Good morning everyone and thank you for joining Ferroglobe's second quarter 2026 conference call. Joining me today are Marco Levy, our Chief Executive Officer, and Beatriz Garcia-Koz, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started with some prepared remarks, I'm going to read a brief statement. Please turn to slide two 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 in Ferroglobe's most recent SEC filings and the exhibits to those filings, which are available at ferroglobe.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. Reconciliation of non-IFRS measures may be found in our most recent SEC filings. We'll be participating in the Seaport Annual Summer Conference on August 18th and 19th, and the IDEAS Conference in Chicago on August 26th. 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 Ferroglop. Our second quarter results reflect solid execution despite a challenging market environment. Our total shipments increased 7% quarter over quarter to 188,000 tons, mainly due to a 34% increase in silicon metal. This resulted in a 9% increase in quarterly revenue to $379 million. Our adjusted EBITDA increased $10 million to $13 million and free cash flow improved by $37 million to $20 million. Beatriz will provide more detailed comments in our section. Next slide, please. Now, I would like to turn your attention to how we see Ferroglobe evolving and how we strive to create value for shareholders. As we look at Ferroglobe today, there are four key areas that we believe will drive shareholder value going forward. first growing our critical material platform second lowering the overall cost structure by optimizing our industrial footprint and implementing cost cutting measures third planning a restart of low-cost operations in venezuela with advantage access to the u.s market And fourth, strengthening the core business through trade protection while leveraging the insuring and supply chain realignment taking place across the U.S. and Europe. Few Western companies possess the combination of furnished infrastructure, metallurgical expertise, vertically integrated raw material sourcing, and strong customer relationships that FerroGlobe has built over many years. We believe those capabilities position us with a substantial competitive advantage as governments, customers, and industries increasingly prioritize supply security and domestic processing capacity over simply sourcing the lowest cost material. As the leading Western producer of silicon and manganese alloys, Ferroglobe continues to build a Western critical materials platform. We are actively exploring the expansion of our production capabilities across a broader portfolio of strategic critical materials, including magnesium, antimony, silver, gallium, and critical ferroloids based on molybdenum, vanadium, and chromium. Importantly, this is not a collection of unrelated pilot projects. It is a coordinated expansion of our industrial platform around the assets and technology we already own and operate. Unlike many critical material initiatives that require large greenfield investments, Most of our opportunities can be pursued using existing furnace infrastructure, leveraging decades of metallurgical processing expertise, while minimizing capital investments and accelerating time to market. Since launching our expansion plan for critical materials, we have successfully completed industrial-scale test production of ferro-molyddenum in one of our existing furnaces, demonstrating the capability to reduce this high-value alloy using our current infrastructure. We estimate annual North American demand of ferro-molydenum at approximately 8,000 tons. At current market prices of approximately $42,000 per ton, this represents a market opportunity exceeding $300 million per annum. We have also successfully demonstrated our ability to produce magnesium at our existing facilities, marking an important milestone toward restoring our production capabilities. North American magnesium demand is approximately 60,000 tons annually. At current market price of $7,500 per ton, this represents a market opportunity of approximately $450 million per year. Magnesium is a strategically important critical material as Western markets remain heavily dependent on imports from China. U.S. magnesium production would require a new facility. We estimate the cost of 20,000-ton facilities to be approximately between $180 and $200 million before government subsidies. Given our expertise and the fact that this product is protected by the U.S. government, we expect favorable economics. Beyond ferro-molyddenum, we believe our existing furnaces can also produce other high-value critical materials, including ferrovanadium and ferrocormium, with minimal incremental capital investment. We will continue evaluating additional critical materials opportunities and expect to conduct industrial-scale test production of other critical alloys later this year as we further expand our platform. Our view is simple. The West doesn't have a resource problem. It has a processing problem. While much of the world's critical mineral processing capacity resides in China, governments and industrial customers increasingly recognize the need for trusted Western supply chains. Ferroglobe's core competency has always been processing advanced materials at an industrial scale, which is why we believe our existing asset base provides a natural foundation for critical material expansion. We are actively engaged in discussions with governments and strategic stakeholders to accelerate domestic critical material capacity and strengthen resilient Western supply chains. These discussions remain constructive and continue to advance. We are making steady progress and continue to target initial commercial activity before year end. At the same time, we are taking decisive actions to improve our profitability through aggressive cost reduction initiatives and