Good morning, and welcome to the Loma Negra Fourth Quarter 2023 Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions]. Also, Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately following an English translation. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Diego Jalón, Head of IR. Please go ahead, Diego. Diego Jalón: Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Loma Negra's earnings conference call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings press release and the presentation for today's call, both of which were distributed yesterday after market close. Joining me on the call this morning will be Sergio Faifman, our CEO and Vice President of the Board of Directors; and our CFO, Marcos Gradin. Both of them will be available for the Q&A session. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following safe harbor statements. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements and I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and recent filing with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances. This conference call will also include discussion non-GAAP financial measures. The full reconciliation of the corresponding financial measures is included in the earnings press release. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sergio.

Thank you, Diego. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. I would like to begin my presentation with the discussion of the highlights of quarter, and then Marcos will take you through our market review and financial result. After that, I provide some final remarks and then we will open the call to your questions. Starting with Slide 2. I'm delighted to share with you our performance for the single quarter of the year. Despite in current, challenging resulting for the political transition and involving economic environment, which impacted second semester activity level. The industry concluded the year with dispatch volume that rank only behind the record year of 2022. In this context, Loma has once again demonstrated its resilience, delivering another solid set of results despite the decrease in our top line, which reaches ARS 99 billion marking a decrease of 13.2%. This decline was primarily due to the volume contraction in our core segment. Adjustment EBITDA stood at $61 million for the quarter or ARS 22.7 billion. The year-on-year comparison is affected by the sale of noncore assets for $19 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Excluding this effect, EBITDA decreased by 25.8%. Consolidated adjustment EBITDA margin for the quarter reached 22.8%, contracting by 389 basis points once we eliminate [ tax ] there will be a result for the base of comparison. On the other hand, the U.S. dollar EBITDA per ton stood at $39 for the quarter, almost flat year-on-year once we subtracted the asset sale and improving by 7% in secondary basis. Looking to our annual figures in 2023, we reached a solid EBITDA of $252 million with an EBITDA margin of 23.8%. On the financial side, we used our Class IV domestic bond. [ Throughout ] the year, we have…

Thank you, Sergio, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 6. As you can see on the upper left chart, the most [ recent ] estimates indicate a negative performance of the economy for 2023 of around 1.6%. In the same sense, the market expectation report from the Central Bank signals a negative performance for 2024, showing a decrease of 3% and a recovery in 2025. When we dive into the numbers for our industry, we can see that after a positive October, the construction activity indicator shows a significant drop in the last 2 months of the quarter, deepening the drop in January. Following this trend, [ cement dispatches ] show a double-digit decrease in November and December and a sharp drop in the first month of 2024. After several months of election process volatility, sales in the national cement industry are being affected by the political transition and the consequent effects of tighter economic policies. The industry's bulk segment dispatches took a hit due to lower level of activity in the fourth quarter, decreasing by 12% year-on-year, while [ bagged segment ] post a moderate construction of 5%. When looking at the breakdown by dispatch more for the quarter, bulk shipments represent 44% of the total dispatches in line with the figure reached for the whole year and 2 percentage points above the fourth quarter of 2022. After the conclusion of the electoral year, it will be necessary to dispel the uncertainty about the economic direction and find a certain political balance to enable our activation of the industry and lay the foundations for a stage of [ genuine ] growth. Turning to Slide 7 for a review of our top line performance by segment. The fourth quarter top line show a decrease of [ 13.2% ],…

Thank you, Marcos. Now to summarize the presentation. I please ask you to turn to Slide 15. We are very proud of the result achieved by Loma in 2023, despite the lower volume of the fourth quarter that were more affected by the end of the period due to the political transition. We must lose seeing that 2023 was the second best year for the industry in terms of volume, only behind the record achieved in 2022. Thirdly, the electoral process and the subsequent change in administration have induced uncertainty, impacting the level of activity industry, stakeholder are cautioned and awaiting the government's initial action and the stabilization of key economic indicators. Despite the significant drop in activity level dividends in the first months of the year, we remain optimistic but are aware of that the path to recovery we winning and full of the challenges. Argentina has great growth potential, which will be unlocked if the country manages to start moving along to right path. In that scenario, Loma has the capacity to support and bolster the country development, fulfilling role of industry leaders. Finally, I would like to thank all our employees for the commitment they have shown throughout the year. I also want to express gratitude to the rest of our stakeholder for remaining close to us for another year. And broadly together, we can face any change that this new year might bring. This is some of our prepared remarks. We are now ready to take questions. Operator, please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions]. Also please note that Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately following an English translation. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from Daniel Rojas of Bank of America.

Can you hear me?

Yes, sir. We can hear you.

Looking at the contraction in margin, the 389 basis points you mentioned that excludes the asset sale. Could you please give a little bit more details on what's behind this? What factors lag behind the lower margin? And what we should expect going forward?

Daniel, thank you for your question. I will respond to that, that margins are not descending. Obviously, when compared year-on-year, they are contracting because of the lower volumes and the hitting on the top line. But if you saw it on a sequential basis, quarter-over-quarter, margins are stable. But the principal factor, honestly is lower volume.

Okay. And if I may follow up. Now that the new President has been in office for a few months, can you give us some color on how you're seeing activity going forward, is your team already on board, do you see a faster or lower transition that you might have expected. We just want to get an idea of how we should expect the year to roll out.

Daniel, obviously, the year and the first month are being hit. Yes, the volume is in the level of 20%, 25%. We expect the upcoming months to continue more or less on this space. But then for the second half of the year, economy began to pick up, and that's where we are going to see a pickup on cement volumes. But obviously, the number is going to be [ negative ] for the year.

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question is from [ Jorge Viñas ] of Latin Securities. Jorge Viñas: The question is about the pricing environment in the current recessionary scenario, given the deepening of the contraction in dispatches, how is the pricing evolving and what should we expect for the next couple of quarters.

[Interpreted] Regarding prices, since December [indiscernible], we are above inflation in the enterprising dynamic. Our actual price hit was hit above the one we had in December. And we expect this trend to continue even though if we see some this quick movement of the effects, we will act accordingly.

And this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Diego Jalón for any closing remarks. Diego Jalón: Thank you for joining us today. We truly appreciate your interest in our company. Allow me to remind you that we issue our -- certain issuance of our sustainability report and it's available on our website, and we invite you to have a look at it. As always, we look forward to meeting you again in our next call. And in the meantime, we are available for any questions that you may have. Thank you, and have a nice day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]