Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Century Aluminum Fourth Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to Investor Relations Manager, Peter Trpkovski. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, Kathy. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call. I'm joined today by Mike Bless, Century's President and Chief Executive Officer; Erich Squire, Senior Vice President of Finance; and Shelly Harrison, Senior Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. 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 after complying with Regulation FD. I would also like to remind you that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements related to future events and expectations, including our expected future financial performance, results of operation and financial condition. These forward-looking statements involve important known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements. Please review the forward-looking statements disclosure in today's slides and press release for a full discussion of these risks and uncertainties. In addition, we have included some non-GAAP financial measures in our discussion. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the appendix to today's presentation and on our website. With that, I'll hand the call over to Mike.

Thanks very much, Pete, and thank you to all of you for joining us this afternoon. If we could turn to Slide 4 please, we will get right into an overview of the last couple of months. Importantly all the facilities were stable during the fourth quarter and into 2017 and the operations performed generally very well. The few operational issues that we have faced at Sebree and Grundartangi over the summer quickly corrected and these two excellent plants are back to performing as we come to expect. And I will give you more detail on the operations in just a few moments. Moving on the financial results for the quarter, if you had a chance to look were favorable. We saw strong topic conversion and good cash flow in this environment. We believe we got an aggressive cost structure now in place and we are confident that we will result in strong cash flow conversion in the current or an improved industry conditions. To remind you most of our sales are priced at least two months prior, so we will see the impact of the current pricing environment in Q1 and even more so in Q2. And in just a few minutes Erich and Pete will provide some detail on the quarter that just ended, as well as our expectations for 2017. Moving along, we saw some important progress on our fair trade efforts during the last months pardon me - as you likely saw in early January the U.S. government brought WTO case taking China they are legally subsidizing its primary aluminum industry. The fact here are relatively straightforward, since the early 2000 the Chinese Government directed a massive build-out of its primary aluminum industry. During this time period their production of primary aluminum has gone from 2…

Thanks Mike. If I could along to Slide 5, please, I'll provide some comments here on the industry environment. The cash LME priced average 17 ton per ton in Q4, which reflects the 6% increase over Q3. Since year end the aluminum price has continued to strengthen and its currently sitting at 18.80 per ton. Delivery premiums in both U.S. and Europe continue to strengthen Q4 averaging $7.6 per pound in the U.S. and $131 per ton in Europe. Similar to the LME price these delivered premium have about nice run so far Q1 and are currently sitting at $0.10 per pound for the U.S. Midwest premium and $165 per ton at the European Duty paid premium. As reported by CRU the global aluminum market experienced a deficit of about 725,000 tons for 2016. Excluding China, the aluminum market was short about $1.2 million tons by excess supply from Chinese producers offset a meaningful portion of this western world deficit. We continued to see good demand growth in 2016 with the 5.3% increase in global consumption year-over-year, Chinese demand growth of 7.4% was better than anticipated was continued strength from construction sector. Global primary aluminum production was up 3.1% in 2016 driven by start-ups and restarts in China towards the back half of the year. There has been a significant amount of speculation recently that Chinese producers reforced to curtail aluminum production in heavily polluted region. These environmentally driven production get could impacted much as 20% of the global aluminum supply during the heating season month of November through March. Even if these temporary curtailment actions due take place, China still expected to be in a meaning surplus position for 2017. There is also significant speculation in the market about trade remedy is may be imposed on the Chinese aluminum.…

Thanks Shelly. If we can turn to Slide 6 please, let me just make a couple comments on the operations during the quarter before we get right to the financial results. As you see here, we generally had a very quarter in safety performance. All the plants continue to make continuous improvement. As you may remember in October when we talked to you, we were especially proud of Grundartangi and Sebree as they avoided serious injuries during the operational excursion during the summer months. And this performance has continued really well at Sebree. At Grundartangi which you're looking at there is only one more incident Q4 over Q3. So we’ve got a lot small numbers working there, but generally good results from all plants. Moving down, good performance also on hot metal production which you see there as Hawesville is down less than 1% quarter-to-quarter due to a slight increase in self-failures in December, and that problem has been corrected very quickly. We are now at full strength at Hawesville in terms of all the sales being operating. Production metrics as you see is strong across the businesses and importantly good performance in conversion cost which led to strong profit conversion. And again, this gives us confidence that we’ve got the cost structure thrive in this higher pricing environment. As you see, Sebree in particular did an excellent job in controllable cost. Give you a couple of example, labor costs were down 15% quarter-to-quarter, and maintenance and supply cost were down 40%. Mt. Holly as you can see is continuing to perform well and that performance is all the more impressive when you think about the environment of uncertainty in which the employees are living at that plant. Again, this cost performance underpins our view that the company is really well-positioned as the trade efforts and other factors lead to an improving commodity price. With that, I’ll give to Erich who will take you through the results for the quarter and for the full fiscal year. Erich?

Thanks Mike. Let's turn to Slide 7 on the presentation and I can walk you through the fourth quarter results. On a consolidated basis global shipments were up about 1.5%, and net sales were up just shy of 2% quarter-over-quarter. Next I’ll give you some market pricing data all of which are on a two-month lag basis. Cash LME pricing was up 3% quarter-over-quarter. Looking at U.S. pricing, the Midwest premium was down 15%, but when combined with the LME movement resulted in the Midwest transaction price up by 1% or about $15 a ton. U.S. realized pricing was also up in line with these market movements. I would note that value-added product premiums in the U.S. remain depressed in Q4 as was the case in Q3 and we expect this to continue well into 2017. Looking at pricing for the Atlantic operations, the European duty paid premium was down 1%, but when combined with the LME movement, resulted in a European transaction price up 2% or about $40 a ton. Atlantic realized pricing was also up in line with these market movements. Of course, the recent positive market movements in the LME and regional premiums that Shelly mentioned earlier, will flow to our results in Q1 and Q2 due to our sales price lag. Turning next to operating profit. For reporting and adjusted EBITDA of $12 million this quarter, which is an increase of $17 million when compared to the adjusted EBITDA loss of 5 million for the third quarter. EBITDA adjustments in this quarter included an impairment charge related to the Helguvik project, and a non-cash adjustment to the carrying value of inventories. As Mike discussed earlier, the $152 million impairment charge is non-cash and required under GAAP accounting as a results of the unfavorable arbitration. Although we…

