues in Mount Holly tons, but obviously you have some incremental OPEX to produce those tons as well.

Okay. And then you talked about 2Q not fully benefiting from the current spot market, plus you're not going to see the full volume from Iceland and Mount Holly. Can you provide a bit more of what the incremental potential could be in the current spot environment, assuming both of those assets are fully up and running?

Yeah, sure, Katya. I'd be happy to. You know, as you saw on the outlook, we tend to give what our expected realized prices are for the quarter. You know, in Q2, we're not fully priced yet, as we just hear in the first week of May. So we have the balance of May to go on our revenue and obviously the balance of the quarter on some of our power prices and things like that. But if you just look at our three revenue components, the major revenue components, the LME gold aluminum price, the U.S. Midwest premium, the European duty pay premium, all three today are higher than what we expect to realize in Q2. So if you just look ahead at that page and where we are in the spot market, you can easily see an additional $400 per ton of LME improvement at spot, maybe another $75 per ton at spot for Midwest premium, and then maybe another $100 per ton in all the Western European prices. So if you just, again, traditionally, we refer to the sensitivities in the back. And if you look at those, you know, quick math, I think that's in the $70 to $75 million range for just those three revenue components. So, again, if you took the Q2 guide midpoint, $325 million, and you sort of mark that at the spot, you can see, you know, a $400 million quarterly run rate level. but that doesn't include the full impact we will have and expect in Q3 from the full Montauly uplift. So, 400 probably is a good number to take away, plus some additional uplift from the Montauly Restart expansion project.

Your next question comes from Matthew Key with Texas Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. I apologize if this is addressed in your prepared remarks, but I wanted to touch on capital allocation and if there's any potential for capital returns to shareholders over the course of this year if the current market environment holds.

The simple answer to that, Matt, is yes. But if you flip to page 21, you can see our capital allocation framework. And obviously now, as you see on this slide, you can see that we've now bet both our liquidity targets and our net debt targets. So as we said, once we reach that stage, which we're at today, we first look and prioritize sustaining CapEx, then next look to our high return organic investments that we have available to us. Of course, in Q1 and Q2, we're very pleased to be able to expand mount holly that's a very high return organic investment project and then we're also in the process of restarting grunertongi there of course we'll ultimately recover the cash from our insurance proceeds but as pete said those proceeds are trailing spend by about one to two quarters so for q1 q2 um it was clear to us the best allocation of our excess cash was to these two projects in line with our framework. We spent about 71 million of investment capex or restart capex in Q1. You expect about a similar level in Q2. We also paid down some debt this quarter. And then coming out of Q2, we should largely be done with these investments and be in a really good position to start generating more cash. So in addition to that, just keep in mine we'll also receive we also expect to receive our 2025 45x payment over the next few months plus we'll catch up on any outstanding grid of tongi insurance recoveries over this period plus you should start to get back some of that working capital build that we've seen this past quarter from rising rising prices running through our our ap and ar um so we think that cash generation should be looking very good going forward and we'll continue to look for the best and hybrid best use of that cash um you know as you know our priority first

will be to find more high return organic investments but otherwise we'll definitely look to capital returns got it that's uh that's super helpful i appreciate that and just as a follow-up um i wanted to ask about the 500 million doe grant for the new oklahoma smelter I'm curious, does that get applied at the project level, or does Century get 100% of that grant?

So we'll give the full detail of the capital breakdown and structure for the Oklahoma progress once we make that final investment decision. But we have worked with DOE to be sure that it will be able to work with the Oklahoma project, and we have full confirmation of that from DOE. so we're in good shape that product that grant will reduce the overall caps of that project and we'll get into further breakdown once we make that final investment decision and share that with you got it okay that sounds good uh appreciate the time and great job in the quarter thanks matt thanks matt our next question comes from john tomazos with john tomazos very independent research your lines are now open please go ahead congratulations on all the good times

thank you john i guess it's real hard to figure out the big picture in terms of politics in the world so let's ask a couple outside the box kind of questions um over the history of century the company hasn't always earned profits Now that things are good, would you consider issuing 10 million shares, putting 600 million equity on the books, being ready to double the Oklahoma smelter if your partner wanted, or if tariffs got abolished in 2029 under a different president, you'd have an equity cushion?