footprint optimization. Our goal is to improve fixed cost absorption through higher capacity utilization by concentrating production at our most competitive operating sites. In addition, we are evaluating opportunities that will maximize the value of other industrial assets within our portfolio. Our objective is to ensure that every asset contributes to stakeholder value, whether through core materials production or alternative industrial application that can leverage existing power infrastructure, land availability, and grade connectivity. The Venezuelan opportunity enables us to optimize our footprint by allowing U.S. premises to produce higher value-added critical materials to meet domestic demand. In late June, we applied for a U.S. permit to begin communication with the Venezuela government and anticipate a decision before the end of the third quarter. As a reminder, our four low-cost furnaces in Venezuela have a combined annual capacity of 120,000 tons. These furnaces have the flexibility to produce silicon metal, ferro-silicon and manganese alloys. Protecting the core business is imperative in order to position the company for long-term growth in recent years our markets have been negatively impacted by unfair trade practices from china and other regions which have distorted market pricing and placed significant pressure on western producers our industry has worked constructively with policy makers in both europe and the united states to establish a level playing field in addition to past successes against multiple countries the most recent success is the rtc's final decision on august 3rd to impose combined anti-dumping and anti-circumvention duties of 38.7 percent and 19.7 percent on australian and Norwegian imports into the U.S., respectively. Today, these trade actions on both sides of the Atlantic are aiming to restore rational market conditions and support domestic production capacity. We are already seeing evidence that these measures are benefiting demand for Western producer materials. One remaining measure we expect to be initiated is an investigation into the dumping of silicon metal by China and Angola into the EU. The next step is the announcement of the European Community Investigation. Ultimately, our strategy is straightforward. Leverage our existing asset base to build one of the few scalable Western critical material platforms. preserve and strengthen our leadership position in silicon and ferro-loys, improve our profitability, and maintain valuable strategic optionality through assets such as Venezuela. We believe Ferroglobe is uniquely positioned at the intersection of critical materials, supply chain security, onshoring, and industrial policy, creating multiple avenues for sure the value creation in the years ahead next slide please i will update on our segment starting with silicon metal on slide 5. the second quarter shipments of silicon metal grew to 41 000 tons as markets are beginning to show signs of stabilizing Keep in mind that even the second quarter shipments are still below 2024 and early 11th. Beginning in early 2025, the impact of predatory imports from China and Angola is evident. Strong growth in silicon metal was driven by a 70% increase in Europe and 80% increase in North America, resulting in a 34% or 10,000 tons overall increase in volume. The index prices improved in both U.S. and Europe in the second quarter. The U.S. was up 5% for the quarter and the European index was up 6% for the same period. Year-to-date, both indexes improved by 2%. We are turning cautiously optimistic about the silicon metal market. the increased European aluminum production is helping demand, as is the improving polysilicon market. At the same time, excess supply continues to affect prices. With the U.S. silicon case finalized, we expect to begin seeing improved prices and demand in the second half. The European Trade Commission anti-dumping investigation against China and Angola timeline will likely dictate the supply environment in Europe. Next slide, please. Silicon-based alloys volumes reached their highest level in five years, with total shipment increasing 4% to 63,000 tons, driven by 31% growth in the EU, partially offset by 11% volume decline in North America, which was driven by increased imports from Angola, Azerbaijan, and Bhutan. Indexes tell a more accurate story. For the quarter, US and UAE indexes declined 2% and 6% respectively. For the year, the UX is down 1%, while European index is down 14%, percent despite the safeguards it is clear that the european safeguards are not having their desired impact on the ferro-silicon market this is mostly due to the dumping of silicon which is then substituted for ferro-silicon the good news is that the european commission will conduct an annual review of the effectiveness of its safeguards in november this year despite Despite solid steel production, the U.S. index prices are hurt by increased imports as mentioned. We are closely monitoring the increased imports from Angola and other emerging countries. We expect the European market to be challenged until improved trade measures are implemented. Next slide, please. Manganese remains the most positive and consistent segment with total shipments remaining in in the mid 80,000 tons range in the second quarter. Manganese safeguards are effective as indicated by an approximately 10% increase in second quarter index prices. After a strong increase following the implementation of the safeguards in November, manganese alloy index prices are up approximately 25%. We expect stable volumes for the balance of the year with potential upside from enhanced steel safeguards that took effect on july 1st i would now like to turn the call over to beatrice garcia cross our chief financial officer to review the financial results in more detail beatrice thank you marco please turn to slide 9 for a review of the second quarter income statement.