Thanks Erich. If you could turn to Slide 11 please, I will take you through the company's expectations for financial measures in 2017. Sebree and Grundartangi continue to run at full capacity while Hawesville and Mt. Holly were at 40% and 50% respectively. As in prior years, we give you our expectations for the premium steel on value added products over standard rate aluminum. We estimate approximately $180 per ton over the LME and original premium on average over just over value added tons not a weighted average overall tons. As Erich mentioned, product premiums in the U.S. remain depressed and we have updated our product mix accordingly to maximize our margins in this environment. Now moving on to some of our largest cost components, Power and Alumina. First the Power, we use the forward screen of MISO, Indiana hub for Kentucky energy prices that result in a delivered price in the upper $30 per megawatt hour. Year-to-date delivery prices averaging the low to mid 30 as a result of mild winter conditions in the U.S. Midwest. In South Carolina we use the Henry hub natural gas price of $3.23 per Mmbtu prices that also subside in the U.S. Southeast and gas prices have decreased to below three. Just to remind you that in South Carolina as Mike mentioned that only implies the 75% of their power requirements. On Alumina we assumed a $300 per ton Alumina index price in 2017 all of our requirements will now be phrased on the index, as opposed to portion being phrased as a percentage of LME as was the case historically. This change increases our sensitivity to movement in the LME price to every $1 per ton movement in the LME commodity price, our annual EBITDA is now impacted by $62 million. You…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Jorge Beristain with Deutsche Bank. Go ahead please.

Hi Mike, it's Jorge Beristain with DB. Maybe just a macro question first, all of the WTO trade case filing, how physically could ruling happened - I mean we are more familiar with U.S. Steel filings that physically slap a tariff on imported steel but how could this work in the world of aluminum. Could you walk us through the mechanics of what the WTO could accomplish in order to get the Chinese basically to control their excess production?

Thanks Jorge. There is no difference in steel I mean the remedy can come in lot of different - if you're asking what the specific remedy could be, yes it comes in any number of different flavors. As you say, Terracotta is combination of the two really is there - the spoke is a fancy word, but there's no specific formula here that the WTO has to use.

But does the WTO then leave that to the local commerce department of each country to enforce? I'm just not understanding how the -

No, absolutely not. It's the WTO ruling. Just to give you completely answers, So A, is the WTO ruling. The first thing that would happen before even the remedies will be decided is that the order would come - if it made it this far, we are hoping of course that there can be a negotiated settlement of some sort but if it got this far we've come for the subsidies to seize.

Okay. And then who would be in charge of enforcing that?

In charge of enforcing that would be the WTO. This all happened under the authorities of the WTO. Is that your question?

Yes. I’ll move on. On a micro level just in Iceland, could you just explain the trigger reason there for the right, you were saying that really nothing has changed, and you are maintaining the full optionality there to proceed with Helguvik. But could you just clarify what was the trigger that caused the write-down.

Yes, sure. And as you say, the leading to your question is correct. But going back to 2007, we signed two power contracts for Helguvik. There was a basis of the project obviously. There were two Icelandic power companies. They were 60% and 40% respectively of the power required for that project, the plant is designed which was a full pot line. One of those counterparties, I don't know if you remember Jorge or this maybe before you were following us - brought an arbitration in 2011 in essence trying to get the contract voided other details which I am happy to do and at that time, it was unsuccessful. The arbitration panel found that the contract was still valid, and that the parties should still work to satisfy the various conditions, blah, blah, blah. They brought the same, in essence, the same arbitration this time last year and regrettably the result was the opposite this time. The panel found that the conditions, because of the passage of time, hasn’t been satisfied and wouldn’t be satisfied. And thus under their contractual right, they voided the contract. So that was the trigger. We now only have one contract remaining, and just for 40% of the power that would be required. And thus there is no under the contract, as it existed, there is no sufficient power to build the plant. So we would have too out and acquire/procure significant amount of additional power in order to make the project viable. So that was the trigger. Very simple, we lost our power, to say it simply.

Okay, got it. I’ll hand it off. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question is from John Tumazos with John Tumazos Very Independent Research. Go ahead please.

Thank you for taking my question. I am a little confused about the Chinese cutting output to reduce pollution during the cold weather months.

Yes.

The International Aluminum Institute data published this week had the Chinese metal output up 19% from a year ago, January.

Yes.

When are their curtailments wanting to take effect?

That’s a good question. You've heard what Shelly said, I don’t even think she had to read between her line - her words to say we are skeptical, period and Shelly, you want to expand on…

Yes. And I don’t think the discussion is about this winter heat is - 2017 for November 2017 to March 2018 is what people are really talking about.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before. John, you’ve been following the sector long enough to know that. Curtailments that have been promised is not announced, even announced as I said. That has not happened. That’s part of the problem. That’s part of why the surplus is there today, and driven by the subsidies this one feels a little bit - and whether it's in response to the WTO case settlement filed in [indiscernible] like there maybe a little bit more behind it but we are certainly mode here but Shelly that's a good answer, if it happens it prospect of.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]

We appreciate everybody's time. And we look forward to speaking with you over the coming months. Good evening.