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

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Ferroglobe's Second Quarter 2025 Conference Call. Joining me today are Marco Levi, our Chief Executive Officer; and Beatriz García-Cos, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started with some prepared remarks, I'm going to read a brief statement. Please turn to Slide 2 at this time. Statements made by management during this conference call that are forward-looking are based on current expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements can be found in Ferroglobe's most recent SEC filings and exhibits to those filings, which are available on our website 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. Before I turn the call over to Marco Levi, our Chief Executive Officer, I want to announce that we'll be participating in the Seaport Virtual Conference on August 19 and 20 and the IDEAS Midwest Conference in Chicago on August 27. We hope to see you there. Marco?

Thank you, Alex, and thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in Ferroglobe. There is a rapidly evolving market environment, particularly on the trade front, resulting in elevated uncertainty and limited visibility around global trade policy and regulatory developments. This was particularly evident as it relates to global tariffs, safeguards and trade measures, both in Europe and in the U.S., adding complexity to an already challenging market environment. Despite these headwinds, we are pleased with the recent progress as evidenced by the newly agreed trade framework between the U.S. and EU, signaling a shift toward greater clarity and cooperation. This development is expected to reduce disruptions and provide improved visibility across global markets. As these measures take effect, we are optimistic that the uncertainties will be resolved in the near term, creating a stronger and more stable market environment heading into 2026. However, given the current uncertainty and limited visibility on market dynamics, trade measures and tariff structures, we believe that it is prudent to withdraw our 2025 guidance at this time. We will revisit it once we have greater clarity on these key matters. I'll now walk through several key developments and uncertainties, many of which we believe will ultimately support a strong outlook for our industry. As discussed previously, the European Commission launched a safeguard investigation last December into silicon metal, silicon-based alloys and manganese alloys, a significant and necessary step to address unfair trade practices. The preliminary decision, which was initially expected in May, has not been officially announced. At this time, we don't know what measures will be adopted or what the timing will be. As a result of delays, we believe that Ferroglobe will benefit from these measures in 2026. As Chairman of Euroalliages, I am actively engaged with its…

Thank you, Beatriz. Before opening the call to Q&A, I'd like to provide key takeaways from today's presentation on Slide 15. First, due to increased uncertainty in the market, particularly around trade actions and volatile pricing in Europe, we are withdrawing our annual guidance. Visibility remains limited, and we believe this is the most prudent course of action until we have a greater clarity. However, we expect the ongoing EU safeguard decision to reduce price pressure from imports, paving the way for robust market conditions in 2026. In the U.S., where we have seen a tangible improvement in the ferrosilicon market, we expect trade policies and antidumping actions to improve the market further. Despite some external headwinds, we continue to navigate the environment effectively as highlighted by our second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $22 million. Our operational discipline, cost control and strong balance sheet, along with our flexible global footprint position us well to manage through near-term volatility. Looking ahead, we are optimistic about 2026 and expect meaningful tailwinds from trade decisions in both U.S. and Europe, along with early signs of supply curtailments. These developments should significantly improve the operating environment next year. Operator, we are ready for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Martin Englert from Seaport Research Partners.

I wanted to quickly touch on, while I know the annual EBITDA guide was withdrawn, do you have any visibility wherein you can speak to any forward-looking metrics like price, volume, costs or broader qualitative views on the second half of this year for the company?

At this stage, Martin, thank you for the question. At this stage, like we said, we are in an extreme uncertain environment and like I said in my speech, uncertainty on overall global trade tariffs, but also tariffs related to our business, right, both in terms of safeguards and antidumping. The big emerging factor in the second quarter has been the massive import of silicon metal from China at extremely low prices. We are talking about $1,100, $1,200 import price, you have to have duties and transportation. So we have faced market prices of EUR 1,400, EUR 1,600 per ton that we could not simply match. And by the way, it's not only Ferroglobe, it's most of the industry that cannot match these prices. This is why we keep on hearing about production curtailments in Ireland, in Germany, in Brazil and also China because I think at this price -- import price level, basically, you get to the cash cost of the best Chinese producers. So also most of the Chinese players lose money at this level. So as a consequence, waiting for more clear decisions is very difficult to project volume and prices for the rest of the year. And from there, our suffered decision to draw the guidance for the rest of the year.

Do you feel like there's any risk that EBITDA could revert negative again before the end of the year? Or is that just unknown right now?

Well, we don't know the amount of EBITDA, but you know that we are going to deliver positive EBITDA. Again, giving a forecast is impossible due to the current situation.