Total second quarter sales increased 9% over the prior quarter to $379 million, driven by a 7% increase in total volumes. Strong sequential volume growth in silicon metal positively impacted overall volumes and revenues, but was partially offset by weak pricing in silicon and silicon-based alloys. Overall, adjusted EBDA improved by approximately $10 million as a result of a stronger performance in silicon and manganese-based alloys, which experienced an increase of $8 million and $3 million dollars, respectively. Overall, adjusted EBITDA margins increased to 3.5 percent versus 1 percent in the prior quarter. The most significant driver of improved profitability during the quarter was solid operational execution and higher fixed cost absorption. The adjusted EBITDA includes a $5 million benefit from litigation in Spain. Turning to the next slide, please. Silicon metal revenue increased 26% in the second quarter to $106 million as a result of a strong volume growth offset by weak pricing, resulting in an adjusted EBTA loss of $2.7 million versus a loss of $2.3 million in the prior quarter. Average selling price in Q2 declined 6% to $2,592 per ton, down from $2,754 in Q1, mainly due to pressure from low-priced Chinese and Angolan imports. Volume and pricing combined negatively impacted adjusted EBTA by $6 million, while cost provided a benefit of $5 million due to high fixed cost absorption related to our operations in Europe. Slide 11, silicon-based alloys revenue increased 2% over Q1 to $125 $35 million, driven by a 4% sequential increase in volumes to 63,000 tons. Realized prices declined by 1.5% sequentially to 1,986 per ton. Adjusted ABTA for this segment was strong in CO2, increasing to $15 million, up from seven million dollars in the prior quarter the improvement in profitability was driven by high fixed cost absorption and a five million dollars litigation benefit in the spain this was partially upset by a two million dollar impact of lower pricing next slide please manganese basil oil's revenue was unchanged in the second quarter at $108 million. Volume in the second quarter was marginally down, offset by a 2% increase in average selling price. However, profitability improved with adjusted EBDA increasing to $30 million, up from $10 million in the prior quarter and adjusted EBTA margins, improving to 12%, up from 9% in Q1. Costs were down 1% due to improved costs in Spain, which were partially offset by higher manganese oil prices.
Operator
Next slide, please.
For the second quarter, our cash flow from operations was $37 million, dollars driven by a 28 million dollars working capital release and improved operating performance this compares with a cash flow from operations of negative six million dollars in the prior quarter tax and others includes a 60 million dollars mark to market adjustment on our power purchase agreement, primarily in France. CapEx increased by $6 million to $17 million in the second quarter, mainly due to a charcoal plant investment in Spain. Despite increased CapEx, our free cash flow improved substantially from negative $16 million to positive $20 million. Next slide, please. please. We paid our quarterly dividend of $2.8 million, or 1.5 cents per share, on June 29th. Our next dividend of 1.5 cents per share is scheduled for September 29th, payable to shareholders of record as of September 22nd. As mentioned, CAPEX in the second quarter increased to $17 million, and we expect the second quarter to be the high point of CAPEX for the year. Overall, we improved our financial position with net debt and adjusted gross debt declining by $17 million and $20 million respectively. At this time, I will turn the call back to Marco.
Thank you, Beatriz. Before opening the call to Q&A, I'd like to provide key takeaways from today's presentation on slide 15. We are pleased with the direction of our second quarter performance with solid improvement in volumes and financial metrics. However, we still have strong headwinds to navigate. The Silicon Metal market is improving, but price and volume levels in Europe remain unacceptable. as Chinese and Angolan imports continue to exert significant pricing pressure. We expect the European Commission to begin an investigation into imports of Chinese and Angolan silicon soon. Our strategic direction is very clear. Build a leading Western critical material platform by expanding our product offering. We have the footprint, know-how, experience and customer relationships to make this a reality in a relatively short time frame. Improving our role competitiveness is essential. We are executing aggressive cost reduction initiatives and enhancing our cost position through higher capacity utilization at our most competitive asset part of the strategy is to restart venezuelan operations to complement and add flexibility to our broad footprint with 120 000 tons of capacity in venezuela we have a significant low cost opportunity to capture incremental volume in the us and greater optional flexibility. Another significant part of our strategy, and the one we have been diligently working for the past few years, is to protect our core market. We have succeeded in protecting the US market and most of the EU market, except against China and Angola in the EU. Operator, we are ready for questions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We will take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Nick Giles from B Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thank you, operator. Good morning, guys. I wanted to start just on the critical materials side. There's been some excitement in the space this week. There's, you know, an event this Friday at the White House. So can you just touch on where your conversations stand with the relevant agencies and, you know, how quickly you feel that you could scale domestic production of adjacent critical materials. Thank you.