Thanks, John. Good out-of-the-box question for sure. We are very pleased with the cash, both the performance of the business and the overall state of the balance sheet. I think we've made substantial progress on that over the past several years and the past couple of quarters. And we're really, you know, just grateful to find ourselves in the situation that we are to be looking at these very profitable investments that we have in front of us. And we're very excited about those investments. So I think to your overall question, are we interested in making sure that we'll be able to make those things happen? Of course. But we also see our outlook, the significant cash generation that we have in front of us, and we feel pretty good about where we stand from a balance sheet perspective, especially as we continue to deliver over the next couple of quarters.

So in terms of the Oklahoma project, if it's, say, escalated to $5 billion, because usually things cost more and your share is $2 billion and the government's helped you for half a billion. Should we expect something like half of the remainder to be funded by cash flow and half by debt? Or how do you think, what's your game plan for writing the checks?

Well, we'll share the final game plan as we continue to advance the project. And once we make the final investment decisions. We'll give you the full breakdown of both how we plan to finance the smelter timeline for building the smelter, final CapEx numbers, all of that will come once we're able to make that final decision. So stay tuned for that. I guess what I would just say to you is there are a variety of really good financing opportunities that are out there in the marketplace and available to these types of projects. So we're excited about the types of things we're seeing as we start to do some of that planning on how we will finance a project like this. And I think everyone will be quite pleased once we're able to share what we achieve.

Your next question from the line of Tema Tanners with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. I wanted to drill down a little bit if I could on the power agreement for the Oklahoma smelter. As we understand, that's the biggest issue for the smelter. And we also have heard that the local utility discussions are moving along nicely. Can you expand a bit more on what you're seeing there and what that might look like? And we've heard that maybe it could look like some of the other power agreements around the world that are levered to the LME. Just curious if you could give us a bit more detail on it, please.

Sure. I guess what I can say, Tim, is we've We've been very pleased with the great business environment that we found in Oklahoma. Governor Stitt, as well as the whole Oklahoma delegation, you can tell they really want to bring businesses and jobs to Oklahoma. And that's been a great incentive for us to look to locate the smelter there. I think I can say that for both ourselves and our partners. We have spent a lot of time negotiating with PSO, which is the local utility in Oklahoma. Those negotiations are continuing to make good progress. And I think both sides are eager to bring those to a conclusion so that we can bring this substantial development to the state and all the jobs and all the economic impact that will come from that. So I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and talk about what the exact structure of what that power contract might look like, but I can say we're making good progress, and we're excited to get that project moving.

Okay, great, and then I guess just to, I guess, beat a dead horse here on the capital case, I mean, when you go through the many moving parts of the 45x payment and more to come, the working capital on YMD, insurance on a lag, and what we know today of the big aluminum price, the massive shortfall in aluminum supply globally. That does seem to set up for a pretty big cash outflow or ability to deploy capital in the second half. Should we expect more color on use of capital on your next call or when might we get more detail or when should we expect that?

Yeah, Tim, that's a very fair question. And I think as you laid it out, we do just find ourselves in this very dynamic time in the global market, both in the aluminum markets themselves and then with Century specifically, given all of our investment projects and all the work we're doing to bring all of this additional tons online, in addition to the Oklahoma project we just talked about. So we thought given all that, and especially given the sort of cash spend that we needed to do to bring those tons online uh it made sense to to um allocate you know the excess cash these these two quarters to that as that starts to clear up and you laid out pretty clearly a lot of those items that should be cleared out over the next couple months before we talk again i think the landscape will become simpler and we'll be able to provide you know more color on on that next call there are no further questions at this time i will now turn the call back over to Jesse Gary for closing remarks. Thank you everyone for joining the call. We remain laser focused on completing these two projects in South Carolina and in Iceland as well as our projects in Jamaica and Oklahoma. We've got a lot going on. We plan to deliver and look forward to talking to everybody in August. Thanks a lot.

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