Okay. Understood. I appreciate that the visibility is challenged out there because of the tariffs. Kind of along those lines with U.S. tariffs, can you touch on any exposure you might have here in the supply chain, meaning on the cost side of the business and implications for your facilities and also how it's impacted Becancour?

Yes. As for the Becancour, Martin, at this point in time, Becancour is not impacted because silicon metal imports from Canada to U.S. are not impacted at this stage with any trade measure. Talking about critical raw materials, as you know, we are fully back integrated key raw materials in U.S. and we don't have any specific problem in Europe. We had to face some -- we had to make some corrective actions on small raw materials like specific rare earth but we have been solving the problem. So this has not been impacting overall our supply chain at this stage.

Can you remind us of what specific rare earth exposure you might have?

A lot depends on the founder formulation, but we are talking about bismuth, germanium, tellurium, mainly these 3 products. Then of course, we have to see what happens with magnesium because the major producer of magnesium, guess what is China. But at the moment, we have been able to secure the supply. By the way, magnesium is not rare earth, right?

We will now take the next question from the line of Nick Giles from B. Riley Securities.

My first question on the EU safeguards, it's encouraging to hear the progress thus far. Should we have a price floor or a minimum import price in mind? Or how should we think about overall structure? And then I was curious if you could speak to how volumes could respond in each of your product categories? And then any clarifying points on timing when this could really be implemented?

Okay. First of all, we don't know what is included in the decision of the European community. There have been a lot of speculations on the product coverage on the mechanism to protect our industry in Europe, but there is no final decision. And as a consequence, I don't want to speculate on that. I just want to confirm that we keep on asking for safeguard covering our complete product mix, silicon metal, manganese alloys, polysilicon and ferrosilicon and foundry. And we expect a decision -- a preliminary decision on August 18, 19 and the final decision on November 20. Speculating now on the impact, I think is not a good exercise at this stage. But what I want to underline is that we are still engaged with the European community on working on their final decision, and this makes us feel rather optimistic about having an outcome, which outcome we will see and we will talk at the right time.

Fair enough. Well, I guess maybe a follow-up to that. I mean, as we look across your 3 main product categories, which of your assets in Europe should we think about as best positioned to respond with higher volumes, assuming a favorable outcome in the safeguards?

Yes. There was -- I want to remind you that the overall safeguard initiative is related to restore local supply of critical and strategic raw materials at a rate of maximum 40%. So 60% will still be imported. This is a critical thing. Talking about our plants, of course, in particular, the silicon metal plant run at a much higher rate, starting from Sabon in Spain, moving to Monzón, and Les Clavaux in France. We have converted most of lockdown production already to ferrosilicon. The other plants are either manganese plants or foundry plant. Manganese is running well volume-wise. Then when you move safeguard Europe may impact also to a certain extent, our production of foundry products in South Africa. But at this stage, we are not operating any smelting facility in South Africa.

That's helpful. Maybe just on the -- more on the U.S. side. I mean you mentioned switching some furnaces from silicon metal to ferrosilicon. And apologies if I missed it, but what's the overall volume impact? And any color on what the potential impact to EBITDA could be at current prices?

Well, yes, we have switched one furnace in Beverly, Ohio from silicon metal to ferrosilicon due to the increased demand of ferrosilicon in the U.S. And we have switched one of the large furnaces in [indiscernible] from silicon metal to ferrosilicon, right? So now the U.S. the margin is supported by the price restoration in the second quarter at about 10%. So it's positive EBITDA while the decision of them is related to market opportunities in ferrosilicon due to our advantaged cost position in France versus lack of business in the silicon metal area.

And then one more, if I could. You did have an update on your Coreshell investment, and apologies if I missed it there, but is there anything to highlight from a safeguard or trade case perspective that would ultimately benefit Coreshell or silicon-rich anode technology more broadly?

Yes. Well, first of all, you have to consider that a very high percentage -- ultra-high percentage of graphite comes from China. So there is a natural positive push toward replacing graphite with silicon. And a s mentioned in our speech, we have increased our participation in Coreshell. And during the second quarter, the new pilot plant started operating very smoothly. The first cells were produced and the first result in cycle efficiency are simply outstanding. And so we are in the process of assembling the first cells to major OEMs in the United States and Europe.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back over to Marco Levi for closing remarks.

All of you, thank you again for your participation. We look forward to updating you on the next call in November. Have a great day.

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