Yeah, the discussions are progressing very fast, particularly in the United States. By the way, good morning. There are two departments that are particularly active, the Department of Energy and Department of Work we are we're following the process that they suggested to us I have to underline that we've been engaged with the Department of Energy for the last two years and the partner of work since February of this year and we have got regular interaction recently we prepared our initial proposal for them particularly the Department of War we have been asked the day after to run the presentation live and then we have been us to proceed filing our proposal as suggested by by their process the next step is going to be based on providing a more detailed proposal including our asks to make it happen in the areas that the departments feel are their priority. And then we expect to progress with our investments.
Thank you, Marco. That's very helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up, when would you be prepared to share with the market kind of more details around which products you would be targeting, kind of the potential economics you see around producing those products, and ultimately any of that government support?
Yeah. Well, first of all, I mentioned the products in my pitch, right? I mentioned magnesium, I mentioned silver, I mentioned gallium, I mentioned two ferroalloys. So in my pitch before, I have been very specific on the products. Now if you look at the ferroalloys part, these ferroalloys can be produced with no minimal capex investment in our current furnaces and we are as mentioned in my page we have started making some industrial tests we have been producing tons of ferromolyte data in spec and and and now we are trying to understand the better understand our cost position in order to be able to share our estimates. We will proceed with the other fraudulence tests before year end, because in the meantime, of course, we have studied the market, we are acquiring knowledge, but we want to understand what is our cost position relative to others. I must say that we have technology on the shelf, and we plan to produce these products with an alternative technology that we expect. We provide some cost advantages versus current competition. The magnesium game is a game that we have played in the past. ferro globe has been playing producing magnesium in france in the past until ferro globe at the time was i think atlantica has been kicked out from the market by by china and and today there is no production of magnesium either in europe or in the us and in us alone there is a demand estimated demand of 60,000 tons of magnesium so of course there are a lot of people who are working at starting up production of magnesium but we have been producing magnesium so we our proposal is to start investing in in a plant of 20,000 tons of magnesium investment will be between 180 and 200 million dollars we have we are ready to implement recycling technologies to produce the silver and gallium with minor capex investment so timing by the end of the year we expect to have a pretty clear put competitive position on our fur alloy production and we expect we expect to be in the market with some of the alloys for the other products we need to we need to follow the process with the American authorities Marco thanks again for all the detail if I could there were some headlines around the White House setting price floors on polysilicon and derivative
products for solar, and so I was curious if you could walk us through how GSM stands to What do you think this could mean for volumes in the U.S.? Thank you.
Yeah, I think this is a pretty wise initiative from the American government. It's related to Section 252. There are only two polysilicon players or significant polysilicon players left in the United States, Amlock and Bakker. and their cost position is absolutely disadvantaged versus China which owns 95% of the political global capacity. Many disadvantages not from a technology point of view but simply from an energy cost point of view. So I think the the floor price is one of the options to to protect the local the local players and and if I set at the right level probably would allow these people also to improve capacity which is driven by by solar and microchips demand so the The consequence is going to be more demand of silicon metal in the United States.
That's very good to hear. I'll go ahead and turn it over for now, but I appreciate all the comments. Thank you, Nick.
Operator
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1, 1 on your telephone. we will take our next question and the question comes from Martin Engler from seaport research partners please go ahead your line is open hello good day everyone wanted to start with the euro area given the change in trade policy on the downstream steel side what are you seeing with capacity restarts from some of the customer base now moving through second half here what are they conveying regarding their alloy needs in the back half of the year and then any read on the inventory situation in the channel
as well if we talk about customers I mean the main factor in Europe is that the impact on aluminum production as a consequence of the almost crisis right and and the the fact that the export outside of the middle east to to europe has been largely impaired has impacted the the production and of aluminium in in western europe and as a consequence that amount of silicon metal. Concerning steel, as all of you know, there are new measures that have been implemented as of July 1st with a further cap of the safeguard fee for imports by 50 percent and a fee increase of 50 percent it is too early to mention the effect on on demand for our products but it is true that some steel makers have announced the restart of some of their blast furnaces in Europe and some others have announced capacity expansion. So the environment sounds pretty good for aluminum and steel at this stage. Concerning chemicals is a different kind kind of situation due to the fact that the issue of energy costs in Europe has not been fully addressed to restore the competitive position of the European players.
Operator
I appreciate that. And then silicon metal volumes, which you touched on earlier, quite a bit of a sequential improvement in 2Q here. it's trying to understand incremental demand opportunities that drove and contributed to that if there was any one-off items as far as like a channel restock or anything like that that came in to drive the volumes yeah well if we talk about the the silicon metal volume improvement and again the volumes are are far below our run rate of 2024, right, rather than 60,000, 70,000 tons per quarter.
This quarter we have improved from 30,000 to 40,000, which is mainly related to the nature of our contracts, and the restart of demand in Middle East Asia of silicon metal. The overall situation of silicon metal in Europe has not changed, as you can see from from from from the pricing uh situation and and i must say that it has even gone more problematic due to the continuous increase of export outside of china and and angola even the statistics of this year while last year this was china and angola more than double the export this growth keeps on happening and is linked not to the demand of silicon metal in the traditional segments but to the partial replacement of ferro-silicon with silicon metal at Chinese or Angolan price so we have concluded our incredible effort to provide data to the Commission now they have five years of data they should be almost ready to proceed to the next step which is a publicly announced an investigation and then hopefully we can help them to speed up on the final decision on putting some additional measures.
Operator
Okay, thank you. One last one, you had discussed cost reductions, efficiency gains targeted, anything you can put around the scope of those efforts as far as dollar amounts that you may be targeting here in these programs?
My opinion is premature. What we have decided to do is really revisit our asset for footprint there there there are assets who are extremely competitive in the top quartiles in terms of cost performance and this is where we're going to concentrate our productions other assets are going to be repurposed for the production of of new critical raw materials, mainly the ferro lois that I mentioned with NIC. And, of course, having energy contacts, we have also other opportunities. It goes without saying that with this kind of exercise, we will need to to address the remaining costs I mean overhead costs that we need to support this new activity so we are information we will communicate more precise numbers later in the year okay I appreciate the additional caller there.
Operator
Thank you for your time. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Nick Giles from B Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thank you for taking my follow-up. I just wanted to ask a question for Beatrice. Working capital improved in the quarter, so I was curious kind of what working capital could look like in the second half, whether you would expect a build if volumes were to increase, and just kind of what this means in terms of your appetite for shareholder returns. Would you look at kind of resuming the buyback just given where the stock is today?
Yeah, thank you for the question. So let me take one step back, in Q1 we consume working capital, in Q2 we release 28 million. And then we see Q, the second half of the year, let me put it like that, as an overall release of working capital. And I think this is a way we plan to continue with the operations ramping up some of them. Some of them are idle, so it's a kind of a mixed bug that we have in our operations for the second half of the year, for the reasons that you know. So, but my best estimation at the moment is that we're going to be still releasing working capital for the second half of the year, around, I would say, $15 million. $15? $15. Yeah, $15. No, $5 million. Sorry for that. And then, of course, with the current market environment and why we are taking the decisions on the critical material, our choice is not to resume the share buyback program for obvious reasons, but we continue to assess this, I would say, on a weekly basis, Nick, to your So as soon as we see that we have the opportunity, we will do it.
No, that's good to hear. I appreciate that. maybe just one more operational question you know Fezzi volumes have been much stronger year to date and so I was curious just if we could see further upside in that number where it would come from or if we should really just be modeling kind of more of the same you know somewhere around this 60,000 ton per quarter level thanks yeah if you talk if you talk about ferro-silicon in Europe the safeguards have laid in our favor in terms of volumes due to the
quotas of importers and now we have we have reached the volume level that is that we expect that we're going to sustain in the second half of the year. In the U.S., I would say that it's a different comment because we didn't have safeguards. We had strong winds on anti-dumping, and basically there are no imports anymore from Russia, almost zero from from Kazakhstan and almost zero from from Brazil but that bodies like I mentioned in my pitch these imports have been replaced by by outcome from different locations but the disturbing factor has come from the overcapacities in Middle East and Asia and Africa and I mentioned Angola Angola and Uzbekistan and Bhutan so I think in terms of demand in the US we have opportunities to grow through silicon and this is linked to the fact that steel product utilization rate has increased now has been going down recently a little bit but we're still at 80% versus 74% last year so that there is demand but but but pricing is not optimal so we we will need to balance out between volume and price decisions.
Understood. Well, guys, I appreciate the update this morning and continued best of luck.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes today's question-and-answer session. I'll now hand the call back to Marco Levy for closing remarks.
Thank you. Very shortly, in a nutshell, we have excellent opportunities to grow our business as we continue to execute our strategy refresh and we are excited to keep you informed about our progress. Thank you again for your participation. We look forward to updating you on the next call in November. Have a great day.
